With Season 13 coming up, I thought now would be a good time for me to go back and see how I felt about the episodes in season 11 & 12, in retrospect.

I'm not going back and watching these, and while I've watched some of them more than once, it was around when they aired. Part of this, for me, is seeing what I actually still remember about these episodes.

Besides, my not remembering much about an episode does say a bit amount about it...

So, let's start. Spoilers, obviously, if you haven't watched any of these:

"The Woman Who Fell to Earth" - Chris Chibnall:
The opening and first episode for the thirteenth Doctor.

Well, it wasn't a bad episode. Wasn't a big favorite, either. Middle of the road.

I liked Jodie in Capaldi's outfit, and her entrance, crashing through the roof. She did have some good moments in here. I liked her wiping Ryan's phone, and making the sonic screwdriver. I did enjoy her "I am the Doctor" moment.

Teeth guy was a villain of the week, and forgetable. Did not expect him to ever show up again.

Loved the double meaning on the title. Loved Grace & Graham. In many ways, I wish we'd gotten Grace in the Tardis instead of Ryan.

The whole thing with the alien capsule being stolen was kinda filler? I did like the affirmation tape scene.

Yaz didn't get much time here. I figured she'd get a proper introduction later.

"The Ghost Monument" - Chris Chibnall:
As skeptical as I am of materializing in deep space, and having two spaceships immediately save all of them, the actual filming of the start of this episode was great.

Ryan had that scene running around with a gun that was, well, memorable, but not for a good reason.

I did love the scene when the Doctor was reunited with the Tardis.

Most of the rest of the episode doesn't seem to have left too much of an impression on me. The guest characters were good, and that one guy was abused as a kid?

Oh, Venusian Aikido! Yay, Jon Pertwee callback.

Not horrible, but not the best of episodes.

"Rosa" - Malorie Blackman & Chris Chibnall:
Okay, loved Rosa. Doctor Who was being a proper historical and treating the subject matter well. I liked the villain, and would've liked to have seen him again. And Graham's face when he realized he was going to have to not give up his seat for history to play out properly.

Kinda wish they'd given shooting the villain to Yaz, with her police background. And Ryan was a bit annoying. Still great episode.

"Arachnids in the UK" - Chris Chibnall:
And now over to the worst episode of the Chibnall era.

I was hoping that this one had something to do with the giant spiders from the third Doctors last serial. No such luck.

Graham dealing with the ghost of his dead wife was good. Meeting Yaz's family was good.

Ryan and loud rap music was the worst thing since... Ryan running around with a gun, I guess?

Did we really need the Trump guy?

The Doctor ended a much better politician's career with five words. Why didn't she do anything here? You know, they didn't even wrap up the episode properly. I think they locked all the spiders in a room and left them there to die of starvation after jumping on Trump guy for shooting the queen.

Honestly, worse than "Love and Monsters"...

"The Tsuranga Conundrum" - Chris Chibnall:
Ooh, mixed feelings here. There was actually a lot I liked about this episode! The setting, for one. I like episodes set in spaceships and space colonies, and all the white walls and corridors and such.

Also, the Doctor runs into someone that doesn't immediately like her, and doesn't like that she's trying to take charge of the situation, because that's his job! I really liked the dynamic between them.

So naturally, they immediately killed him off. :(

I actually loved the way piloting was handled, too, because they were doing sort of a Cordwainer Smith thing, like in "Game of Rat and Dragon". I'm a sucker for that.

Yay, sonic screwdriver was killed! Unfortunately, it got fixed.

I remember the Doctor having this great scene talking about the ship's drive, too.

The pregnant guy... okay, doesn't make the most sense to me, seems like it was brought in largely to let Ryan talk about his family, and wasn't really handled well. Generally, if a guy is going to get pregnant, it should be deliberate, like medically implanting a fetus in their body.

Of course, Red Dwarf had a guy get pregnant first... and did it much better. Parallel Universe was a great Red Dwarf episode. I remember how uncomfortable it was that the female versions of the crew were treating them just like they normally treat women. Great song, too. I should go back and rewatch it. Parallel Universe, that is. I don't need to rewatch the Tsuranga Conundrum.

This episode is kinda something that happened multiple times for me, actually. There would be a bunch of things I liked in an episode, but it'd kinda be let down by the rest of the episode, and might've been better with some rewrites...

"Demons of the Punjab" - Vinay Patel:
This was such a good episode, for teaching about an area of history I didn't know much about, and the shear emotions involved. Better than Rosa, actually, and I loved Rosa.

Oh, there was also an awesome Indian cover of the Doctor Who theme at the end!

Weakest moments would be that Yaz didn't get enough time in her own episode. There was a great Graham moment, but then, he's always great.

Also, the aliens. Episode would've been stronger without them. Just say that Prem's death was a fixed point in time.

Great episode, though.

"Kerblam!" - Pete McTighe:
Mixed emotions, here we come again.

Loved this episode on first watch. I like the Doctor and gang going around big evil corporations, the the Sun Makers. There were clues to who the bad guy was around too, that I missed on first watch, and appreciated afterwards.

I remember one scene where the background music was just so great I was mostly paying attention to that.

Thinking back on it, though... sure, the terrorist needed to be thwarted, but so does the evil corporation! And what about that computer that just up and murdered a character I liked and gets no consequences?

Loved the setting, and some of it was written very well... and some wasn't, and falls apart.

Arrgh.

"The Witchfinders" - Joy Wilkinson:
Um, right, this one. Mediocre episode with some great moments.

Okay, anything with King James in it was top tier. He killed it, and was so much fun to watch.

The actual villain was one of these villain of the week things, though, and was the worst part of the episode.

Honestly, accepting the otherwise weak episode for Alan Cummings wonderful performance.

"It Takes You Away" - Ed Hime:
Yay, god is a frog!

Blind girl, and tapes being used to scare her was good. Father was sucky, but was supposed to be sucky for the episode.

Other dimensions are always fun, but this was probably one of the most boring sections of the episode.

The Grace/Graham scene was great, and it was nice seeing Ryan and Graham get along better.

The Doctor has seven Grandmothers!

I do like this one a good deal, even if part of it was the whole god as a talking frog thing. I like silly, out there things like that.

"The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos" - Chris Chibnall:
Ah, right, this one.

Eh, Graham had some good moments?

Prefer "The Pirate Planets" in the Tom Baker era, but then, that one had Douglas Adams, and a captain with a silly cyber parrot. Hard to beat that.

Mostly another mediocre Chibnall written episode, bringing back the mediocre villain from the start of the season.

"Resolution" - Chris Chibnall:
Not even sure how much I remember this one. Dalek acts like something from the Puppet Masters, had a fairly good Dalek design, IIRC, and Ryan's deadbeat dad saves the world with a microwave?

Yeah, that sounds like an episode of Doctor Who, I guess.

"Spyfall, Part 1 & 2" - Chris Chibnall:
Great James Bond stuff. Great new Master. Good callback to the original master, and miniaturizing people. I've been asking for a more Delgado-ish Master forever.

Yay, Ada Lovelace!

Aliens were interesting. Big corporate CEO less so.

Still, enjoyable two parter.

"Orphan 55" - Ed Hime:
Mixed Emotions again. And this was written by the guy who did "It Takes You Away"!

I liked the setup. Doctor goes to a resort planet with their companions is a classic, and I liked the look of it. I liked the cheesy alien that greeted them!

I was riding the momentum the first time and enjoying it. I was kinda going, "Oh, this is Earth. Interesting." along the way.

Ending was really hamhanded and unsubtle. I mean, I agree with the message, but you can let us draw the conclusions ourselves!

"Benni!" is such a meme at this point.

The plot totally fell apart on any examination. Seriously, was this originally supposed to be a two parter, half the plot got scrapped to make it one episode, and they left out too much or something?

So here we are with another sucky episode that could've been good. Chibnall...

"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" - Nina Metivier:
Yay, Nikola Tesla.

Um, why's the Racnos here?

It's not the Racnos? Okay...

Seriously, this is another one of these ones where they should've just cut the cheesy villain and found something else to hang the rest of the episode around. I liked how Tesla and Edison were handled, I just would've liked a better plot for them to be in.

"Fugitive of the Judoon" - Vinay Patel & Chris Chibnall:
The writer from "Demons of the Punjab" came back!

You know, overall, I liked this episode. Seeing the Jadoon come back was fun.

That moment where we uncover the Tardis, and Jo Martin's character turned out to also be the Doctor was great. And she killed being the Doctor. Doesn't use sonic's, either.

Also, her Tardis was so much a classic Tardis brought up to modern standards. I loved it and it's high up there on Tardis's for me.

My biggest disappointment on this one is that we didn't get Jo Martin as the Doctor and this great Tardis for more than part of this episode. Give her a spinoff! Or make her the next Doctor?

"Praxeus" - Pete McTighe and Chris Chibnall:
Ooh, not really remembering this one that well right now. Yaz was good in it, and the enviromentalist plot was handled better than in Orphan 55?

Oh, this was the one where I was surprised when they didn't body the gay guy, because it looked like they were going to.

Honestly, still didn't leave much of an impression.

"Can You Hear Me?" - Charlene James & Chris Chibnall:
Detachable fingers and Yaz gets a backstory?

Guess I'm not remembering this one that well, either, aside from some great Yaz stuff that we should have gotten in season one.

"The Haunting of Villa Diodati" - Maxine Alderton:
Best episode of the season. The creepy house vibes were great, loved having Mary Shelley and crew there, and it had a cyberman villain that was well written, and by all rights, should've been a continuing villain for a season or more.

And that Doctor speech about the hierarchy.

Great episode. I wish it had been followed up on better.

"Ascension of the Cybermen" & "The Timeless Children" - Chris Chibnall:
Oh, these things.

We start tackling the Cybermen taking over everything, then the Master takes over the plot, and offs a great villain casually. Gallifrey is destroyed once again, and the Time Lords are Cyber Time Lords now.

Oh, and we bring back the Matrix, which is nice to have back, and we get a bunch of canon revision through scenes the Master shows us, and the Matrix is infallable, so they must be true.

Well, there was that time the Matrix was tampered with, by, who was it, the Master? And then there's the time the Valeyard tampered with it. Has it ever been infallable, actually? Okey, it's so complicated that it'd take the Doctor or the Master, but that's, like, everyone in the room at the time.

But okay, so the Doctor theoretically isn't really from Gallifrey, and regenerations on Gallifrey are totally based on their ability to regenerate, figured out by her foster mother repeatedly killing her as a child. Maybe child protective services should have gotten involved?

And the first Doctor is far from the first, and the Doctor had their mind wiped.

Except, you know, none of the ones before William Hartnell should call themselves the Doctor, since that was something started there. And his Doctor initially didn't go around saving people, and was actively sabotaging things initially. The way the Doctor is now was character development during the first Doctor's run and subsequent incarnations. All of the first 4 doctors had a major impact on the character.

Unfortunately, this is one of these things where the setup was good, but it was let down by the reveal. I'd much rather let Jo Martin's Doctor be the 2.5 Doctor or the 14th Doctor after all, and have the Master turn out to have been the real Timeless Child or something.

I did like the look of these Cybermen. This wan't really their story, though.

"Revolution of the Daleks" - Chris Chibnall:
There were things I liked about this one. I remember feeling like this should've been a serial. I said on Orphan 55 that I thought it might've been an idea that was cut down too much too, actually. Maybe the fact we are actually getting a serial will be good.

Doctor locked in jail and busted out by Jack Harkness was good. Should've been longer.

Yaz spending all her time in the Tardis trying to figure out where the Doctor was, was, again, good.

Jack was all:

Hey, when I was with the Doctor I, I saw more than I could have ever dreamed. And then we lost each other. I don't know what happened to him. If he was alive or if I was ever gonna see him again. Hard way to live. Being with the Doctor you don't get to choose when it stops. Whether you leave her or she leaves you.

Right. Plenty of companions have chosen to leave the Doctor in the past. Jo Grant got married. Tegan outright told the Doctor that it wasn't fun any more and left. Harry left the moment the Tardis landed someplace familiar. Barbara and Ian left once they were back someplace near their time.

Just rubs me the wrong way. Don't mystify and deify the Doctor. This isn't just a Chibnall thing, either, but a New Who thing.

I actually do like the whole plot of Daleks being reverse engineered and manufactured as a robotic police force. This was some great commentary on society that should have actually gotten some time to play out. And of course, remember Power of the Daleks. "We are your servants!"

We really didn't need to bring Trump guy back. He was better in this episode, but...

Daleks vs. Daleks fighting each other because they are impure, again, is great. This was well done in Rememberance of the Daleks, a great Dalek serial. Still needed more time.

The Doctor killed a poor defenseless Tardis. Sorry, contrived way to end things, awful thing to do, given things like "The Doctor's Wife", and utterly the worst moment of the episode for me.

Ryan left the Doctor! Yay!

Oh, Graham left too. Not so yay. Still, we get an all female Tardis crew, with it being just Yaz and the Doctor and the least crowded it's been in forever. They can go around the universe, have fun, and Yaz can get some character development. Yes!

What do you mean? Who's Dan?

And... that's season 11/12, from my perspective. Reminds me of all the reasons I go up and down on Chibnall's era, and why I am happy to have a new showrunner coming.

Still, thinking about the episodes that could've been better if they'd had more time does encourage me a little bit about Chibnall doing a 6 part serial this time.

So, I know plenty of you don't like the seasons as a whole, but thoughts on individual episodes? Also, don't kill each other, and it's okay to like things other people don't, and vice versa. Different people like different things!

--Sweetie Belle

7586028
"Also, don't kill each other"

Oh please. Kill is so... Overrated. Around here. We exterminate each other.

7586035
As long as I don't have to delete a bunch of comments.

--Sweetie Belle

I will be blunt but I'll try to be polite, I cannot see each episode as individuals because they let's face it, they are all the same.

Chibnall's time as head writer has done nothing but destroy more than 50 years of lore, world building, and character. And the decision to make the series "Inclusive" has done nothing more but to alienate many, and I mean many old fans and discourage new fans from joining in. I don't even need emphasise the problem when the numbers speak for themselves.

No, I do not care if the Doctor is a woman or when a character is of a different ethnic "Minority" or of a different sexual orientation. Eccleston, Tennent's and Smith's run had a full set of characters with those traits and they ended up as good characters. Chibnall I'm afraid, is more concerned of Force-feeding the Gospel of "Inclusiveness" instead of quality storytelling.

I'll be frank, nobody wants to be preached at in our media. The failure of America's Modern Christian film industry can attest to that. So the same could be said with the Woke Preachers. Each episode has done nothing but preach the same rhetoric that I don't even remember why the characters were there to begin with.

I am so sorry, I didn't mean for this reply to be a rant but I am just so tired of the rhetoric that the media is trying to push. I just want quality storytelling again. Stories that tell lessons subtly without shoving it in your face. Stories that are more concerned with character and character dynamics instead of making tokens out of them. Stories that pay homages to their predecessors with respect and reverence for the franchise's long history. In way, I wish the New Doctor Who was more like the MLP where it is now.

7586028
Yeah, she had some great episodes, Rosa and such. Like, I remember in the Brain of Morbius (I believe), there was gonna be a plot point that like, the Doctor had more incarnations we hadn't seen, and also like, they were gonna be revealed as a Loom clone of The Other, the mysterious third founder of Gallifrey.

Personally I would have had the Doctor, and the Master be the Timeless Children, but have it be revealed Techna was The Other, and had made them as weapons against Rassilon, who had stolen her research into making regeneration (Wouldn't be the worst thing Rassilon did.)

7586061
Yeah, it was this scene here:

It wasn't brought up again, and Phillip Hinchcliffe left at the end of the next season, so it was pretty much silently ignored after that. The scene could be read as that those extra faces were Morbius's, and people decided to sort of go with it that way.

There are interesting things that could be done with it. The big things I don't like are: I don't like the Doctor being that important and all of Gallifrey being founded based on them, and I don't really like William Hartnell not being the first Doctor. OTOH, I'm fine with sticking a bunch of Doctor's between 2 and 3, and inserting things in other weird spots that leave room for it. ¹

--Sweetie Belle

1. How did the 6th Doctor die, and why was the 7th Doctor going around dressed like him with a wig on? :P

7586069
Yeah, as a friend noted, it made the Doctor special for what they are, not what they've done.
The BBC Books Past Doctor Adventures novel Spiral Scratch proposes that the Sixth Doctor died as a result of his chronal energy being drained in a confrontation with a powerful pan-dimensional entity before being snared by the Rani's beam.