Doctor Who Review - Orphan 55

Oh dear…this is not good.

This shot is hilarious/ly illogical when examining it. And that's just the beginning.

Possibly the worst episode of Doctor Who to ever exist (even considering Colin Baker’s tenure), this is an extraordinarily incompetent space “adventure” that I can’t believe got made. I can understand when movies like Gods of Egypt or similarly trash movies are made, because filmmakers often are unable or unwilling to access greater materials, but here, it’s a show funded by the BBC, controlled by the guy who made the amazing Broadchurch, with the most talented VFX company on the planet behind it. What the actual hell happened?

This movie felt to me like a Roland Emmerich movie without the explosions. There are too many characters with their own individual quirks to put up a façade of three-dimensionality, there’s inane dialogue, faceless villains, superficial relationships we’re meant to get invested in, and a very heavy-handed message about humanity (which I’ll get to later). It just lacks the explosions and action that people actually go to Roland Emmerich movies for.

And my god, the characters. Everyone in this episode is a quirk. Just a quirk, whether it be that they bicker with their son, or that they are old, or that they are a furry, that’s all the character they get. The episode has nowhere near enough time or purpose for these characters, so why are they there? Sh%tty comic relief by screaming “OH, BEHNNY”?

Spelling doesn't matter.

One of them even straight up steals a plotline from Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day with a character continuously saying “No, you can’t” only to get owned by his son and forced to grovel. The only partially interesting character is maybe the hotel boss, played by Gus’s Madrigal chemical supplier from Breaking Bad, because she actually has a good reason for going into the danger (unlike the others who come along for no reason, including the geriatric lady and the cowardly furry). But then she gets slapped with a surprise daughter twist that ends in the least developed way possible, with no debate, no development, just a completely random event.

The villains in this episode, named “Dregs”, are hilariously bad. Their visual design is not terrible, but their use, and the way they’re shot, are just not intimidating. They move with the urgency of zombies and they look like even the pensioner could take them on with a chair. They fail to be intimidating in any way possible, but the episode treats them like they’re Xenomorphs who will engage us by merely snoring.

Eww.

Even the music for this episode is bad, according to my composing friend Patrick. He hates the new composer for the series, Segun Akinola, because according to Patrick, all of the music Akinola composes is just atmospheric, no action or comedy music. With Murray Gold, the former composer of Who, he may have been a bit repetitive, but he had varied music including orchestral bombast, quirky beats and Half-Life-esque vaguely-electronic tension music. Here, it’s just atmosphere with no creativity or variety. And by the way, Pat’s working on an awesome review for Star Wars music, so tune in for that.

And now, the message. This movie ends with Jodie Whittaker practically breaking the 4th wall to lecture us about climate change, as (SPOILERS) this planet is actually a nuclear-ravaged Earth and the Dregs are humans. It’s something we could have thematically interpreted from the episode without being told, but instead it’s stretched out laughably like a Twitter troll trying to be relevant. Imagine a Spike Lee movie where he just forgot all of his training except for his brutally forceful messages (so basically Oldboy), and that’s Orphan 55.

Why is Doctor Who taking lessons from Deadpool?

Holy god. Please include other episodes in the comments which could be worse, because there are always more. For this one, I’m giving a pitiful 2/10, because the acting is thankfully to a small degree of competence.