• The voice of the Pakhar character isn't a high pitched squeak like the last time one of them appeared in a story. There you go. That's the good thing about this story. THE good thing.
  

• The cynicism. This is, frankly, a disgusting story. It seems to be going for a cynical Caves of Androzani type atmosphere but forgets that arguably the strongest element of that story was the throughline of the Doctor refusing to accept Peri's doom and fighting every step of the way to save her - and succeeding! There are no redemptive elements to this story, every character outside of the main cast are horrible, nasty, miserable little shits who cynically exploit those around them for their own benefit. Everybody is purely out for their own gain, and any character who demonstrates even a modicum of empathy or selflessness is either revealed to be faking or are quickly eliminated while the nasty characters goad and taunt them for being so "weak". One character who appears to be a reluctant hero, saving Peri from her fate as a sacrifice, later reveals in a log that he only did so to use her as a distraction to achieve his own selfish goals. He then suffers his own horrific fate, with Peri mourning him none the wiser that he fully intended to throw her to the wolves.
  
  
• Sex and violence. I'm always torn when it comes to this type of thing in Doctor Who - I'd like to think there isn't ANY theme that can't be explored in an interesting way by a good writer. But the writing here is not good, and the overabundance of violence coupled with the extraordinarily distasteful sexual elements feel horribly out of place, present purely for their shock value. Outside of the enormous amounts of violence - an entire fleet is wiped out, witches tear apart the bodies of the survivors and eat them alive, the Doctor literally gets his head torn off - there is a lot of disturbing sexual content. Peri is captured by the "Witches" of Talderun and drugged in preparation to be a sacrifice to their God - this apparently involves her being stripped naked and left to bathe in oils while being watched by a hidden field researcher. He then rescues her and snaps her out of her stupor, leading to very contrived dialogue about her nudity for seemingly no reason beyond providing mild titillation. Worse than that though is the cliffhanger ending to an episode where the military commander suddenly out of nowhere decides he is going to rape Erimem.... just because! This cliffhanger is "resolved" with a lengthy sequence where it is suggested that he did just that and is utterly unapologetic, and it is only after several uncomfortable minutes of this hanging in the air that we learn the "good news" that he didn't rape her, just beat the utter poo poo out of her when she fought back. This has no further bearing on the story at all. None. It is, again, seemingly just there for the shock value. About the only good thing I can say is that despite the nudity and the attempted rape, I at least never got the sense that I was reading somebody's stealth "erotic" fanfiction - when the best thing I can say about a story is "At least it wasn't The Creed of Kromon" that's hardly high praise.
  
  
• Poor writing, characters & resolution. The story is nonsensical, the characters are inconsistent, and the resolution resolves nothing. The basic story is that in the galactic region of Nekromanteia is the planet of Talderun, where a massive energy converter has provided the "God" Shara with eternal life. A Corporate CEO has sent his fleet to conquer Talderun to get the information necessary to build his own converter and gain eternal life himself. The witches who serve the God protect the planet ferociously and provide sacrifices to their God. But the events of the story constantly contradict themselves, with characters taking actions that make no sense. The CEO is working for a mysterious male figure who is eventually revealed to be the head Witch using a voice modulator.... except she turns it off halfway through their conversation and he was apparently fully aware the entire time who she was... so why the hell was this present at all other than to "trick" the listener? To what end? Also why are they working together, she apparently needs sacrifices but surely there were easier ways to get them than having to fight a giant space battle? At first I thought it was because the CEO was planning to betray her (which would be in character) but things he says indicate that he genuinely thought they were on the same side and he was working in good faith. The CEO's ultimate fate comes out of nowhere, not out of some neat twist but just to further sink home the general theme of everybody being selfish, self-absorbed assholes. Commander Harlon, the guy who tried to RAPE Erimem, not only escapes with his life but is rewarded, with the suggestion he is going to become the most powerful man in the galaxy after cynically abusing and taking advantage of everybody without the slightest sense of remorse. The Doctor just straight up walks into the coven of witches despite knowing they're aggressively territorial cannibals, and proceeds to get his head torn from his head - no joke, no twist, he literally dies by walking stupidly into a deathtrap, and is only returned to life by the actions of the "God" when everything goes wrong. There's also a running thing through the first 2/3rds of the story about the Doctor being the "Anti-God", the devil of the witches' religion.... except this goes absolutely nowhere and has zero bearing on the story, and just gets entirely forgotten about. The resolution when it comes makes no sense, the head witch (with her horribly overbearing voice) has a breakdown moment where I think we're supposed to feel sympathy for her (she's a genocidal cannibal!) because she's been cheated out of her own promise of eternal life.... only Shara already told the Doctor his eternal life was meant to be just that - eternal - and carefully balanced so that he and only he could be "God" and she knew that, and in fact she herself was trying to pull the same scam on the CEO. Shara's death puts the entire universe at risk and his replacement is so unbelievably telegraphed that the moment lacks any impact.... but then everybody just leaves. So were the sacrifices ever necessary? Who will guard the incredibly dangerous energy converter now? What is to stop anybody from finding it, taking the catalyst and destroying the universe all over again? The Commander says he has no intention of coming back for it, but Rom's colleagues were not only fully aware of what he was doing/what he was after, but he says numerous times before his death that if he dies his colleagues will come looking for him. It's like the main cast was so sick of this story they just wanted to get the hell out of there and put the whole horrible affair behind them... and I don't really blame them.
  

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Nov 26, 2015

IceAgeComing fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Nov 26, 2015