The Ghost Monument (2018) Review

When you first discover porn and are juggling
massive levels of guilt and pleasure
just staring at it...
or maybe that was just me.

The Ghost Monument presents one of my favourite concepts for a Doctor Who story - a quest - but it lacks in execution, leaving it a mildly amusing runaround.

WRITTEN BY

Chris Chibnall, who is a serious hypocrite now, because tonally, the show has come right back to Terror Of The Vervoids.

PLOT

After the Doctor's teleporter malfunctioned, the TARDIS crew is literally stranded in space until they are conveniently rescued by two racers now on the last leg of their race. Their goal is to reach the eponymous "ghost monument", which also conveniently happens to be the Doctor's TARDIS. Unfortunately, the entire planet is a death trap. Fun times ahead...?

ANALYSIS

As I said above, I really like quest storylines, good examples being The Keys Of Marinus or The Five Doctors, where the story itself acknowledges that the characters are mere pawns that have to pass through challenges to achieve a certain goal by the end.

But what made those stories work was that that's not all there was to them. The Keys Of Marinus for starters was three times as long as this episode, enabling us to explore a variety of environments with different threats instead of just one. That, and it was also a parable about the dangers of mental conditioning.
The Five Doctors, of course, was a nostalgia romp and thus had in-built investment AND was also a parable, about the classic "be careful what you wish for".

Compared to those two(and to be honest, I'm not even that big of a Marinus fan), The Ghost Monument pales in comparison. The threats that the TARDIS crew face are robots, floaty rags and water, the latter of which becomes a Chekhov's gun. In other words, the main reason why anyone likes these kinds of stories - the fascinating situations that the characters have to overcome - are milquetoast at best and embarrassingly unimaginative at worst.

But maybe it's all worth it for the character development?

CHARACTERS

The closest thing this episode has to a defining point is ramming home the importance of teamwork. Which in of itself isn't a bad idea for a quest story, but again, the way it's executed is incompetent. Not only do we never see in-bickering between the characters save for Art Malik's Epzo(and his great crime is being mostly indifferent to others rather than a malevolent threat), but there's not really any situation that requires the team to work together to defeat a problem.

I know that having characters whine at each other isn't a fun experience(looking at you, season 19 and series 8 TARDIS crews), but these four are so fiercely loyal and cuddly with one another that it's ludicrous. Barney the dinosaur wouldn't have looked out of place travelling with them.

And as for the conflict between the two racers, Epzo and Susan Lynch's remarkably Jodie Whittaker-ish Angstrom, well, it's mostly relegated to acting like an old married couple and not even trying to stop one another from reaching the monument. I was hoping for Angstrom to be the one to turn out to be the real villain of the episode, you know, using the TARDIS crew as a means to an end or at least seeing Epzo learn the error of his ways by actually depending on someone else, but in the end, this entire teamwork exercise ended just like they do in real life - with the teacher making a grumpyface and everyone else rolling their eyes, doing what they came to do and then going home without having learned anything.
Riveting.

As for the TARDIS crew as individuals, I only really cared for Bradley Walsh this episode, and purely because he was the only one acting like a normal person whilst the other two companions made me wonder why people think badly of Hayden Christensen's acting talent.

Jodie Whittaker's Doctor sadly came across almost like a parody, constantly preaching sugar and spice and everything nice. Oh, and she hates guns and chews Ryan out for trying to do the only sensible thing any sonic screwdriver-less person would do. Because the anti-soldier thing will never ever die.

NOTES

*By far the best part of this episode was the new title sequence, I adore it. Part of me is glad we finally have it at the very start of the episode again, but that does kind of mean we have lost our cliffhanger substitute...

*Also, no idea why this sequence couldn't be in The Woman Who Fell To Earth.

*The design of Epzo's ship reminded me strongly of the one Jack had when we met him back in The Empty Child. I'm just gonna assume there's a connection there because why not?

*How did the TARDIS crew get separated? And why even, in terms of the writing?

*Why did none of the humans suffer from ill effects from their little trip to the vacuum of outer space?

*Where did the Doctor get the sunglasses from Pythagoras or Audrey Hepburn? Last episode, she was all "empty pockets aaaarrgh". And I can't really imagine the Twelfth Doctor having those when he already had the sonic shades.

*The Doctor claims to have been a hologram once for three weeks? Let's take that and neatly put it alongside that time the Third Doctor thought he was several thousand years old.

*How did the TARDIS end up phasing in and out of existence on Desolation? Did somebody steal it? Or did it go on its own, and if so, why would it do that? I can accept it being some kind of a glitch, but it feels weird that they didn't really address the why and how.

*Graham's need to have Ryan call him "granddad" and constant pestering to get him to open up is really starting to grate on me.

*Speaking of opening up, why does Epzo(a guy who's been presented as being a private person up until this point) blab to the TARDIS crew about his mother? And why does he agree to share the reward with Angstrom after all of their rivalry?

*Why didn't the gun affect the robots, aside from a convenient excuse for the Doctor to go "I told you so"?

*The Doctor's passive-aggressive sniping at Epzo for his lack of empathy may be technically in-character(Pertwee wasn't above this sort of thing), but it makes the Doctor look childish and bullying. I get why she'd have a problem with him, but I'd like to think she just wouldn't lower herself to that level, especially given how much older she is at this point. In fact, it'd be nice if Ryan or Yaz sniped at him and the Doctor told them off for it, because she can understand why Epzo's life would have led him to have these kinds of opinions.

*Why did the indigenous people inscribe their fate onto some random floor instead of... I dunno, any other recording device? Did they not have paper? Even the dwarves of Moria had paper!

*How come Angstrom's knife was able to damage the floating rags and yet the Doctor's sonic had no effect?

*Why did it take Ryan and Yaz so long to inform the rest of the group that the robots had reactivated?

*I get why the Doctor would give Ryan a pep talk before letting him climb the ladder, but calling him "amazing" for "all the things he's done to get here" is kind of ridiculously exaggerating. He's done squat since he joined the team.

*Of all the people to prophecise the Doctor's future, why floaty rags(which are meant to be nothing more than war machines, remember)? Why not the tent guy?

*Some people seem to claim that the Timeless Child thing isn't meant to go anywhere, but I'm definitely getting series arc vibes out of it. It's not like in Silver Nemesis, where the Doctor's secret from the "Dark Times" is left ambiguous and it's a part of the story since the technology that informed Lady Peinforte is Gallifreyan, here they're just randomly baiting it.

*Segun Akinola has been a great choice for the series composer thus far, his incidental music's pretty cool. The tunes don't exactly stand out, but they're also weird enough to complement the episode and make you go "huh, that's some cool music", if that makes any sense.

*The Doctor giving up the minute when she can't see her TARDIS where it's supposed to be(doesn't even do a sonic scan) is just dumb. And don't they already know it phases in and out?

*Okay, this may be an extremely nerdy nitpick, but... the Doctor has no TARDIS key. The doors just open on their own without prompting. Why not have her open the doors by snapping her fingers?

*Quick thoughts on the new console room: it's alright. The console's kind of rubbish, and the metal framework should be removed(looks unfinished), but I like the walls and the crystal pillars and the overall vibe of it.

*Finally the Doctor puts on some boundaries over who can touch the console and who can't! Let her slap their hands off!

CONTINUITY ADVISOR

1) The Doctor dishes out some good old Venusian aikido again. Always nice to get a callback to Pertwee's James Bondian days.

2) The Stenza from The Woman Who Fell To Earth are responsible for Desolation's condition. Which honestly just feels like they're trying too hard to build a separate era. It could've been anyone. Why make the universe smaller by having it be the dudes from the last episode?

3) Yet another rendition of Troughton's famous "you've redecorated" line, because why not? This constant reuse of this line is fast becoming a joke in of itself.

BEST QUOTE

"My beautiful ghost monument!" - Cute.

CONCLUSION

Feeling very CBBC, and not in a good way.