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Prem means Love
Welcome to the Punjab,1947. Hope you like weddings and demons, because this episode has it all. This week, Doctor Who takes her new friends to the Partition of India. “Why?”, you might ask. It’s a wedding!
Yaz, receives a gift from her Nani, one that she has held on to since her youth in Punjab. This ignites Yaz’s curiosity to the point that she asks the Doctor to take her back in time to get a better understanding of her grandmother. Again, “Doctor Who” gives us a splendid story wrapped in gorgeous visuals and wed to superb music. “Demons of the Punjab” is sure to be an instant classic, much like “Rosa”. Season 11 is really hitting a high note by allowing historical stories to be written by the people of it’s respective culture. We discuss this wonderful story and so much more on this weeks episode of Don’t Blink. Come join us in the TARDIS!
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Just a quick bit of Who news in case the book readers haven’t found out yet – there are three DW novels coming featuring this group; the first is called “The Good Doctor”, the second “The Molten Heart” and the third “Combat Magicks”.
12 episodes is too short, I need more of this group!!!
This is the second week they’ve set up injured Doctor with no real pay off and I have to say that’s disappointing because as Jada said you’d think it would be an issue in some regard but we get nothing. I hope this isn’t a season trend. If they’re going to have Doctor act injured even just a little have it be a factor in at least one scene!
My apologies to Wayne this week as I’ve fallen down the shipping hole; it’s okay you don’t have to come get me, I’m happy in the Thirteen/Yaz hole! I know we said no shipping but Doctor is just such mush for Yaz I can’t help it! 🙂 I’m still down with them not going hard on any pair on screen this season so I can support your wish there but if they do ship I’m pulling for Yaz/Doctor; #sorrynotsorry Wayne! 🙂
I have mixed feelings about the Graham-Yaz talk because while it was excellent I agree Jada I do wish it was Doctor to give her more to do this episode; she is the one who knows most about time travel effects after all. I can certainly watch the scene repeatedly don’t get me wrong but I do wonder would it have been better with Doctor reminding Yaz of these things instead.
There were definitely a lot of great twist this week; when I saw the brother I thought he would marry Umbrin because the other brother died but that’s a clear nope. They make you think the aliens are behind things and that’s a nope. You think someone might mess with time but the characters were all sensible so there goes that…it was just a great episode in terms of organic drama and logic!
It would be cute if Umbrin remembered Yaz.
I’d say my favorite was the love story and by extension it’s more backstory on Yaz so it’s a two for if you pick it! 🙂
Define “preachy” because DW this season is NOWHERE near as preachy as other shows Is say…at least they’re not as heavy handed as others if that’s how preachy is defined for some.
Excellent comments Aaron! Thank you for all of your support. Jada and I GREATLY appreciate it. Awesome news about the new Doctor Who books.
Good points about the couple of injured Doctor storylines that didn’t really pay-off. I’m not sure why it wasn’t addressed in the writing process.
Aaron, although I’m not much into “shipping” on tv shows, we certainly don’t have a “no shipping rule”. You go right ahead with your Doctor Who “shipping”. 🙂 And, it’s not as-if I’ve never “shipped” on Doctor Who. I admit to “shipping” the Tenth Doctor and Rose.
You do have a good point that there are many other tv series that are far more heavy handed / preachy than Doctor Who is (although Doctor Who has it’s moments). I guess I’m pretty jaded against most levels of heavy-handed-ness in tv shows (and I think the term “heavy handed” is more accurate than the phrase of “preachy” that I’ve been using).
Looking forward to hearing or reading your thoughts about Sunday’s “Kerblam!” episode, hopefully in time to share on the podcast recording. “Kerblam!” looks like a crazy bonkers episode!
I certainly get being turned off by heavy handed plot execution Wayne!
For me when someone says “preachy” I think that means maybe they’re not a fan of the topic being discussed and I definitely feel some topics need discussing and I like that series don’t shy away from discussions that’s why I say it’s more the “heavy handedness” of a topic that’s annoying rather than the topic itself being discussed.
I’ll fully admit there are some weeks where I see one show be heavy handed and it actually makes me rate another show lower than I would because they were also heavy handed; a prime example is this season’s “Arachnids In The U.K.”, I would have taken off points regardless just for the business man’s attitude and actions but because it was a heavy handed episode in areas in a week where other shows had also been heavy handed with executions it went from being a not great viewing experience to being an annoying one if that makes sense and thus I gave it a 7 when it might have been an 8 or 7.5 at least episode on it’s own.
Again we certainly need to discuss things but it’s the extremity of some writing that I think unintentionally has people tuning out especially when you do it week upon week of a season. I will grant writers sometimes people just have bad ideas/feelings and thus should be shown as bad guys for those actions but not everyone is that way, sometimes there might be valid reasons or fair points about a topic and a middle ground can be reached if people work towards it; I feel there’s more often a middle ground than not with topics, again yes some are A or B but not always. This week’s was an A or B in terms of good/bad I feel because as Prem said they were all fine until people started making racist statements arguably suddenly and debatably it wasn’t even about region like some claimed they just used that as a guise to keep wealth and power; I don’t know everything about the Partition but I know religion was a pushed theme even though it didn’t seem like that was the sole reason and it wasn’t suddenly, the divides started long before the day in this episode but hopefully you get where I’m coming from with this analogy.
So yeah I get how the frequency of seeing extremities can turn off some viewers, if things were a bit more ranged when discussing topics instead of putting people in either group A or B then it might make for better viewing.
But yeah that’s why I feel “heavy handed” is more accurate; some may again not like heavy topics discussed at all and that’s fair but I personally don’t mind things being discussed I just feel they need to be done so in more organic ways and I think as a whole Who has been organic this season with the exception of Arachnids where the hotel owner was just an extremist who refused to listen to anyone or even entertain opposing ideas.
Ugh next episode will be 7 which means only 4 more new Whos with this group! Who do we have to lobby at the BBC to get next season extended to say 16 episodes because I am loving this group! Honestly my only complaint would be we need more mixing amongst them as it’s often Ryan-Graham and Doctor-Yaz which works great for this set up season don’t get me wrong but maybe next season we can get more Graham-Yaz moments along with Doctor-Ryan ones or some Ryan-Yaz bro moments and Graham-Doctor ones along with Doctor/Yaz moments 😉 as the team will have more history together and the Graham-Ryan family stuff will have progressed enough they can develop outside of that.