Plastic Apocalypse

We loved Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Martha Jones' sister Tish and were excited to see her here.

Until we actually saw her here.

One dimensional and unbearably stiff, she gives us nothing.

But she's not the problem.

Russell Tovey can act his way out of a paper bag and unfortunately that's what he has to do in this episode.

How is it that RTD can create Years and Years and It's A Sin, which both are absolutely brilliant with terrific writing, phenomenal editing and production values, and yet still insist on giving us substandard...crap? Even the acquisition of Disney money can't excuse this.

Salt issues an unexpected demand: she wants Barclay to act as ambassador to the humans. Barclay is given a strict script to stick to, but instead veers off course.

After episode one, I had some hopes - there was a budget, a good cast, and a fairly nice idea. Unfortunately, this second episode was just boring. Time ticked by, and nothing seemed to happen.

If I hear the word "homo aqua" once more, I'm going to scream. Too much! It doesn't matter how many times they shout it; they're still Sea Devils.

The world is about to go to war, and the Prime Minister is more worried about misgendering Salt. Impartial messaging from the BBC? Subtlety clearly wasn't on the menu. Albion.....F O R M E R??.....subtle.

Sorry, this was boring. We knew it would be heavy on messaging, but I hoped for a bit of spark. Sorry, Russell, have you forgotten how to entertain us? It's so static that even the swooping camera shots became irritating.

Hopefully we'll get some action soon.

Painful.

4/10.

Episode one was great but was very clearly a set up episode, this episode continues it's strengths and adds some much needed action sequences along with some extremely tense moments.

Add in more screen time for our UNIT cast and some interesting character development for both Barclay and Kate, this show is off to an amazing start.

Fingers crossed the next 2 weeks keep up the momentum.

A big step up from the first episode, so much has improved. Even though most of the time it's going between meeting to meeting, it shows that it doesn't get really boring. The threat that Homo Aqua poses has finally been shown, and in all honesty I don't think they could have done anything better for this episode.

BIG STEP UP!!!

8/10.

I think the show has clear intentions with clear messages it wants to convey, and I'm fine with it especially as it doesn't seem massively shoehorned in.

And for the most part, each message it conveys makes sense in context and adds good layers to the plot. So on that part, yes. It's good.

I think the acting has been okay, though the pacing probably needs a bit of work. But I'd say it's a solid step up from Doctor Who of recent times. Still tacky at points, but it's entertaining enough and does enough right to get a good rating from me and to keep me hooked in for the rest of the series.