'The very best travellers in the whole of time and space are heading this way' - but they're NOT are they? I'd happily stretch a point for JODIE! but Yaz, Graham and Ryan are no Rose, K9 or Donna.
'The Doctor took the sonic out again, and for once didn't wave it around, but stood still, arm outstretched' - I thought she was ALWAYS standing still, arm outstretched with the dear old sonic these days?
Since when have Graham and Ryan patted each other's arms all the time?
'"Doctor," she said, "are you sure about these two?" "Am I sure they're friendly? Of course I'm sure! Everyone needs rope [cut entire paragraph of Doctor blathering on about rope]." "Doctor," said Yaz, patiently, "I wasn't talking about the rope. I was worrying about whether these people running towards us mean us well"' - er, yes, Yaz, THE DOCTOR KNOWS, that's why she said SHE'S SURE THEY'RE FRIENDLY.
'"You get to my age, you don't pass up the chance for a nap. That," said the Doctor, "is the sum total of my wisdom."' - a) No it isn't and b) Why is Ryan later wondering if she ever sleeps?
'Big flashing light on top' - er...Doc...you do know Sexy doesn't go round flashing ALL THE TIME, right? Only when she's de/materialising.
'"It makes sense," said Graham. "Maybe we can find out where the TARDIS is. Get it back"' - er, yes, Graham, Yaz HAS just spent the last page and a half explaining to you that 'I think [the Doctor] wants us to find the TARDIS' and 'So we should find the TARDIS.' (Also, shouldn't you guys start worrying about the fact that for some inexplicable reason NONE OF YOU HAS A KEY?)
Ryan's oar becomes sticky so he reaches out to TOUCH it? Never mind that said stickiness is a evil stinging jellyfish - he wasn't to know though frankly might have guessed - said oar has just been dipped in the WHITE-HOT LAVA RAPIDS. He's dyspraxic, he's not a half-wit.
'Turned out those video games had been good for something after all. His reflexes were better than he thought they were' - er, hadn't this sort of thing already been settled in The Ghost Monument?
'I feel like Moses. Nice man, bit beardy' - also bit genocidal but hey, don't let THAT bother you Doctor, after all, loads of the people he slaughtered were worshipping a golden calf when they COULD have been worshipping a golden cat - sorry, I mean Jehovah! Please don't put me to the sword!
Saying 'buses' when you mean 'bushes' is...confusing.
'The Doctor nudged him. "Cheer up," aid said. "It's like Mirkwood!" "Doctor," Ryan said. "Mirkwood was full of giant spiders and an evil wizard." "Oh yeah," she said. "I always forget that bit. I only ever remember the Elves"' - didn't those gittish elves imprison all of Our Heroes? (AND treat them worse than they treated GOLLUM?) And PLEASE tell me the Doc's only read the book and hasn't seen the numerous movies cos the thought of her/him watching McCoy on his bunny-sledge is doing weird things to my brain. Oh, and also: when you're doing a really perfunctory and mediocre rendition of the Hero Goes On An Exciting Journey For No Readily Apparent Reason cliche DON'T remind the misfortunate reader of a classic of the genre.
'The Doctor shook her head. "If we had the TARDIS, we'd be up on the surface in a jiffy. But without? Who knows?"' - why the hell didn't you just retrieve Sexy first and skip the stupid go-down-lava-rapids, stroll-through-mushroomy-forest stuff altogether?
Why does Yaz unnecessarily tip the suspicious strangers off to the existence of the Doctor? Why do none of 'em bother to ASK about said Doctor?
'I wish - I really wish - that we could contact the Doctor' - MOBILE PHONES, PEOPLE! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU! The grotesque irresponsibility of not supplying her pets - sorry, fam - with the basics of keys and mobiles is especially noticeable, given how unusually RESPONSIBLE JODIE! is for a Doctor ('I can't guarantee that you're going to be safe...when I pull that lever, I'm never quite sure what's going to happen...You're not going to come back as the same people that left here...Be sure. All of you, be sure').
'Can you run' Yaz asks Graham, something that should surely have been established by now?
'Your films and your telly give you a really funny idea of aliens, you know. It's really alienist, your culture. Always seeing a threat when there isn't one' - DON'T regurgitate one of the all-time great lines of the Capaldi Era in an inferior manner. Just...don't.
'"So someone else has been here already," said Ryan. "From up on the surface." "Beginning to look that way, isn't it?"' - Er, no it isn't, given that you just SAID they were from ANOTHER PLANET, not this one.
Why is Yaz angry with herself for trusting Quartz when she DIDN'T trust Quartz?
'"Why don't you tell us what you've found, Basalt?" said the Doctor. "To do that, we have to travel onwards," he said. "Or, more precisely - upwards."' - Er, no, to SHOW her you have to travel upwards, you could TELL her what you've discovered RIGHT NOW, moron.
(Sorry, I shouldn't call Basalt a moron. He's single-handedly inventing forms of crystalline communications while the Doc's too thick to tell her Companions to carry a mobile phone.)
To be continued...
Since when has...Graham been 'Granddad' to Ryan?
Especially when this RUINS the long-awaited poignant (well, would-be poignant anyway) moment that Ryan FINALLY acknowledges Graham as his Granddad in It Takes You Away?
'"The fissure?" said Ryan. "That doesn't sound good." "It's no," said Basalt. All his playfulness had disappeared. "It's a calamity"' - aaand yet he WAS remarkably cheery for a while for a guy who'd realised the sky was literally falling. He SHOULD have been running round like Chicken Little.
'You can imagine how marvellous we thought this all was - all this digging, these machines...Incredible!' - and you the genius scientist really didn't manage to add two and two together and realise THIS IS WHAT'S CAUSING THE IMMINENT DESTRUCTION OF YOUR SPECIES?
No one in Basalt's team thought to spend a few hours returning home, announcing that they'd found the proof of his theories, and asking their people to come help shore up the fissure to stop their entire world exploding?
Since when has rock blistered on contact with salt water, anyway?
Grace 'slept like a queen' - I thought they slept LESS well than us plebs, I mean, ONE pea under the mattresses and they're screwed.
Switching nanobots off with a sonic screwdriver seems remarkably easy, pity the Doc never thought of THAT in The Empty Child.
Even RYAN could see the flaws in this set-up - why bother having people do the mining at all, and why suddenly abandon the planet (the Doc's suggestion that the company went bust proves untrue).
And if you ARE using people to mine, bring a sodding canary or something, an interstellar company with hordes of nanobots and suchlike really shouldn't be caught out by 'an unexpected gas pocket in the mantle'.
'He'd seen the Doctor at work. He absolutely believed that she could topple empires as if they were a tower built of dominoes' - well, that's awfully sweet of him given that JODIE! only seems to be averaging about one life saved per episode, these days...
'Yaz felt utterly defeated, as if everything she had tried to do had been a failure. She had not learnt her lesson from Quartz, and instead had trusted Onyx, and it had been another mistake' - has the stupid woman never heard of the DOUBLE-BLUFF! Even after Onyx explained it to her in words of one syllable?!
'Sorted, Doctor?' 'Only slowing down. The drilling can't be stopped dead, too many safety precautions built in' - whatever happened to 'I've turned off the mining systems' two pages earlier?
'An alarm sounded, shrill and angry. Red lights started flashing, and then klaxons went off' - quite apart from the Doctor being too stupid to disable the secondary security system before shutting down the mining...the lights should be MAUVE.
And how incompetent/rich must the company be, to not only leave the mining going on when it scarpered, but to leave all those well-armed satellites in orbit...?
'I'm quite shocked myself that the TARDIS opened up so easily. Mental command amplified by the crystal lattice. Impressive, don't you think?' - NO I DON'T HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU TO JUST GIVE THEM KEYS OR, HEY, JUST TEACH THEM TO CLICK THEIR FINGERS...(NB: Not McCormack's fault, Chibnall's. Not that his Doctor's the only one to leave her Strays to DIE rather than let 'em into the TARDIS, Moffat's Doctors had the exact same problem.)
'Yaz looked at the Doctor, and was surprised to see that, for once, she was completely wrong-footed' - JODIE!'s always being wrong-footed, there really is no doubt that sex-change cost her a few IQ points and I speak as a feminist - '"Of course. The fissure wasn't made directly by the machines, it's a fault-line that's opened up - so the nanobots won't know how to reverse it. I hadn't thought of that..."' - Well, you bloody well SHOULD have, it's not rocket science.
'Make the fear and the chaos your people have lived through worth it' - it wasn't just fear and chaos though, was it, it was lots and lots of DEATHS. Dunno how you make THEM 'worth it'?
How come this has double speech marks for, well, speech and Combat Magicks has single?
Since when has Yaz been 'Yaz, love' to Graham
Have just had a second season in which such words have never left Graham's lips, but At Childhood's End provides another 'Yaz, love'.
'I wish - I really wish - that we could contact the Doctor' - MOBILE PHONES, PEOPLE! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU!
And yet they've got COMMDOTS on their necks by Praxeus...