Doctor Who: The Vanquishers Review - 4 Ups & 9 Downs
7. DOWN - Rambling And Technobabble
This episode does a lot of explaining away with paper-thin science mumbo-jumbo. Whilst this is hardly a new thing in Doctor Who, it does become a problem when the plot hinges so heavily on it.
There’s also a lot of nonsense talk in this episode, particularly from Swarm and Azure, who don’t make much sense at all for ninety percent of the run time. We’d like to focus on one scene in particular for this point: The conversation between Thirteen and Azure aboard the Division ship.
This scene seems to think it’s a lot smarter than it is, but in reality it goes nowhere and provides no insight or plot development. Azure essentially tells The Doctor: “I’m super evil and I don’t understand why you’re good” - the Doctor, in turn responds by saying “Yeah, well, I’m super good and I don’t understand why you’re evil”.
We don’t really understand either, Doctor.
Truly gripping writing…