Resolution - A Review

Resolution, the New Year's Day Special, provided us with the finale that we were denied back in December. An enjoyable episode, though not without its faults.
Chris Chibnall assured us that there would be no old monsters in Series 11, and he was right if only up to a point. From the production pictures I have seen on-line, parts of this episode were recorded during the making of Series 11, so the return of the Daleks was always part of the plan. (Some people actually seem to think that this story was produced in response to the negativity with which the last season was met. Patently not the case).
Let's get the negatives out of the way first, and there weren't too many. The main problem I had was with the Ryan / Aaron, Graham / Aaron interludes. Bringing Ryan's dad into a one hour episode was a big mistake. The story was about the Dalek, and what the Doctor was going to do about the Dalek. The Sinclair family dynamic scenes killed the momentum and wasted valuable screen time - leading to yet another rather rushed conclusion. Don't get me wrong - the scenes were well written, and superbly played, but but they should have been used somewhere else - perhaps in an ordinary episode which had relevant themes and where they would have fitted better in context. The Special episodes tend to be watched by people who don't necessarily follow the regular series, so I'm sure many casual viewers were left wondering what was going on as they had no idea about Ryan's daddy issues.
Aaron did at least help provide the means to destroy the Dalek - which brings me to another negative. The Doctor herself was once again shown to be impotent. She had no plan herself how to defeat the Skarosian. The 13th Doctor did at least confront the Dalek on her own, but she acted as though she were not the same person who had first encountered the Daleks 55 years ago, and who raged at them in her 9th and 10th incarnations. Chibnall just had to have the Doctor be "nice" and offer the Dalek a chance to stand down. A far cry from 2005's Dalek, from which this story borrowed heavily.
Here was a chance to show the darker side to the new Doctor, and the opportunity was wasted.

The Special episodes tend to be a little more whimsical than standard ones, and usually feature less death. This was not the case, as we saw the Dalek exterminate various individuals and squads of soldiers. There was some humour - namely the Brexit / Trump reference when the Doctor found out that UNIT operations had been suspended, and the family having to face a world without Wi-Fi and social media and so actually have to speak to each other. The latter joke would have worked better had this been a Christmas episode, however. New Year's Day in the UK is just like a normal Sunday.
I was worried about what the homemade Dalek might look like, but I think it was realised very well. Loved the missile launchers behind the bumps. Special mention should be made for Nick Briggs giving the Dalek a more interesting characterisation - both once it was in its new shell, and especially when it was inhabiting the mind of archaeologist Lin. She and Mitch worked well, and I'm sure there are some who would have liked to see them run off in the TARDIS at the conclusion rather than Ryan and the ever under-utilised Yaz.
The Reconnaissance Dalek did throw up some continuity problems (but since when have Daleks not muddied continuity?). Some questions about plot logic were also thrown up by it - such as how such a powerful creature could have been captured and destroyed by a bunch of Anglo-Saxon peasant-soldiers in the first place? The Dalek mutant was chopped into three bits, yet a bit of ultra-violet light managed to reanimate one of these pieces after 1100 years, magically teleport the other bits towards it, despite no way of knowing where they were buried, then it reanimated them and joined itself up. The Witch's Familiar had told us that Daleks were essentially immortal, but in that story it was shown that they still physically decomposed. It has to be asked, also, how such powerful Daleks - capable of remotely stopping TARDISes - did not feature heavily in the Time War.
One other plot point that made no sense was the two Custodians, in Siberia and the South Pacific, not knowing that the British colleague had been killed and left exactly where he fell. Dead people left beside roads would still be be buried even in the 9th Century, or at least have their remains scattered by animals if not found.
I am not too worried about the apparent closing down of UNIT. It will simply be brought back when a future episode needs it. A trick was missed when Chibnall failed to have the Doctor call on Torchwood instead. We could have had a nice cameo from Captain Jack, too busy dealing with an alien menace of his own to come and help out.
A very good first third, and an excellent last third. When I buy the DVD in February I will probably be fast forwarding the middle third, however. Hopefully Chibnall will take on board the criticisms of the recent series and give us more action-adventure and less soap when the show returns in 2020.