I thought it was bollocks I'm afraid.
Constant mention of the daughter being trans in the most ham fisted and unnatural way. When you compare how well Viktor's transition was handled in Umbrella Academy season 3 to this, f*ck me this was amateurish. Only the Doctor Donna can save them because the Doctor is useless in his own 60th year. Yeah great way to celebrate your hero. Can you imagine someone doing a story where the whole point of it is that Superman or Buffy has to give their powers to someone else because they are useless with them. They do stories like that in reverse where someone else gets them and abuses them reminding you why they are heroes beyond their powers! The poor Doctor has such ideologically driven tits who have 0 respect for the original they leech off of he is the only hero to get that story the other way.
Also sorry but Yasmin Finney is sooooo wooden. I mean really she's worse than Yaz. Above all else though it was boring and unoriginal and bland.
Same generic shit plot as a dozen RTD era stories. Ancient beast that is the last of its kind that threatens the earth in some stupid plan (Unquiet Dead, Sound of Drums, Fires of Pompei, The Shakespear Code, Dalek.) Cute, unthreatening annoying little alien that turns out to be evil (Cassandra, Pting, Adipose) badguy who is on the run from the intergalactic police (Smith and Jones.)
Also it was padded and slow. No action scenes until about 30 mins in, tedious soap opera shit, an absurd reason as to how Donna gave up her money, and about five minutes added on at the end. Also as someone who didn't like Donna I cannot STAND seeing her be made out to be his all time best friend, his all time best companion.
Also the wheel chair girl was a bit wooden. She wasn't replacing Osgood to be fair so I'm not even pissed about that, but she was just kind of meh. She had weapons in her wheelchair and there was even a bit where she said we all have them.
So RTD has made out that the only reason you could be trans is if you are a weird alien/human hybrid and wheelchair people are all packing heat? A hamfisted attempt to say "aren't minorities cool and badass." That comes over as offensive.
I know Russell thinks he owned the Gammons with this remark, but all I see is a guy who cannot write women or minorities. He doesn't see them as people who can go on adventures and be fully rounded individuals like say Willow and Tara or Buffy or Xena and Gabrielle. He needs to write them as being amazing at everything, and constantly insult the white male characters around them, and undermine them and go on about how amazing it is being a woman or trans which sums up their entire personality.
It reminds me of a parody of female characters, like in Married with Children, a comedy, when Marcy and Peg who are meant to be awful go on about how amazing they are just for being women, even after ruining Al's holiday.
"God bless us."
"He did, he made us women!"
Also RTD reminds me of Brian in this bit from Family Guy, when Brian is so terrified of looking racist around his black girlfriend, he overcompensates and goes on about how he prefers black people to white people etc.
Only good thing is that its viewers were quite pathetic at barely over 5 million so here's hoping the show might finally be out of the Fitzroy's hands. It needs a rest though. Here's also hoping the myth of RTD being a genius finally dies down. How that ever happened is deeply depressing.