ValueSubtracted

Written by: It's a secret (it was Mike McMahan)

Directed by: We're not tellin' (it was Brandon Williams)

The three episodes will drop weekly starting Saturday, November 25, with the release of “The Star Beast,” followed by “Wild Blue Yonder” on December 2, and “The Giggle” on December 9. The special episodes will be the first as part of a major broadcasting deal between the BBC and Disney to stream exclusively outside of the UK and Ireland on Disney+. They will continue to broadcast on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer in those regions—which will also see the debut of the first episode of Doctor Who’s revived behind-the-scenes program, Doctor Who Unleashed, on November 25 to accompany the broadcast of “The Star Beast.”

I've been meaning to make a QL post for a little while, and this is as good an excuse as any.

If anyone here has been thinking about giving the new series a look, I'd recommend it - I find it fairly engaging.

My main caveat is that it's very much a "network show," and plays it safe in a lot of ways. That said, it still manages to be pretty entertaining.

In terms of comparison to the original series:

• This series is very much a sequel series to the original - Sam Beckett is still out there, and gets mentioned semi-frequently. Ernie Hudson's character, Magic Williams, is someone Sam leapt into way back in 1990's "The Leap Home, Part II".

• That said, there have been some changes to how the leaps work. The Waiting Room of the original series is gone, and Ben's physical body doesn't leap to the past the way Sam's did - instead, it's more of a possession scenario, with Ben inhabiting the Leapee's body for the duration of the Leap. The other big one is that Ben's not restricted to leaping within his own lifetime the way Sam (mostly) was.

• The format of the show is also a bit different, with a larger ensemble cast in the form of Ben's support team in the "present" - they get a lot more screentime, which is where the more serialized elements tend to play out. This also means Ben's leaps can get a bit less screentime, which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on your point of view and on the story being told.

At the end of the day, I think it's a pretty fun show, and worthy of the original. It's not going to be winning any awards for innovation, but there are worse ways to spend your time.

Today Paramount+ released a set of images for episode 409 but they did not release any other details, not even the title of the episode.