Praxeus by Pete McTighe & Chris Chibnall

Plastic is our enemy this week. But it's not the Autons. Probs would have been better if it was.

There's a coherence of message in this episode that was sorely lacking in Orphan 55. Essentially, the moral of the story is the same, that pollution and climate change are causing untold damage to our planet and will eventually destroy us (cheery thought), but it's delivered with a great deal more elegance and subtlety in Praxeus. Or to put it another way, the Doctor doesn't need to turn around and say at the end, "Stop dumping plastic into the ocean, you bunch of dimwitted simpletons." (I feel like the Twelfth Doctor would have been fine saying this though). The episode itself is competently assembled, with some interesting individual moments, and zips along at a pretty reasonable pace. It's not great by any means, it's just kind of OK.

McTighe does a much better job of balancing all the regulators here than we've seen throughout most of this season. They each get something significant to do that advances the plot, even, and don't faint when you read this, Yaz. We'll talk a lot more about Yaz in the review of the next episode, but her relative importance in the most recent stories only goes to highlight how wasted the character has been. Mandip Gill brings a great deal of enthusiasm and charisma to the role and, if as looks likely from her growing independence, she's leaving at the end of the season, it will end up being such a waste of potential. She gets some good moments here, though, and I particularly enjoy her disappointment that she hasn't actually discovered an alien planet after all.

But as I say, the companions are all reasonably well served here, or at least as well as they can be within the constraints of the 50 minute episode format. The tried and tested trick of splitting them up and having each of them contribute something to solving the mystery is effectively utilised here, as well as I'm sure easing some of the pressures of production. Ryan gets to investigate and then dissect the birds and discover that they're full of plastic, which works well to actually sell the message the story is trying to convey because the whole thing is just incredibly icky. Yaz goes off on her own and discovers the alien construct. Even Graham, whose role this season has largely been comic relief, gets a few nice moments. The scene where Jake confesses his insecurities to Graham is lovely, and there's a lot of unspoken references to Grace in how Bradley Walsh plays it. Despite the rushed feeling of the story, there are at least a few moments for each companion to shine.

Although, I feel like it could have been even better for the regulars if we hadn't spent so much time globetrotting in this episode. Don't get me wrong. I like that this season has an international element to it. Early New Series Doctor Who was so fixated on London (and occasionally Cardiff for ease of filming reasons) whenever the TARDIS landed in Earth, it was easy to forget that there are other cities in the world. But there's no reason for any of this to be set in those places in particular. The only thing that distinguishes that some of the scenes are set in Hong Kong is that we get a big caption that says "HONG KONG". We don't get a sense of the culture, the history, or really anything to do with the location. It helps keep the story moving forward with some sense of momentum but it might as well have been anywhere. I feel like we could have cut one of the locations and some of the side characters and just slowed things down a touch.

This feels like a step backwards in terms of the Doctor's characterisation as well. Gone is the darkness and edge that Jodie Whittaker has weaved into her performance so far this season, and we're left with something much more closely resembling the Series 11 Doctor. She's there to basically dump exposition with a fixed zany grin on her face, and when you're talking about the world being poisoned by plastic, it feels very jarring. The script leans heavily on technobabble to explain what's happening, but the writers don't have the flair that Steven Moffat had for making exposition interesting and so the whole thing feels clumsy. A lot of the work falls to Jodie Whittaker to make those moments work and they just don't. Hopefully this is just a temporary setback and we'll be back to the more three dimensional characterisation as we approach the finale.

More positively, the gay representation in this episode is a massive improvement. So far in the Chibnall era, it's become a running joke that LGBT+ characters only turn up to be killed a moment later or to refer to their dead spouse. Burying your gays is one of the more unpleasant narrative devices in storytelling. Luckily Jake and Adam feel like fully rounded characters who actually get a happy ending. Shock horror. On the whole, it's very skillfully and sensitively done. Although I could have done without Jake's whole noble self-sacrifice thing as Jamie Mathieson kindly eviscerated that particular trope during the Capaldi era. Go and die to save a hairband, indeed. At least they don't actually kill him I suppose.

I'm left wondering what it is that justifies the co-writing credit from Chris Chibnall here. In the last episode, it was clear after the fact why the showrunner had had such heavily involvement in it. Here I'm not so sure. It feels like McTighe is a skilled enough writer that it might have benefited from less involvement from Chibnall. Either way, what we have is as solid and functional as Chibnall era Who gets. It works well enough, but I doubt I'll remember much about it in a few weeks.

Random musings

• There was a lot of speculation following this episode that Yaz was behaving strangely and that it might have something to do with the season arc. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that this was categorically not followed up in the next episode. But then that's what happens when you don't bother to give one of your characters any characterisation for a season and a half, people end up leaping to conclusions because there's no consistency in their behaviour.

• The effects when people are consumed by Praxeus are very effective. Nasty but staying on the right side of gruesome for pre-watershed television.

• Poor Aramu. Not sure anyone even noticed you died.

• The jokes about vlogging feel like they were written by two 50 year old men. Which, of course, they were.

• "Can't get the breathing apparatus off to see the face." Why hello, The Empty Child.

Verdict

As a standalone episode of Doctor Who, Praxeus is solid if pretty unremarkable. But as a follow-up to the arc heavy and revelatory Fugitive of the Judoon, it can't help but feel a little disappointing.

Rating

6/10

Fugitive of the Judoon by Vinay Patel & Chris Chibnall

The capacity to be unpredictable has always been one of the show's greatest assets.

Let's get the gripe out of the way first because my take on this episode is going to be almost uniformly positive. But I don't know why Jack Harkness is in this. Even moving passed John Barrowman's recent questionable comments and his weird insistence that Steven Moffat has some sort of vendetta against him, Jack's presence feels incredibly cynical. He contributes nothing except to dump exposition and tease future adventures. Let's face it, his character always was a bit much, even in the mid-naughties but he feels incredibly out of place in 2020 Doctor Who. Twitter loved it, but the whole cameo left me feeling cold. It's long passed time that this era of the show stopped trying to recapture the greatness of the Russell T Davies era (the viewing figures suggest that this isn't remotely working) and actually strive to do something original. The strength of this episode is how it seeks to upend the rules of Doctor Who in order to do something different; it succeeds when it's looking forward, not when it's looking back.

However, accepting that, Fugitive of the Judoon is pretty unequivocally excellent. A fitting Episode 5 comparison would be Series 9's The Girl Who Died. That similarly starts out like a mid-season bit of fluff, a filler episode albeit it with an interesting premise and characters, before gradually revealing that it's got some quite profound revelations about the Doctor. And while The Girl Who Died is one of my favourite episodes of Doctor Who that this can't quite live up to, I'm impressed that it manages to have a damn good try.

The advertised return of the Judoon proves to be nothing more than narrative sleight of hand to make the audience look one way while the story sets up much bigger and more important reveals. That said, it's a welcome reappearance. The Judoon have always been one of the more effective original monsters of the revived show, and the improved animatronics help give their leader a more defined character than before (I love the little gasp that it makes when Allan gives it a shove). They strike the right balance between seeming genuinely threatening and bringing some much needed lightheartedness to the story, particularly when they are arguing with the Doctor about who is in charge and bargaining how long she has for arbitration.

About halfway through we think we've got the measure of the situation. The Judoon are pursuing an alien criminal who has disguised themselves as a human. It's almost entirely the narrative beats from Smith and Jones and the expectation is that it will resolve itself in a very similar way; one of the guest characters will reveal themselves as the villain and the Doctor/the Judoon will deal with them accordingly. Only that's not what happens and instead we get one of the boldest twists that Doctor Who has attempted in a number of years. Ruth turns out to be the Doctor. One of my main complaints with this era is how basic it feels; everything that happens happens because it's the most obvious and (often as a result) the least interesting choice. That's not the case here.

In fact, the Ruth!Doctor is something of a revelation. She seems utterly in control of events, contrasting with the Thirteenth Doctor, who often has felt like someone who drifts from one bad situation to another without having any say in the matter. She takes an active role in events, from holding her own against the Judoon to sabotaging a Gallifreyan weapon in order to turn the tables on Gat. Her mere existence poses some pretty existential questions for the show to answer about how many lives the Doctor has lived, the history of the Time Lords and the Doctor's relationship with them. But I have to admit that when she strode across the garden of the lighthouse to triumphantly declare that she was the Doctor, I was totally buying it.

It's pretty much impossible to work out at this point where Ruth fits into the Doctor's timeline, and it'll be interesting to see whether Chibnall can make the explanation work without descending too far into an utterly myopic quagmire of continuity. All we can say for certain is that this new Doctor and our current Doctor are far from fans of each other, and this conflict brings out Jodie Whittaker's best performance in the role. There's something incredibly fresh and distinctive about their relationship, in a way that the show has never quite managed before between different incarnations of the Doctor. Even with the War Doctor, there was still a certain level of cheeky banter and camaraderie between him and his successors, but these two could not feel more different. There's plenty more mileage to be explored with this dynamic, which is lucky as it's pretty much certain that we'll see Ruth again before the end of the season.

The story is filled with striking visuals, in a way that the brown and grey palette of earlier Chibnall era episodes just felt a little washed out and uninspiring. The Judoon appearing on the streets of Gloucester and menacing the local population with the cathedral in the background. The energy of the Chameleon Arch streaming out of the broken glass and into Ruth. The lighthouse that neatly mirrors the look of the TARDIS. The Doctor discovering the familiar shape of a police box under the soil. For the first time in a long while, these are moments that actually stick in the memory after the episode has ended. Jack's ship looks terrible though.

This is another episode where the companions are superfluous to requirements. Realising that it has nothing to do with them, the story maneuvers Graham, Ryan and Yaz out of the way. This helps prevent it from feeling overstuffed and allows the writers to focus on the central relationship between the two Doctors. As much as it is disappointing for the three companions to once again be given so little to do, this time it does at least feel like it's in the service of a much more interesting narrative.

And in many ways, this is an unfinished narrative. Its greatness is predicated on the promise of future greatness. If viewed in isolation without the rest of the season, this would seem strange and incomplete, and there is a lingering sense of dissatisfaction that none of the story is really resolved here. But taken in context it succeeds absolutely in what it is intended to do, which is to confound expectations at every turn and deliver some shocking revelations about the Doctor and her personal history. Doctor Who feels unpredictable again and that is to Patel and Chibnall's great credit.

Random musings

• "Look at you, and your platoon of Judoon...near that lagoon" may be the first time I've properly laughed out loud in this series. It's a riff on an old RTD joke, but it works. There's a few funny moments involving the Judoon, like their totally arbitrary countdown on the temporal isolator. In fact, the whole episode feels like a throwback to when the show took itself a bit less seriously.

• My 'defensive of Moffat' tendencies started to tingle at people lapping up the amount of continuity this episode throws at the audience when we heard endless complaints about it under the previous showrunner. It's mostly stylishly done here, but I do wonder what casual viewers will have thought at the sheer amount of callbacks and references.

• Yaz remembered she was a police officer for a moment there. Fittingly, she was almost immediately teleported away before it actually became important.

• I see Jack's as much of a sex pest as before. Did I mention I really don't like his cameo...?

• "Beware the Lone Cyberman. Don't give it what it wants." We're getting to River Song levels of unhelpfully cryptic. Spoilers, I guess?

Verdict

Fugitive of the Judoon is a bold statement of intent, demonstrating that this era can be as exciting and unpredictable as the two that preceded it. The online response when this was broadcast was probably the most uniformly positive I've seen since The Doctor Falls and that was nearly three years ago. It's not quite the best episode of Jodie Whittaker's tenure so far. It's a close second to Rosa, because that felt more like a complete story, whereas this is an excellent episode of Doctor Who that can't quite stand on its own without its wider context. The season still has a lot of work to do to make me content with the story emotionally, but there's no doubt that I'm intrigued to find out where all this is going. After two weeks of inconsequential filler, we're back in business. Let's see if it can stick the landing.

Rating

9/10

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror by Nina Metivier

I work for the future, and the future is mine.

The final line of this episode is an adapted real quotation from Nikola Tesla that goes "The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine." For a second, I thought the story was about to go all Vincent and the Doctor on us and I'm glad that it didn't. As much as the moment where the Doctor shows Vincent Van Gogh how much he is admired in the future is one of the most beautiful moments this show has ever produced, trying to replicate it seems like a totally doomed endeavour. Instead, it's a much simpler resolution. And that's a good way of describe this episode: simple. It's nuts and bolts Doctor Who, taking a well worn idea of the celebrity historical and executing it well, without ever threatening to break new ground or give us a classic for the ages. All of this is a long-winded way of saying, it's pretty good.

The episode is anchored by two absolute powerhouse guest performances from Goran Višnjić as Tesla and Robert Glenister as Thomas Edison. Višnjić in particular absolutely oozes charisma and makes Tesla one of the most memorable one-off characters for some time. He also shares some very effective chemistry with Jodie Whittaker and the parallels between the two characters are not hard to spot. Although, the cynic in me wonders if Tesla essentially being a well meaning but ultimately powerless and inconsequential figure isn't too close a metaphor for the Thirteenth Doctor than the writers would like to admit.

Edison meanwhile is portrayed as the shit he basically was, but he's not without moments of redemption in the story either. He seems genuinely horrified when a load of his workforce are killed and also helps the Doctor and co clear the streets of civilians before the Skithra attack. This kind of moral ambiguity hasn't always been present during the Chibnall era, and it's nice to see the show grapple with a historical figure with a little less of a rose-tinted view than it has before (yes, we're talking about you Victory of the Daleks). The central conflict between Tesla and Edison of idealism versus pragmatism helps keep the episode feeling grounded as well as mirroring the scavenger nature of the Skithra, who are a parallel for Edison's world view, even down to adopting Tesla as their engineer. It's not deep thematic resonance I know, but it is at least a theme.

The major flaw is that the strong guest characters also serve to highlight the shortcomings of the regulars. This was the episode when I realised that the three companion model just isn't working, particularly when you combine it with stories that move at breakneck speed through their narrative. I struggle to remember anything notable that the companions did, and their roles in the episode are pretty much interchangeable. Even Bradley Walsh, who provided so much of the good material in Series 11, is poorly served here, despite a fun moment when he struggles to remember anything that Tesla actually invented. Three companions hasn't really worked since the First Doctor's era, and is even trickier to pull off when your stories only last 50 minutes. This is also another example of the Thirteenth Doctor's baffling morality. Guns are bad, but it's all right to destroy an alien spaceship with a bolt of lightning. OK.

The Skithra themselves work well enough for what the episode needs them to do. The design is strong, even if the Queen is a little too reminiscent of the Raknoss from The Runaway Bride. They serve as good foil for the Doctor, who genuinely seems disgusted by them, but there's little substantive to say about them apart from 'scavenger scorpions'. This seems to be a recurring problem for the show with its monsters. I'm struggling to think of any memorable original villains in the most recent seasons of Doctor Who. It's probably The Silents, and they were introduced nine years ago.

To end on a positive note, the episode looks great. It's no secret that the BBC is far more adept at making period drama than it is at episodes set in the future, but the production values here feel particularly strong. The direction is solid, especially during the action sequences (I enjoy the little additions to the Skithra like having them scuffle with each other when they collide during the chase scenes) and the effects are all very good. A lot of this season has lent on a more global setting for the show, but often this has felt superfluous to what's actually going on. This episode feels authentically like it's set in America and it's all the better for it.

Random musings

• I see we don't need to mind wipe Tesla and Edison after this adventure. Maybe it's just women who aren't allowed to remember stuff. Get some consistency Doctor.

• I like that the episode gives Edison the chance to articulate his reasoning that brilliant ideas aren't worth anything unless you can make them sell. It's pretty clear who Nina Metivier wants you to sympathise with, but the room is there for the audience to disagree.

• I focused a lot on the two major guest stars, but a shout out to Anjli Mohindra as well, who chews the scenery nicely as the Skithra Queen.

• They don't get much to do, but the companions all look great in their period dress.

• Small gripe, but the Silurians aren't aliens and probably shouldn't be described as such.

Verdict

The Doctor and Nikola Tesla seems like the sort of combination that someone should have come up with before now. The similarities between the characters are not hard to spot: both outcasts, with ideas far ahead of their time. Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror is a solid, workmanlike episode of Doctor Who that has all its pieces facing the same way and broadly coheres into something that works. For an era of the show that often borders on almost incoherence (and having just seen Episode 7, there'll be plenty more to talk about this later), this feels like no small achievement. The Chibnall era definitely works better when set in the past. It's probably the best episode of the season so far but that doesn't feel like a particularly good place to be. Four episodes in and I'm still waiting to be seriously impressed. Luckily...

Rating

7/10

Orphan 55 by Ed Hime

The message alone is not enough.

The best thing you can say about Orphan 55 is that its an episode that ostensibly has its heart in the right place. Doctor Who has been doing environmental politics since at least the mid 1970s and it feels only fitting that the message that we live on a planet that is rabidly starting to boil is delivered with a lot more urgency and a lot less subtlety than it was back then. The broadcasting of this episode coincides quite effectively with the wildfires currently engulfing large parts of Australia. The problem is that before it gets to that final message, Orphan 55 fails at almost every basic element of good storytelling.

For a start, its narrative is utterly incoherent. It picks up ideas and drops them again a few moments later with casual disinterest. Everything is subsumed beneath the greater need of getting your characters from one location to another so they can fulfill the demands of the plot and discover the twists when they need to.

The major issue with structuring a story like this is that it requires your characters to behave like idiots. Taking the entire cast on a suicidal mission to rescue one old man. Bella deciding to kill lots of people because she's got abandonment issues. Nobody in the right mind would think any of this was a good idea. They're only doing it because the narrative demands that they do (see Season 8 of Game of Thrones if you want to understand more about what this looks like).

The guest characters are similarly under baked. Bella and Kane suffer the worst from this. The revelation that Kane is Bella's mother and abandoned her is supposed to carry emotional heft. But these characters never feel like more than thinly drawn sketches. I defy anyone that they reacted to that revelation with anything more than a shrug. Nevi and Sylas suffer from the same problem. I quite like the idea that the kid is actually the one with the skills to save everyone (particularly if you view it as a metaphor for how it's the younger generation that have the ability to actually deal with climate change even while no one in authority is listening to them), but it's done in another blink and you'll miss it moment. The characters never get the attention their relationship deserves, which is a great shame. I complained about Spyfall under-using Lenny Henry, and they've done it again here with James Buckley.

The twist that Orphan 55 is actually Earth is neat. It's directly stolen from the Colin Baker era story The Mysterious Planet, even down to an underground station sign being what gives the game away, but Doctor Who has a noble tradition of ripping off its own ideas. The Dregs, which are a good design well executed, are actually the future version of humans. The key difference between those two stories is that the former gave us some perspective on what this all meant through Peri's reaction to her home now being an uninhabitable wasteland, while here the revelation is smothered beneath another set piece action sequence with the Dregs.

After the resolution, the main characters get delivered back to the TARDIS so that the Doctor can (pretty much) turn to the camera and warn us about the catastrophe we've just witnessed. It's delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. That in itself, I don't have a problem with. If there was ever a need for non-subtle calls to action about the environmental catastrophe unfolding around us, it's now. But the episode hasn't earned it. Its theme aren't developed enough. We're never given the space to reflect on what it means for Earth to have become a poisoned wasteland because the story is still too busy vomiting new set pieces and ideas at us. There's a lot to be said for weaving themes throughout the structure of a story, rather than just having someone unilaterally declare them at the end.

I hesitate to say this should have been two-parter, because then you're just asking for 45 minutes of pain to be extended to 90, but with a little room to breathe, this might have managed to form together into something slightly more coherent.

Random musings

• I vowed that the main section of the review would avoid talking about "BENNI!" but I can't resist bringing it up somewhere. Pity the poor actress who plays Vilma, the most unintentionally hilarious character in Doctor Who since...who knows when. We all breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally gobbled up by the Dregs.

• Speaking of Benni, I just don't get what was happening with the Dregs possessing him, or torturing him, or whatever it was. Were we even supposed to know what was going on? It feels like there's a scene missing that explains this. We can add that to the list of ideas this episode doesn't feel particularly interested in.

• "Give me crayons and half a container of spam and I could build you" is probably the only memorable line in this whole episode.

• Very little from the series arc here, but the Doctor's blunt reaction to Yaz saying she's in a "mardy" mood is a good character beat.

• If anyone ever tries to signal romantic attachment to me by sucking their thumb, I'm ending the date right there.

Verdict

According to the online reviewer database IMDb, Orphan 55 is the worst episode of post-2005 Doctor Who. Putting aside the fact that the IMDb rating system is basically broken for the Thirteenth Doctor's stories (even before they're broadcast, the site is flooded with tedious Not My Doctor types), this feels like an overreaction. Yes, the episode fails on almost every conceivable level. But it's not actively worse than say The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos because I can at least see what this episode is trying to accomplish and can imagine a world where it kind of works. In contrast, there's no world in which the ideas in the Series 11 finale are anything approaching interesting. It feels a lot like damning the episode with faint praise when the nicest thing you can say is that it had potential, but there we are. It had potential.

Rating

4/10

Spyfall Part Two by Chris Chibnall

Even now I have no idea what it's supposed to be about.

It's pretty clear now that Chris Chibnall's approaching to writing this season is to operate his RTD random idea generator and smash half a dozen of those ideas together to create an episode of Doctor Who. The end result of that is Spyfall Part Two, an episode that has some great individual set pieces, but is also a tonally inconsistent mess. Taken together, this two-parter is The Sound of Drums meets Army of Ghosts meets The Sontaran Stratagem, and it ends up being lesser than all of them. This iteration of the show is going to have to learn pretty quickly that recreating Russell T Davies era Doctor Who without the crucial ingredient of...er...Russell T Davies is a recipe for, if not quite disaster, then just pretty mediocre television.

Let's start with what works. The Thirteenth Doctor works. At last. As you'll see below, I'm yet to be convinced by Sacha Dhawan as the Master, but what he does do is bring out the best in Jodie Whittaker. The Morse code rhythm of two hearts message that brings them together in wartime France leads to one of Whittaker's best scenes in the role so far on top of Eiffel Tower. There's finally some depth appearing in her Doctor and it's great that Series 12 is making the most of how good an actor she is.

One of the great innovations of the Chibnall era has been the resurrection of the educational historical episodes. Rosa and Demons of the Punjab were two of the strongest entries in the last season. I particularly like the focus on less well known historical figures. Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan in this case (it'll be Nikola Tesla later in the series, and even Mary Shelley is less of a household name than Queen Victoria or Charles Dickens). They are participants in the storyline, and get to help the Doctor defeat the Master, at the same time as teaching us something about these incredibly important women.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of problems. Most notable is the Master. I'm just not yet sold on Sacha Dhawan. It's perhaps unfair to compare his performance to Michelle Gomez, but if you insist on bringing back the character so soon, that's inevitably what people are going to do. Gomez's version of the Master was a triumph, and by far the most interesting we've ever been given. Here, the Master does a lot of leering and shouting. He works best in the quieter moments but even then, I'm yet to see any distinctiveness to his characterisation. I'd have liked to have seen him interact with the companions more. There's an interesting story to be told about him sowing distrust of the Doctor among Graham, Ryan and/or Yaz that seems itching to be told, and it's a shame that this possibility isn't explored. As he'll clearly be back later in the season, I hope he gets a lot more to work with. 

What's more, Lenny Henry is wasted, just as I feared he would be after Part One. The scene where Barton kills his mother feels like it's tacked on because he hasn't done anything villainous for a few minutes and the audience needs to be reminded that he's actually in the story. Him and the Kasavin feel incredibly out of place here in an episode that's trying to be a chase through history between the Doctor and the Master, but still has to resolve its plot threads from the first part. It just doesn't feel like Barton is an important part of the story.

That is, until we get the lesson™ and the whole plot just falls apart. It's not that the idea of warning against the horrors of modern technology is inherently a bad idea. The problem is that it's not remotely connected to the rest of the story. Barton's plan isn't hinted at throughout, it's just delivered in one big exposition dump to an audience whose reactions we can charitably describe as 'stilted'. In fact, the episode is so disinterested in Barton's plan that the Doctor thwarts the whole thing off screen using a laminator and then just tells us that's what she's done. Truly a villainous masterplan for the ages.

But it turns out the Master's not quite done yet. Hinting earlier that all was not well at home, he convinces the Doctor to travel to Gallifrey and she finds it in ruins. There's something really quite cynical about this creative choice. It's designed to make us care by going big and important but without doing any work for it. I understand the temptation to end each episode with some big reveal, as it leaves the audience thinking the whole thing was much better than it was (see The Almost People) but I struggle with the idea that Chibnall's first big contribution to Doctor Who lore is...just destroying Gallifrey again. Come on, we've been there and done that. At least Jodie Whittaker absolutely sells the reaction to see her planet destroyed.

I also want to deal with the two most uncomfortable things about this episode. Yes, we're going to talk "problematic." First, the Doctor mindwipes Ada while she's begging her not to. Seriously, Doctor Who? I thought we'd been over this. It was bad when 10 did that to Donna, but to do it again twelve years later, even after the show had specifically acknowledged that particular mistake, is not good. One of the best things about Hell Bent is that Clara asserts her right to her memories and makes it clear the Doctor has no right to take them away from her. Giving your characters agency is generally a good idea, it's just a shame that Chibnall wasn't taking notes.

The other moment that is somehow even more spectacularly misjudged is the Doctor weaponising the Master's skin colour and turning him over to the Nazis. Reading that you may think, "that doesn't sound much like the Doctor." You're not wrong. I've commented before about the Doctor's incoherent morality in Series 11, but this is just bad on so many levels. This is not an original take by the way (go check out Andrew Ellard's tweet notes on the episode for a much more coherent explanation of the problem) but I thought it was important to acknowledge it. I don't want to condemn Chibnall too harshly for this, it feels a lot like carelessness rather than being genuinely callous, but it sticks out horribly. Doctor Who can and has done better than this.

Random musings

• I enjoy the way the Doctor saves her companions from the plane crash. It's like a Moffat solution but way simpler and sometimes simpler Moffat is better Moffat.

• "Hello friends, or should I say plane thieves?" Doesn't even begin to make sense.

• Graham's laser shoes kind of work because Bradley Walsh is clearly loving it.

• The companions are relegated to the subplot because the episode isn't interested in them (this will become a recurring theme). They get some nice moments but having all three of them superfluous to the main action feels like a waste.

Verdict

So it's a mess, but an often entertaining one. It's got some excellent moments like the Doctor confronting the Master on the Eiffel Tower or the Nazis invading Khan's home while the Doctor and Ada hide under the floorboards. But those moments are lost behind a broader narrative that's utterly incoherent. It uses fan service and big reveals to disguise its fundamental flaws. Unfortunately, it's beginning to look like incoherence may be a feature of the Chibnall era, rather than a bug.

Rating

5/10

Spyfall Part One by Chris Chibnall

I approached the opening episode of Series 12 with more than a little trepidation. I recently rewatched all of Series 11 (yes, including The Tsuranga Conundrum and that's forty-five minutes of my life I'll never get back) and, although it holds up better than expected, it's got serious issues that I feared might be structural features of Chris Chibnall era Doctor Who. What's more the thing that anchored the entire season and by far the best thing about it, namely Graham's character arc, had pretty much been resolved. Series 11 without Bradley Walsh is not a series of Doctor Who it brings much joy to think about.

And for thirty minutes, it felt like I was living in that world. The first half drags. It takes ten minutes reassembling the TARDIS team without telling us anything notable about the companion's lives while it's at it. Yaz is still (at least nominally although you'd never know it) a police officer, Ryan still has dyspraxia and Graham's wife is still dead. There's nothing new here. It then deploys tropes from spy thrillers left, right, and centre without ever threatening to do anything remotely interesting with them. Even the presence of Stephen Fry playing the Head of MI6 as if he was...Stephen Fry isn't enough to maintain interest. 

The pace picks up considerably as we move into the final half though. I particularly enjoy the Bond pastiche of the casino party. It's a cliche for sure, but it gives a chance for the characters a few moments of fun rather than having to relentlessly exposition the plot. They all look great in their formal gear as well. The aliens threatening the characters (both the Doctor and co in Australia and Ryan and Yaz in America) are solidly well constructed set pieces as well. I doubt the Kasavin are going to top anyone's list of the show's greatest monsters, but they're reasonably intriguing here, and give off the air of being dangerous.

The casting of Lenny Henry as an evil version of Mark Zuckerburg is an interesting choice (although I'm not sure Zuckerburg would manage to register as even 93% human on the Doctor's gismo, but moving passed that). It feels like someone as good as him could make a lot more of a meatier role, rather than seemingly as the human lackey to either The Master or the Kasavin, but he gives a characteristically strong performance. I particularly enjoy the scene he gets with The Doctor, and it gives Jodie Whittaker a chance to perform something other than zany light-heartedness. More of this please.

At this point, after a car chase that is well shot and pretty fun, it looks like the episode will end a bit limply. And then it turns out that O is actually The Master and all hell breaks loose.

It's a twist that I (along with everyone else in the universe) didn't see coming. Mostly because I was surprised that Chibnall decided to resurrect the character so soon. It's been two and a half years since Missy's "death" in The Doctor Falls, but in story terms, it's actually only been a dozen episodes. I don't mind Sacha Dhawan's performance here, and he does the switch from good to evil pretty effectively, but it feels just a bit too similar to John Simm's RTD era performances in those couple of minutes. My major concern bringing back the character is that whatever they do with them next will necessarily not be as interesting as Missy's redemption arc, and the character performing like a crazed villainous version of The Doctor is just about the most boring take on the Master you could imagine at the moment. Missy showed us there was a great deal of potential in doing something different with the character, so let's hope that's what we get with Dhawan's incarnation eventually.

But the twist itself is very effectively executed and leads to a stunning cliffhanger. I'm a sucker for fanwank so the reference to the Tissue Comprehension Eliminator and previous Masters' predilection for shrinking people brought a smile to my face. His parting words of "Everything you think you know is a lie" promises a season arc that Series 11 was sorely lacking. The final few minutes are the shot of ambition the show desperately needed at this point and hooks you in to find out what happens next.

Random musings

• The Doctor finds out O is lying because he lies about not being good at sprinting. That's...decidedly rubbish but never mind. 

• It was nice not to be spoiled on a big reveal for a change. A lot of people compared it unfavourably with the John Simm spoilers in Series 10, which I think is unfair. It's a lot easier to hide the surprise when you have a new actor playing the Master and the fact that Simm had been shooting on location was bound to leak at some point.

• Humour that was such a natural part of the RTD and Moffat eras is still very thin on the ground here, but there are a couple of moments: the Doctor yelling "snap" during a game of blackjack is fun.

• The tribute to Terrance Dicks at the end is suitably lovely.

Verdict

A tough first half gives way to a much more interesting final 25 minutes. Everything from the moment the Doctor and co enter the casino party is incredibly compelling and the cliffhanger is a major shot across the bows in terms of a new direction for this season. It's weighed down by many of the flaws that afflict a lot of Chibnall episodes but it's pretty good nonetheless.

Rating

7/10