The Woman Who Fell to Earth The Ghost Monument Rosa Arachnids in the UK The Tsuranga Conundrum Demons of the Punjab Kerblam! The Witchfinders It Takes You Away The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos Resolution Spyfall - Part 1 Spyfall - Part 2 Orphan 55 Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror Fugitive of the Judoon Praxeus Can You Hear Me? The Haunting of the Villa Diodati Ascension of the Cybermen The Timeless Children Revolution of the Daleks FLUX Chapter 1 - The Halloween Apocalypse Chapter 2 - War of the Sontarans Chapter 3 - Once, Upon Time Chapter 4 - Village of the Angels Chapter 5 - Survivors of the Flux Chapter 6 - The Vanquishers Eve of the Daleks Legend of the Sea Devils The Power of the Doctor 
The Doctor - Jodie Whittaker Graham O'Brien - Bradley Walsh Yasmin Khan - Mandip Gill Ryan Sinclair - Tamsin Cole Grace O'Brien - Sharon D Clarke The Master - Sasha Dhawan Ruth Clayton - Jo Martin Jack Harkness - John Barrowman Dan Lewis - John Bishop 
OTHER DOCTORS Tom Baker Christopher Ecclestone David Tennant Matt Smith Peter Capaldi Ncuti Gatwa SPIN OFFS Torchwood The Sarah Jane Adventures TIME TRAVEL SHOWS Timecop Life on Mars Ashes to Ashes Journeyman Daybreak Goodnight Sweetheart The Flipside of Dominick Hyde
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THE WOMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH transmitted October 7th 2018The Doctor crashes through the roof of a train that is under attack from an alien presence. Whilst struggling with the disorientation of regeneration and the loss of both her Tardis and sonic screwdriver, she must unravel the mystery of the alien from the train and the strange new arrival in the woods and all before the dna bombs in everyone's collarbones explode. A new incarnation of the Doctor is always a huge milestone in the show, especially when coupled with a new showrunner. To date, the choices have been for lead actor have been inspired and this opening episode establishes Jodie Whittaker as the world's favourite Time Lord almost instantly. To be fair, she had us at 'brilliant' in the last episode of the Capaldi era, but bnow she gets a full episode to show what she can do. A bit manic and scattered, she's a force of nature, full of enthusiasm and awe, delight and anger, running her mouth at a million miles an hour. All of this could be put down to the stress of regeneration, but it certainly marks her out as a contrast to Capaldi's more dignified and grave incarnation. There's perhaps a touch too much gurning, but on this evidence she'll do very nicely indeed thank you very much. The fact that the new incarnation is female matters for barely seconds and is referenced rarely. That is how it should be. But what about the other new arrival? Showrunner Chris Chibnall serves up a fast-moving story that mixes action, mystery, danger, characterisation and comedy. There's even time for a couple of twists and a touch of tragedy along the way. He serves up an alien that is nicely balanced between scary and amusing. At least the reaction of everyone to its name is amusing. The flashes of humour don't undermine the drama and the big action climax atop a construction crane is certainly spectacular. Not to mention the cliffhanger at the end. The supporting players are all nicely rounded out, considering this is their first episode as well. They make a nice unit, firstly coming to terms with the idea of the Doctor and then backing her up. Enough of their backgrounds are given to make them more than just cyphers. There's a nice balance of age and gender and everyone has their role to play. It's fair to say there aren't any weak spots in this opening episode. Nothing has been spared to make the new Doctor's arrival a successful one and everything works as it should. The Doctor is dead, long live the Doctor. Top THE GHOST MONUMENT transmitted Otober 14th 201The Doctor and her accidental companions are rescued only to find themselves on a deadly planet with two competitors in the ultimate reality show. They have to work together to survive whilst still only starting to learn about each other. We can forgive the insane coincidence of the Doctor and her friends being saved from certain death in open space by passing ships (surely a nod to the Heart of Gold saving Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY), but then having the rescue spaceship crashing right where the rest of the gang are is too much. That's before the even more ridiculous coincidence of the race ending on the planet where the Tardis keeps showing up on the one day in a millennium when it appears. After the extended opening episode, this is the first test for the new Doctor and her writing team. Though it makes little sense, the opening action is spectacular enough, with open space vistas giving way to wide open planetary landscapes and crashing spaceships. There are then pulses of action interspersed with character development, all wrapped up in the mystery of a deadly planet called Desolation. It's a touch episodic and even clunky at times, but it gives the Doctor a chance to show her brains over bullets credentials and Jodie Whittaker holds everything together nicely. With the addition of the two contestants, there's a few too many characters with nothing to do. Graham and Ryan almost deal with their shared loss, but Yas plays no part in the events taking place. The Stenza, who first appeared in the last episode, are set up to be a major new threat for this incarnation of the Doctor even though they don't appear. Those creatures that do appear are armed killer robots and animated wrappings that are hardly original and not very scary. There are some interesting hints about plans for the future regarding the Doctor herself and a 'Timeless Child'. A step down from last week's opener, it's still an entertaining romp. One thing, though, the new design of the Tardis interior, with crystal pillars yet, really doesn't inspire. Top ROSA transmitted October 21st 2018Montgomery, Alabama, 1955. After a hard day's work, Rosa Parkes takes a seat on a bus marked for white people when all those marked for coloreds are full. It is a defining moment for the civil rights movement in the United States. Except it never happened. Or it won't if a time-travelling bandit has his way. It's up to the Doctor and her friends to ensure events unfold as they are supposed to. The Doctor takes on racism and produces the first classic episode of this new incarnation. The recreation of time and place is detailed and compelling and the pervasive sense of danger, mainly to Ryan, is very real. It is the racial element that works the best. The ancillary tale of the time-traveller meddling with the time stream is the excuse for placing the team in the middle of the historic event and the weakest part of the episode. The scene in which Yas and Ryan compare racist stories is a bit on the nose, but works for the younger audience. It's not historical and if it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone. More subtle is the obvious distress as Graham is asked to carry out a racist act and says simply that he doesn't want to. The pace does flag a little in the middle section, but come the end there is a real sense of having seen something powerful and special. With Rosa, the signs for the future of the show are looking very good. Top ARACHNIDS IN THE UK transmitted October 28th 2018The Doctor returns her companions to their present in Sheffield, where Graham must face a life without Grace, Ryan is faced with the spectre of his absent father and Yasmin's mother has just been sacked from her job in the latest luxury hotel built by an obnoxious American billionaire with designs on the White House for failing to keep the spider webs at bay. Something is very wrong with the spiders of Sheffield. After the excellence of Rosa, we get the distinctly average Arachnids in the UK. The technology has moved on since the Third Doctor's reign was brought to an end by giant spiders (Planet of the Spiders). CGI means that photorealistic spiders of unusual size are are quite achievable on a TV budget. In fact, the template for this episode could very easily be the film EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS in which giant spiders hide out in mine tunnels whilst munching down on the citizens of a midwest town. That film had a large empty building (mall, not hotel), abandoned mine workings and spiders made large through the mistreatment of chemical waste. It also had a businessman whose dealings were less than perfect and who was a selfish coward at heart. The character here is so obviously meant to be a version of Donald Trump that the script has to mention Donald Trump in order to prevent the show from being sued, but the parallels in character are so obvious that they are only one bad hairstyle away from being doppelgangers. Taking potshots at Trump is one of the two raisons d'etre of this episode. Greedy business trashing the planet is an open goal of a theme and does hark back to a celebrated third Doctor environmentalist tale in The Green Death, which had its own oversized insect monsters in the shape of giant maggots. The spiders are, of course, the other raison d'etre. Now that realistic giant spiders are a technological possibility, it was only a matter of time before the Doctor faced off against them. And they are certainly real enough to give any arachnophobes the heebie jeebies. This episode should be issued with a warning to anyone afraid of spiders. The plot is straightforward enough, but possibly could have done with a longer running time. Yas's family get short shrift, none them being given any personality of depth. An annoying little sister, a quixotic crusader of a father and a hard-working career woman; these are stock characters that are not fleshed out at all. We don't get time to know them at all. No, this is all about getting the characters into a remote location and throwing lots of CGI spiders at them, keeping the tone light in attempt not to scare the daylights out the viewers. It's nice that the spiders, whilst they provide the threat, are not the villains of the piece. They are, in fact, as much victims as the unfortunate people they eat. The environmentalist message is hammered home a little hard, but not as hard the absent father subplot that has been simmering since the opening episode. The absent father motif is one that crops up a lot in modern DOCTOR WHO and is getting a little old. After Rosa, this is a disappointment, but is in reality a fairly solid adventure piece aimed at the younger audience with some obvious references for the adults. It's also got giant spiders, so what's not to like? Top THE TSURANGA CONUNDRUM transmitted November 4th 2018A mishap with a sonic mine when foraging for parts leaves the Doctor and the her friends on an automatically-piloted medical ship flying away from the TARDIS. The ship encounters a Pting, a creature that is toxic to the touch, virtually indestructible and capable of gorging itself on any inorganic matter. The Doctor must find a way of dealing with this creature before the authorities learn of its presence and blow the whole ship to atoms. The series is starting to lose its new Doctor smell with this episode following the also underwhelming Arachnids in the UK. The main problem here is the threat. We're led to believe the monster in question can eat the whole of the spaceship from around them and is so dangerous that they will be instantly destroyed if the ship's sensors alert the central authority to its mere presence aboard. That is pretty intimidating. What we are presented with is called a Pting, is about a foot tall and is as cuddly and unintimidating as the adipose were. This is a kiddie-friendly monster that instantly negates any possible threat. It is not convincingly dangerous, scary or remotely believable. That's a major stumbling block. Once again, there appear to be too many companions for the writers to give everything something meaningful to do. As a result, Graham and Ryan are sent off to assist a male alien give birth to his male offspring. This gives them another chance to raises the topic of Ryan's absent father, and pretty much diss all fathers everywhere, as part of the anti-father theme. Meanwhile, Yas and the Doctor attempt to save the ship from its non-threatening threat. There is a crew of supporting characters who are less than the sum of their parts, though the greatest pilot in the fleet and her younger brother do manage to make a minor impact. The Tsuranga Conundrum has enough going on to keep the younger members of the audience happy enough, but the older viewers may struggle to find anything here worthy of their time. Top DEMONS OF THE PUNJAB transmitted November 11th 2018Yas persuades her to take the gang back in time to see her grandmother as a young woman on eve of her wedding. Instead of Lahore, they find themselves in rural Punjab on the eve of the partition of India and Pakistan. They also find alien assassins lurking in the woods. The second delve in recent history for the new Doctor and, like Rosa before it, it is a powerful story well told. It is also a story where the historical is far more interesting than the science fiction story. The aliens are a mystery that is quickly solved and not really necessary at all, apart from providing a red herring as to the nature of the titular demons. For this is a story about the partition of India and Pakistan, not in the political, global sense but in the human, individual sense. This is about a family being torn apart by politics, by religion and by intolerance. The setting is historical reality and the knowledge that scenarios like this one must have played out for real all across the two new countries lend the story an even greater power. And it holds it resolve right to the end, never settling for a narratively easy way out. This is all filmed against a beautiful backdrop of lovely landscapes, all draped in a golden glow that belies the darkness spilling out of people's hearts. Demons of the Punjab is flawed, but powerful stuff. Top 18 KERBLAM! transmitted November 18th 2018The Doctor receives a parcel from Kerblam containing a call for help on the packing slip. The gang go undercover in the moon-sized warehouse and learn that human staff members are going missing, the automated system is suffering power cuts and glitches whilst the robot workers are acting in a significantly creepy manner. Something is very wrong at Kerblam! Stories about the working conditions in warehouses, most specifically those of Amazon, are rife and Kerblam! takes that as a starting point for a fun adventure with a slightly harder than expected edge. The fate of one particularly likeable staff member seems harsh in the extreme. The plot expands from warehouse conditions to take in the whole issue of automation taking human jobs. That's a wide scope of subject matter, but it is leavened by humour and the fact that the main weapon is the humble sheet of bubble wrap. The mixture of real world issues with sinister smiling robots and some good jokes makes Kerblam! the most simply entertaining episode of this series to date. Top THE WITCHFINDERS transmitted November 25th 2018Whilst investigating a village in the throes of a witchunt that has claimed over thirty lives, the Doctor and her friends face off against zombies, mud tendrils and a king who is obsessed with eradicating Satan from the land around Pendle Hill. A comedy episode about the oppression and murder of women under the guise of a witchunt? That's a big ask and this episode falls short. It centres around a fine comedy performance from Alan Cummings as King James (of the King James Bible fame) as a feckless, foppish king with a core of zealotry against anything he considers to be evil. Aside from that, there's the usual trapped aliens affecting the surrounding area in their search for an escape and the primitive humans seeing it as evil. Then there's the stuff about the oppression of women as the Doctor is immediately demoted to assistant witchfinder because of her gender and the women are taken to be witches just because of their skills. The local landowner is a strong woman who feels cruelty is the same as strength. The theme, though, is buried beneath the usual shenanigans that end up not amounting to much. This is possibly the weakest episode of the season to date. Top IT TAKES YOU AWAY transmitted December 2nd 2018In Norway, the Doctor and her companions encounter a blind girl trapped alone in a house menaced by the roars of a patrolling monster. There's also a mirror that is also a portal to a hellish world. Things are about to get mad. What starts off as a horror story about a trapped, vulnerable child becomes a mad rush through mirror dimensions, giant flesh-eating moths, duplicitous guides and visits from the dead. It also touches once again on how bad fathers are, as the dad who is missing presumed dead is merely putting his own selfish desires ahead of the needs of his blind daughter. It seems that there can never be a good father in all of the time and space that the Doctor visits. More than anything, though, this is a story about loss. Graham is faced with the return of his beloved Grace, or something that looks, sounds and thinks exactly like her. Bradley Walsh's understated performance as a grieving man forced to face the possibility of regaining his love, only to have that ripped away again, knowing all the time that it cannot be real. There's almost too much plot to fit into the running time. Quite apart from the monster outside the house, there is the buffer world between dimensions filled with deadly moths and the trapped guide who is willing to kill to get any advantage, the mirror dimension where the dead come back to life and then, in an almost insane escalation with the revelation of a whole sentient universe that was exiled from our own and is feeling a bit lonely. Oh, and which looks like a bad frog prop. It's the final moments where the episode goes completely off the rails. Quite apart from the existence of a sentient universe from before time, its manifestation as a frog goes beyond any sort of sense, which is a shame because it had a lot going for it up to that point. Top THE BATTLE OF RANSKOOR AV KOLOS transmitted December 9th 2018The Doctor and her friends respond to a group of distress signals on a planet that attacks the mind and memory of organic lifeforms. There, they discover an impossible power being misused by a enemy from the past, an enemy that Graham has sworn to kill. The series finale brings us back to the opening episode and brings Graham O'Brien to the end of his full circle. The most memorable villain (in looks anyway) of the series is back, though he isn't doing very much more than rehashing the planet-stealing schtick of The Pirate Planet. There are some more killer robots (how many is that now in this series?), some running around and refusing to use killing as the solution to the problem, but on the whole, there isn't anything here that we haven't seen before and that's a bit disappointing in the final episode of the season. And so the sun sets of the first series with the first female Doctor. Whilst it's been a mixed bag in terms of story quality, Jodie Whittaker has established herself in no uncertain terms as the Doctor and there have been enough high points for us to look forward to the next series with hope and confidence. Top RESOLUTION transmitted January 1st 2019The Doctor and companions respond to a warning from Earth. Something that was split between three locations in ancient times has been unearthed and made its way back together. When a DNA test confirms the creature to be a Dalek, the Doctor must act quickly to locate it, find out what it wants and stop it before it can summon an invasion fleet. The annual special episode has been moved from Christmas Day to New Years Day, hence the title. It also applies to Ryan's story arc in the episode. His absent father reappears, wanting to patch up their relationship, something that is not going to happen overnight. The reaction of the various members of the Tardis crew to Ryan's father arrival allows for complications in the team dynamic, but the arc of the relationship over the episode is both predictable and unconvincing. We've been building up to this from the start of the season and could have hoped for something a bit better. The same can be said of the main Dalek storyline. The opening sequence, which lays down the background to the Dalek's presence on Earth, is relatively epic, but the subsequent encounters are not. Where once we had thousands of Daleks filling the skies over London, we now get a single Dalek facing off aaginst one squad of ground troops and a tank. Perhaps the opening accounted for so much of the budget there wasn't a lot left for a satisfying action sequence, but the Dalek is set up to be a threat to the entire planet on its own and a bigger battle would have made it far more impressive. Fortunately, the early parts of the story feature the Dalek outside of its casing and its ability to sit on the back of a human and use them as a puppet (looking very much like the giant spiders in Planet of the Spiders) is quite creepy and effective. Once inside its casing, however, the budgetary constraints come into play. The human cast comes off much better, not least because they don't need the costly effects. Jodie Whittaker gets to run the gamut of the Doctor's emotions as she faces the worst challenge any Doctor can face. There's still a little bit too much mugging in the performance, but when she gets serious, the Doctor's harder side comes out. Tamsin Cole and Bradley Walsh bring some real heart to their reactions to the reappearance of Ryan's father, enough that the later developments disappointingly undermine their good work. Yas is given little to do, a recurring issue with this number of companions, not least because Charlotte Ritchie takes up a sizeable amount of screen time as the Dalek's first victim. As the first seasonal special of the new era, Resolution has some nice ideas and big ambitions, but the apparent financial limitations hamper the realisation, making it less than completely successful, which is a shame. Top SPYFALL - PART 1 transmitted January 1st 2020Spies all over the world are being killed, left as husks with rewritten DNA. MI6 go to the Doctor for help. A single lead is uncovered in the shape of the world's greatest tech tycoon. Whilst Yas and Ryan investigate him, the Doctor and Graham visit a knowledgable ex-member of the intelligence community known as O. When the aliens attack O and the Doctor manage to repel them, but a visit to the billionaire's birthday leads to revelations she could not have expected. Quite apart from punning on a recent James Bond title, the opening episode of the 13th Doctor's second season borrows many of the British superspy's tropes. There are car chases, gadgets, globe-trotting locations, climbing onto airplanes whilst they're taking off, sneaking around villains's lairs, briefings from the head of the spy service, infiltrating fancy parties and a spectacular cliffhanger ending. Following the financial constraints of Resolution being on display, this episode has everything thrown at it to allow it to meet its ambitions. The scale has been amped up in every way. The action is epic by the standards of the show, the aliens are impressively realised, the villain is national comedy legend Lenny Henry, and national treasure Stephen Fry appears in a throwaway role that is barely a cameo. Everything here is as big as the show can make it, to match the ambitions of the story being told. It's a spy mystery, to be sure, but it's a spy mystery leading up to a single massive twist. It's also a two-parter, so there is plenty of time to allow the the story to breathe, giving time to the characters as well as the plot. And the cliffhanger really is a big one. The characters are well-established now and the actors are all in the groove. They manage all the changes of pace with elan and make the most of the moments of humour amongst the action and story-telling twists. It's a riotous opening romp and promises much for the new series. Top SPYFALL - PART 2 transmitted January 5th 2020The Doctor is transported through time by one Ada Lovelace, to Victorian England and to meet Charles Babbage. The rest of the gang escape the crashing plane in the present, but are sent on the run by the tech billionaire's control of information systems. Trying to get back to her friends, the Doctor bounces through time, barely getting away from the Master with her life in each era. Can she get back in time to prevent the Master's plan. Following the rather splendid ambitions of the first part of this story, the second part comes as something of a letdown. The aliens continue to be visually impressive, as does the recreation of Paris during the war, Eiffel tower and all. The brief appearance in Victorian London, at an inventor's fair, is rather too short to make an impression beyond the costumes. What doesn't impress, is the story. For want of another word, it fizzles. The companions survive the crashing plane scenario in amusing enough fashion, but after that they are left wandering around in search of something to do. As, to be fair, is the tech billionaire played by Lenny Henry. His part in the plot, to turn all humans into hard drives (hello, THE MATRIX anyone) via their wifi devices. His speech about how we blindly trust giant corporations we know to be untrustworthy with all our most personal data for the sake of a little convenience is well-said, but almost irrelevant by the point we get around to it. That's because the plot is no longer about impressive aliens and tech billionaires plotting, it's about the Doctor and the newly-revealed Master. Sacha Dhawan's performance as the newly-revived villain is jarringly over the top, especially after his restrained turn as O in the first episode. His version of the dark Time Lord is virtually unhinged, an intelligent child after too many Christmas sweets. He snarls and sneers and gibbers his way through the script, the unceasing intensity making him rather unbelievable. The twisted relationship between the two remains interesting however. When the Doctor asks why he is obssessed with the meddling and the killing, he asks how else is he going to get her attention. The moments between the two are most interesting moments of the episode. The rest of the plot suffers enormously. We are introduced to two remarkable women, but learn almost nothing about them other than they are remarkable. The reasons why Yas and the Doctor were spared by the aliens and transported to the alien dimension is given so quickly it could be easily missed, leading to confusion, as could the explanation as to why a descendent of Lord Byron is hanging around in the alien dimension just at the right time to save the Doctor from exile. They may make storytelling sense, but needed a bit more time in the telling. Younger audiences are likely to be lost on these details. And then there's the denoument. How the Doctor saves the day, both in the crashing plane and at the moment of the human race's greatest need, by nipping back in time to put in the necessary safeguards to ensure success is such an obvious cheat that you have to wonder why the Doctor hasn't used this for every situation. Just nip back to before things went wrong and make sure they don't. Simple. Also, a big fat cheat. Once matters are brought to their rather unsatisfying conclusion, however, things are not quite over. The Master has a message for the Doctor that references again the Timeless Child and that they have both been lied to all their lives by the Time Lords. This is clearly a set up for later in the season and succeeds in heightening curiosity, but it's not enough to save the episode from being a bit of an anticlimax. Top ORPHAN 55 transmitted January 12th 2020A free holiday to the Tranquility Spa turns into a nightmare when it turns out to have been established on an alien planet with a toxic atmosphere and the defensive wall fails, allowing the indigenous lifeforms to breach the complex and start killing the guests. This is a straight-up horror plot. Stranded in a remote location with no way out, a small group of survivors struggle against marauding monsters. That's about it, plotwise. There's some running around in corridors , a road trip into the wilderness, some family discord and some deaths. The men-in-suits monsters are fine, but they are shot in a way that makes them much more impressive and much scarier than when you see them all at once. We are told that the planet is all but dead, and yet there is an entire army of these things, not to mention lots of trees in the background. There's a twist to all of this, one that comes with a thumping environmental message that is hammered home with an ill-judged monologue at the end. Few audiences enjoy being lectured at, which is precisely what happens here. Orphan 55 rattles through its runtime with enough activity to mask the fact that it has nothing new to say. Top NIKOLA TESLA'S NIGHT OF TERROR transmitted January 19th 2020Chasing strange energy readings in 1903, the Doctor encounters struggling inventor Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately, it is a Nikola Tesla being forced on the run by a walking dead man with alien weapons. This is the first historical story of the new series. It benefits greatly from the central performance of Goran Višnjić as Nikola Tesla, a complex mix of genius and impracticality. What is otherwise a fun historical romp is elevated by this performance. Not far behind him is Robert Glenister as Thomas Edison, less of an inventing genius and more a showman and stealer of other men's ideas. Their rivalry makes a fun background to the otherwise bog standard alien invasion story. Also bog-standard are the Skithra alien race, basically a reworking of the Racnoss from The Runaway Bride, only based on scorpions instead of spiders. The middling CGI of the soldier Skithra is unimpressive, but their queen's makeup is enough to allow for a fun performance. The setting of time and place is very nicely done, but the episode never quite manages to reach for the special. Top FUGITIVE OF THE JUDOON transmitted January 26th 2020The Rhino-like militaristic police force Judoon seal off Gloucester and start scanning for a fugitive and executing the local populace. The Doctor steps in to try and resolve the situation. This is going to lead to to revelations and questions that will shake the Doctor to her core. Meanwhile Graham, Yas and Ryan find themselves on a spaceship stolen by one Captain Jack Harkness. There is no way to review this story without spoilers to a huge revelation in this episode, so if you haven't see the episode do yourself a favour and watch it cold. Consider yourself warned. Well now, this episode gathers the pigeons together and then throws in a dozen cats. It takes the established mythology and stands it on its head. Admittedly this is not the first time a previously unknown Doctor has been added into the timeline. It's not that long since The Day of the Doctor introduced John Hurt as the War Doctor. And there is no doubt that we have been introduced to a new incarnation of the Doctor, because Jo Martin is credited as such at the end of the episode. Exactly how that can be is not explained. In fact, the whole point of the episode is that neither Doctor can explain how they can both exist without one remembering the other. Nothing about the situation is explained. Presently, it just exists, but it must be part of the overarching plotline involving the Master, the destruction of Gallifrey and possibly the Timeless Child. As such, it's a fascinating set up for what is to come. Speaking of things to come, John Barrowman has a glorified cameo as Captain Jack, his only purpose to spirit away the companions from the main plot and give them something to do. Admittedly, it's just to receive a cryptic message about not giving the lone cyberman what it wants. Another hint about the events we can expect in the future. Apart from the shattering revelation of the new Doctor (side Doctor, double Doctor?) the episode is fairly standard. Classic creatures the Judoon are back, but here they are playing the comic relief. There's a vengeful ex-partner in charge of them, searching down the person who did them wrong. It's hardly the most original plotline, but that's just because it is simply the pretext for bringing the two Doctors together. This is a show taking a huge chance with its loyal fan base, being brave in its storytelling and characterisation and excite those who enjoy surprises and a very good mystery. The season just got very, very interesting.
Top PRAXEUS transmitted February 2nd 2020What does a missing astronaut in Hong Kong have to do with a submariner washed up on a beach in Madagascar or a travelling girl in Peru? The answer appears to be the birds, and possibly plastic. The human race is facing one of its deadliest threats. Can the Doctor identify it before humanity is gone. Pollution is bad. Plastic pollution is bad. Microplastics pollution is bad. That the thrust of this episode and it makes it loud and clear and unsubtly. Orphan 55 banged the environmental drum in terms of global warming and Arachnids in the UK pushed the anti-pollution message in the last season. When it comes to the environment, all subtlety apparently goes out the window. The rest of the story doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. There's an alien race studying a disease that feeds on plastic and that disease is what links the other characters in the story. Why the alien race should choose to experiment on a crashing astronaut, a submarine crew and a couple of wandering bloggers is never explained. They're just the excuse to give the Doctor a mystery to sink her teeth into that will eventually lead her to an island of plastic in the middle of the Indian Ocean and a spaceship that lies below it. The effects of the illness are well-rendered, but the solution comes about so quickly and conveniently as to be completely unbelievable. Coming only one episode after the startling Fugitive of the Judoon, this is a disappointing lecture pretending to be a story. Top CAN YOU HEAR ME? transmitted February 9th 2020A hospital in 14th Century Aleppo is attacked by vicious creatures. The Doctor's companions are suffering strange nightmares, possibly caused by a creature with detachable fingers. Where will those nightmares take them and what will they find when they get there? For once, the Doctor is completely outfoxed by a villain. The two seemingly unconnected stories are actually unconnected stories because one is simply a lure to bring the Doctor to a certain place and time and let her do the rest. This is the Doctor, though, and the ease with which she despatches two seemingly omnipotent beings doesn't ring true and seems more than a little anticlimactic. The whole episode doesn't quite cohere and the elements never really come together in a satisfying manner. There's even an attempt to make it as though the whole episode was about the difficulties of discussing mental health and the importance of getting the right support and help, but even that comes across as a half-hearted afterthought. The dreams, though, provide some insight into the characters and makes their places in the Doctor's life more uncertain than before. Perhaps that was the biggest threat. Top THE HAUNTING OF THE VILLA DIODATI transmitted February 16th 2020In the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin found the inspiration to write the story of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. The Doctor brings her companions to witness the event, but find that there a very supernatural-seeming events taking place. The historical episodes of the 13th Doctor's reign have generally spawned some of the better episodes and it is once again the case with this cracking episode. A gothic horror story starring one of the authors who spawned gothic horror stories, it is full of atmosphere and menace, scares and tension. Like any good horror tale, it starts off with a few small events and then builds up the final confrontation with the monster, and it is with the monster that the story shows its true brilliance, tying together the horror story with the science fiction universe the Doctor inhabits. Yes, this is where the Doctor encounters the 'lone cyberman', about whom she was warned by Captain Jack in Fugitive of the Judoon and so the story is part of the bigger tale being told, but it is also a first rate story in its own right. One of the strengths of the current Doctor's incarnation has been the way in which the historical episodes have been realised. The sense of time and place is clearly evoked despite events taking place within a single house. This is mainly down to a cast of supporting characters who have depth and reality right down to the wonderfully droll supercilious valet. The relationships between the various personages are allowed to breathe and grow, even as the spookiness is ramped up, through skeletal walkings hands, moving furniture, rooms you can't get out of and zombie-like fugues. There's even a helpless baby in jeaopardy to ramp up the tension. Even the jokes land without disrupting the oppressive atmosphere. It really is a joyful romp through a classic ghost story. And then we come to the lone cyberman. His appearance in the heart of a ghost story doesn't unbalance things in the slightest. The incomplete nature of the creature even feeds into the subplot of how the night's events will inspire the author to write her masterpiece. It's a smart and effective reworking of the classic cyberman into something new, which hasn't been achieved with this particular monster in some time. As a standalone episode, this would alreasy be head and shoulder above the the average, but it also fits into the unfolding story arc flawlessly. This is probably the 13th Doctor's best episode yet. Top ASCENSION OF THE Cybermen transmitted February 23rd 2020In the far future, a last-ditch attempt to protect the last handful of humans from the marauding Cybermen goes wrong. The Doctor and Ryan manage to steal and cybershuttle and head for the last place of safety, a boundary that can be crossed out of the galaxy. Yas and Graham also escape, but only onto a ship filled with dormant Cybermen that are about to wake up. The first of two-part season finale is rarely satisfying in its own right and that is the case here. It is all about setting up the finale and so is light on plotting and characterisation, but heavy on action. There's a skirmish on a shattered world, a desperate escape, a last ditch attempt to avoid dying in space and some wandering around a giant cybercarrier. All of this achieves very little other than to get the Doctor and his companions where they need to be for the big cliffhanger that will set up the final episode. There isn't time to be bored, but it's really just an incident-filled holding pattern. One of the strengths of the current Doctor's incarnation has been the way in which the historical episodes have been realised. The sense of time and place is clearly evoked despite events taking place within a single house. This is mainly down to a cast of supporting characters who have depth and reality right down to the wonderfully droll supercilious valet. The relationships between the various personages are allowed to breathe and grow, even as the spookiness is ramped up, through skeletal walkings hands, moving furniture, rooms you can't get out of and zombie-like fugues. There's even a helpless baby in jeaopardy to ramp up the tension. Even the jokes land without disrupting oppressive atmosphere. It really is a joyful romp through a classic ghost story. That said,the final twist is quite a good one. Then there's the small matter of an entire side story in which a Irish foundling grows up, lives and unremarkable life (except for not dying from being shot and falling off a cliff) and then is taken into the back office by an ageless father and his friend to be tortured. This will hopefully be explained in the final episode since it is essentially meaningless filler otherwise.
Top THE TIMELESS CHILDREN transmitted March 1st 2020The Master takes the Doctor through the boundary to see the destruction he has wrought on Gallifrey. There, his final plans come to fruition, plans that go far beyond anything the Lone Cyberman could conceive of and that will change the very nature of the Dcotor's life. For the second time in a season, we are issuing a spoiler alert. DO NOT read this review until you have seen the episode. Your enjoyment of it will be greatly diminished otherwise. Still here, or come back after watching the episode? OK, your choice. Let us begin. This is the culmination of the Timeless Child story arc that was first mentioned right back in the 13th Doctor's first episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth and it is a culmination that overturns everything we thought we knew. When the Master said everything was going to change, he wasn't kidding. What we could be sure about what that the Doctor was a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. He stole a ship that could travel in time and space and went on the run. This is established DOCTOR WHO lore. Or it was established DOCTOR WHO lore. After The Timeless Children, almost none of it is true. Instead, it is revealed that the Doctor was discovered as a foundling, exiled from another dimension and imbued with the natural ability to regenerate. From that natural ability, the inhabitants of Gallifrey developed their own version of the ability and thus, the Timeless Child was not born of the Time Lords, but gave birth to them. She was then recruited to the Department, a secret Time Lord cabal that actively interfered in the events of the universe, whilst the race outwardly maintained a ethos of non-interference. At the end of each life, her mind was wiped clean. She has existed for far longer than previously thought and has had far more faces. This explains the Doctor from Fugitive of the Judoon and also, incidentally, the strange faces seen in the mind battle from The Brain of Morbius. It also explains the leeway the Time Lords have always shown the Doctor when she butted up against their non-interference policy and even elected her as President. This is a huge and ambitious retconning of one of the most revered show mythologies in the genre and is certainly a brave move. Unfortunately, it is revealed in a long, expositionary info dump from the Master, with added images courtesy of the Matrix, which is possibly the least interesting way it could have been delivered. Even so, it is enough to leave the Doctor, and the loyal audience, reeling. Even if that wasn't enough to make this season finale one of the most memorable episodes in the show's history, there are some other nice touches that elevate the story. The mission of the Lone Cyberman is elevated from domination to the elimination of all organic life. The Master's reaction to this plan is delightfully derisive. His own plan, which combines the organics of the Time Lords, with their regenerative quality, to the armour of the Cybermen into a new race of Cybermasters, is beautifully revealed, in direct contrast to the info dumping of the Doctor's true past. In fact, the Master is the true star of this episode. Sacha Dhawan's performance is overly manic, but considering what he has learned about the Doctor, that can be forgiven. He gets all the best lines and his relationship with the Doctor remains deliciously twisted. He leaves her the solution to the problem he himself has created just to see if she will take it, to see if she will become like him, giving her the ability to defeat him, but only by removing what makes her better than him. The get out clause for this is one of the disappointing aspects of the episode, and all a bit convenient. It doesn't really change the moral dilemma that the Doctor is faced with and is, really, a coward's way out. The episode also doesn't rally know what to do with all the other characters, not the first time this team has had that problem. There is some dressing up as Cybermen and that's about it before they are all abruptly exiled back to Earth. The scenes from Ireland in the previously episode illustrate a small point in the new backstory and so really were filler. The Timeless Children is not a perfect episode, but it has to be applauded for the sheer audacity of what it sets out to do. Many will not appreciate the rewriting of sacred history, but it is a guarantee that few people will quickly forget it. Top REVOLUTION OF THE DalekS transmitted January 1st 2021An unscrupulous businessman conspires with an ethically-challenged Home Secretary to use alien technology to create security drones guaranteed to keep Britain safe. When that technology is of Dalek origin, however, things are absolutely not going to go well. Following on directly from last year's New Year special, Resolution, this episode ups the ante from the single dodgy-looking Dalek redesign to a whole raft of dodgy-looking Dalek redesigns. The finances have apparently been provided to allow some impressive Dalek destruction to be wrought on screen. First, however, there is the small matter of the Doctor being locked up in intergalactic supermax. This allows her the time to comes to terms with the shocking revelations of The Timeless Children, though that is barely mentioned before a very welcome old friend reappears to spirit her away and bring her back to Earth just in time to be reunited with the Fam before discovering the Dalek plan and watching the world fall into chaos. How the Daleks are dealt with is at least ingenious, though it does rather rely on the pepperpot aliens walking into an obvious trap at one point. There's always a good reason to leave a couple of guards outside an open door, after all. We'll let that go because of the way it also ties up a loose end from last season's finale rather nicely. The return of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness elevates the whole thing. His character really is a delight and capable of improving any story he appears in. Less welcome is the reappearance of Chris Noth's Jack Robertson, the Trump wannabe who seems to be one of Chris Chibnall's favourite returning characters. He is as slimy and untrustworthy here as previously and ties in nicely with Harriet Walters' ambitious and unlikeable Home Secretary, later Prime Minister. The commentary on the state of world politics at the moment is timely, but hardly subtle or clever. Revolution of the Daleks has its longeurs, but it does provide some great entertainment along the way, has a sense of scale the previous special was lacking and says a fond farewell to two of the current companions in a moment that just might bring a tear to your eye. If you're not too busy punching the air in delight, that is. Top FLUX Chapter 1 - THE HALLOWEEN APOCALYPSE transmitted October 31st 2021An alien prisoner on a distant, desolate world escapes. A fleet of doglike aliens is heading for Earth whilst one of their number chases a very ordinary human. The Doctor is in pursuit of her past, something she hasn't yet explained to Yas. And out in the universe, a power known as the Flux is coming to destroy everything. The 2021 series of DOCTOR WHO returns to the traditional format of a larger story told over a number of episodes. It's another way that showrunner and head writer Chris Chibnall is returning the show to its roots. This, however is not a simple story told over a number of weeks, but a multiplicity of tales that will, hopefully, come together into some sort of a coherent whole. There is little sign of this in the opening episode, which suffers from too many things happening with no apparent link. This doesn't make for a satisfying episode as there are a lot of starting points, but no connective tissue. Who is Dan and why is he being targeted by a humanoid dog alien? Why is a Victorian gentleman building tunnels beneath Liverpool? Who is the alien released from a long and cruel internment and why does he know the Doctor when she doesn not know him? Who are the couple living in the Arctic Circle and what are they hiding from? Who is the young man monitoring a quiet section of space? Why is there an invasion fleet of millions of ships heading directly for Earth? Why is the TARDIS coming apart at the seams? Who is the woman who has met the Doctor, but the Doctor hasn't yet met? How are the Weeping Angels involved in all this? Or the Sontarans? Virtually none of these questions get an answer, which means there's a lot of activity adding up to not very much. And that's before we get to whatever is causing tension between Yas and the Doctor. And there is a lot of activity. Right at the start, the Doctor and Yas have to escape from certain death in a sequence that plays to the youngest part of the audience base in the most cartoonish manner. This is in stark contrast to the escape of the mysterious villain of the piece, which is dark and sets off the body count early, possibly being a bit scary for that same youngest section of the audience. The manner of killing is harsh and also a bit scary for the young ones. The makeup on the villain, and his later revealed partner, is nicely rendered to create an original and intimidating alien threat. The same can't be said of the dog-alien, which is a cross between Chewbacca and a puppy with a northern accent. His dialogue bounces between the comic and ominous and that combines with the unconvincing face mask to undermine any chance of us taking him seriously, which is a shame as he seems to be a critical link between the Doctor and her Division past, as revealed in The Timeless Children. Also new is John Bishop as Dan, a scouser who gets involved in all of this quite by chance and spends most of his time filling the role that belonged previously to Graham, that of comic relief and audience question asker. He does a perfectly good job and fits in with Whittaker's manic Doctor and Mandip Gill's Yas. The special effects benefit from the reduced number of episodes the budget has to be spent on. The space vistas are impressive, the alien make-up (dog alien aside) impressive, the Flux itself devastating on a huge scale. Planets are destroyed willy nilly and this is only the start. Admittedly, this reminiscent of the energy ribbon that destroyed planets in START TREK: GENERATIONS, but only that probably won't get picked up by the majority of the audience. The multi-episode nature of the story means it is not possible to properly review the episode in context, but on its own it rushes by at breathless pace, throwing situations at the screen so fast there's no time to question anything, or understand it. The tone veers wildly throughout the running time, sometimes in the same scene. Very little time is given for pause or character development, which is a shame because there are an awful lot of new characters introduced and only Dan gets any real time for us learn about him. Even that boils down to a couple of quite opening scenes before he gets thrown in at the deep end, much like the audience. It's a loud, brash and bold start to this new experiment in DOCTOR WHO storytelling, but not entirely successful. Further episodes will have to build on this base to redeem it. Top FLUX Chapter 2 - WAR OF THE SONTARANS transmitted November 7th 2021The Flux fails to destroy the TARDIS, but throws it back through time to the Crimean War. Just as the Doctor realises this, Yas dematerialises to the Temple of Antropos on the planet of time to Meet Vinder, the man who was monitoring the region of space where the Flux first appeared. Dan, meanwhile is sent back to present day Liverpool, where the Sontarans have taken over, the same alien race that is now fighting against the British in Crimea. Putting aside the small matter of the ribbon of energy currently destroying the entire universe, this episode comes up with the idea of the Sontarans figthing the Crimean War. There isn't any real reason for this, other than the sight of British Victorian forces facign off against the might of the Sontaran Empire. It's an impressive setting, but the story doesn't really know what to do once it gets there. It introduces the true life historical character of Mary Seacourt and her hospital cum hotel. Just like the setting, the story doesn't really know what to do with her. Her main function appears to be coming up with the fact that all Sontarans go to sleep at the exact same time. Exactly why one of the foremost military races in the universe would allow such a ridiculous tactical weakness to exist instead of sleeping in shifts is just one of the problems with this episode. Another is why those same crack Sontaran troops don't seem to be able to hit the side of a barn with their weapons when the heroes are involved. They have the same level of marksmanship as imperial stormtroopers from STAR WARS. It is impressively staged, with an evocative and desolate battlefield setting, huge Sontaran bases in both time frames (both of which have shocking security), a massed (but brief) battle between the gathered ranks of British and Sontaran armies and a broken temple that seems to be at the heart of the larger mystery of the otherwise ignored Flux and a focal point for all of time, which is a departure from the idea that Gallifrey and the Time Lords were the masters of Time. We are introduced to the comedy duo of Dan's parents, whose sole purpose is to show up out of the blue and explain what's going on in modern Liverpool and bicker amusingly before disappearing again. More importantly, we are reintroduced to Vinder, the watcher from the space station. We don't learn anything more about him, but he does come in handy for explaining what is going on in Antropos. This is the significant part of the episode, even though it takes up the least of the running time. The main aliens, Swarm and Azure, are still the most impressive part of the story. The Crimea section is mainly distraction from that. The theme of the madness of war is laid down by the actions of a commander who is willing to sacrifice all his troops against impossible odds. It's basically the charge of the light brigade without the light brigade. It also borrows the destruction of the retreating aliens berayal from The Christmas Invasion almost verbatim. This second episode of the Flux storyline is as visually impressive as the first, but is as uneven and unsatisfying as the first, though for different reasons. It is to be hoped that the next can build on the good aspects and provide more in the way of coherence and answers. Top FLUX Chapter 3 - ONCE, UPON TIME transmitted November 14 2021In order to save Yas and Vinder from being utterly destroyed by Time unleashed, the Doctor plunges everyone into a time storm. There, she is buffetted between their past and future experiences, along with those of Dan and her own past self. Some secrets are about to be revealed. This episode introduces Bel, a young woman roaming through the ravaged remains of the universe that the Flux hasn't yet reached, searching for someone. She has to dodge Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans, the last three great races vying for dominance over the ever-diminishing scraps left of the universe. Hers is a story that has no apparent connection to the main, though that connection is revealed at the end and doesn't come as any surprise. This is a distraction, however, from the main plot that is taking place within the time streams of the four main characters in the temple of Antropos. The time storm reveals some vital background for both Vinder and for the Doctor herself. In Vinder's case, we learn how his rise up the ranks of the military comes to a drastic end when he falls foul of the corrupt leader, the Great Serpent. It was for doing the right thing that he was exiled to the lonely monitoring outpost where first we met him and the Flux. What relevance this has to anything else is not explained, but it at least fills in a section of the jigsaw without fitting it into the main picture. That, though, is nothing when compared to what we learn about the Doctor and her relationship to Swarm and Azure. We learn that, in the guise of the Fugitive Doctor (as played by Jo Martin and first encountered in Fugitive of the Judoon), she faced them down and saved the universe from their attempts to release the power of Time. There is a war between the elements of Time and Space and the aliens are determined that Time will win and destroy Space utterly. The Doctor's previous incarnation saved the day and carried out the sentences of internment forever and personality destruction from which they escaped in the opening episode. The Doctor also learns that the release of the Flux and the destruction of the universe is because of her. Exactly how is yet to be explained, but the answers are coming and the shape of the main mystery has finally been fully defined. Though it is an episode of two parts, this is the best of the series so far. The events within the time storm and the time streams of the main characters are initially confusing as the Doctor bounces around wildly within them and sees strangers being portrayed with the faces of the main cast. Exactly why this confusion of having the main cast show up as other people is necessary is uncertain. Things would have been much simpler if they had been played by other actors (as the Great Serpent is, making it likely that this character is more important than he appears in the flashback) and the effectiveness of the storytelling would have been intensified rather than reduced. Even so, the insight given into Vinder's background and that of the Doctor herself is the best thing to have happened in the story so far. By contrast, Bel's story is of little interest and smacks a little bit of being filler, even with the link revealed at the end. With this episode, the FLUX storyline has hit its stride and met some of is promise. Top FLUX Chapter 4 - VILLAGE OF THE ANGELS transmitted November 21 2021The Doctor, Yas and Dan find themselves in a village in 1967, along with the woman who approached them in modern-day Liverpool, a psychic researcher called Professor Jericho and a whole bunch of weeping angels. Can she work out what the angels want before they are all sent back in time or turned to stone themselves.
Since they first appeared in Blink, the weeping angels have been one of favourite monsters of the modern era. With each appearance, however, the effect has been reduced. This episode, however, brings some menace back to the angels, not providing any explanation for their presence until all is revealed in the final moments. Throughout the rest of the running time, they do what the weeping angels do best, which is be mysterious and menacing. The introduction of a weeping angel on fire is a nice touch and the development of angels being able to possess the minds of psychics ('that which holds the image on an angel can be an angel') is a welcome addition to the mythology. The Doctor's power to mind meld with humans is a less welcome development. How come she hasn't been doing this all along? Also welcome is the double team of Claire Brown and Eustacious Jericho (played by Annabel Scholey and Kevin McNally). In this episode, they show a chemistry that suggests more of a history and a sense of connection between them. Their time with the Doctor is the core of the episode and the rest of the story, with Yas and Dan wandering around the village in both 1967 and 19014 to little additional effect. Furthermore, the story of Bel encountering Azure and her passenger drone (a figure that can hold a limitless number of prisoners within its body) on one of the few remaining planets again bears no real relationship to the main story taking place elsewhere. This episode, though, is all about the weeping angels and their apparent connection to the mysterious Division. This thread of the plot anchors the episode and spins through twists and turns before coming to a final moment that is a terrific cliffhanger. Not quite as good as the episode preceding it, this is still an improvement on the first two and moves the story forward in interesting and exciting ways, making us look forward to the next. Top Yas, Dan and Professor Jericho are running around the globe in 1903, trying to find out when the final, post-flux assault on Earth will come. The Grand Serpent is manipulating the existence of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) and the weeping angels have delivered the Doctor to Division, where a figure from her past looms large.
It's the penultimate episode of this serialised season of DOCTOR WHO and answers come tumbling out of the sky whilst the various characters line up for their assault on the finale. Dan's love interest, pretty much forgotten since The Halloween Apocalypse meets up with Vinder inside an otherwise empty passenger drone. Where have all those people Azure was so assiduously collecting gone? Karvanista, Dan's dog alien, meets up with Bel to restore the shield of spaceships around the Earth, just as an alien invasion looms. Most bizarrely of all, the Grand Serpent, responsible for Vinder's disgrace, shows up on Earth throughout the recent past and influences the development of UNIT before closing it down to avoid any interference with the events about to happen. None of this actually achieves very much, other than to put pieces on the board for the big finale. Even the Indiana Jones style globetrotting of Yas, Dan and Eustacius Jericho, which offer up the most entertaining section of the episode, do little than bring them back to Liverpool and the mysterious tunnels mentioned on and off throughout the other episodes. The doors within the tunnels now connect to all parts and time and space and one of them is clearly being signposted as one of the solutions needed next week. What is significant is the Doctor's storyline. Admittedly, that starts off reductively enough, casting aside the drama of last week's cliffhanger ending immediately for a scene in which the Doctor harangues a crowd of silent, unmoving weeping angels. This whole episode could easily have been dispensed with without affecting anything at all. The taks of the angels was to bring the Doctor to Division, the headquarters of which are outside of the universe we know. There, it is revealed what Division is, who runs it, who is resonsible for the release of the Flux and why. Much of this doesn't make that much sense. It is hard to believe that anyone would wipe out an entire universe just to make sure the Doctor destroyed. That's Master-level madness and the figure from the Doctor's past who is pulling all the strings seems a long way from insanity. Ruthless to the core, yes, but not insane. Last week's episode showed it possible to trap the Doctor within a weeping angel. She could then have been tossed into the heart of the star and the job is done without the need to wipe out a whole universe. This thread of the story, though, is part of the Timeless Child rewriting of the Doctor's, and therefore the entire show's, history. Her confrontation with the shadowy head of Division casts some serious shade on how the Doctor does things, a fair reflection that has been brought up from time to time in previous stories. The Doctor isn't perfect and this confrontation provides both some insight into and explanation of her character. Sadly, it is neither deep enough nor long enough to really have maximum impact, despite roping in the redoubtable Barbara Flynn as the antagonist. The episode looks fantastic, as has the series as a whole. The interior-bound adventures of Yas, Dan and Jericho are given a real period and exotic feel and the realisation of the home of Division is wonderful. If only the story had been able to live up to the visuals. Still, the end is in sight. It might all come together yet. Top The Sontarans have again invaded the Earth, successfully this time. They are using human minds to work out the exact time and location of the final Flux assault that will wipe out the remains of the universe. In Division HQ, outside of the universe, the Doctor is split in three, which may be just enough Time Lords to avert total annihilation.
The final episode of this shortened season has a lot of work to do to tie up all the loose ends left dangling. It chooses to do this only partially, leaving the matter of the Doctor's hidden past only partially resolved. We don't learn anything more about it, but the pocket watch with all those memories stored inside finally comes into her possession. She chooses not to open it, but for how long. With only a handful of special episodes left before the current Doctor and showrunner leave, it's inconceivable that we won't see it again. The matter of the Sontarans and their plan to rule what little is left of the universe is wound up neatly enough, if a little genocidally, using the Flux itself to do so and taking down a couple of equally large armies with them. This shows some of the far-reaching tactical nature of the aliens who have previously been played mainly for laughs. Here, they come within a whisker of achieving their goals. As do the main baddies, Swarm and Azure. They have control of Division, the Flux, the Doctor and her memories. Their plan is to destroy all of space so that Time can be released from Atropos and they can ascend. They are agents of destruction and chaos and nothing more. They want only to watch the universe burn, roll back time and watch it burn again, over and over. As motives go, it's not the strongest, but it does have the virtue of being pure. They are, however, somewhat sidelined as the multiple Doctors deal with the more immediate matter of the Sontarans. We have seen multiple Doctors on a number of occasions, but this is the first time we've seen three of the same incarnation in the same story. This is as distracting as it was in Once, Upon Time, at least until the rapid between the three of them slows down. When two of them show up in the same place, Jodie Whittaker gets to have a ball playing against herself. The rest of the cast get less screen time and make little impact, having almost nothing to do beyond single heroic actions. Yaz takes out some Sontarans with an open door, as predicted in the last episode, Jericho and Claire Brown get subjected to mental probes, the rest shoot some stuff. They almost don't need to be there. Even worse, the Victorian builder of the tunnels is present purely to have the Doctor say 'Thank you and goodbye' whilst Kate Stewart of UNIT has no function at all. In fact, the whole UNIT storyline seems to have been grafted on from somewhere else, as has the character of the Great Serpent. Unless they both crop up again in the forthcoming specials, their presence remains a mystery. And the least used character of all, Dan's love interest, comes up with the way to save the day using the passenger drones that have been there all along, but we all ignored. This makes it all feel a bit deus ex machina, when it has, in fact, been set up for a while. Possibly worse than all of that is the way the consequences of the events of the series are apparently ignored. Pretty much the entire universe has been destroyed, but the minor characters are sent on their way 'to find some jobs'. Rebuilding the universe might be considered a job. The crew of the Tardis head off with no idea where. The carrying capacity of the Tardis would have made it invaluable to rescuing survivors of the Flux's devastation and taking them to safety, but team Tardis just decide to go on another jaunt? By eschewing a big reset button that would reverse the effects of the Flux (this is a time travel show, after all), Chris Chibnall has taken a bold step, but by then ignoring the havoc he has wrought, he has effectively abandoned that boldness. Unless, of course, the remaining special episodes are going to address that. The sneak peek of the New Year Special doesn't suggest that to be the case. Top The Doctor, Yas and Dan find themselves on New Year's Eve in an almost empty self-storage with the owner Sarah, and customer Nick. Before they can realise what is happening, they have been exterminated by a Dalek. Time, though, resets and they find themselves with another go around. Can they prevent the innocents, and themselves from being exterminated anew?
FLUX was an attempt to make a season of DOCTOR WHO that was expansive in scale and scope despite the restrictions placed on the filming by the covid pandemic. EVE OF THE DalekS goes entirely the other way with the a box story, all the action taking place in a single location, albeit on different floors. The location, though plays into the claustrophobic sense of the piece. Everyone is trapped and facing the most dangerous killing machine in the universe with only their wits and whatever an unseen employee has stashed away in the various storage spaces. The threat is enhanced by the early death of everyone, which shows it is entirely possible for things to go very, very wrong. The first time is shocking. The plot is effectively the Doctor does GROUNDHOG DAY, and the repeating of a series of actions that end in catastrophe over and over until they get it right is a trope that has been used in just about every genre show there ever was. That said, this take on it has enough incidental pleasures to just about get away with it. The main bonus here is that with the plot being little more than a series of repeated actions with only slight variations, there is plenty of time for character interaction. There are the lingering issues between the Doctor and Yas to be sorted out, but both spend most of the time ignoring the elephant in the room until Dan makes it impossible for them to continue to do so. Then there are the other two non-Dalek characters. Sarah is played by Aisling Bea and is given plenty of time to shine, something she can do because she is given all the best lines and the comedienne's timing is impeccable. More impressive is the fact that Sarah is not an altogether likeable person. Irritable, self-absorbed and more than a little caustic, she is a departure from the usual innocent caught up in the Doctor's wake and trying to be all heroic about it. Then there is Nick, played by Adjani Salmon as a sad loser with more than a hint of the potential serial killer about him. The slow building of the relationship between these two mirrors that of previous specials and almost manages to become believable. Which can't be said for the plot as a whole if you look at it too closely. Fortunately, the pace and the jokes and the running around make it hard to think too much about it. True, the Daleks seem to be able to hit a postage stamp at five hundred yards one minute, but can't shoot a bunch of humans running in a straight line down a crowded corridor the next. True, it's never explained how one Dalek becomes two Daleks becomes several Daleks throughout the time loops. It's also never explained how the Daleks put an inescapable shield around the whole building except one door, a door that they see someone trying to escape through in an earlier loop and still don't take time out to secure. Perhaps worst of all is that there is no mention of the aftermath of the Flux. The universe is in tatters with only Earth left unscathed and yet nobody says a thing about it. Despite this, this is an enjoyable, old-fashioned DOCTOR WHO episode with a mystery to be solved, people to be saved and only a limited space in which to do it. There are enough character moments and funny lines to get the story over the line feeling good about itself. This is probably the best use showrunner Chris Chibnall has made of the Daleks to date. There's not a lot of time left for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and we can only hope what's left is more like this. Top The Doctor, Yas and Dan travel to 19th century China where they get caught up in a pirate queen's plan to get a fabled treasure from a crew of Sea Devils in order to buy her crew out of slavery.
The Doctor and pirates don't usually go well together and this second of three special episodes marking the end of Jodie Whittaker's reign is another example of that. It's not a particularly bad episode of the show, but it's also not a particularly good one either. The plot feels both sparse and overfull at the same time. There's a pirate queen, an undying legend and a Sea Devil who plans to flood the entire planet, but none of these manage to cohere into a solid main story. There are three strands on the go at the same time and nothing seems to quite come together. Take the giant sea monster that is loosed by the Sea Devils; it appears in two scnes and then disappears from the plot completely, having not actually done anything much at all. There's an undersea bubble of a habitat for the Sea Devils, but the Doctor herself reminds us on a number of occasions that they are an aquatic race, so why do they need a bubble of oxygen? The Doctor and Yaz manage to save the imprisoned legendary sea captain and escape the Sea Devil ship, but that all happens off screen. Everything just feels bitty, as though there was a better, longer script from which whole scenes have been yanked. If you're going to have a swordfight on a pirate ship, at least make it look like some of the fighters can use a sword. The action sequence is laughable and smacks of not having the time and money to choreograph something more impressive, hoping that it can be fixed in the editing suite. Unfortunately it can't. What also can't be fixed is the burgeoning romance between the Doctor and Yaz. This remains completely unnecessary, not least because this incarnation of the Doctor is soon to be leaving us. The supposedly emotional moments between the two don't really work and are heavy to the point of being at odds with the supposed lightness of the rest of the adventure. The production design, cosutmes and effects are a saving grace, up to the standard we would expect and making the whole thing look impressively expensive. This is apart from the Sea Devil costumes which are surprisingly static and inexpressive. If only a bit more of the resources could have been lavished on getting the plot and script up to the same standard. This is the penultimate adventure for Jodie Whittaker and we could have asked for better. Top After attempting to foil a cyberman attack on a bullet train in outer space, the Doctor finds herself assailed by a number of simultaneous attacks. In 1916 Russia, a new planet is in the sky and Rasputin controls the court, in 2022 a rogue Dalek offers to provide the secret to destroying all the Daleks, whilst UNIT struggles with the defacing of the world's most most famous paintings and the kidnap of the worlds leading seismologists. Are these random issues or could the Daleks and Cybermen be working together. Even worse, could there be another, more diabolical mind pulling all these strings?
The end of a Doctor's reign is always a special time and, in recent years at least, calls for something very special from the writers. With showrunner Chris Chibnall's record being somewhat spotty writing from Jodie Whittaker's groundbreaking Doctor (yes, she's female and she's leaving, so the haters can really get over it), hope was possibly a bit higher than expectations, but against those expectations, he has managed to pull off a worthy, if not perfect, finale. You could certainly accuse The Power of the Doctor of throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks, but bringing together the always popular Daleks, with the now-regenerating Cybermen and throwing in Sasha Dhawan's Master provides a powerful troika to give the Doctor her ultimate face off. Unfortunately, it does leave the Daleks with little to do, making them feel like a bit of a sideshow. Their volcano blowing antics may be a call back to THE Dalek INVASION OF EARTH 2150AD's mining shenanigans, but pretty much any of the other races could have carried out that part of the plan. Still, the rogue Dalek offering up the destruction of his whole race is a new wrinkle, even if it is somewhat thrown away. Better served are the Cybermen, with Chibnall not only keeping the regeneration power he gave them in The Timeless Children, but making that a central part of the plot's resolution. It's a clever move and the best bit of plotting in the whole piece. Sasha Dhawan is back as the Master and is as manic as ever, but the scheme he is given is one of the best yet and really fits the mindset of the Master. Add to that his disguise as Rasputin, which just really, really makes sense and a musical number to Boney M and this is absolutely his best role under Chibnall and Dhawan's best performance. And whilst we're piling on the bad guys, we might as well match them with companions. Yaz and Dan are present, of course, though Dan's early departure sets the tone and scene for a more significant parting later on. UNIT's back and that means Jemma Regrave as Kate Stewart, but she's got support from old handers Sophie Aldred as Ace and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka. They get relationship closure with their Doctors via a Tardis operated AI hologram system, which is a nice touch, but Chibnall then finds a way to bring back David Bradley, Colin Baker and Paul McGann as well as Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy for cameo appearances. Even Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor is smuggled in. It may sound like it's all a bit too much fan service to stuff into a single episode, but the feature length running time and the clever plotting manages to find space for them all. And that's before the nice little touch of a Companion support group that gives us glimpses of Bonnie Langford, Katy Manning and William Russell. In terms of a casting callback, there's never going to be any way to top that. Not all of the plotting works quite so well. The alien power creature that masquerades as a child is a throwaway plot device, as is the reappearance of Jacob Anderson as Vinder, who is given precisely nothing to do at all. There's no explanation of why the Master sets up his Cyberplanet in 1916 Russia, apart from wanting to do the whole Rasputin thing. There is also no reason for the Master to give himself up and mastermind the attack on UNIT headquarters; it does nothing to advance his plot for personal revenge on the Doctor. There's also no explanation of how Tegan can drop from halfway up the inside of a tall building to escape gunfire and not end up as a pulped mess on the basement floor so far below. These, though, are quibbles in the face of so much to like. And the pace rattles along with its usual speed to skip over the cracks and holes and bare bits. There is, however, one bit that can't be skated over. The Doctor's time is up and she's going to have to say goodbye to Yaz, having finally declared her love for her companion. This forced love interest has never rung true and has always felt forced in for no readily apparent reason. This farewell might have given us that reason at last. Parting is such sweet sorrow and the parting of these two is given all the time and power that the previous relationship never was. This brings home the fact that the Doctor is going and an era is ending. It's not really enough to justify the lacklustre love story that went before it, but it does give the regeneration some punch. A Doctor's farewell is one of their most important moments and both Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker give it their best shot. She was always the Doctor, from her first utterance of "brilliant" (oh shut up and go away, haters), even though she wasn't always given the best writing to prove it. Here, though, her departure scenes are strong enough to stand proudly alongside those of other incarnations. Tag, Doctor whoever-she's-going to be. You're it indeed. And if you managed to avoid all the spoilery rumours and announcements to this point, there's a treat of a twist in store. Top |
