Doctor Who – The rest of the season

Aliens rarely dress for the weather.

NB. I’m way behind on these reviews, so I’m going to rush through this.

This review will contain spoilers

‘The Tsuranga Conundrum’
"Whole worlds pivot on acts of imagination."

Incapacitated and rescued by a hospital ship, Team Tardis have to rally the crew and patients to stave off three kinds of disaster, before one of them claims all of their lives.

There’s a good bunch of supporting characters and a nicely Doctorish solution, although this is one of the Thirteenth’s more erratic episodes, perhaps the most extreme of her ‘adjustment’ episodes, and the all-consuming pting is a little too adorable a death machine.

Easily my favourite thing in the episode is when the Doctor is trying to turn the ship around to get back to the Tardis, and the doctor (small d) gives her a chewing out about the other sick people who need to get to the main hospital, and she listens. That last bit is important.

Rating - 6/10

‘Demons of the Punjab’
"This is all that remains of our home. Our people. Every ancestor. All one dust.... They died unwitnessed, unsaved. We were too late to grieve or honor them. But we, who returned, gave up 100 generations to sift, to remember the lost dead, the unmourned. In time, it was all we knew. And now we travel beyond, seeking the unacknowledged dead. Across all of time and space. This is now the Thijarian mission -- to bear witness to those alone. To see. To bear pain, honor life as it passes."

Yaz persuades the Doctor to let her visit her grandmother, Umbreen, to solve a family mystery. Despite her promise not to get involved, Team Tardis find themselves part of Umbreen’s wedding to Prem, a Hindu man who is not Yaz’s grandfather. But the year is 1947, and the partition of India is about to rip the country – and this marriage – apart. Also, there are aliens.

‘Demons of the Punjab’ covers some of the same territory as ‘Rosa’, but this time the racism is all home-grown – Prem’s brother is a Hindu nationalist, violently opposed to Prem marrying a Muslim – and the aliens are there as observers, and perhaps a link to the arc plot (their world was destroyed, possibly by Stenza weapons.)

This is another strong, Earthbound episode, with a solid historical message which, come at me haters, is what Doctor Who exists for. It also gives Yaz the character workout that she has been missing.

Rating - 8/10

Free existential terror with every order.

‘Kerblam!’
Jarvis Slade: How would you like a warning for insubordination?
The Doctor: I'd love one. I could add it to my collection.

Someone sends the Doctor a gift via Kerblam! (basicallt space Amazon,) but the packing note contains a cry for help. The team go undercover at Kerblam!’s fulfilment centre, where they discover a broken system and a possibly misguided conspiracy.

Playing to modern fears of human redundancy, Kerblam! is elevated above lazy satire by making fear and mismanagement the villains, rather than simply taking aim at corporations in general, but unfortunately it does sort of let the corporations off the hook entirely by doing so. A couple of very sympathetic sacrificial characters add emotional involvement, but it isn’t as powerful as the recent pseudohistoricals.

Rating - 6/10


‘The Witchfinders’
"We want certainty, security. To believe that people are evil or heroic but that's not how people are. You want to know the secrets of existence? Start with the mysteries of the heart."

The Tardis team land near Pendle Hill in the midst of a witch hunt, but it’s not the Pendle witch hunt known to history. As the fanatical magistrate Becka Savage drowns her way through the population, no less a figure that James I shoves his oar in, but the Doctor detects an alien hand as sentient mud begins to animate the dead.

Bringing its pseudohistorical game to a more remote time, but more local place, ‘The Witchfinders’ once more looks at the politics of fear and hate in a drama that stands a step above the pure SF episodes of the season. Honestly, I’m curious to see what they current team could do with a pure historical.

Rating - 7/10


‘It Takes You Away’
"This woman is clearly an alien force, collapsing two realities and impersonating your dead wife. Time to move on, mate!"

The Tardis lands in Norway, where the team discovers a young, blind girl, living in an isolated house and menaced by a snarling monster that took her father away. Creepy enough, but then they find a mirror that leads into an alternate dimension, and it all gets even weirder.

Doctor Who gets a bit Scandi-Noir, before bringing in a sentient pocket universe looking for companionship, one of the few beings lonelier than the Doctor. The episode is Graham’s turn to shine, as Bradley Walsh puts in his Bafta nomination performance for his character’s confrontation with a projection of his late wife, Grace.

Rating - 6/10

Another planet, another quarry.

‘The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos’
Ryan: What happened to 'never do weapons'?
The Doctor: It's a flexible creed. Door, locks, walls, buildings. Fair game. If it can be rebuilt, I'll allow it.
Following many, many distress signals, the Doctor brings the Tardis to Ranskoor Av Kolos, where a large number of ships have crashed and a psychic field alters perceptions. Here they discover Tzim-Sha of the Stenza has managed to masquerade as the god of a two-person race called the Ux, who have the power to manipulate reality, using them to shrink planets and store them in glass jars. While Graham declares his intent to kill Tim Shaw, the Doctor struggles to win over the Ux and send the planets back where they belong.

A strong episode for Graham and Ryan, and a cap to the season arc, there’s a lot happening in ‘The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos’, and some of it is a little too familiar. Stealing planets is reminiscent not only of ‘The Stolen Earth’, but of the classic series serial ‘The Pirate Planet’, and as much as persuading powerful religious characters to rethink their life is classic Doctor, it’s really Graham’s confrontation with Tzim-Sha that gets the best of the writing, and the result is somewhat uneven.

Rating - 5/10

Doctor Who – ‘Resolution’

I'm not sure what I'd say about the new look, but I can't help imagining the
response would be: "THANKS! IT HAS BOBBLES!"

"Where's your kitchen? I just need to get some eggs to check the protein alignments in the goo."

Once again, archaeology threatens the foundations of human civilisation, as a fragment of monster is dug up and reconstitutes itself. Now, a Dalek is loose on Earth, and the Doctor races to find it before untold destruction ensues. Meanwhile, Ryan’s dad turns up looking to reconcile.

This is a surprisingly strong festive showing, proving once more that a single Dalek can be more effective than an army if used correctly. There are strong shades of ‘Dalek’, although this lone Dalek – a reconnaissance scout sent out in the early years of Dalek expansion – is a remorseless foe with none of the pathos of that sole survivor.

A strong end to a strong season, I would say, and a good start for the 13th Doctor. Now, roll on 2020.

Rating - 8/10