August 31: "Resolution"

Promotional photo for "Resolution" (from BBC One - Doctor Who,
Resolution Gallery) ©BBC

Another episode without a title sequence! Does Chibnall not actually like the opening titles?

For the first time since Doctor Who came back in 2005, we don't get a Christmas special; instead, it's been delayed a week until New Year's Day 2019. (The cynical part of me thinks that's because, with the announcement that series 12 won't begin until 2020, this way they could still say Doctor Who had aired in 2019.) And so we get a story tied into New Year's instead of Christmas, but in other respects "Resolution" is basically the same thing we've come to expect. It's a longer, bigger episode, with something to entice the casual viewers, and that "something" is the return of the Daleks. Well, a Dalek, at least. But yes, after a season of new threats and planets, Chibnall finally chooses to dip into the show's past and bring back the audience's favorite monster for the "end of series special".

The opening sequence is a bit odd, though; it's like Chibnall wants to create this epic backstory, with pieces of the Kaled mutant being separated across the globe and defended for centuries by a group called the Order of the Custodians, but then he doesn't really do anything with it. The Kaled mutant is able to teleport itself back together once one of the pieces is revived, without any battle or anything, and so we're kind of left wondering what the point of that was. Chibnall could have just had the whole mutant uncovered and revived in Sheffield without any damage to the plot.

But elsewhere we get a pretty solid tale. Chibnall appears to be borrowing from the episode "Dalek" the idea that a lone Dalek is more terrifying than an army of them, but he puts his own spin on it, with the stuff of the mutant being able to latch onto people (kind of like the spiders in Planet of the Spiders, or the time beetle on Donna's back in "Turn Left") and to take over their bodies being an effective and disturbing threat. Plus it gives Charlotte Ritchie, as Lin, the Dalek's victim, a chance to act evil without compromising the sweetness of her character. And hooray! Despite all the changes from the Moffat era that Chibnall has made, we still get Nick Briggs as the voice of the Dalek!

Promotional photo for "Resolution" (from BBC One - Doctor Who,
Resolution Gallery) ©BBC

But in other regards this is a whole new Dalek (described as a special kind of Dalek, a reconnaissance scout, in order to maintain good faith continuity with the older versions of Daleks), with a new look and new weapons, such as missiles behind the giant Dalek "bumps" on the front of the skirt section. (And, in another first, this Dalek was completely radio-operated, with no person inside making it move or anything.) The Dalek looks a little ratty and slightly odd, but that's partly because it's reconstructed its shell from odds and ends. ("What do you call this look, junkyard chic?" the Doctor taunts.) It's a clever way of letting the production team design a new version of a Dalek without having to be married to it, the way the Moffat era was stuck with the iPhone Daleks for a while. And this Dalek is still incredibly dangerous, as shown by the way it takes out a squad of soldiers and a tank without much difficulty, so although the look may be different the danger is just as potent as ever.

So the Dalek storyline proceeds nicely, but we do get some character moments thrown in as well to help sweeten the deal, such as at the beginning, with the Doctor having taken her friends to nineteen New Year's celebrations in a row (and I, like the rest of the world, utterly adore the thirteenth Doctor's scarf here). And Jodie Whittaker has an understated but gorgeous line reading, after she works out that the creature in the sewers is a Kaled mutant: "I always I think I'm rid of them. Never am." But the main character bit is the introduction of Ryan's dad, Aaron, who's been hinted at throughout the season but not actually included until now. What's fascinating about his scenes is that Daniel Adegboyega, playing Aaron, makes him a surprisingly sympathetic character. It's not like when Clyde's dad showed up in The Sarah Jane Adventures; here, it feels like Aaron genuinely has regrets and genuinely wants to make amends as best as he can. This really shines through the scene between Aaron and Graham, where Graham has a box of Aaron's stuff that Grace had kept. "I wish I was better at life, Graham," Aaron says. "Well, there's still time," Graham replies. Aaron comes across as flawed but not irredeemable, and while Ryan's acceptance of his dad at the end feels a bit too easy, it's not the worst thing in the world. And Aaron shows himself to be not completely useless, which is nice; he has some engineering skills that not only allowed him to designed a combination oven and microwave, but also let him come up with the plan to defeat the Dalek, after the Doctor points out that this version has a lot of metal in its shell.

Of course, because this is a holiday special and they're expecting more casual viewers to tune in, they've decided to include some "jokes" in the episode as well. The one about UNIT isn't terrible, with its implication that UNIT was shut down as a result of Brexit ("All UNIT operations were put on hold following financial disputes and subsequent funding withdrawal by the UK's major international partners") -- and hilariously, some pro-Brexit viewers were apparently really upset by this -- but the one about all the WiFi and internet and phones going down starts with a good joke from Graham and Ryan ("What, on New Year's Day, when everything's shut and everyone's hung over?" Graham asks. "What a monster," Ryan replies), but then it cuts to a pretty cringe-inducing scene with a family worried that they'll have to talk to each other now. Less of this in future, please.

So it's not a perfect story by any means, but there's quite a bit to like about "Resolution". The actual Dalek itself is pretty terrifying, and the majority of the story is focused on the Dalek, so this part comes off well. If the surrounding material lets the side down, that just means that "Resolution" is ultimately more a solid tale than a brilliant one. Not a bad way to start the New Year at all.

And so that wraps it up for this run of Doctor Who stories. I hope to see you here again on September 1, 2020, when I'll cover series 12 (currently rumored to be airing early in 2020 -- so they basically just pushed the start date back by a few months, rather than scrapping a year altogether).

August 30: "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos"

Promotional photo for "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos" (from BBC One
- Doctor Who, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos) ©BBC

And so we've arrived at the end of (the regular part of) series 11, with the Doctor and company facing a foe they thought they'd dealt with. "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos" is by Chris Chibnall, here to provide the big finale to the series. Chibnall doesn't have the greatest track record when it comes to big epic episodes (recall his Torchwood season 1 closer "End of Days" and quietly despair), and, sad to say, this episode doesn't do much to redress the balance.

That's not to say that it's bad, mind, but basically all the good bits have to do with the characters, not the plot. There are some interesting bits of plot -- the idea of a race of people called the Ux who can build things with their mind is pretty interesting, and the other idea that they've mistaken a returning villain for their god and consequently are doing whatever he says is, while perhaps a bit well-worn, still worth exploring.  The problem is that there's not actually much exploration of that idea, or, crucially, any real fallout once the scales fall from the Ux's eyes; they realize he's evil and work against him, and that's about it -- no examination of conscience or even much guilt is expressed.

The other main problem is that that returning villain is Tzim-Sha/Tim Shaw, from the season opener. As I noted in that episode, while he was a nasty piece of work he wasn't exactly a difficult challenge for the Doctor (to put it in fourth Doctor terms, he's more of a Meglos than a Weng-Chiang), so for him to be treated as this super-dangerous foe falls flat rather. It also doesn't help that it feels like bits of this are lifted from The Pirate Planet (planets crushed down and held in stasis) and Babylon 5 (someone plugged into a powerful machine -- that one might be more of a visual lift, but it's still there in the mix), without anything particularly inventive done with the pieces. Tim Shaw's plan is also left frustratingly vague; he wants revenge on the Doctor, so he's going to place a bunch of planets in stasis crystal-thingies, because...that'll learn her? The last planet he threatens is Earth (although all we get is an effect shot from space, so it never feels that urgent or desperate), but that seems more like a whim because the Doctor's there rather than his plan all along. It's like Chibnall had these ideas that he wanted to play with, but because he didn't explore them in much detail they all just kind of awkwardly co-exist, never quite gelling. And the location they use for the planet is even a dreary old quarry, just like Chibnall's predecessors spent most of their time avoiding.

Ryan and Graham defeat Tzim-Sha. ("The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos")
©BBC

So it's not a great story, but where it does succeed is with the characters. Bradley Walsh continues to excel as Graham, and his arc in this story, where he learns that Tim Shaw is still alive and vows to kill him, to avenge Grace, is handled superbly. The moment where the Doctor confronts him, telling him that if he kills Tim Shaw he becomes no better than him, and Graham responds with a sort of sad matter-of-fact attitude, is gorgeously played by Walsh. And while the quick interchange between Graham and Ryan, where Ryan is trying to get through to him ("We're family. And I love you." "What did you just say?" "I'm not saying it twice. Don't pretend you couldn't hear me the first time") is kind of awkwardly played, it's at least a very believable awkwardness, so it works. Then there's the moment where Graham has Tzim-Sha in his sights and decides not to pull the trigger ("I'm the better man"), followed by Ryan and Graham taking him on together ("You shot him!" "Yeah, but just the foot ... just to shut him up"); that's really lovely too.  Plus I like the well-earned fist bump that Ryan finally gives Graham at the end of that scene.

And Jodie Whittaker continues to shine as the Doctor, ready to face down bullies like Tzim-Sha (and his acolyte, Andinio) with a confidence and verve that serves the character very well. She's also very patient and kind with Paltraki as he tries to remember what's been going on. I also like how she plays improvising a plan; it has a rather tenth Doctor feel to it, but Whittaker makes it feel like a natural part of her Doctor's character. You can tell she's gotten very comfortable in the role, and I look forward to seeing what she does next series.

Sadly, once again it feels like Yaz is sidelined rather, but then that's been par for the course this series; it's rarely felt like we've gotten much development of her. We know she has a family, she's a junior police officer who's had training to remain pretty level-headed in a crisis, she's been the subject of racist comments, and that's about it. We don't have much in the way of knowing what she likes or dislikes, or what her hopes and ambitions are, beyond general stuff like "be the chief of police one day". It's an ongoing disappointment, and one I hope they proactively address in series 12 -- because right now Yaz tends to get lost in the background.

So the character moments (particularly from Graham) are the best thing about this story; everything else feels a bit underdeveloped and uninspired. Again, part of the problem is that Tzim-Sha isn't the threat that Chibnall seems to want him to be, but there's also a sense of just pulling pieces off the shelf and putting them together without enough care or forethought. Things like the Ux are a pretty cool idea, but they just don't get the development that they need, while the main plot just isn't clear enough to be the clear threat that it needs to be; it's almost like the show is just going through the motions, rather than providing something truly new and exciting. This means that "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos" is a pretty forgettable story, honestly, and decidedly the weakest one of series 11.

We've still got "Resolution" to go, of course (since Chibnall was referring to that as the "end of series special" -- but on the other hand it's not included in the "Complete Eleventh Series" boxset...), but for all intents and purposes this is the conclusion of series 11 -- it's the final episode of the regular run, after all. Series 11 has marked a big shift for the show with its introduction of a female Doctor, but in most other ways this has been the most traditional (i.e., old-school) series of Doctor Who that BBC Wales has produced; there's more of an emphasis on educational bits and the Doctor discovering things alongside the audience and less of an emphasis on gimmicky stuff -- other than Tzim-Sha, who doesn't exactly count, we've gotten no returning foes from the show's past (not counting "Resolution", of course) and no overarching plotline this time around: no equivalent to Bad Wolf or Harold Saxon or the cracks in time or the Hybrid or anything like that. In that regard it's somewhat refreshing; we can get on with the episode at hand without having to worry about things that were said in previous stories, and while in some cases it's almost felt a bit too traditional, as if they need to play things safe with their new female Doctor, it doesn't get in the way that much, and it's certainly provided some excellent storylines. (That said, it remains to be seen whether series 12 will continue in this trad groove or will start to push the boundaries a bit more.)

But make no mistake; the casting of Jodie Whittaker is a huge change, the results of which are still being felt in some (dark) corners of fandom. But smartly, they don't make a big deal of the Doctor being a woman; she just is now, but she carries on just as any other Doctor would do. Jodie Whittaker does a fantastic job in the role, providing us with an incredibly inquisitive Doctor, one who's passionate about her beliefs but one who's also kind. As I've said, her Doctor has a tenth Doctor vibe, partly in the way she reacts to things and seems to be processing stuff out loud on the spot, but also because her Doctor feels very human and relatable. She's not slightly distant or apart from humanity, the way the twelfth Doctor sometimes was (though they definitely softened that aspect of the character in his later seasons -- although it never entirely disappeared); she's instead ready to muck in and help any way she can, and Whittaker makes it all look natural and easy. Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor, just as much as any of her predecessors.

And she's surrounded with a great supporting cast; I'm not sure anyone expected Bradley Walsh to be as good as he is, but he knocks it out of the park every time. It helps that he's incredibly down-to-earth, making sensible decisions (such as packing sandwiches because he knows they go a long while without eating) and responding to the Doctor in a way many of us would respond. (I think the current expression for this is that Graham is a mood.) And Tosin Cole as Ryan does a good job as well of being the slightly bemused teenager who's nevertheless incredibly loyal to his friends, while Mandip Gill does a good job with what she's given as Yaz, making her seem calm and collected. They all work well together, even if Yaz doesn't get enough to do.

So yeah, I think series 11 was a success -- more of a solid set of stories than a triumph, but there's nothing really wrong with that; certainly there aren't any outright disasters in this batch, and there are a couple stories ("Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab") that in my opinion proudly sit among the best of Who. Now the question is, will this prove to be a foundation that Chibnall will build upon, or will series 12 just be more of the same? That, I think, will prove to be the real test.

August 29: "It Takes You Away"

Promotional photo for "It Takes You Away" (from BBC One - Doctor
Who, It Takes You Away Gallery) ©BBC

The TARDIS arrives in 2018 Norway (ooh, another place the show has never visited before!), where an isolated, boarded-up cabin contains a blind girl who's terrified of a monster that's living in the forest. But things are definitely not what they seem...

Since the show came back in 2005, it's generally been the case that there's been an episode per series that pushes at the restrictions of what Doctor Who can be, whether that's due to scheduling issues (as with "Love & Monsters") or simply to see if it can be done (as with "Heaven Sent"). "It Takes You Away" is the latest entry in these "offbeat" (for lack of a better term) stories.

"It Takes You Away" (which is a rubbish title, by the way) is by Ed Hime, writing his first Doctor Who script. (Fun fact: Chris Chibnall is the only writer on series 11 who's written for the show before (although Malorie Blackman wrote a seventh Doctor short story ebook, "The Ripple Effect", for the show's 50th anniversary²⁸⁸) -- by contrast, only one writer for the previous series, Mike Bartlett, wasn't a returning writer.) It starts out with some quirky moments, such as the Doctor tasting the soil to work out when and where they are and then being worried by a sheep ("It's fine. It's only 2018," she declares. "I thought we'd leapt into the Woolly Rebellion"²⁸⁹), before investigating the house. So it starts with a kind of weird, almost horror-film-like tension, with the isolated cabin and the inexplicable boarded-up nature, and having a terrified blind girl named Hanne (played by Ellie Wallwork, who really is blind), a bellowing monster sound coming from outside, and the disappearance of her dad does a good job of ratcheting up that tension. Of course, Ryan is skeptical that there's a monster ("You're not buying that?" he asks Graham. "Her dad's done a runner and she's making this monster stuff up"), which highlights Ryan's feelings about his own father -- but the general impression is that Ryan is too cynical and that the others are ready to believe that Hanne's dad Erik was taken away by a monster.

Er, except it turns out Ryan is right (not that anyone ever points this out); Erik really has done a runner, just into a different universe where his dead wife is still alive instead of to a different town or something, and he's taken these elaborate steps to ensure Hanne doesn't go outside, including boarding up basically every possible window and running a speaker system outside to play scary noises so that Hanne can cower in fear instead of just chilling with some music or something -- and just so that she won't wander off! Couldn't he just tell her he's leaving for a few days, don't go outside?  ("He should've just got Wi-Fi," Ryan comments. Either way, Erik isn't going to win any parenting prizes, that's for sure.) But I dunno if they were worried that the episode was underrunning, or that the episode was too cerebral and they needed something exciting for viewers to latch onto, but there's a place between the two universes called the Antizone, full of flesh-eating moths and some weird dude called Ribbons of the Seven Stomachs (played by Kevin Eldon), which seems designed to add some action to the proceedings but also feels completely superfluous to the actual storyline. It's all right enough on the first viewing, but on subsequent viewings you wish they'd just get on with it and get to the other universe.

Because that part of the story is far more compelling. Placing everyone in a literal mirror universe, with all the images flipped, is a nice touch, and the stuff where the universe is an ancient sentient universe called the Solitract that got expelled from our universe for being incompatible is a nice idea, even if it mirrors the Divergent Universe stuff from the eighth Doctor Big Finish audios a bit. (And the "Granny 5" stuff works way better than the Woolly Rebellion thing.) It's also here where it becomes clear just how terrible a father Erik really is -- but that's (partly) justified because Erik is grieving the death of his wife and so isn't thinking straight ("You're not well," Hanne later tells him; "you haven't been since Mum died"), and he's willing to live in this parallel universe and effectively abandon his daughter to get his wife back. And the Solitract tries to do the same thing with Graham by bringing Grace to him, which leads to some very touching scenes between the two of them.  It's nice to see Sharon D. Clarke back, and it's heartbreaking the way Graham reacts to her presence. If they'd expanded this part of the story a bit more, they could have probably ditched the Antizone stuff without too much trouble and improved things no end.

The Solitract. ("It Takes You Away") ©BBC

Because the ending is delightfully insane. After it becomes clear that this constructed universe is destabilizing, the Doctor offers herself up in exchange for the others, which leads to the Solitract personifying itself as a talking frog. I know fandom has found the talking frog very divisive, but I quite liked the concept. I also liked how they appeared to be using an actual puppet frog -- it felt nicely old-school. (If it turns out it was a CG frog, then disregard this, but it just looks too immobile to be CG.) And there's a nice theme of loneliness present here, which manifested itself with grief for Erik and Graham but is more melancholy here, with the Solitract just wanting a friend -- but even the presence of the Doctor is too much, causing things to destabilize:

DOCTOR: Me being here is going to kill us both. You may want us to be together, but it's not working. It can never work.
SOLITRACT: You're lying to me because you want to leave.
DOCTOR: No. I'm your friend. But friends help each other face up to their problems, not avoid them. This is... You are the maddest, most beautiful thing I've ever experienced, and I haven't even scratched the surface. I wish I could stay. But if either of us are going to survive, you're going to have to let me go and keep on being brilliant by yourself.
SOLITRACT: I miss you. I miss it all so much.
DOCTOR: I know. But if you do this, I promise, you and I will be friends forever. You have to let me go.
SOLITRACT: I will dream of you out there without me.
(The Doctor backs away and blows a kiss.)
DOCTOR: Goodbye.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - It Takes You Away)

It's exactly the sort of thing that makes Doctor Who so great; I just wish there had been a bit more of it. If they'd spent more time with the Doctor and the Solitract interacting (or maybe even just intercutting between the relative peace and quiet there with some hustle and bustle from the others (back in our universe, in the version of this story without the Antizone)), this could have potentially been even better.

So in some ways this story works quite well; the reflected universe stuff is nicely done, and the theme of grief and loneliness is handled thoughtfully -- and the way that Ryan calls Graham "Grandad" at the end is not only a nice culmination of their relationship over the previous episodes, but it also contrasts with that theme of grief; Graham may miss Grace still, but he can move forward with Ryan. It's just too bad that they felt it necessary to add the Antizone stuff, or that Erik had such a bizarre scheme to keep Hanne inside that really falls apart when you think about it too much. Those moments hold "It Takes You Away" back from achieving the full potential that it promised; as it is it's only decent instead of marvelous.







²⁸⁸ The story itself isn't too bad, about a parallel timeline where Daleks are a force for good, but Blackman weirdly seems to think that the seventh Doctor talks like Jon Pertwee, with lots of phrases such as "My dear Ace" peppering his dialogue, which sound deeply wrong when imagined in Sylvester McCoy's voice.
²⁸⁹ The Woolly Rebellion thing seems really bizarre, even though it's meant to be more a joke than anything else, but since we're in the business of making everything fit here, we have to treat it as a serious event. It's a bit horrifying to think we're killing and eating sheep if they're conscious and sentient (you might argue it's horrifying to eat them in the first place, of course), but it's also weird that it took them so long to rebel. Given that the Woolly Rebellion apparently happens in 2211, aka about fifty years after the Dalek Invasion of Earth, maybe the Daleks did something to the sheep to make them self-aware. Or maybe they liked the way they were treated under the Daleks better than how they were treated by the humans. Or maybe this really is just daft.

August 28: "The Witchfinders"

Promotional photo for "The Witchfinders" (from BBC One - Doctor Who,
Series 11, The Witchfinders) ©BBC

The Doctor, shooting for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I, overshoots and arrives in Lancashire in the 1610s, where a local landowner, Becka Savage, is conducting a series of witch trials in order to deal with the presence of Satan that she believes is infesting the village of Bilehurst Cragg. But it seems there may be in fact something alien infesting Bilehurst Cragg...

"The Witchfinders" -- written by Joy Wilkinson -- isn't the first time Doctor Who has covered witch hunts and trials (see, for instance, Steve Lyons' excellent first Doctor PDA The Witch Hunters, which covers the Salem witch trials -- and which is one of a handful to have been reprinted relatively recently, so you should be able to find a copy without too much trouble), but it is the first time televised Who has directly tackled the subject. And this episode feels a lot closer to what we'd come to expect from BBC Wales's trips into history, with a famous historical figure (in this case, King James I, played marvelously by Alan Cumming) and an alien threat, than what we've gotten so far this series.

But what really makes "The Witchfinders" work is that it's the first episode to really take into account the fact that the Doctor is now a woman. Up to this point it's been acknowledged a little bit but then largely ignored, and the previous trips into history have been set up in such a way that the Doctor doesn't really need to justify herself just because of her gender. But here Wilkinson chooses to directly tackle what it means to be a woman in the past, and more importantly what it means for the Doctor to now be ignored just because of that. It starts small, with King James I reading the psychic paper as calling the Doctor the Witchfinder's Assistant, instead of the Witchfinder General as Becka saw, and treating her as second-class as a result. "Hold your tongue, lassie," King James tells the Doctor after she tries to interject into the conversation. "Stick to snooping and leave the strategy to your king." But then things escalate as the Doctor investigates the living mud which has started inhabiting the corpses of the "witches" Becka has already tried: "'Cos this is my problem. I can buy that this is the biggest ever witch hunt in England, or I can buy it's an alien mud invasion. But both on the same day? I can't buy that. ... Unless they're connected. Your witch hunt's been going on a while now, so there's no way that mud has just rocked up today. What do you know, Becka? What's going on here in Bilehurst Cragg? A woman who keeps an axe by her bed. What have you seen?" And since Becka knows that she's been infected (by Satan, she believes) and doesn't want to be found out, she instead accuses the Doctor of being a witch and turns King James against her. "Honestly," the Doctor grumbles, "if I was still a bloke, I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself." But that's the point here; the Doctor now has to deal with the sexism of the time, and even though she's the smartest person in the room (so to speak) because she's a woman she can't get people to listen to her, and it ultimately leads to her being tried as a witch. It's a clear demonstration of the extra barriers that she now has to deal with, and it's handled very well, and in a way that it's difficult to imagine any of the male Doctors having to deal with. (Sure, Becka could accuse the Doctor of being a warlock, but it's honestly very hard to envision a version of this story where, say, the twelfth Doctor was disbelieved and then put on trial.)

So much of the drama here comes from the way the Doctor is constantly on the back foot, where all her skills can't convince people in power that she's not the enemy, and which leads to her being ducked as a witch herself, that everything after this point, where the aliens reveal themselves to be a race called the Morax, imprisoned inside Pendle Hill for war crimes until Becka Savage unwittingly released them by cutting down a tree that was actually the prison lock, feels a bit anticlimactic. We get some green flame (made from the wood of the not-tree) that's toxic to Morax, and then the Doctor does something clever and handwavy to reimprison them, and that's about it.

King James shows off his witchfinding tools. ("The Witchfinders") ©BBC

But yes, Alan Cumming is in this! That feels like a real coup, getting him to play King James here, and you can tell he's having a great time. I suppose one could object to the fact that Cumming plays the King with a constant twinkle, as if this is all just a great laugh, but it does help lighten the otherwise very heavy subject matter, and it also makes his single-mindedness regarding the pursuit of witches more interesting, because here is a person who will happily condemn a person to death if it saves them from Satan. I also like the way he keeps eyeing up Ryan as his "Nubian prince". (There's evidence that King James may have been either gay or bisexual, so this isn't an invention for the episode.) It's a great performance, and while Cumming is spending a lot of time providing this twinkle, he can still bring it when he needs to; the conversation between him and the Doctor when the Doctor has been tied up awaiting her trial is really well handled on both sides. And we also get Siobhan Finneran (who's done loads of stuff, including Coronation Street and Downton Abbey) as Becka Savage, who plays her as so self-righteous and unyielding, even when it's clear she's hiding something, that you just love to hate her. In fact, that's part of why the ending is a bit of a letdown; once she stops being Becka and is instead the Queen of the Morax (as Graham calls her), she's just not as interesting a character, ranting about conquest instead of witches.

But the ending is really more a minor flaw than a major problem. The real focus of the story is the Doctor, and how she handles being a woman in a time and place where that means being ignored and brushed aside. It was a story that needed to happen, and Joy Wilkinson does an excellent job of bringing it to life. "The Witchfinders", with a good script and some fabulous performances, is a standout of series 11.

August 27: "Kerblam!"

The Doctor and company check in as workers at Kerb!am. ("Kerblam!")
©BBC

Question: why is this episode called "Kerblam!' and not "Kerb!am"?

This is an odd episode in some respects. The overt influence here is Amazon, with its "ship everything" philosophy and its somewhat notoriously intense working conditions in the warehouses, and while we do get some of that ("Great conversation, guys," one of the robots tells Yaz and fellow warehouse worker Dan, "but unnecessary talking can lead to efficiency reductions. Why not pick up the pace a little?"), this doesn't draw the overt parallels that one might expect. In fact, the people we see working generally seem pretty pleased to be there, doing their jobs happily. Part of the reason is that writer Pete McTighe has also chosen to add in conversations about automation into the mix. "What I don't understand is, why does Kerblam need people as a workforce?" the Doctor wonders. "These are automated and repetitive tasks. Why not get the robots to do it?" "Kandokan labour laws," packing station worker Kira replies. "Ever since the People Power protests, companies have to make sure a minimum ten percent of the workforce are actual people, at all levels. Like the slogan says, real people need real jobs. Work gives us purpose, right?" Maybe this was just so there would be a reason for people to be around instead of just robots, but it leads to an uneasy tension between the automation aspect and the unexplored "exploited employees" aspect.

That's not to say that it isn't fun -- this is definitely a fun episode, with small bits like the Doctor getting a fez ("Still me?" she wonders after putting it on) or the stuff with Graham being sent to Premium Maintenance (after he swaps assignments with the Doctor, which means that originally she was going to be the one doing maintenance work). And I quite adore all the stuff with Twirly, the original delivery bot, even though by rights that should be cringe-worthy -- but somehow they pull it off. Plus those little references to Ryan having worked at a shipping warehouse leads to the payoff here, with his knowing how these places work. The mystery of what's going on is also handled pretty well, with the tension slowly ratcheting up as people are shown to have been inexplicably disappearing. Some of it isn't handled quite as elegantly, however; the scenes of Ryan, Yaz, and maintenance worker Charlie riding the conveyor belts at high speed, jumping from belt to belt, and then dodging anti-contamination laser blasts, feel like pure kids TV, rather than the exciting action set piece they were presumably going for.

But it sometimes feels like McTighe is concerned about people guessing where the story is going, so he's constantly throwing in bits of misdirection to distract us. But occasionally this leads to just weird moments; Warehouse Executive Jarva Slade is shown to be a rude, unpleasant man who keeps a locking filing cabinet full of details of the missing personnel, and he's packing a gun, but it turns out that he's not a villain, he just thinks the Doctor is -- except he's convinced otherwise really quickly. Or the really bizarre idea that the Kerblam system kidnaps Kira -- a completely innocent bystander -- and kills her in order to convince Charlie not to go through with his plan. (Even stranger, the thirteenth Doctor -- a woman who even criticized Karl for pushing Tim Shaw off a crane after Tim Shaw a) tried to kill Karl and b) was dying of DNA bombs he'd detonated himself -- doesn't see fit to take the computer system to task for this, or even mention it in any way, really.) And so the big twist is that it's not an evil computer, it's an evil maintenance worker who wants to convince Kerblam to hire more people by... sending out a bunch of packages that will kill anyone who pops the bubble wrap packaging inside. (Clearly, people named Charlie really are the worst.²⁸⁷) Is the idea to try to frame the computer system? Because it looks like the result of this plan would be to completely shut down Kerblam such that the ten percent of the company that aren't robots won't have a job anymore. And if the computer is the one who sent the initial "Help Me" message to the Doctor, why didn't it put more details on it, like "Help Me Charlie Is Going To Mail Bombs"? And so the actual consequences of Charlie's failed plan, other than shutting Kerblam down for two weeks for repairs, is to give in to Charlie's demands and try and hire more workers, even though they've just seen that it was an "organic" who caused the problems and murdered a bunch of people in the first place? (Oh, and as long as we're complaining, this is our first real look at how the pillars surrounding the TARDIS console move up and down in time with the time rotor, as if they were constantly bowing to it like Wayne and Garth chanting "We're not worthy" to Alice Cooper. It's a pretty stupid look, honestly.)

So it's an episode with some fairly big logical flaws. But that still doesn't take away from the fact that "Kerblam!" is still a pretty fun episode, with generally pleasant characters and lots of fun interactions and moments. It does mean that this is kind of the Doctor Who equivalent of candy, though; enjoyable while it lasts, but ultimately nothing of real substance. Now I know I took "Empress of Mars" to task last series for being basically just candy, but this episode doesn't bother me as much as that one did -- perhaps because here the characters are better realized, rather than just broad caricatures. So maybe the lesson is, if you're going to give us a lightweight Doctor Who episode, give us something to focus on besides the details of the storyline -- and that's something that "Kerblam!" does very well.







²⁸⁷ Shout-out to my best friend Charlie Wallace!

August 26: "Demons of the Punjab"

Finally, a chance to (ostensibly) bring Yaz front and center to the proceedings. "Demons of the Punjab" focuses on her family, with her wanting to know more about a broken watch her grandmother gave her that Nani Umbreen wouldn't talk about -- and since her friend has a time machine, why not look back to see what happened? And so after some warnings about not interfering with history, the TARDIS tracks the watch back in time -- not to 1950s Lahore, as Yaz expected, but instead to the Punjab on 17 August 1947: the day the borders dividing India and Pakistan were announced. And Umbreen lives right on the border, ready to marry a Hindu man who isn't Yaz's grandfather...

"Demons of the Punjab" is the second episode of Doctor Who to be written by a person of color: in this case, it's Vinay Patel (getting sole writing credit -- the first time this series), covering a piece of history that, here in the United States at least, we know almost nothing about: the Partition of India, dividing British India into current-day India and Pakistan. It was a time of intense turmoil and bloodshed as people moved between the Hindu-majority India and the Muslim-majority Pakistan, with lots of sectarian violence and large-scale displacement of people. So in some regards we're once again continuing the educational theme, shining a light on parts of history. And, somewhat surprisingly, this is the first time (televised) Doctor Who has visited India -- or really even mentioned it, other than some stuff in the future (such as in Chibnall's own "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", or the weird Indo-Japan thing from "Sleep No More"). Except we're actually in Spain instead of India, but it looks, to my untrained eye at least, like a reasonable facsimile of the Punjab. And while there are some aliens present, they're more of a red herring: the Thijarians are initially presented as enemies, but they're shown to be strictly observers -- they're not trying to change history or conquer the planet or anything like that. So consequently, despite the aliens, this feels like the closest we're going to get to a pure historical in this day and age. (Confession time: I would absolutely love to see a pure historical again, with no aliens or time travellers beyond the TARDIS team in the episode. Come on, Chris Chibnall, make it happen!)

The Doctor marries Prem and Umbreen. ("Demons of the Punjab") ©BBC

The main focus of the story is the tensions between the families of Umbreen and her fiancé Prem. We're only shown Umbreen's mother, who keeps worrying that their marriage is cursed, while Prem's little brother Manish is shown to be an ultra-nationalist, one who's happy to move all the Muslims to Pakistan -- even the ones like Umbreen who've lived next to him for decades, and who will soon be his in-laws. "Don't marry tomorrow," Manish tells Prem. "You can't live together here. India's not her home now." "India's a home to all of us. We didn't change when a line was drawn," Prem replies. "But we did," Manish insists. Manish's prejudices still have an unfortunate resonance today, with nationalism and its problems on the rise, and it makes the piece more effective, because it's not a problem the Doctor can solve with a sonic screwdriver. And by choosing to focus on, essentially, an ordinary couple located on the border and caught up in events, Patel makes the history come alive in a real, tragic way, with a family torn apart first by differing opinions, and then by prejudice, and ultimately by violence, with Manish leading soldiers to their land in order to deal with Prem and his new family.

It's not all dark, though; Amita Suman (as Umbreen) and Shane Zaza (as Prem) do a great job of showing their characters' affection for each other, and the interactions with the others, before it all goes sour, are quite nice as well. I also like Graham's little speech, after Yaz gets upset that her nan never told her any of this: "Yeah, but maybe she just didn't want to tell you everything, you know. The woman's allowed to have secrets, even from her granddaughter. ... And I honestly don't know whether any of us know the real truth of our own lives, 'cos we're too busy living them from the inside." Really, if there's any complaint to be had, it's that despite the focus on Yaz's family, it still feels like maybe we're getting shortchanged a touch in learning more about Yaz herself. None of this is meant as a slight against Mandip Gill, mind, who's wonderful in the role of Yaz; it's more directed at the general trend of the writing this season. I guess this is just a way of saying give us more Yaz!

Now I said earlier that the aliens were a bit of a red herring, but that's not strictly true; while it is the case that they're initially shown to be sinister before being revealed as witnesses to those who would otherwise die alone, in some ways that's the theme of the episode. The Doctor and her companions (and, through them, the audience) are present to also bear witness to these events, to put a human face on the cost of Partition. Because it's not like the Doctor or her friends have any significant bearing on events here; they can't stop Prem's death, they can't change Manish's mind... the most they can do is to observe and to remember, just as the Thijarians are doing. But sometimes that's enough. And that's the point of the episode; to remind us that these historical events that we may not even know about have a human face, that real people were caught up in history (people who may still be alive today). It's to show us or remind us that Partition had real, lasting costs, issues that are still present to this day (witness the recent events in Jammu and Kashmir, India, just north of Punjab), and it encourages us to remember the past and to learn from it. (Coincidentally, this episode went out on 11 November: Remembrance Day.) Patel provides a beautiful and thoughtful script, shot and acted with great skill. "Demons of the Punjab" is thus probably my favorite episode of series 11.

And I quite like the Punjabi-style arrangement of the theme tune that plays over the end credits.

August 25: "The Tsuranga Conundrum"

After getting hit by a sonic mine on a junk planet, the Doctor and company arrive on a hospital ship (although, slightly oddly, the Doctor keeps thinking it's a building rather than a ship -- maybe she's seen hospitals that look like this?) run by an organization called Tsuranga, where their injuries are treated. But while in flight, the ship is intercepted by a dangerous alien that threatens to destroy them all...

I know that a lot of people have been rather down on this episode (it was the least favorite on the recent Doctor Who Magazine season survey, for instance -- although they didn't list the average scores this time around, so we don't know how far down the scale this actually was for people), but it's not clear why. I mean, fine, it's not the most exciting episode ever, but I feel like it does a good job at what it sets out to do.

The Pting watches as the Doctor tries to scan it. ("The Tsuranga
Conundrum") ©BBC

Continuing the traditional theme a bit, this time around we get a base-under-siege tale, the last one since, well, "The Doctor Falls", I suppose (although you could probably make an argument that last time was also a base-under-siege tale). But this time around, almost uniquely for Doctor Who, the threat isn't a monster trying to kill the people inside or hijack the ship or anything like that. Instead it's just an alien lifeform that was attracted to a food source: a food source that just happens to be keeping everyone alive. The Pting is incredibly dangerous because it has toxic skin and it feeds off of energy, but it has no malicious intent.²⁸⁶ It's a conscious effort to show that, while aliens can be deadly, they're not necessarily evil. (Between this and the spiders last week, it sometimes feels like Chris Chibnall is trying to make up for the rampant xenophobia that characterized much of the two seasons of Torchwood that he showran.) And once again we get some educational content, with the Doctor and Yaz talking about the particle accelerator running the ship and comparing it to CERN. And the design of the ship is pleasingly old-school as well, with gleaming white walls everywhere.

Actually, that leads to something worth bringing up. Chibnall has been making an effort to bring the show back to its roots, with a TARDIS crew of four and more educational bits thrown in. There's also a concerted attempt to make the Doctor seem more like she's clever, working things out as they come up, rather than a know-it-all -- witness how she's never heard of the Pting before, for instance. (Although she has participated in events around this time, as the Book of Celebrants stuff makes clear, so she's not a complete novice in the 67th century.) In some ways this is a welcome change, bringing the Doctor back in line with how he/she's been for the majority of the show. However, because Chibnall needs to take the time to establish everything, to show that things are different from how they were in Russell T Davies' or Steven Moffat's eras, it sometimes comes across almost as playing it safe, as if the fact that the Doctor is now a woman means we need to make everything around her more traditional, as if to make it clear this is indeed the same character and the same show as before. It doesn't intrude hugely on things, and I doubt it's intentional (since in some ways it's more about Chibnall introducing the old way of doing things to a generation of fans who don't know the show can still work like that), but it is lurking in the background a bit.

But honestly, this episode is quite enjoyable. It helps that all the characters are reasonably likable -- even Ronan, the android consort of General Eve Cicero, is all right, and he's the one kind of designed to be unlikable. But David Shields plays against it a bit, so that while Ronan is uptight, it's out of concern for the general rather than because he's a jobsworth. They're all so pleasant, in fact, that it's a genuine surprise that Astos, the more experienced medic, dies fairly early on in the episode, as he'd been building up a genuine rapport with the Doctor. And Jodie Whittaker continues to be great as the Doctor; her enthusiasm at the antimatter drive, or her disappointment after the Pting absorbs the energy in her sonic screwdriver, is so much fun. And again we get the sense that this Doctor is more willing to stop and observe customs, to pause and reflect upon those who've died -- look at how she asks if she can also incant with Ronan and Durkas Cicero in remembrance of Eve and her sacrifice for them all. Or consider how she tries to reassure the inexperienced medic, Mabli, and makes an effort to bolster her confidence. This is a Doctor who truly cares and is willing to demonstrate that.

Now, admittedly, Yoss, the pregnant Gifftan male, is a bit ancillary to the main plot. (Maybe this is what people objected to about this story? And incidentally, why did Chibnall think it was a good idea to name a character Yoss while there's a Yaz around?) He's mainly there to add a little extra stakes/drama to the proceedings. But the benefit of this is that it gives us some opportunities to learn more about Ryan and Graham and their relationship -- particularly as Yoss is planning on giving up his son after he's born, which leads Ryan to reflect about how his own dad left. "He's the same age as me dad must have been when he had me," Ryan tells Yaz. "Same age as I am now. I never really thought about it like that. I wouldn't be able to cope having a kid now. ... He ducked out when I needed him. He's like a... a gap in my life. Even at Nan's funeral..." But as Ryan and Graham help Yoss with his delivery, there's a sense of the two of them starting to bond a bit more, even if Ryan won't return Graham's proffered fist bump.

Of course, this does mean that Yaz fades into the background a bit. This has actually been an ongoing issue this series; it's not that she gets nothing to do (she's not forced to crawl around ductwork for a story while the real plot happens elsewhere, like Tegan and Turlough in Terminus, for instance), and she definitely gets some fun moments with the Doctor in this story, but it frequently feels like she gets ignored a little bit, in favor of the Ryan and Graham relationship. Now part of this might be because Bradley Walsh continually excels as Graham, giving beautifully nuanced performances (watch how he interacts with Ben Bailey-Smith as Durkas, after he catches Durkas trying to hack into his sister's medical records) and being possibly the most relatable of the regulars. It's also the case that they've been giving Walsh lots of character moments for him and Ryan. But Mandip Gill doesn't get paired with Bradley Walsh that much, and so we don't get as much character development from Yaz as we have from Graham and Ryan. It's not an overwhelming concern, at least not yet, but it doesn't really help the argument in favor of having four regulars.

But this isn't meant to be a complaint about this story, just a general observation. I dunno, when I finished watching "The Tsuranga Conundrum" I had a smile on my face. It's not perhaps the most exciting threat, although the Pting itself is well-handled (and I like how they find a way to simply get it off the ship, rather than killing it). But I don't know that I ever felt cheated by the events in the episode; it's not like the neuropilot stuff or even the auto-destruct thing (which is with the "three strikes" thing perhaps the most arbitrary of the problems we're presented with here) comes out of left field, and it always feels like there's a natural reason for things to be there. But ultimately I think it's the relationships and interactions with the characters that really sell it for me; these are people I wouldn't mind spending more time with. I wouldn't be surprised if opinions of this story go up in the future; it's a pleasant, fun tale.







²⁸⁶ Curiously, the credits list the Pting as created by screenwriter Tim Price, rather than Chibnall -- a move usually made when a returning creation is credited, not for a brand-new one.

August 24: "Arachnids in the UK"

Promotional photo for "Arachnids in the UK" (from 11 questions (and
some answers) we have after Doctor Who: Arachnids in the UK) ©BBC

Back to the present with "Arachnids in the UK", with the Doctor finally getting her friends back home, half an hour after they left. But, demonstrating that the thirteenth Doctor is different from some of her predecessors, she's hanging around, not really ready to say goodbye yet -- this doesn't seem to be a Doctor who wants to be alone. And so Yaz invites everyone around for tea, and we get some insight into how Yaz's family is: her father Hakim is well-meaning but a bit conspiracy-theory-minded, while her sister Sonya seems to be constantly taking shots at her sister. And we get some fun moments of the Doctor rambling about sofas as an attempt at small talk ("I thought I was doing quite well. ... Maybe I'm nervous. Or just socially awkward. I'm still figuring myself out") while the Khans behave as a typical family. "I'm going to make pakora," Hakim announces, pleased that Yaz has brought guests over. "Dad, don't," Yaz replies. "He's terrible at pakora," she warns the others. And then Yaz goes to pick up her mother Najia, while the Doctor sees that the neighbor is holding a package for the Khans. "Do you want me to go get it while you make your terrible pakora?" the Doctor asks brightly.

But yes, "Arachnids in the UK" (which is a pretty lame title, by the way²⁸⁵) is all about spiders, grown to great big sizes. They also make them look pretty realistic; we're a long way from Planet of the Spiders and the order to make them deliberately unconvincing. Consequently, this is an episode likely to elicit some feelings of dread from parts of the audience. (I personally don't mind spiders so much as I mind insects and similar things that are too big, so this episode definitely gave me the creepy-crawlies a few times.) Because there are a lot of giant spiders in this episode. But they're not malevolent or alien or anything like that. Instead, this is a tale warning against pollution and lax standards, with improper disposal of special "make spiders live longer and thus get bigger" enzymes leading to the problems in the episode.

The root of the problem is American billionaire businessman Jack Robertson, who's built a hotel on a disused coal mine that his companies have been dumping garbage into. Chris Noth plays Robertson like an unfeeling, unpleasant capitalist, willing to pass the buck when it suits his needs and take the glory when he can. So rather like a competent version of Donald Trump then (or, perhaps more accurately, the public's general conception of Donald Trump before he fully revealed himself to be an incoherent, raging egomaniac) -- which is why it's a little odd how Robertson is framed as being a lifelong enemy of Trump, planning to run for President in 2020. Is Robertson meant to be a Democrat then? Is he going to run as an independent candidate? Or is he trying to replace Trump as the Republican candidate? But in any event, you can tell that Noth is having fun playing Robertson as uncaring and unredeemable, being both overconfident and cowardly. And the script takes great joy in deflating Robertson through the Doctor: "Sorry, I don't know who you are," the Doctor says. "Oh, really?" Robertson sneers. "'Cos you must be the only person on the planet that doesn't." "Are you Ed Sheeran?" the Doctor asks. "Is he Ed Sheeran? Everyone talks about Ed Sheeran round about now, don't they?" "I am not Ed Sheeran," Robertson says indignantly. "I am Jack Robertson and this is my hotel. Just one hotel in an incredibly successful chain of hotels, which is just one small part of my business portfolio, as featured in Fortune Global 500. Does that ring a bell?" "Should I look impressed right now?" asks the Doctor, more bemused than anything. "Is that impressive?"

The Doctor also gets some other great lines, such as, in an important tone, "I eat danger for breakfast," followed, less importantly, with "I don't, I prefer cereal. Or croissants. Or those little fried Portuguese... Never mind, it's not important." Or, a couple moments later, after Robertson tells her she's trying to enter a restricted area: "Dude, I've all the authorisation I ever need. (to Yaz) I call people 'dude' now." It's good fun, and Whittaker does a fabulous job with delivering the lines in a way that makes them part of her character, rather than awkward or clunky.

The other regulars get some character-building of their own; Graham's palpable sadness at being back in his house, now that Grace is gone, is gorgeously played, while Ryan gets to deal with a letter from his absent father, apologizing for not being around while offering Ryan a home, much to Ryan's irritation: "Says that I can live with him now, being that he's my proper family. ... I don't like that he put that. 'Proper family.' He's not proper." It's a small moment, but it does give some insight into Ryan, as well as hinting at the developing closeness between Ryan and Graham. Oh, and thanks to Ryan and this episode I learned about the music genre called grime! (It's a kind of club music with rapping mixed in, although this description doesn't quite capture what it's like.)

The spiders respond to the vibrations. ("Arachnids in the UK") ©BBC

But yeah, the main attraction is the giant spiders, and they're definitely creepy, with the CG effects being very good indeed. And once again we get some educational content, such as how spiders "smell" with their feet, or in the scene between the Doctor and spider researcher Dr Jade McIntyre, describing how spiders keep growing until they die, or how there are 21 quadrillion spiders on Earth. But this all means that we don't really have an enemy here; the spiders are just trying to live, same as ever. It's not their fault they got so big. Robertson is the closest thing to a villain, and even he manages to be a bit sympathetic at times (due more to Noth's performance than the scripting, it must be said). But the ending feels a bit off; it's not clear why luring the spiders into a room to starve to death is somehow more humane than finding a way to put them down, or why Robertson shooting the enormous mother spider is somehow worse than letting it suffocate to death. (Although that one might be more due to intent; Robertson shoots the mother without knowing that it's dying, and while he frames it after the fact as a mercy killing that wasn't the reason he shot it.) It's like Chibnall couldn't quite come up with a way to deal with the spider problem, and he just hoped that no one would notice that his solution doesn't really work as intended. What's more, once the spiders are dead that's it; we don't see any indication that Robertson is going to take responsibility for anything, or that any consequences will result from this. We don't even know if they're going to actually clean up the garbage dump under the hotel that caused the problems in the first place.

So there are definitely some good moments in this, and it's suitably unpleasant to watch in the ways they intended, but it does feel a bit unfinished. The character moments are therefore the best things about this story; the plot itself, with its unresolved aspects, feels less outstanding and more just competent. It's not really bad, but it's not that exciting a storyline either. "Arachnids in the UK" is thus a reasonable story that sometimes falls flat. Not terrible, but not spectacular either.

But at least they handle the "we've decided to come with you" bit at the end really well. "Look at you," the Doctor says happily. "My fam. No, still doesn't quite work. Team TARDIS? ... Welcome aboard. Properly."







²⁸⁵ And what's up with the rock puns for episode names this season? "The Woman Who Fell to Earth", "Arachnids in the UK"... Surprised they didn't give "Kerblam!" the title "Rock the Warehouse".

August 23: "Rosa"

A present-day story, then a future story (well, an alien planet, at least), and now a story set in the past. At least some things remain the same. (Although I suppose you could argue that this has been the case since the very beginning of the series if you wanted.) And now we've headed to the United States again (in reality more of South Africa), to 1955 Alabama and the day before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus.

When Doctor Who announced that they were going to do an episode about Rosa Parks, a number of fans (myself included) were slightly worried by this. Given that the show doesn't really do pure historicals anymore, this would mean there would be an alien or time traveler somewhere mucking things up -- would this therefore mean that Rosa Parks was going to encounter an alien? Or, worse, that the Doctor would somehow be the inspiration for Rosa to refuse to give up her seat (thus taking away from the courage the real life Rosa Parks exhibited that day)? But fortunately, the subject is handled with a great deal of care and thoughtfulness, thanks to writers Malorie Blackman (Doctor Who's first non-white scriptwriter, after only 55 years) and Chris Chibnall. And while it's not a pure historical, this is about the closest the show has come in a long, long time (a distinction it shares with upcoming story "Demons of the Punjab").

Yaz, Graham, the Doctor, and Ryan outside a "Whites Only" motel.
("Rosa") ©BBC

And to their credit, "Rosa" spends a good deal of time directly confronting the issue of race and racism in 1955 Alabama. Doctor Who's track record on race isn't great, to be honest, and the tendency, particularly in recent years, has been to brush it aside when it comes up (such as in "The Shakespeare Code" or "Thin Ice"), but we get nothing so glib here. The Doctor is now traveling with two non-white companions, and the color of their skin puts them in just as much danger here (if not more) as on a hostile alien world. "Are you crazy?" Rosa demands, after Ryan gets slapped for trying to return a white woman's glove. "...Don't you read the newspapers? You know what they did to young Emmett Till." "We're from out of town," the Doctor replies. "So was Emmett Till, on vacation from the North," says Rosa. "Couple of words to a white woman in Mississippi, and the next thing, they find his body in the river. You want that to be you?" And so Ryan and (to a lesser extent, Yaz) are constantly being watched with suspicion and hatred, purely because of how they look. And, smartly, the script makes a point of making it clear that racism didn't end in the '60s, that people of color still have to deal with it today:

RYAN: I'm sick of this place already.
YASMIN: I know. But to be here just as history's taking place.
RYAN: This ain't history here, Yaz. We're hiding behind bins. I'm having to work so hard to keep my temper, every second here. I could've slapped that guy back there as soon as we arrived. Thank God me Nan taught me how to keep my temper. Never give them the excuse.
YASMIN: Yeah? My dad tells me the same.
RYAN: Yeah, see? It's not like Rosa Parks wipes out racism from the world forever. Otherwise, how come I get stopped way more by the police than my white mates?
YASMIN: Oi, not this police.
RYAN: Tell me you don't get hassle.
YASMIN: Course I do, especially on the job. I get called a Paki when I'm sorting out a domestic, or a terrorist on the way home from the mosque.
RYAN: Yeah, exactly.
YASMIN: But they don't win, those people. I can be a police officer now 'cos people like Rosa Parks fought those battles for me. For us. And in 53 years, they'll have a black President as leader. Who knows where they'll be 50 years after that? But that's proper change.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Rosa)

But yes, the main storyline here isn't about inspiring Rosa Parks or anything like that; it's instead about stopping another time traveler, Krasko, from altering history such that Rosa Parks isn't in a position to refuse to give up her seat. Krasko is an ex-con from the Stormcage (where River Song was held) who's traveled back to 1955 to change history, essentially because he's a racist: "Parks won't be asked to stand, she won't protest, and your kind won't get above themselves," Krasko tells Ryan. "...Stay in your place." It's a bit sad to think that racism will still exist even in the future, but it's also depressingly plausible here in 2019, where we read about acts of hate crimes and white supremacy terrorism here in the United States with distressing frequency. But that also means that's all the motivation Krasko needs, and since he can't just kill Rosa Parks (because of a "no violence" implant in his head), he instead has to make small changes to derail history. So we're a long way from "But you can't rewrite history! Not one line!" in The Aztecs.

But in other ways this story feels a lot like a Hartnell historical, with lots of opportunities not just to show the audience what life would have been like in 1955 for black people, but also a detailed description of what Rosa Parks did and the events that led to it. They add some jokes in to help it go down (such as when Graham protests at the Doctor scribbling on the motel wall with a marker: "Pack it in. You ain't Banksy." "Or am I?" the Doctor replies, a mischievous glint in her eye), but this has a heavy educational bent to it. Of course, describing the facts of Rosa's life are one thing, but then seeing the way the police officer treats the Doctor and Graham with suspicion because they've been seen around with Ryan and Yaz, or the way everyone stares at the four of them in the restaurant, makes it a lot more clear just how openly prejudiced society was then. It's very powerfully done. (That said, I adore the way the Doctor stares somewhat disgustedly at Graham's hand after he puts it on the Doctor's shoulder, to convince the cop they're a happy married couple.) I also appreciate the confusion surrounding Yaz, where she's treated as both less-than-white but also almost white, with people calling her Mexican but also allowing her to use the bus as a white person. "The driver let me on at the front of the bus. What does that mean for where I sit?" Yaz wonders. "Obviously not a lot of Pakistani heritage around here. Does 'colored' just mean black in 1955?" It's a good way of showing how the lines ended up blurred.

Rosa Parks refuses to move. ("Rosa") ©BBC

Plus we also get opportunities to see Montgomery through Rosa Parks's eyes, just by how she treats those around her, and in the conversation she has with Yaz, as well as with Ryan at a little meeting at Rosa's house, where Ryan gets to meet Martin Luther King, Jr. (Vinette Robinson, playing Rosa Parks, looks an awful lot like the real Rosa Parks. Ray Sesay, playing Martin Luther King, only kind of looks like King, sad to say.) It all builds up to paint a picture of life back then, in a way that puts most of the other BBC Wales historical stories to shame. This isn't a story about aliens or time travelers; this is a story about Rosa Parks, and what she did.

And so we get a lot of running around, trying to undo all the changes that Krasko has made, which allows for some fun moments in a rather heavy story, but ultimately this story is about Rosa Parks, her struggles, and her decision to make a stand. The episode doesn't take away from that decision in any way, and it's all the better for it. "Rosa" is a standout episode not just of series 11, but of possibly the entirety of Doctor Who. This is a historical story about something that really matters, handled in a caring way, while educating the audience along the way. Would that all the adventures in history could be like this.

August 22: "The Ghost Monument"

Finally, we get the opening titles properly at the start of the episode. (The very start, as it turns out; bucking the previously established norm, none of series 11's episodes have a cold open -- they all begin old school, with the title sequence.) I have to confess to being a touch disappointed that Jodie Whittaker's face isn't in the titles, though.

So we carry on from last time's cliffhanger by having our four regulars picked up by a couple passing spaceships, who are on their way to a planet that's not where it's supposed to be, for reasons that are never adequately explained. "I tracked my TARDIS here, but the planet had fallen out of orbit. We landed where the planet should've been," the Doctor tells the others, as if planets fell out of orbit all the time, and that's all we hear about it. They arrive on a desolate planet named, appropriately, Desolation, becoming involved in the last leg of the final Rally of the Twelve Galaxies, where the last two remaining contestants, Epzo and Angstrom (the two who picked the Doctor and company up), have to cross dangerous terrain to the location of the "Ghost Monument" -- quickly revealed (thankfully, for those of us who had already worked it out) to be the Doctor's TARDIS.

"The Ghost Monument" was filmed mainly in South Africa, and consequently it's the vast scenery that's the real star here. We get lots of sweeping vistas and gorgeous, very-definitely-not-in-Wales backdrops that really give the episode an open feel. And director Mark Tonderai takes advantage, with lots of shots that show off the vastness of the location, really making it feel like we could be on another planet. That's definitely a plus, because the story itself isn't particularly exciting: it's basically just get from point A to point B, with some incidents along the way. There's no real twist or shift in the narrative; they take a while to get to the Ghost Monument, and then they do.

But on some level Chris Chibnall realizes this, and to his credit he gives us some good character moments. There's the Doctor's declaration that she never uses guns, and that brains are always better than bullets -- and, countering that, Ryan's charging at the SniperBots (™, one presumes) with a laser gun because he's played Call of Duty, only to panic when he realizes his "just shoot them" plan isn't working, is a lot of fun. We also get some good moments with the guest characters, Epzo and Angstrom, with Epzo's story about how his mom failed to catch him when he jumped out of a tree at the age of four giving us a nice insight into his character. But the best moment is between Ryan and Graham, as they're trying to fix the boat that will take them across the flesh-eating-microbe-infested water, where Graham tries to get Ryan to open up a bit by talking about what Grace would say to them. "You talk about this stuff way too much," Ryan says dismissively. "And you don't talk about it enough," Graham replies. It's a nice, understated exchange.

But as I said, the episode itself isn't the most exciting thing ever. They also slightly put a foot wrong by making both the race that destroyed Desolation and the race that attacked Angstrom's race the Stenza. This might have worked better if the only Stenza we'd seen up to this point hadn't been Tzim-Sha/Tim Shaw, who was shown to be a cheat but also the future leader of the Stenza. Taking care of Tim Shaw didn't seem like that much effort for the Doctor (despite the cost of Grace's death), so this attempt to make the Stenza seem like a really powerful, super dangerous race falls a bit flat. Maybe Chibnall's got plans to make the Stenza a lot more impressive that we just haven't seen yet, but as of writing Tim Shaw's the only one we've got to go on, and he doesn't really impress. There's also a slightly odd moment where the weird talking pieces of cloth (the Remnants, according to the credits) look into the Doctor's mind: "You lead but you're scared, too, for yourself and for others," the Remnant says. "Afraid of your own newness. We see deeper, though, further back. The Timeless Child." "What did you just say?" the Doctor asks. "She doesn't know," the Remnant replies. "We see what's hidden even from yourself. The outcast, abandoned and unknown." It feels a lot like setup for the overarching theme of the series (much like, say, Harold Saxon in series 3 or the Hybrid in series 9) -- except (again, as of writing) this doesn't come up again. So consequently with hindsight it actually feels more like a weird draft artifact, a bit of mystery that got injected before being ignored in favor of something more compelling (kind of like Captain Jack's missing two years' worth of memories in "The Doctor Dances").

But countering that artifact of new-school Who that doesn't go anywhere (yet), "The Ghost Monument" has a sense of old-school Who that runs through this episode beyond just the lack of a cold open. The Doctor isn't shown to already know everything that's going on; she's discovering things at the same time we are. We also see everything through her eyes and those of her friends: no "meanwhile" sequences where we see villains plotting or anything like that. That's a rather a Hartnell-feeling move. Similarly, the moment where they run through the characteristics of acetylene (lighter than air, smells like garlic, etc.) also has an educational vibe to it that would presumably make Sydney Newman proud. It feels like Chris Chibnall is deliberately taking the show back to its roots, bringing it more in line with the original vision of the show than what Davies and Moffat had done. It's kind of a welcome change, although it's not a super-flashy or thrilling one. It's more that the emphasis has shifted, but not in a bad way.

The new TARDIS interior. ("The Ghost Monument") ©BBC

And so the episode ends with the Doctor finally reclaiming the TARDIS, which has undergone a redesign both inside and out. The exterior changes aren't that dramatic (a black plate for the "Open to the Public" sign instead of the old white one, a slightly different color of blue, the loss of the St. John Ambulance flash, slight changes to the windows), but the interior has undergone a definite overhaul. In some ways it resembles the "coral" look of Eccleston's and Tennant's TARDIS, only with crystals instead of coral, while the central console is round instead of hexagonal (again, like the coral version), with a giant hunk of crystal replacing the time rotor. Meanwhile, the walls are covered with overlapping metal hexagons with circle cutouts, giving it a feel of both roundels and the hexagons from the other BBC Wales versions. I don't know that I like this design that much, to be honest, but part of the issue might be that it's incredibly dark inside -- this may be the darkest a TARDIS console room has ever been, so it's kind of hard to see what it actually looks like. The overall impression is a murky one, which isn't my preference. Having the full police box shape (three of the four walls, at least) grafted onto the wall of the console room is a nice touch, though.

So "The Ghost Monument" has some good moments, and generally speaking it looks great, but it's not a terribly memorable episode. There's not really anything particularly wrong with it, and there are some admirable attempts to liven up the proceedings, but this is ultimately another one for the "pleasantly average" column, likely to be best remembered for the reveal of the new TARDIS than anything else going on in it.

August 21, 2019: "The Woman Who Fell to Earth"

It's the start of a brand-new era of Doctor Who: new showrunner, new Doctor, new companions, new composer, new director, new night (Sundays instead of Saturdays)...even the filming equipment is new, with the show now being shot with 2:1 anamorphic lenses (instead of the typical 16:9 framing for most modern TV), in order to give the show a more cinematic look. But perhaps the biggest shock is that, like "Sleep No More" before it, we don't get a title sequence of any kind at all. (Actually, even "Sleep No More" at least had a short title card announcing the name of the show.)

There is admittedly a subtle texture to the picture that makes things seem a bit more like a film than a television series, with a more colorful feel on display than we've gotten before. This is apparent from the first scene, up in the hills above the South Yorkshire city of Sheffield, where we meet Ryan Sinclair, a 19-year-old male with dyspraxia (a neurological condition that impairs coordination), who's trying to learn to ride a bike with his grandmother, Grace, and Grace's husband Graham O'Brien. After he gets frustrated and throws the bike off the cliffside, he discovers while going to retrieve his bike a strange glowing symbol in the air that he touches, which then produces a weird giant blue teardrop-shaped thing. So he calls the police and they send out a probationary police officer, Yasmin Khan, who Ryan went to school with. Graham and Grace, meanwhile, have left Ryan behind and are taking the train back home, when a strange ball of tentacles smashes into the train, sparking and being generally weird and spooky as it approaches Graham, Grace, and a third passenger, Karl... And that's when a woman suddenly crashes through the roof into the train.

Up to this point you can see how the episode is being set up as a case of "strange things happening in Sheffield"; in some ways it feels like any number of opening episodes of similar genre shows, taking time to introduce the characters before it starts introducing the elements that are going to send things into typical sci-fi territory. But, as with all good Doctor Who, the arrival of the Doctor distorts the familiar tropes, changing the direction of the story. And Jodie Whittaker makes one hell of an entrance, crashing in and then immediately taking charge against the weird sparking ball (which she later calls a "gathering coil"). Instead of trying to ease both her and the audience in to this brand-new Doctor, writer and showrunner Chris Chibnall smartly has her hit the ground running (so to speak), immediately having her take charge even while she's not 100% certain who she is.

Because yes, Jodie Whittaker is our first bona fide female Doctor (since people such as Joanna Lumley in The Curse of Fatal Death or Arabella Weir in Big Finish's Doctor Who Unbound series don't quite count), which means that there are a lot of expectations being heaped upon her. And she confidently shatters them all. There's never a sense that this was a mistake or that making the Doctor a woman is going to change things in some fundamental way; instead, it's clear that this is the same Doctor we've always known. It helps that this isn't one of those regeneration stories where we spend time waiting for the Doctor to revive (such as Spearhead from Space, Castrovalva, or "The Christmas Invasion"). This is one more like Robot or "The Eleventh Hour", where the Doctor regenerates and then more or less continues as he/she means to go on. So the thirteenth Doctor gets to spend time investigating and being clever, with the "still cooking" stuff only occasionally intervening. And we see that this Doctor is a kind, caring Doctor, with a touch of the tenth Doctor in there (the way she sort of rambles on about things -- "Right then, troops. No, not troops. Team? Gang? Fam? –I'm distracting myself"-- has a definite Tennant flavor), but still with some definite traits of her own. When she thanks Grace for thinking of covering the body, for instance, we get a sense that this Doctor cares. (One wonders if this Doctor was in fact informed by the twelfth Doctor's dying speech.)

And standing alongside her are a whole cast of characters: we get Mandip Gill as Yaz, Tosin Cole as Ryan, Bradley Walsh as Graham, and Sharon D. Clarke as Grace, all of whom are willing to help this strange woman deal with the gathering coil and the alien pod. Bradley Walsh in particular does a great job as Graham, not really thrilled to be involved but nevertheless choosing to muck in. (Walsh here making his second appearance in the Doctor Who universe: he'd been Odd Bob the clown in the series 2 Sarah Jane Adventures story The Day of the Clown.) Really, if there's any downside to this large supporting cast (the largest number of regulars since 1983) it's that it does mean some of the others don't get perhaps quite as much screentime as we'd like -- although they also get an equal share of the action here and there's plenty of time to explore their characters down the road, so it's not the greatest sin.

It's interesting, though, how in some ways this feels a lot like a Steven Moffat series opener, with lots of action and rushing about and such, but with the emphasis tweaked a bit. So instead of dealing with an invasion or something similar, it's just one person, Tzim-Sha, on a hunt, and while Tzim-Sha is built up as a threat, he's also deflated in some ways -- most notably in how everyone (even the credits) refers to him as "Tim Shaw", but also by showing that he's cheating at this "noble" hunt meant to determine the leadership of the Stenza. So instead of saving the planet we're just saving one person, Karl: the stakes are smaller scale. And this also seems like a more self-reliant Doctor: the sequence where she makes her own sonic screwdriver (rather than just being provided one by the TARDIS, as both the eleventh and twelfth Doctors were) shows that she's smart and capable, just getting on with solving the problems at hand.

But in some ways the biggest shift is at the end, where the Doctor stays for Grace's funeral, after the show goes and kills one of the best people in it. Grace is absolutely wonderful ("Is it wrong to be enjoying this?" she asks Graham happily at one point), and so it's heartbreaking to see her die, even if it is a noble death. It also gives Ryan's YouTube video, which opened the episode, a new meaning: the greatest woman he ever met isn't the Doctor, like we were initially led to believe, but instead is his nan, which is a really nice move.²⁸⁴ But yes, the Doctor stays for the funeral, in what feels like a unique aspect of this Doctor (compare, for instance, with the seventh Doctor quietly pulling Ace away from Mike's funeral in Remembrance of the Daleks). That just reinforces that this is a Doctor who is kind, who cares, who's willing to stay and deal with the consequences sometimes. (Unless you want to think she was forced to stick around because she still needed Graham, Yaz, and Ryan's help, of course, but I'm personally not that cynical.) This isn't a Doctor who's a lonely god, or a figure of legend; she's simply a wanderer: "I'm just a traveller," she tells Yaz. "Sometimes I see things need fixing, I do what I can." It's part of a move this series to bring the show back to its roots somewhat (in addition to having a full TARDIS complement, just as they did in 1963), and we'll see more of this as series 11 progresses.

The thirteenth Doctor selects her new outfit. ("The Woman Who Fell
to Earth") ©BBC

And so after a new outfit gets selected ("That's what you're going with?" Yaz asks, somewhat disbelievingly) -- although, it must be said that Jodie Whittaker looks fabulous in Peter Capaldi's old outfit as well -- it's time to find the TARDIS and to say goodbye to her new friends. Except she ends up accidentally transporting them with her, into the depths of space, unprotected: how's that for a cliffhanger?

And so we finally get a chance to see the new title sequence and hear the new theme arrangement from Segun Akinola. (Unless you were watching on BBC America, which for some reason believed we would rather watch Wil Wheaton and a bunch of nameless "celebrities" discuss the episode we'd just seen instead of getting to hear the new theme.) Akinola's theme kind of feels more like a remix of the Delia Derbyshire original than a brand-new envisioning, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Plus this version of the credits (which includes a slightly odd trailer, highlighting upcoming guest stars rather than upcoming scenes) gives us the middle 8, which is pretty great. I don't know that I would say it's my favorite rendition of the theme, but it's not the worst one I've ever heard. And the titles aren't bad, although they do seem quite visually dark. I do like the approach of essentially making a color, CG version of the old howlround graphics from the 60s though, even if it sometimes looks like we're actually underwater.

So overall "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" is a confident series opener, showing us a group of likable new companions and an outstanding new Doctor in Jodie Whittaker. The threat isn't the most compelling (and this'll come back to bite them a bit in later episodes), but the fact that this episode is built up on relationships between characters -- both new regulars and characters we've only met a little bit (such as Karl, or Rahul, the man who lost his sister) -- means that a smaller threat isn't a bad thing, because it's not really the focus: the focus is on the new thirteenth Doctor, and Jodie Whittaker more than delivers. This is the Doctor, the same as ever, no substitutions required: "I know exactly who I am. I'm the Doctor. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe." Let's hope the series can keep it up.







²⁸⁴ Of course, that means that there were two people who watched Ryan talking about his now-deceased grandmother and still chose to downvote his video; people really are the worst.