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| Promotional photo for "Orphan 55" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, Orphan 55 gallery) ©BBC |
"Orphan 55" is the second script from Ed Hime, after last series's "It Takes You Away" -- a generally solid and imaginative story let down a bit by some padding and a couple questionable characterizations. So you'd hopefully expect that the sophomore effort would be along an upward trajectory, with some of the rough edges smoothed away. Unfortunately, that isn't the case here.
To be fair, it starts out reasonably well; there are some nice jokes in the TARDIS ("I've got to go and fetch my Speedos!" Graham exclaims, after the Doctor tells them they're about to be transported. "Only joking. Already got 'em on," he says, to the slight horror of his companions), and the way the place is set up is quite nice, with the discussion of the Hopper virus, while Ryan starts to flail, being quite delightful ("Now suck your thumb until the hallucinations stop. And remember, they're not real bats," the Doctor tells him). And most of the characters are reasonably likeable, which helps. The only exception at the beginning is the person running the place, Kane, who's played by Laura Fraser (who you might recognize from A Knight's Tale or Breaking Bad, but who I actually recognize as Door from the 1996 Neil Gaiman show Neverwhere). I think she's meant to be no-nonsense, but Fraser chooses to play her as more pig-headed -- and honestly, that would probably be a reasonable reaction to the Doctor's presence, and if it were just her things would likely be fine. But unfortunately she's just the start of the rot.
Because in order to get his characters to move to the places he needs them to be, Ed Hime makes literally every single one of them (with the possible exceptions of the regulars, and even they don't escape completely unscathed) behave like idiots from time to time just to keep the plot moving. Benni going to get Vilma's hat isn't perhaps the worst of sins (other than from the horror movie cliché point of view), but this means that we're subjected to his girlfriend's endless wailing about "Benni!" I'm sure Julia Foster is a lovely, wonderful person in real life, but if I have to hear her call out "Benni!" one more time I think I'll have to punch someone. And none of the other guest characters are safe: Bella seems like she'll be nice but sassy, but then she undergoes a massive heel turn to start threatening everyone else's lives because she's mad at her mommy Kane, even after it's abundantly clear she'll be condemning everyone to death; Nevi keeps putting his son down for comic relief, just so they can share a supposedly touching "I need you" moment at the end; even the son in question, Sylas, who seems initially to be the most level-headed among them, storms off in a fit of pique while he knows the Dregs are attacking the place because the script needs him to be separated from his dad for a bit. I guess Hyph3n and Vorm aren't too frustrating, but that's more because they're turned into cannon fodder before they can undergo their own transformations into idiots. And even the Doctor to an extent isn't spared: it's her suggestion that they go get Benni in the first place, even though it doesn't seem like there's any way an old man like him could be moving around outside the Spa at high speed and this is very clearly a trap. Yes, it speaks well to her moral code about not leaving anyone behind if she can help it, but the minute it becomes clear this is a trap she should be more on the ball.
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| The Doctor makes telepathic contact with a Dreg. ("Orphan 55") ©BBC |
Because the thing is, "Orphan 55" hasn't remotely earned that payoff. It's so intent on manhandling its characters into annoying and frustrating situations that all attempts at believability have long since left, and so this is yet one more thing we're being asked to accept in an episode full of unnatural situations. (My brother suggested that maybe the characters are meant to be metaphorical, acting that way because they represent the various ways humanity chooses to ignore the dangers of climate change in favor of their own petty squabbles. This may in fact actually be the point, but if it really is then Hime hasn't done a very good job at successfully conveying the metaphorical side of things.) Which is perhaps why the final moments at the Spa, where Kane suddenly reappears out of nowhere after being apparently killed in order to rescue the daughter, are so aggravating: because they are completely unearned. Bella's supposed to be all hunky-dory with the mom she's spent most of her life despising just because of a deus ex machina rescue? Come on. The TARDIS fam teleports back to the Ship before we see Bella and Kane's final fate, so at least we can hope the Dregs got them in the end.
As I said, "Orphan 55"'s heart is in the right place, and the final speech makes that perfectly clear and direct (and it's a message worth hearing!). But Ed Hime has to work so hard to force his pieces into the positions he wants them in that the whole thing simply collapses under the stress. Maybe another draft would have helped. Maybe giving it to someone else to work on might have helped. But as it is, "Orphan 55" is easily the worst thirteenth Doctor episode to date, and possibly the worst episode the show has ever done: worse than "Boom Town", than episode 4 of The Time Monster, than part 2 of The Horns of Nimon. It might even be worse than "The Lazarus Experiment" -- honestly, its main competition at this point is "Kill the Moon", and right now that would be a tough call for me to decide which was worse. "Orphan 55" has the right general idea, but the complete wrong way of going about it.
Still, at least it looks pretty; the location filming on the island of Tenerife clearly paid off.
292 And knowing that, part of me wishes they could have been the Haemovores from the dying future in The Curse of Fenric instead. But maybe that would have given the game away too soon.