An Hour of Who a Day: 09/04/20

September 4: "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror"

Promotional photo from "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" (from BBC One -
Doctor Who, Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror gallery) ©BBC

The Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla is looking for funding to complete his Wardenclyffe Tower project, but it seems no one is particularly interested in the idea while also having concerns regarding the safety of the project. But it seems someone from another world might be interested in Tesla himself...

"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" is the first Doctor Who episode from writer Nina Metivier (although she script-edited a couple of episodes last series), and it feels a lot closer to the style of series 11 in terms of providing educational content within an entertaining story. This is a good thing, by the way; one of the nice things about series 11 was how it tried to provide more of an educational grounding a lot of the time rather than just relying solely on action-adventure content, and while I'm not saying that's a bad thing it's good to see that the show is still pulling on that thread rather than jettisoning it in the new series. And so here we learn all sorts of stuff about Nikola Tesla and who he was, as well as some stuff about Thomas Edison and how the two of them were rivals. Goran Višnjić, playing Tesla, does a great job of making Tesla likeable and engaging, while Robert Glenister (who you might remember as Salateen from The Caves of Androzani) excels as the more testy, prototypical capitalist Edison. And while it's been fashionable in recent years to make Edison the villain of the Tesla-Edison feud (not completely without reason, it should be noted), Glenister and the script both do a good job of making Edison more than a simple caricature -- note, for instance, his reaction after seeing that all his employees have been killed. Edison in this version is more someone who has a much better grasp of how the world works practically and how to speak to people: the way he gets people to clear the streets after Yaz's unsuccessful attempt being one such example.

Really, I could happily watch Tesla and Edison interact for the whole episode, but because it's Doctor Who we get an alien element as well. This time around it's a race of alien scorpions, led by none other than Anjli Mohindra, The Sarah Jane Adventures' very own Rani. She certainly seems like she's having fun, and the makeup is pretty good (although it seems weird how human she looks, especially compared to the other Skithra -- and is she meant to look so much like a Racnoss from "The Runaway Bride"?). I also like the idea of how the Skithra are essentially a scavenger race, with no understanding of how things work, and so they're going to kidnap Tesla to be their engineer. It's a nice change from wanting to conquer the planet or wipe out all life -- although we get some of that too, with the Skithra threatening to overrun Earth as revenge for being thwarted by the Doctor. Plus, the presence of the Skithra in their stolen Venusian spaceship provides a reason for Wardenclyffe Tower to start firing off energy bolts (a real-life event that Tesla never explained), which is quite nice.

But it's Tesla and Edison who are the highlights of this episode. They're just so much fun, and the episode is nicely informative about them, but the script never comes off as preachy or condescending. It's a great peek into an area of history that (somewhat surprisingly) hasn't been explored on the show before. (And another trip to the United States, as well!) It's just about the perfect balance of history and SF, and that's why it's probably my favorite story of series 12.