Tom Salinsky

Another day, another legacy threequel. This time I had seen both predecessor films before, but I took the time to revisit them as I didn’t remember either very clearly.

It comes as no surprise to learn that the 1982 original was a case of new technology looking for an application. Ambitious young executive Steven Lisberger was fascinated with the possibilities of computer graphics and sold his screenplay about a man digitised inside a mainframe to Disney with himself attached as director. A very expensive prospect and not a big financial success, it nevertheless hit hard with a certain demographic. I was ten years old, also obsessed with computer graphics and I loved it. I saw it and the cinema, I rented it on VHS, I read and re-read the novelisation.

Watching it now, it has a certain naive charm but the story barely makes a particle of sense, some of the visuals are very shonky and it’s only really Jeff Bridges’s brawny charm that makes any of this work at all. Even David Warner seems oddly withdrawn. This “secret life of computer programs” which makes even less sense than secret life of toys, secret life of bugs or secret life of monsters. That’s when it isn’t being Spartacus or other less good gladiator films.

Some of the primitive CG is genuinely striking, like the amazing light cycle chase. It’s useful to remember how new all that was, but to me it still holds up. But much of the so-called computer graphics material is either backlit cell animation or old-fashioned photochemical matting, and the black-and-white photography for the faces of the programs and the grey costumes makes the whole thing look grainy and the wrong kind of artificial. The non-neon parts of the costumes always look bad, and the pillowcase which someone has shoved over David Warner’s head is absolutely dreadful. Perhaps that’s why he looks so miserable.

What’s real and what’s not is hard to pin down. Strikingly, once Flynn is translated into the digital realm, we never return to the real world until he does – despite a supposed (vague) threat the the rogue MCP is attempting to start a world war or somesuch. Instead we’re asked to care about the self-actualisation of computer programs, which is a bit of a stretch.

Still, this is novel, not too self-important and breezes past at just over ninety minutes. None of which is true of the 2010 sequel, which I was initially surprised to learn was Joseph (Top Gun Maverick) Kosinski’s big break. It adds an extra half hour to the runtime, makes Flynn’s son the hero and reimagines the computer world with far more mature graphics. However, here comes the wrong kind of artificial again and this time it’s pervasive instead of occasional. Take the giant hovering “Recognizers” which patrol the space. In the 1982 film, they look like floating blocks, whose smooth geometry is all that early eighties workstations could feasibly animate. This gives them a definingly digital appearance, which is very striking, especially when the individual blocks can barely hold together.

The newer film, made in an era of photorealism, keeps the same gross design for these craft but makes them inescapably physical objects which have weight and momentum, and kick up dust when they land. They are things, making an intangibly alien world mundane and familiar. The same is true of the light cycles, which used to traverse a purely two dimensional grid making ninety degree turns, like no vehicle on earth. In the Kosinski film, they leap, jump, curve, tilt and skid – in other words, they do all the things that ordinary bikes do, so what’s the point? The same dullness extends to the costumes. Sure, no-one’s wearing a duvet on his head, but the helmets which keep their faces hidden just make them look like courier drivers.

Then we come to the fact that the chief antagonist is a Flynn’s program Clu, also played by Jeff Bridges who is returned to his 1980s youth and vitality, but 2025 digital de-aging is barely up to the task, and 2010’s digital aging only ever makes the young Bridges (also seen in the real world as a younger Flynn) seem like a waxy puppet version of the actor. Again, it’s the wrong kind of artificial. For that matter, why has the digital copy of Flynn aged at all? And in any case, why not have had Flynn missing for a couple of years instead of decades and avoided the whole issue?

The supporting cast is strong. Olivia Wilde is quite an upgrade compared to the rather bland Cindy Morgan, and it’s always a pleasure to see Michael Sheen. But the leaden pacing kills this one, and it makes even less sense than the original. By far the best element is the score by Daft Punk which means this is always worth listening to even when it isn’t worth watching.

All of which brings us to the 2025 iteration, Tron Ares, helmed by somebody called Joachim Rønning. Whereas the two previous films begin in the real world, go into the “grid” and stay there – even when the storytelling might have benefited from cutting back-and-forth – and then only emerge at the end, this upends the whole Tron tradition by having people go in-and-out of the grid all the time. Yes, we get programs and even light cycles in the real world.

This was so refreshing after the dry, portentous, self-importance of Legacy. I assume the planning process involved taking all the things in the previous two films which made any sort of sense at all, tidily dropping them into the nearest waste paper basket and then using the now-reclaimed narrative space for more car chases and explosions. Watched at the BFI IMAX, this was a ridiculously enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Greta Lee turns out to be an ideal action movie star, not trying to bring too much sparkle to a role that doesn’t need it (we have Gillian Anderson for that) but never disappearing among the swarm of pixels either. Jodie Turner-Smith is suitably terrifying, and even Jared Leto seems perfectly cast as a character with no personality.

And all the problems with the CG world which Legacy succumbed to have been correct here. The 2025 iteration of the Grid feels entirely alien and digital, and then delightfully in the final act we get an evocation of the 1982 Grid for that extra power shot of nostalgia. Jeff Bridges gets little to do except pontificate into his beard, but by that time we’ve already had a police car get sliced in half by a light cycle trail, so nothing could piss me off.

Sadly, this has underperformed at the box office, and the 3D is largely pointless, but Tron Ares makes a perfect summer blockbuster, which is why I can only assume it was released at the beginning of awards season.

Sometimes you need a push to go back and watch a classic you missed the first time around. My watch-all-the-Academy-Award-Best-Picture-winners project was great for this because not only did I see some amazing winners for the first time, in the interests of putting each film in its proper context I also caught up on some other masterpieces made the same year. And regular readers may recall that I only watched The Day of the Jackal very recently because it had been turned into a TV series and I wanted to see the original first.

With 28 Years Later, the impetus was even more urgent because it suddenly seemed as if my entire podcast feed had been turned into people saying “We’re going to discuss that bonkers ending now, so here’s your spoiler warning.” I am also going to discuss that bonkers ending, so here’s your spoiler warning.

Now I couldn’t watch 28 Years Later because I hadn’t seen 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later, but luckily both are readily available on streaming services so here we go. I’m generally very pro Danny Boyle and 28 Days Later is the perfect example of his idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking, allied to a strong interest in bold clear narratives and engaging relatable characters.

The structure is absolute simplicity, almost simplistic. Delivery guy Jim wakes up in hospital, like Bill Masen before him, to discover that while he slept the world has ended. Alex Garland and Danny Boyle’s zombies – sorry “infected” – aren’t supernatural the way that George Romero’s classic undead are, but there’s only a thin skein of biological plausibility over the whole premise, which is easily punctured. (For that matter, nobody wakes up from a four week coma and is rampaging around a military compound like a one-man army a couple of days later, but whatever.) Like a good magic trick, the film makes sure you aren’t worrying about that; it keeps distracting you with far more interesting and exciting things.

Jim meets Selena and Mark. Selena and Jim kill Mark when he becomes infected. Selena and Jim meet Hannah and Frank. Soldiers kill Frank when he becomes infected. Soldiers try to rape Selena and Hannah. Jim kills all the soldiers. So, as is generally the case with this kind of film, the real villains aren’t the flesh eating monsters, but the amoral humans. Determined to cast unknowns in the leads (Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris for chrissake!) Boyle hired familiar faces Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson for supporting roles, but out of those familiar faces come very unfamiliar voices (Eccleston poshing up, Gleeson doing Cockney, neither very consistently). It’s a tiny flaw in a lean, propulsive thriller where the cheap-ass camerawork isn’t something that needs to be overlooked, it’s kind of the point.

The film was a sizeable hit and reinvigorated the zombie genre, giving rise to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the Pegg/Frost/Wright Shaun of the Dead, the seemingly endless The Walking Dead and so on. A sequel seemed inevitable, but when it came, Boyle, Garland, and the entire cast were nowhere to be seen. 28 Weeks Later does a decent job of getting the story going again, and has a cracking opening scene with Robert Carlyle leaving Catherine McCormack to die, but lacks any of the freshness and focus of the original. In particular, it casts around aimlessly for characters we’re supposed to care about, the baton being passed between Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau and Carlyle and McCormack seemingly at random. Everything that happens in 28 Days Later is based on the bond between Jim and Selena. In the sequel, some people try to survive and some do and some don’t. It’s not as compelling and I looked in vain for a relationship as strong and as interesting.

Although it made money, the second film wasn’t anything like as profitable as the first (which had cost half as much and took slightly more at the box office). So despite the demand, 28 Months Later never arrived. But now, 23 years later, comes 28 Years Later. That’s a big jump, and the storytelling reflects that. In the first film, Jim has skipped several weeks during which the country fell. In the second, the problem starts and then is contained over a few months. In the third we have a whole generation of characters whose only connection with the pre-Rage world is old VHS tapes and stories their parents tell.

Picking up one solitary thread from the previous film, Garland and Boyle (now back as writer and director) establish that Britain is sealed off from the rest of the world, with quarantine ships patrolling its borders. That’s another fascinating difference. Often this kind of film, being a vehicle for social commentary, has a rather broad approach to geography, seeking a universal appeal. So, the first film takes place in and around London because it has to take place somewhere. The second film, with its American Army focus, feels like it could be happening anywhere. But the third film is about Britain. It’s about cricket and Teletubbies and Jimmy Saville and Henry V, and Brexit – Boyle indulging his fondness for quirky cut-aways just enough to give the sequences a little boost of energy, not so often that it becomes tiresome.

In act one, overbearing father Aaron Taylor Johnson takes his young son Jamie (Alfie Williams) to hunt infected on the mainland with bows and arrows before they retreat back across the causeway to the safety of their compound. So far, so zombie, with just the tiny wrinkle that dad exaggerates tales of his son’s prowess in the way that a country that used to have an Empire still imagines that it’s able to punch above its weight.

But in the second act, Jamie and his sick mother (Jodie Comer, spectacular as always) seek out the dotty old doctor who is still living among the infected. After a sidequest in which the presence of Swedish SEALs briefly makes this feel like the suspense and gory action sequences are just going to keep ramping up, we settle down for a remarkably compassionate and heartfelt meditation on death, life, memory and dignity, anchored by a beautiful performance from Ralph Fiennes.

Add to this a satisfyingly detailed introduction to a more complex infected eco-system, and you have a rather surprising but thoroughly entertaining film which manages the trick of carrying on the story and giving me something I didn’t know I wanted, rather than just doing the same tricks again. And then we come to Jack O’Connell in a lurid shell-suit.

It’s one of the tropes of this series that you have to start with a prologue, so the title of the film can do double duty. Animal rights protestors free an infected monkey. 28 Days Later, Jim wakes up in hospital. Robert Carlyle runs for his life. 28 Weeks Later, he’s reunited with his kids on the Isle of Dogs. And here, a young boy sees the local vicar seemingly welcoming in hoards of infected. 28 Years Later, he’s become – not the very slightly unhinged father figure played by Aaron Taylor Johnson as we are no don’t intended to conclude – but cult leader Sir Jimmy Crystal. It’s a violent left turn and in a Marvel movie would no doubt have played as a mid-credits scene, but given that the fourth movie (directed by Nia da Costa) is already in the can, I’m all for this kind of throw-forward. And I don’t want the next film to repeat the third film any more than I wanted the third film to repeat the first film.

As to the evocation of the horrendous Jimmy Saville, it’s easy to conclude that this is just being done for shock effect, but I’m happy not to pre-judge. Icons of evil can be powerful storytelling tools and the image of cuddly Jimmy, friend to children, who was actually a vile sex criminal who abused his power, is a potent one. But to find out whether that story is used carelessly or pointedly, we’ll have to wait until January.

Let’s start with the end. When Eccleston quit after one year, Russell briefly wondered whether it would be possible to pull off a surprise regeneration. How amazing for a new generation of kids who had never seen the show before to see the Doctor change his face before their eyes, without knowing such a thing was even possible. Sadly, it was not to be – Eccleston’s departure and the identity of his replacement was known weeks before. But Ncuti Gatwa’s era is highly unusual, having been planned, written and produced pretty much as a single two-year story. That isn’t to say that everything for The Reality War had been shot by the time The Church on Ruby Road went out, but there was a structure and a plan in place in a way which we’ve really never seen before. Eight episode seasons are good for something it seems.

And with the Disney deal expiring following the upcoming The War Between The Land and The Sea, at present nobody knows what the future of Doctor Who looks like, but it seems the Gatwa was told that a two-year deal was in place and responded “Sure, I’ll do two years.” So this moment was always coming, even though nobody expected it, and I certainly didn’t expect Billie Fucking Piper to be staring back at me as the episode ended. As many have spotted, she is credited only as “And introducing Billie Piper” so who knows what further fuckery is afoot, but we’ll have to wait for answers.

The rest of the episode falls into two halves, very much in the way that The Giggle did, with the villains despatched somewhere around the 35 minute mark, almost exactly the midpoint of the episode. But while I criticised The Giggle for building to a climax and then hanging around for 15 or so minutes of less thrilling story admin, I didn’t have the same problem here. Firstly, those first 15 minutes are absolutely bonkers brilliance. The Time Hotel is a wonderful idea to revisit, the Doctor shedding the John Smith costume and returning to his pinstriped kilt is a real punch-the-air-moment, we get glimpses of Troughton and Pertwee and Daleks, and we get a truly horrifying CGI Omega (which alas Gatwa manages to pronounce in just about every way except the one we’re used to).

I also think the structure works better than last year’s Empire of Death. Sure, Omega doesn’t get to do much except munch on Rani and then be banished, but the problem with ending the world is that you have to un-end the world again to send us out happy. It might feel less exciting to have life as we know it merely threatened and not ended, but I prefer crisis-averted-but-at-what-cost to the-worst-has-happened-and-now-we-have-to-reverse-it. Your mileage might vary, but I feel the storytelling scales are balanced better this way.

The pals are all there of course, and most of them have something to do – Rose barely enough and the Vlinkx still absolutely nothing whatsoever. But Mel gives good value and Kate is always a welcome presence. Even the long exposition scene between the Doctor and the Rani is good fun, in no small part thanks to Archie Panjabi’s lip-curling relish at playing this fabulous part, in a costume which is part dominatrix, part John Nathan-Turner and part Martha Jones. And I absolutely hooted with laughter at Anita Dobson’s “Two Ranis” exit line.

Millie Gibson, undoubted MVP of the last series, once again shows her class here. She’s amazing, whether when fighting to overthrow the Bone Palace from below, standing alongside the Doctor in UNIT HQ, but especially when she’s desperately trying to convince him that the fight isn’t over yet. The moment of Varada and Ncuti passing baby Poppy’s orange jacket back-and-forth as it shrinks and finally vanishes is tremendously effective, setting up the final problem not with a crash and a bang but with a creeping sense of unease.

So here are the two reasons why I think the second half of this episode was just as thrilling as the first half. Reason one: we haven’t had the regeneration yet. We’re promised it 50 minutes in, but it doesn’t happen until the very end. The Giggle blew its load after Gatwa’s first appearance, and everything after that feels slightly anti-climactic as a result.

Secondly – and this may not have been entirely deliberate as rumours abound of last-minute re-shoots – but the presence of Susan last week does an awful lot to very subtly but very definitely raise the stakes on baby Poppy. When writing my book about Star Trek, one of the tropes I identified was the cover-of-a-comic-book teaser. The purpose of the cover of a comic book is to get you to buy the comic (just as the purpose of a teaser is to get you to stay on this channel and watch the rest of the episode). So it’s very tempting to start with something really eye-catching, which may or may not be paid off in the way you expect. The cover of the comic book shows Clark Kent pulling open his shirt in front of Lois Lane. When you read the story, it turns out she’s been temporarily blinded and couldn’t see the costume under his clothes. That kind of thing.

So it doesn’t matter how many times Varada and Ncuti tell us that Poppy is their child, we know that the Doctor can’t have a kid with a human woman, and we know it’s all going to be reset by the end of the episode – once again, the storytelling scales are out of balance. But half a mo. There’s Susan. And we’ve been reminded that the Doctor once travelled with a granddaughter. And you can’t have a grandchild without first having a child. So… maybe? Just maybe, Poppy is here to stay after all?

She is and she isn’t. Fifteeen pours that regeneration energy into the TARDIS and brings Poppy back. But she’s not his daughter. She’s Belinda’s. And that does make sense – more sense ultimately than her being Susan’s mum – but these two dangling threads kept me going all the way to the end of the episode. And gawd, I haven’t even mentioned Jodie Whittaker yet, here to give a barely-needed pep talk to our hero before he risks everything for the sake of one little life. Whittaker clearly relishes getting some RTD dialogue to say, but alas we slip back into Chris Chibnall just-say-exactly-what’s-on-our-mind mode right at the end when she says “I should say that to Yaz.”

But that is honestly my biggest complaint with this episode, and sure a lot of the first half is a hyperkinetic whirl, and it takes a long time after that to come into land – but all of that felt purposeful, deliberate and carefully judged. The Doctor’s victory is incomplete, hard-won, and the product of desperate last-minute improvisation and reliance on his friends, not simply waving a thing and spouting some gibberish. Conrad is undone not by violence but by kindness. And our hero gave everything he had for one single life. I don’t approve of Doctors only doing two years, but Ncuti has been magnificent, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. Bravo.

Wow, that came around fast. It seems only yesterday that I was pondering the impact of incel #1 Alan in The Robot Revolution and now already we’re gunning for the season finale, which features the return of incel #2 Conrad. As usual, it’s hard to judge the effectiveness of the story as a whole when we only have the first half to consider, and last year I was blown away by episode seven and felt episode eight didn’t quite live up to it. This time, I’m not quite so blown away by episode seven, but I feel as if the pieces are in place for what could be a terrific conclusion to what has been quite a strong season.

Rather than spend an entire episode having the Doctor desperately trying to prevent Rani #1 and Rani #2 from putting their evil plan into action, rather thrillingly we begin with the plan having almost completely succeeded. And it’s a slightly odd one, although the explanations are there if you listen carefully (or put the subtitles on). Omega can only be freed by cracking open the planet and that means constructing an obviously fake world which the inhabitants can then start doubting. This gives everybody the chance to play different versions of their familiar characters, which is always fun. So we have Ncuti and Varada as Mr and Mrs Smith, Jemma Redgrave as his clockwatching boss and even UNIT HQ is cos-playing as the Masque of Mandragora TARDIS.

Meanwhile, although Jonah Hauer-King still seems to me like a space where a person should be, and Bonnie Langford gets little to do as Mel, Archie Panjabi and Anita Dobson are having the absolute time of their lives, job-sharing the role of the Rani and Jonathan Groff, Susan Twist and Carole Ann Ford are along for the ride too. The gag of identical yellow mugs that slip through tables is deliciously odd, and the parable about the disabled is nicely handled. But there are an awful lot of unanswered questions at this stage: why is Omega underneath our planet? Will his reappearance be yet more jeopardy-via-surname or will his role make sense given his history and be understandable by new viewers? What is Space Baby Poppy doing there? And – as usual – just how will the Doctor get out of that one.

This all looks amazing – director Alex Sanjiv Pillai does lovely work and the set design is gorgeous – so I was very happy while it was on. My only doubts are about next week…

Stakes are funny things. On the surface, the idea seems obvious. Two people amusing themselves predicting the outcome of a coin flip is dull. Two people betting fifty quid on the outcome of a coin flip is a bit more interesting. Two people betting their life savings on the outcome of a coin flip is fascinating. Two people flipping a coin for their actual life is horrifying and compelling. But it doesn’t always work like that. Consider how many stormtroopers get mown down or blown up over the course of any given Star Wars film. And yet when Luke Skywalker fills in a gap in his family tree, or loses a hand for all of ten minutes of screen time, it seems to matter far more. Stormtroopers are anonymous. Luke is someone we care about and that makes all the difference.

So it almost doesn’t matter whether ten or a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand spectators get sucked out into space, just as it almost doesn’t matter when a hundred or a million or a billion or a trillion viewers stand to get whammied when Kid does the thing with the whatsit. They’re all anonymous. But – hang on! The Doctor is one of those sucked out into space too. That raises the stakes, right? Actually, it kinda lowers them. If this is happening to the Doctor, then it must be survivable – and if it’s survivable, that lowers the stakes again.

Now, this is a problem in any adventure story all of the time (you can only do the ending of No Time to Die once per hero) so the trick is to play these events with conviction and brio, and try to engage our emotions and stop us from thinking too hard. And that’s why I enjoyed this episode so much. The shot of all of those bodies being drawn up into space is an astonishing one and the solution is far from obvious. Nor does the explanation of how they survived make any kind of scientific sense, but it is properly executed in terms of structure, because we saw the Doctor fiddle with the thingamajig before the roof blew off.

I’m a bit less interested in the viewers at home to be honest, but the plot requires that Winn and Kid (named after their fathers perhaps?) are in the process of doing an awful thing and need to be stopped, and this all went off very smoothly. The evocation of the contest is brilliantly done, on paper and on screen. The contemporary references to Rylan and Graham Norton don’t grate too badly, the songs are amazing, the aliens look fab and the backstage shenanigans with Mike and Gary and Belinda and Cora are all well-handled. Well, maybe Belinda is stuck in her own sideplot which goes nowhere, and maybe Susan steals her thunder a bit, but I admired how elegantly the political backstory was sketched in, and I loved seeing this Doctor completely lose it.

The pacing is good as well. This is a nice simple story, which starts strong and still manages to build to a climax, leaving enough time for the various bits of plot admin to be dealt with without it feeling like the episode reaches the end and keeps going. The huge number of people who need to be individually rescued is a bit of a problem, but once again this is recognised and papered over with shots of whole groups being retrieved and revived.

And Mrs Flood is the Rani. I’m not a huge fan of this reveal, to be honest. It’s a bit thrill-by-surname, like Benedict Cumberbatch revealing himself as Khan in Star Trek Into Dullness. The Rani wasn’t a brilliant character in Mark, was a frankly terrible character in Time, and although Archie Panjabi is great, it was only Kate O’Mara who made it watchable at all. Still, I’m not going to prejudge, but as a cliffhanger ending, it had nothing like the power of the return of Sutekh – a return which crucially didn’t require viewers to have seen Pyramids of Mars to understand what was going on.

This is probably worth four stars, given the solid construction, while also taking into account the slight overreaching and the sidelining of Belinda. But I had such a good time watching it, I’m going to bump it up another half. A strong year so far, making me very hopeful indeed for the season finale.

This is clearly the film of the summer which is tearing through the box office faster and more ferociously than a gang of redneck vampires through a juke joint. I saw it and loved it, but I was also careful to learn as little about it as possible in order that it could give up its secrets as it saw fit. I’ve since seen the spoilerific trailers, and I’d urge anyone reading this who hasn’t seen Sinners to avoid them too, stop reading and go and see Sinners, because it’s terrific.

This is the second of two legends-of-acting-playing-two-roles movies out this month, but here it feels like it makes rather more sense than de Niro showing he can do hat-on and hat-off acting in the same film. Smoke and Stack are two different sides of the same coin, plus – who else you gonna get to go toe-to-toe with Michael B Jordan if not Michael B Jordan? The effects work is exemplary, although I wasn’t so knocked out by the cigarette switch in the opening, but the climactic fight is absolutely flawless, and in the dialogue scenes, I simply forget they were both the same actor after a while.

The rest of the cast is top notch too, from seasoned campaigners like Delroy Lindo, to up-and-comers like Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell and Wunmi Mosaku, to complete noobs like the revelatory Miles Canton.

About the only thing which anyone seems to complain about is the pacing, but everyone has a different niggle, so this is evidently a matter of taste more than anything else. For what it’s worth, here’s my take. The opening narration is delicious, and the opening in-media-res-wait-one-day-earlier while shopworn works well to promise the scares that are coming. I adored the material surrounding the brothers putting their venue together and didn’t feel for a minute that I was being made to wait too long for the gore fest, but the intro to Jack O’Connell felt misplaced. I gather this was originally planned to open the film, but director Ryan Coogler felt the audience would be waiting for him to reappear and not be paying attention. He might be right, but the new position for this short sequence feels arbitrary and clunky. Compare that to the elegant way in which the bravura and astonishingly bold music-through-time-lifts-the-roof sequence gives way to the arrival of the bloodsucking trio. Here everything feels purposeful, carefully weighted and hugely effective.

As reality dawns on our gang and they break up the party, they’re made to confront the consequences of their choices, and this again is beautifully paced, but this movie which so luxuriated in its set-ups rushes its pay-offs ever-so-slightly with the climactic battle in the eaves of the bar feeling almost perfunctory. Do stay for the closing credits though if you want to know how the story really ends.

To be clear, these are minor quibbles, with what overall is a hugely exciting, deeply involving, transcendently musical, incredibly confident piece of filmmaking, packing luminous performances, suitably gory effects, razor sharp editing and gorgeous cinematography. What really makes it work though is how the themes of good, evil, temptation, history, hatred, trust, religion, sex, money and death are woven through the rich characters to create a deeply layered, profoundly moving and intricately constructed story. Not bad for a vampire flick by a Marvel director.

This is a tough one for me. Lots to enjoy. A fresh location, both macro (Lagos) and micro (barbershop). Some amazing guest actors. The regulars on top form. Unexpected continuity nods. And a very appealing Neil Gaiman-like fantasy atmosphere – thankfully achieved without actual Neil Gaiman. But counterbalancing this are some odd choices, a lack of coherence and the fact that there probably wasn’t quite enough plot for the running time.

Let’s start with Lagos. Despite all being summoned up in the Cardiff studios, this looked and sounded amazing and was completely convincing. And the Doctor’s explanation as to why he was drawn back to this place was very sweet and rather heartfelt – as is his surprise at hearing Belinda empathise completely with his plight. This most human and open of all Doctors needs friends and has learned that these are a little harder come by in some quarters than they were when he looked like a flamboyant cabinet minister.

Ariyon Bakare is mesmerising as the Barber and Michelle Asante is luminous as his troubled sidekick Abby/Abena. But not nearly enough was done with the other inhabitants of the barbershop to properly differentiate them. This is a common problem and the gulf between the instantly distinguishable crew of the Sanctuary Base and the impossible-to-keep-straight Flesh Gangers is a wide one – to pick two examples which stand out to me. Here, writer Inua Ellams only seems interested in the Barber and maybe old Omo, but none of the others.

Getting Belinda into the story is tough, and when she isn’t available, the Doctor has to play the role of blundering naif, yanking open the door of the shop when surely his Spidey-sense – or just his common sense – should have told him to exercise a bit of caution. There follows – if I’m honest – quite a lot of that Steven Moffat standby: people standing around urgently. This is livened up briefly by a glimpse of Jo Martin (presumably in Abby’s memory, not the Doctor’s) which is good fun, as is the equally brief appearance of Captain Poppy from Space Babies – and the requisite Angie Watts cameo.

Then after all of this narrative vamping, the resolution feels rushed, with the braided-hair-map barely being needed and set up only seconds before being paid off. And the climax didn’t really feel like it meant anything. So, none of this was bad exactly, and all of the good points still stand. And its lyrical style means it can get away with more plot holes than Lucky Day, which is fortunate. I just didn’t feel much while watching it, and I really think I was supposed to.

This seems to have gone down well with fandom at large. For once, a story with a strong message isn’t being pilloried for being “woke garbage” or tarred with similarly meaningless epithets. That’s rather heartening. And once again it’s great to see the breadth that the series is capable of, as we leap from literal animated fantasy to flesh-creeping science-fiction terror to domestic UNIT-based psycho-drama.

But to me, this all felt a bit “will this do?” And it pains me to say that because I know how much hard work goes into making any television, let alone something as ambitious as Doctor Who. The pitch isn’t bad. Catching up with an ex-companion and seeing UNIT and its fight against alien invaders through the lens of the manosphere/online trolls/misinformation warriors/conspiracy theorists/delete as applicable. Sure, I’ll watch that. However, the execution seemed to me to be consistently lacking.

Millie and Conrad’s ghastly flirting is relentlessly generic, yet the bland lines in the script might have worked if Jonah Hauer-King had found something distinctive to do with the part, but he (like everyone else) is just settling into familiar grooves. Such a disappointment after McTighe’s thrillingly original Kablam! and his amazing work on the Blu-ray range. And following an episode which did “something nasty hiding in the shadows” so brilliantly, this time the men in rubber suits look like that and only like that, whether that’s what they’re supposed to be or not. What last week’s director did seemingly effortlessly has left this week’s flailing. Do you know how rare it is for me to find myself criticising writing, directing and acting on new Who?

Of course, this is the season’s double-banked episode, with no Varada Sethu and barely featuring Ncuti Gatwa, which does make life harder. But sometimes that makes everyone else up their game, and we get classics like Blink or Midnight or Turn Left or 73 Yards. Here alas, the lack of Doctor is keenly felt. And, now I’m distracted by how familiar this feels – bits and pieces of Blink (the glimpse of the Doctor on another adventure), Love & Monsters (fan’s eye view of the Doctor), A Christmas Carol (the Doctor’s chance encounter with young Conrad), 73 Yards (Millie Gibson telling everyone in a scary pub to listen to her) and so on.

And crucially, the big switcheroo doesn’t really work at all. Either Conrad is a very well-known anti-UNIT, anti-alien podcaster with a large and loyal following and therefore everybody knows who he is and what he stands for, OR he’s the kind of podcaster which Ruby Sunday would happily go and talk to. But not, as this story needs him to be – both at once.

And just why does actually seeing real aliens and a disappearing police box make him a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic instead of, as would seem to make rather more sense, a true believer? Why does he think that making his own fake aliens will convince the world that other aliens are also fake? If I showed you fake potatoes, would you stop believing in potatoes? And why doesn’t he take the damned antidote – other than to make the plot work? Then again, he’s the kind of conspiracy theorist whose bonkers claim is that UFOs aren’t real, so maybe I shouldn’t expect logic from him. But worse, there’s no complexity to him either, no hint that he is in any way conflicted over his treatment of Ruby. We’re right back in Chibnall-land, where subtext is forbidden and everybody has a single dimension and just says what’s on their mind as directly as possible.

Look, there’s good stuff here. Millie is great, as usual. I adored her in the pub bluntly telling the old git who dared question her authority “Go and get some fresh air, big man, see what happens.” Yes, mate. It’s always a pleasure to see Jemma Redgrave, Alexander Devrient and Ruth Madelely. And the Vlinkx, was… also there. The UNIT traitor, though, isn’t so much hiding in plain sight as sticking out like a sore thumb, forefinger and big toe. Sure, I can get behind the message. I agree: Internet trolling equals bad. But to me this all felt a bit reheated, and a bit half-hearted. And I don’t think I really like the idea that if you meet the Doctor as an impressionable child, there’s even a chance that this interaction will turn you into a cartoon villain like Conrad. The Doctor is responsible for our current toxic online culture? Really? I don’t want that even hinted at. Damn.

Ah, it was a stealth sequel. Fans being fans, that’s what seems to have exercised us the most (was Trooper Shaya really The Rani, etc) but honestly, the callback to Russell’s towering mini-epic Midnight occupies mere seconds of the running time, and is in many ways the least noteworthy feature of this incredible episode.

We begin with the slightly ludicrous cold open which sees the Doctor and Belinda plummeting out of a spaceship which can’t land on the planet below, but can follow them slowly down. Thankfully, everything’s happening too fast and too thrillingly for us to ponder this absurdity for very long, and very soon we’re in the haunted house environment which will be the main setting for the rest of the story. Star Trek has a long history of sending the crew down to a space station / colony planet / mining operation / derelict craft only to discover that it is littered with corpses. Sometimes, there’s a lone and very suspicious survivor, and so it proves to be here in the person of Rose Ayling-Ellis’s achingly vulnerable Aliss Fenly.

As he’s done previously, Russell takes the inclusion of a minority figure and stitches her disability into the fabric of the story, and yet doesn’t make it a story about deafness. This is a story about paranoia, about trust and about death. Well-worn tropes to be sure, but in the able hands of director Amanda Brotchie and co-writer Sharma Angel-Walfall, this all works incredibly well, from the initial mystery of the dead bodies, to the suspense of the twelve o’clock death position, to the final break for freedom.

Varada Sethu is very strong here, combining disorientation and confusion at being on an alien planet, with a fierce desire for justice, and allowing her compassionate nursing side out long enough to care for Aliss. And Ncuti Gatwa owns the part now. From top to bottom this is outstanding stuff. More please.

Just when I thought I might – after over forty years of fairly dedicated following – be even a little bit over Doctor Who, along comes an episode which completely restores my faith in the format, cast, creative team and everything. This all just worked, despite (or maybe because of) some pretty big swings.

My heart sank just a little when i realised that after last week’s 1950s-inflected bad sci-fi robots, we were heading out into… the 1950s. And there is a teeny bit of the Russell playbook on show here. In 2005, Davies set the template of “Companion-centric story set on contemporary Earth, followed by bonkers sci-fi adventure, followed by trip to the past, followed by two-parter…” and so on, all the way to the showdown with the Big Bad in the final instalment. Even Moffat stuck to this fairly closely (for one year at least). Here, we condense the first two beats into a single story, so this week a trip to the past it is. But this isn’t another celebrity historical. This has other things on its mind.

Mr Ring-a-Ding is an extraordinary creation. Brillantly and terrifyingly voiced by a returning Alan Cumming, his beautifully animated bendy body perfectly evokes Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s (which absolutely would still be showing in 1950s cinemas) and the integration with the live action is likewise flawlessly done. Even the Doctor and Belinda’s trip to Toontown and their own renderings as cartoon characters looks fantastic, and yet feels real and high stakes.

Not satisfied with having Mrs Flood lightly tap on the fourth wall, now the show sees the Doctor and Belinda literally and metaphorically destroy it and we meet three bit-character fans – a portrait both warmly affectionate and bitingly satirical, thanks to sharp writing and three lovely performances. It’s great that they give the Doctor his way out, and even better that we (and they) have to watch film cans going up in smoke as the nitrate film (only just being replaced by more stable materials) is sacrificed by the noble projectionist, who burns up the recreation of his beloved to save the rest of the people trapped.

But the most effective scene might possibly be the one in the diner as the Doctor – and Belinda – face some of the uncomfortable realities of travelling into the past. Doing in five minutes what Rosa couldn’t manage in a whole episode, here’s a clear-eyed look at America’s racist past which needs to be acknowledged but which isn’t allowed to overwhelm the whole affair.

Add to this some decent (but not perfect) American accents, a lovely sense of time and place, a plot which kept me on my toes but never felt unfocused, and I think we have here a classic for the ages. Doctor Who is back. How could I have ever doubted it?