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 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?
Eh… it was fine.
Look, I’ll give some fuller thoughts in a minute, but for the first time that I can remember, I’m finding it hard to get excited about the show. The relentless negativity from some quarters of fandom is really getting me down, and it doesn’t help that the programme itself seems to have settled into a comfortable groove, parcelling out a leisurely eight episodes a year, seemingly without breaking much of a sweat. Don’t misunderstand me – everything we got since Russell returned has been better than almost anything Chris Chibnall oversaw, but all the very best stuff was in those first three specials. And although Ncuti is a magnetic presence, none of the stories has been as consistent and as surefooted as The Star Beast, or as evocative as Wild Blue Yonder (73 Yards came close) or contained anything as bravura as the Toymaker’s re-entrance in The Giggle.
So, for a season opener, this was… fine. The huge robots looked a bit like the ones in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and they plucked Belinda out of her suburban home a bit like the Wrarth did in The Star Beast, and the Doctor joined the rebellion and overthrew the evil empire like that archetypal story Andrew Cartmel used to take the piss out of. Verada Sethu works in a hospital which the Doctor causes to lose all power – ho ho ho. She’s… fine – but she seemed more engaged playing Mundy Flynn and we were just getting to know Ruby Sunday. The every-ninth-word gag is good but seems a bit arbitrary. Mrs Flood is here. Nicholas Briggs is the voice of the robots. It’s all absolutely fine.
The best bit was probably the death of Thalia. The Doctor having lived on Missbelindachandra One for six months is a little glib, but his partnership with Thalia felt real and it was genuinely shocking to see her disintegrated. But other than that, this isn’t anything like as epoch-defining as Rose, as exciting as Smith and Jones, as funny as Partners in Crime, as fresh as The Eleventh Hour, as bonkers as The Bells of St John or as engaging as The Pilot. It wasn’t bad. It didn’t do anything wrong. It was just… fine.
