Tom Salinsky

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.