Doctor Who: Series 11, Episode 1 – “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” (2018)

She’s here!  New season, new episode, new Doctor.  I have quibbles about the episode, but overall, I’m totally stoked for the new Doctor and can’t wait to see more of her.

When some sort of alien intelligence descends on Sheffield, a small group of humans is caught up in the madness:  most notably, Ryan, his nan and her second husband Graham, and Ryan’s old classmate Yas.  There’s a mysterious pod, a strange energy creature with writhing tentacles, and something that takes trophies from humans after killing them.  Luckily for our frightened band of humans, there’s also the Doctor, who’s literally fallen out of the sky to save the day.  She’s newly regenerated and is without the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver, and some key memories (including her identity,) but she knows she’s here to help, and that’s what she means to do!

Obviously, the new Doctor is the big headline here, so I’ll touch on everything else and then take the review out on a high note.  Don’t know the new companions very well yet, but they all seem promising.  So far, Ryan seems like the lynchpin companion, since he’s the one with connections to both the other two (but I like that they’re loose connections:  it seems he and Yas haven’t seen each other since elementary school, and he makes a point of not calling Graham “granddad) and, so far, seems to have made the biggest connection to the Doctor.  I like that Yas is a police officer, and I enjoy Graham’s insistence on bus drivers as the source of all vital intel.

The alien stuff is pretty decent, scary in the right places and with a clear motive, even if it’s a little unremarkable overall.  What’s definitely on point here is the visuals.  The production design, the effects, and the camera work all look wonderful – there’s a shot early on of Ryan just walking through a woodland area, and it looks stunning, beautifully drenched in light and color.  Tonally, the episode feels like it’s still finding its footing a bit.  More than anything, it feels just a hair too slow at times, like the energy’s not quite there.  Not sure if this is a directing issue or just working out the kinks.

This latter issue extends at times to the Doctor herself, and there are moments where she feels slightly out of rhythm for me.  That worried me, although I didn’t blame the character or Jodie Whittaker for it – like I said, this affects everyone in the episode, so it has to be some sort of top-down snag that hopefully gets sorted out after this episode.

Because when she gets out from under that slight sense of drag, the Thirteenth Doctor is absolutely, 100% the Doctor.  It’s all there – the contemplative/offbeat nonsequiturs, the relish for problems with no obvious solution, the short attention span, the by-the-seat-of-her-pants planning, and the bravery, optimism, and determination that inspire others to follow her.  Any offness is definitely a pacing issue, because whenever there’s just a bit of an uptick, everything slides into place, and I go, “There she is.”  The Doctor through and through. 

Favorite moments:  declaring that she’s going to say “Yas” instead of “Yasmin” two minutes after they’ve met “because we’re friends now,” admitting that she doesn’t currently have a plan but is sure she’ll come up with one by the time she gets where she’s going, and the climactic confrontation scene with the baddie in which she’s speaking to him while actually speaking about herself and who she is now.  Bring on next week!