Not a
remarkable episode, but a pretty solid one.
The Doctor does what she does best, and all the companions get something
to do, which is important – the more we can see of their individual
contributions, the more we’ll get to know them as separate people.
After
finding themselves on the unfortunate end of a sonic explosion, the Doctor, Yaz
(I’d thought it was “Yas,” since her name is Yasmin, but the BBC website says “Yaz,”
so I’m fixing it now,) Ryan, and Graham get picked up by a medical transport
ship. It’s taking them away from the
TARDIS, which is bad, and it’s just been beset by a nigh-indestructible little
creature bent on eating the ship from the inside out, which is worse. The goal?
Keep everyone alive, neutralize the creature, and safely make planetfall
so our heroes can be teleported back to the TARDIS.
All the
main characters are in pretty good form here.
Being stuck with a dangerous creature on a moving spaceship stuck in a
preprogrammed flightpath is a classic “rally the troops” scenario, and the
Doctor is more than up to the task. She’s
of course brave and inquisitive, insistent on taking risks despite some
injuries sustained and constantly trying to deduce the reason for what’s happening.
She does a splendid job dividing and conquering when it comes to the
one-shot characters, finding their useful skills as well as keeping up their
dwindling reserves of hope. We get a
couple absolutely-lovely “inspirational Doctor” speeches here, and Jodie
Whittaker plays them wonderfully.
We also
get some really concrete stuff for the companions, which is nice. Differentiating them is something of an
ongoing issue for the show, so this episode is a step in the right
direction. Yaz, as the police officer,
gets a little more of the action stuff this week, which seems fitting, and
Graham and Ryan are challenged by a surprising complication that particularly
resonates for Ryan. All them of them are
getting better at navigating sci-fi environments; here, on a 67th-century
spaceshiup, they’re naturally taken aback by some things they’ve never imagined
before, but they manage to roll with it (side note: interesting that most of the aliens they’ve
personally interacted with have looked humanoid, even if there have been
internal biological differences. Wonder
if that’ll continue, or if they’ll spend time with more alien-looking aliens.)
The story
itself is mostly good: important stakes,
a clear objective that’s resolved in a satisfying way, and several engaging
one-shot characters. While it gets a bit
crowded at times with subplots, it largely clips along at a decent pace and
only occasionally feels too busy.
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