Great episode! A few details/logic things bugged me, but other than that, I thought it was a real winner. Looking forward to rewatching this one!
The Doctor and Belinda have arrived in the far future, where they’re immediately dropped into the middle of a military operation. A squad has been sent to investigate a mysterious disaster on a mining facility. On a planet long rendered uninhabitable by severe radiation, something has incited the deaths of nearly everyone in the base. Our heroes meet the lone survivor and search for answers.
Before I get into the meat of the story, I have to say: at long last, the show has made up for the Twelfth Doctor knowing how to speak “baby” and “dinosaur” but not British Sign Language! Aliss, the survivor on the base, is Deaf, and she both signs and voices throughout the episode. The Doctor signs a portion of his dialogue to her, and the soldiers also have nifty wearable devices that provide holographic real-time transcription for Aliss. Plus, Aliss is surprised that Belinda doesn’t sign. “A nurse who can’t sign? That’s against the law!” she exclaims. Belinda kindly replies, “Well, we have different laws. But you’re right, it should be the law.”
I still have a few quibbles on this front. While I’m thrilled that the Doctor can sign at last, it kind of bums me out that the TARDIS apparently still can’t handle sign language. The Doctor even explains the translation circuit to Belinda at the start of the adventure, but there’s no evidence that it helps them communicate with Aliss. I would say it’s because the TARDIS isn’t in the immediate vicinity, but it’s heavily implied that the soldiers aren’t speaking Earth English, and that translates for the Doctor and Belinda just fine. It’s only BSL that the TARDIS seems to have trouble with. Additionally, the transcription devices are cool: they’re highly accurate, and a soldier can even relay the transcription of their words to another soldier’s device if Aliss isn’t looking at them. But throughout the episode, characters play fast and loose with turning them on and off. Much of the time, they only turn them on when they’re speaking to Aliss directly, repeatedly forcing her to depend on lipreading to understand what’s going on. Why? Once it’s turned on, the device can stay on. It takes more effort to turn it off and on again. What’s the point of using technology to gatekeep Aliss access to people’s speech? That definitely feels ableist to me, and unfortunately, even the Doctor and Belinda do it.
As for the adventure itself, it’s a good one. Classic base-under-siege story, only in this case, almost everyone on the base is already dead. It’s cool and creepy, drawing on previous show lore in satisfying ways—the planet and the mystery was pinging for me early on, and I was happy to see my theories play out. The mystery is creepy, and the oneshot characters are drawn well. Major stakes, nice rendering of the main baddie, and I like the solutions the characters find over the course of the episode.
I like that Belinda is getting more into the swing of things as a companion. Her nursing instincts are still quick to kick in—when one of the soldiers first discovers a body, her immediate reaction is to try and help, thinking they might still be alive—and she contributes to the investigation in important ways. In addition to noticing a key clue early on, she’s the first one to realize how the baddie operates, even if the Doctor has to fill in the blanks on some of the mechanics.
Love the Doctor in this. He’s compassionate and reassuring, with both Belinda and Aliss. At the start of the episode, as Belinda worries again about the TARDIS’s ability to get back to her time, he pulls her into a hug, kisses both her hands, and promises that he’ll find a way to bring her home and meet her parents. With Aliss, the fact that the Doctor signs has an instant calming effect, and I love that he continues to sign some of his dialogue to her even after he’s given a transcription device to wear. In a room full of nervous soldiers with itchy trigger fingers, he does everything he can to urge calm and focus, being protective of Aliss as they seek to blame her for the horrors that have happened on the facility. Besides that, he shows off some techy skills, he drops past Doctor knowledge, and he dances while wearing a spacesuit. What’s not to love?
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