After the events of “Spyfall,” no doubt our TARDIS foursome could use a little rest and relaxation. But countless Doctor Who adventures in both TV and comics tell us that there’s no such thing as pure relaxation. So pour a glass of cucumber water, find a place to sit for a few hours (and then find another), and let’s see what adventures we can get into in this day at the Tranquility Spa in “Orphan 55.”
As always, spoilers within.
1. Something’s In The Water
Or in this case, the spa’s ionic membrane, aka the security system that keeps the spa safe from the rest of the planet, which is an “orphan planet” – – a place with no life to be found. But there is in fact life: the Dregs, biped alien creatures who have the ability to quickly adapt to everything from their environment to attacks from the spa’s security forces (led by Kane). With the enemy easily identified, our fam with a few new friends from the spa (Nevi and his son Sylas, the elderly Vilma, Bella, Kane, and spa second in command Hyph3n who also looks way too much like Barf from Spaceballs) head out to rescue Vilma’s boyfriend Benni who somehow has gotten out of the spa’s safe confines.
All this, from the introduction of our setting and dramatis personae, to the alien of the week, to the task at hand, gets revealed in the first 15 or so minutes. This had me thinking that there’s something more sinister lurking in the surface, that this isn’t just your “rescue hapless human from the aliens” story. We’ll get to that in a bit.
2. Is Someone Jealous?
Oh Yaz. You’re really showing this season so far you have something for your friend Ryan, don’t you? If it’s not shutting down his desire to chat up your sister, it’s on full display when you pointedly break in to Bella and Ryan’s conversation. The Doctor notices it too, and decides at just the right (or wrong) time to insert herself into the conversation.
Romance in the TARDIS is not one of my favorite things, save for Amy and Rory (and that’s because their relationship developed outside of their TARDIS travels). And Yaz deserves better than being just someone’s love interest. Last time I checked, there’s no singles bar by the TARDIS swimming pool.
3. OK Boomer
There’s a lot of parents and children not listening to each other and adults behaving badly to sufficiently screw up this mission. Vilma’s push to find her boyfriend is admirable, but annoying in how it manages to put a wrench into everything. (I think I may have actually turned to my boyfriend while watching Vilma scream “BENNI!!!” one time too many to cause a Dreg attack and said “Ok Boomer.”) Nevi is ignoring his tech wiz son Sylas who has the solution for when the ionic membrane goes down. And – – surprise! – – Bella turns out to be Kane’s daughter from a long-ago fling, who is hell bent on blowing up the spa to get back at her absentee mother.
It’s all a little soap operatic, but when you find out who the real enemy is (as I said before, we’ll get to that in a bit), you end up viewing these character developments in a very new context.
4. Problem Solver
Whereas last week everyone got to show off their skills to advancing the story, this adventure is full on Doctor taking charge. She’s got a plan, even if it’s only 2/8ths of a plan, and she’s going to execute it, obstacles be damned. She wants to be in full on control of this situation, and to a certain extent, she is. And it’s great to watch. It’s a Doctor I know, and a Doctor I love: bossy because she knows she’s the boss, but not condescending (unless you deserve it. Looking at you, Kane and Bella).
In spite of the fam being a bit mad at the Doctor after the events of our two-parter season opener, they put those differences aside to handle the crisis at hand. (Though let’s hope future episodes unpack that confrontation. There’s a lot Graham, Yaz, and Ryan need and deserve to know.)
Continued belowBut while the Doctor can fix things at the Tranquility Spa, there’s a larger problem that she can’t fix.
5. We Have Met the Enemy . . .
. . . and he is us. Orphan 55 is Earth, a future earth destroyed by climate change, war, food chain collapses, and all humanity’s inactions to those crises. And the Dregs are mutated humans, the few that survived this apocalypse. The alien of the week is, quite frankly, right in the mirror.
In recent interviews, Jodie Whittaker has said that this season of Doctor Who will still take on social issues, though not through the power of historical episodes such as “Rosa” or “Demons of the Punjab.” And when she teased that this episode would feature “the most frightening creature” the team would face . . . well, she was right.
6. Skolstrejk för Klimatet
It’s no secret Doctor Who has a social conscience that stretches back to its early days as an educational program. Nor has it not done an eco-centric story before. There’s something about the timing and urgency of this message that hits home harder than past installments. We watch while Australia burns. We watch while the Ring of Fire erupts in the Pacific. We watch while Puerto Rico gets hit with earthquake after earthquake. We watch while the northeastern United States sees springlike temperatures in January.
If you weren’t squirming in your seat during the Doctor’s final monologue, even a bit, get your pulse checked.
Knowing the real backstory of the Dregs and Orphan 55 puts some of the earlier character interactions in a new context, perhaps a clever take on intergenerational conflict. There’s a lot of adults ignoring the kids (Nevi and Sylas) and adults not seeing past the end of their noses (Vilma). Bella’s activism is not without blame, for its motivations are selfish. It is in those final moments that you do see parents and children working together: Kane and Bella facing down an army of Dregs that breached the spa perimeter, Nevi and Sylas fixing the transponder to get everyone away from the spa. But is it too little, too late for the long term?
The ending of this episode is purposefully ambiguous. We don’t know if Kane and Bella survive the Dreg attack on Tranquility Spa. We don’t know if this is the destined fate of Earth. We do know, as the Doctor says, that we have the power to avoid it, so we better damn well try.
The Greta Thunbergs of the world are telling us that our planet is on fire. And we can be like Vilma and not see past the end of our noses, or we can be like Bella and Kane and take up arms alongside the children who we leave this planet to. The choice is ours.
Afterthoughts:
– No Graham, no one wants to see you in a Speedo either.
– Of note is that this episode is directed by Ed Hime, who directed “It Takes You Away” from the previous season (that one with the fjords and the frog). It’s a complete 180 from that philosophical sci-fi tale, but when you have to put forth a pointed message, he certainly seems the man to do it.
Lines of the night:
– The Doctor: “This is not the way to resolve a family dispute. How about some good old passive aggressive discussion?”
– The Doctor, to Kane: “If I had crayons and half a can of Spam I could build you from scratch, now get out of my way!”
