We are at week five now of the new season of Doctor Who, featuring the new Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. This episode was Chris Chibnall’s filth episode after last weeks “Arachnids in the UK” monster episode, hopefully all the people with arachnophobia have recovered. This week is an off earth sci-fi episode with another new alien.
So here goes, spoilers ahead.
1. Lost and Found, again.
We Start this episode in the mist of a previous adventure finding, the Doctor, Ryan, Yaz and Graham all searching through alien junk, The Doctor accidentally sets off a sonic mine which injures our team and taking them away from the TARDIS and abroad a 64th century medical vessel, the Tsuranga. Waking up from the sonic attack, the Doctor is faced with a real Doctor stating that they are still recovering.
I thought this was a nice touch as it took our Time Team away from there already developing adventure into a brand new one. We are introduced to our new supporting cast while the team are trying to escape. The supporting characters are made up of guest stars; Suzanne Packer who plays an ill pilot, Eve Cicero, her brother, comedian, Ben Bailey-Smith (Doc Brown), an Android Ronan played by David Shields and a pregnant man, Yoss who is played by Jack Shalloo and finally The two medical staff Astos and Mabil who are played by Brett Goldstein and Lois Chimimba, respectively.
2. Alien or Lilo & Stitch?
While trying to tell the Doctor that escape from the vessel they are on is completely impossible as they are all still healing, including the Doctor who has a damaged spleen, they are boarded by an alien.
To find what has boarded the medical vessel, the Doctor and Astos decide to split up, which isn’t a good idea in any Sci-fi/Horror scenario, and find the alien. After Astos is tricked into an escape pod and ejected into space the Doctor is reunited with everyone to witness our alien this week, the ‘Pting’ a little creature who eats metal and energy. The alien reminds me of Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. After escaping and containing to eat through all the energy systems of the ship, the team are in a kind of weird scenario, where the alien won’t eat them because it doesn’t eat organic life but it does it metal and energy so the ship will slowly disappear around them. The Doctor must come up with a solution to there very quickly devastating problem.
I thought the alien was cute, yet very underused, we didn’t see much of it. There was however a very nice torch when pilot eve was explaining to the Doctor what a Pting is, we saw old Doctor Who villains which included the Cybermen, Weeping Angels and the 1970’s Silurian’s as featured in the Third Doctor’s (Jon Pertwee) era.
The medical vessel which everyone is on is heading to an even bigger colony, if the Pting were to reach the colony, it would mean disaster. So the Doctor fools the Pting to eat a bomb that was put on board as a fail safe, just in case the vessel became comprised. The Pting can survive the pressure of space, so fooling the Pting, the Doctor feeds it with energy and sends it on its way.
3. Science and character.
There are two things I’m mentioning in this post, one is the science bit and there other is how much character development there was in this episode.
The science in this episode was interesting, as we saw a that in the 64th century, ships will be flown by miniature Hadron Collider‘s just like the one at CERN. This takes the premise that technology always gets smaller and less costly to make, for example the mobile telephone, back in the 1980’s mobile phones didn’t have touch screens more played music, they were solely used for phone calls, and cost quite a lot of money. Now in 2018, most people have one and most people can afford one, even if it’s cheap. This is the point I’m making, now CERN’s Hadron Collider is used to investigate the origins of the universe but in the future, we might use it for completely different properties.
The Second point is the character development between are core Team Time, Yaz again in this episode I feel is very underused, she does have a moment with the Android, Ronan, where they are protecting the Hadron Collider from being devoured by the P’ting but other than that she is neglected.
Continued belowRyan and Graham have a few touching moments, one I will talk about in the next section but throughout Graham is becoming a very grounded character, he doesn’t get swept away with all the excitement and danger, and provides a very ‘straight forward,’ ‘Black and white’ attitude which I very much enjoy. We do find out a bit more about Ryan and what happened to his mother, in which she died of a heart attack when he was thirteen, he was also the one that found her. We also have a clue at why he was staying with his grandma, Grace, and step-grandad, Graham in episode one, because his dad said he looked to much like his mother. This again is very touch and rounding out the Graham, Ryan dynamic, part of me thinks we might see Ryan’s dad pop up in an upcoming episode, well I hope so.
4. The man that gave birth.
Now, men giving birth in the future is nothing new, fan favorite Captain Jack Hakrness, once mentioned in Torchwood season one, that he gave birth and won’t be doing it again.
It is one thing to mention male birth but to see it is something else, we are given some information about 64th century pregnancy habits, for example, men give both to boys and women to girls, and when the baby is delivered, in men they are delivered by C section. This was helped reluctantly by Ryan and Graham, Yoss gives birth to, you guessed it, a baby boy. There another nice moment between Yoss and Ryan where, because Ryan’s dad wasn’t there when he was growing up, he gives Yoss inspiration to just be there.
5. The road so far….
As mentioned in my introduction, this is executive writer, Chris Chibnall’s fifth episode and I did personally find it a bit dull. The alien Pting was cute and there was some real character development going on, on a side note I do feel Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is starting to take shape, for the better, however this episode was just a bit flat.
One thing to do have to bring up is how many times does the Doctor have to use the sonic screwdriver, she dramatically points the thing at everything. She is supposed to be the smartest begging in the universe but always needs the sonic, I think it’s just lazy writing, give the Doctor problems she can solve using her mind.
In conclusion, this episode was flat with a few sparks, I am however looking forward to next weeks episode “Demons in the Punjab” were we will be meeting Yaz’s grandma in 1947, so hopefully Yaz will have more to do next week.
