It was not what I expected, which remains inherently high praise for Doctor Who. Part of this was deliberate misdirection. Our eponymous character was previewed as menacing, the post-Ruby Road trailer painting him as a traitor. What we get is him hovering over everything until he’s deployed out of nowhere to defuse Face the Raven in miniature and allow the episode to have no finale set-up whatsoever. It’s sly. Roguish even. As the first script since Can You Hear Me? to be written by someone who did not write for Series Three in 2007, which is a problem, it makes a charming impression. Certainly it makes you wish Kate Herron had done more than just direct Loki.
It’s anchored by a phenomenal cast—a fact it establishes by the four minute mark, with a one-two reveal of Indira Varma and Jonathan Groff, a duo prestige dramas from the days of HBO Go would have cut your throat for. Varma’s delivery of “a very difficult cheese” is a four course meal’s worth of old school Doctor Who acting from the days of KERA 13, where Jonathan Groff has blissfully never seen the work of Philip Madoc or Kate O’Mara and so comes to “can you do Captain Jack with less sexual harassment” pleasantly fresh. Gatwa, meanwhile, remains firmly from the days of Disney+, and is given acres of space to do it.
“Acres of space” describes it in a lot of ways, in fact. Malevolent space cosplayers is an absolutely phenomenal conceit for a monster of the week—a genre in which we’ve not even had a sincere contender since, what, the Mire? They’ve even got a good name. But they’re a complex premise as these things go, and the episode wisely paces itself around that fact. The effect is to let everyone just vibe in their Bridgerton riffs. The way in which Gatwa is on Doctor Who Unleashed absolutely cackling at his chemistry with Jonathan Groff suggests quite a lot of fun was had with it.
I keep coming back to that word. Fun is not my favorite concept, which I recognize is a me problem, but it’s nice to have it. Certainly it’s nice to see it had with such confidence. Bridgerton, notably, helped push Boom down to a season low 18th in the ratings with its four episode drop, half of which edged it out. Issuing a response episode in three weeks rivals “Meet the Grahams” in ruthless efficiency. This is stylish and knows it.
As a viewer with fun issues who’s not actually seen Bridgerton I’m not quite its target audience. I’m still too fussed on earning your emotional beats—selling the Doctor/Rogue romance better, instead of just bluntly tropesing in. But this is, again, a me problem at this point. This is plainly a show that’s got mojo.
Let’s return to that notion of expectations. This was the episode I was looking forward to least on the whole. It had midseason filler written all over it. You always hope for a Cornell or a Mathieson, but the more likely point of comparison was Graham or Whithouse. Instead I’m charmed. I’m genuinely going to miss the routine of Friday nights in Doctor Who season—rushing to my keyboard and getting thoughts out as I try to squeeze dinner around it. We’ll come to rankings when we come to rankings. I enjoyed this immensely.
- To make another point about expectations, the very first thing in my notes document is a note that “I cannot wait to see them set to battle mode,” which I’d jotted down after the earrings were put on the mantle. I’d forgotten completely by the time they went off, a delightful solution to the “dead Ruby” misdirect.
- A subtle note I appreciated in amidst all the casual queerness of this era and conscious race-blindness of the episode (a trait drawn from its source material in Bridgerton) was that the Doctor and Rogue’s romance was given a beat of being scandalous within historical context. Indeed, never mind the casual queerness of this era—Doctor Who’s engagement with queerness has never really gone in this direction, save the beats around Rose in The Star Beast.
- Some great musical cues here, from the orchestral “Bad Guy” (another actual Bridgerton lift) to the extended Kylie Minogue sequence, which provides what’s probably the peak of the Doctor/Rogue chemistry. Though I’m also pleased to see the first TARDIS scene since The Devil’s Chord.
- I was momentarily annoyed by the vapid morality of “well killing them is clearly wrong but imprisoning them in solitary confinement for all eternity is fine,” but then the script circled back to it to highlight the Doctor’s vengeful rage after Ruby’s apparent death, robbing me of things to complain about.
- “The new boss,” eh? Wonder if he’ll be interested in hearing about this fellow with two hearts.
- Though if we’re going continuity diving, can we just pause to appreciate Davies “hold my beer”ing Chibnall’s canonization of the Morbius Doctors with a casual Shalka canonization?
- Or, I mean, a Curse of Fatal Death canonization. You never know.
- More seriously, if also somehow more trivially, Rogue’s spaceship is absolutely phenomenal design work.
- I was not so much surprised as meta-surprised by the explicit reference to D&D within Doctor Who. It’s not that it’s an unexpected crossing of the streams—certainly more expected than Doctor Who and Magic: The Gathering. But it was a frame of reference the show hadn’t used before, albeit one that made absolute sense for the basic idea of the Chuldur.
- Similarly great use of the premise—the in hindsight very funny scene between Emily Beckett and Lord Barton, in which we at the time think only one of them is a malevolent shape shifting alien, only to find out that they both are and the whole scene is just alien scenery chewing.
- Much as I’ll miss it, I’m hyped as hell for the finale, where I am at this point a convert to the Sutekh theory, even if I have, to put it mildly, concerns.
- As always, this review was brought to you by my 450 Patrons, who last week got the Boom podcast I recorded with Caitlin and Miranda. They’ll also be getting an exclusive review of next week’s Tales of the TARDIS episode, to join the reviews of the first six they have. Point is, it’s good to be a Patron.
Rankings
- Dot and Bubble
- Boom
- Rogue
- The Devil’s Chord
- Space Babies
- 73 Yards