WHO REVIEW: 11-2 - "The Ghost Monument"

At last, we get a new title sequence, with Segun Akinola's new theme arrangement in all its glory. I love it - unsettling and unearthly in a way it hasn't been since the earliest days of the programme. There's still a bit of percussion there to give it some bombast, but it's an eerier, less orchestral version than we've had in a long time.

At the other end of the episode, the TARDIS finally arrives, spruced up again and with a brand new interior for a brand new Doctor. Overall, I like it. It feels somewhere between the antique McGann version and the organic Eccleston/Tennant one. I particularly like the porch area that forms the police box shape, the cogs that make up the walls (very Invasion of Time) and the coral central column, although I'll need to see some motion there before I can truly decide whether it works. Not so keen on some of the details, like the little crystal police box, although maybe that's a reading of the chameleon circuit? I do like the custard cream dispenser. Why not? Matt Smith had ketchup and mustard on his console.

And in the middle, a story, in the most straightforward of terms. Having the characters split into two pairs, each accompanying a dodgy character on a race across a dangerous planet, both lots trying to reach the finish line, stay alive and find the other side works. To set this up and then immediately bring all the characters back together... it's just a bizarre storytelling decision. For the second week running, this was a very simple story, quite literally a journey from a to b with the minimum of mystery or complexity. That's not a bad thing, per se, but I'm pleased that the next episode looks like it'll be something a bit more challenging.

Given how straightforward the story is, it's disappointing that the main characters don't get fleshed out a bit more. There are some nice emotional moments, but it never feels like they're developing as characters, or even being explored much. Yaz barely even is a character in this episode. Ryan remains likeable, and it's good that his dyspraxia is going to be running concern, although given that condition he is astonishingly on target with his blaster shots. Still, that was one of the best bits of the episode, with his hilariously girlish scream when the droids got back up again.

Bradley Walsh, as Graham, is probably the best of the companions for this episode. I don't think people are appreciating what a good performance he's giving, because Graham is such a deliberately ordinary character that it be swallowed up in all the sci-fi. Graham works better in this episode than the opener, because there's more to contrast him against. Just an Ordinary Bloke in Sheffield is one thing, but Just and Ordinary Bloke on the distant planet of Desolation is quite another. Still, there's a definite feeling that the larger team is struggling for room a bit in these two episodes. It's hardly the first time we've had a four-strong team since the revived series arrived - "Boom Town!" had Rose, Mickey and Jack join the Doctor, and there are a number of episodes with Amy, Rory and River, and that's excluding stories featuring UNIT or the Paternoster Gang. It's not like it can't work. Nonetheless, with the larger set of regulars being likened to the early Hartnell or Davison teams, it's worth noting that those groups had a lot more screentime per story. A bit of room to breathe as characters.

Guest cast-wise, Susan Lynch and Shaun Dooley were both good, Lynch particularly, although to be fair she had a lot more to work with in her character. Angstrom was far more rounded than the cliched hard-bitten, trust-no-one Epzo, but even so, both characters worked well, fitting the setting and rubbing against it each other entertainingly. Art Malik was perhaps a little wasted, but if you want someone to drop in and appear classy, enigmatic and a little sinister, you can't really go wrong in casting him. The mystery of the planet of Desolation is a bit overplayed, given that the eventual reveal is pretty obvious, but the various hazards keep everything ticking along and it never gets the chance to be boring. I especially liked the "remnants," clearly based on the ittan-momen, a Japanese yokai that exists as a roll of cotton that smothers its victims in the night. Rationalising these as bandages that clear up the dead and dying is a wonderfully sinister variation on a bit of folklore that most people in Britain likely won't have encountered before. Still, I was expecting that the planet would be revealed to be a far future Earth. A hoary old cliche in itself, but given the continual mentions of an inexplicably lost civilisation, the noting of its being in the wrong place in space, and the completely humanoid but apparently not human characters, one of whom had an inarguably human name (Swedish, in fact) seemed to make it obvious. But no, it was just some nasty old planet.

At the end of the day, a linear-as-hell storyline and bleeding obvious plot devices (Chekhov's cigar, we shall call this) aren't a problem when the point of the episode is simply to be thoroughly entertaining for fifty minutes, and under those criteria this succeeds. The decision to film in South Africa allows for some breathtaking vistas, and the episode is visually amazing from start to finish, from the impressively realised spaceship crashes to the desert plains of Tatooine Desolation.

At the centre of it all, Jodie Whittaker continues to be wonderful, with a more mercurial, less dominant Doctor than we've had for a long time. She's more than capable of taking control of a situation when it's needed, but exists largely on the sidelines, watching and learning. She's as much of a hypocrite as the other Doctors when it comes to weapons (really hammering that one home here), and has a surprisingly defeatist streak. I'm interested to see how Whittaker and Chibnall's take on the character develops. Not so enthused by the hints of a plot arc, but so far it's background stuff that isn't threatening to take over the narrative.

Kisses to the Past: The Doctor uses Venusian aikido, a martial art introduced by the third Doctor and used by the twelfth as recently as "World Enough and Time." This is the first time we've heard that it was taught to the Doctor by nuns though.

The Doctor's line about redecorating goes back to the second Doctor's appearance in The Five Doctors and has been referenced many times since, but this is the first time the Doctor's actually liked a decor scheme.

Dr. Namedropper: The Doctor pulls out some shades that she says belonged to either Audrey Hepburn or Pythagoras, which is impossible, because her pockets were empty before she picked up her new clothes in the charity shop. So the new Doctor talks arse just as much as her previous selves.