WHO REVIEW: 11-11) "Resolution"

Without getting too far into the implications or thought processes behind ditching a highly sought after Christmas Day slot, it was strange not to have an episode of Doctor Who to look forward to on the big day, for the first time in thirteen years. However, it was great to have a new episode to look forward to on New Year's Day, when we had been slobbing around for the entire day, waiting for the takeaways to reopen because we missed lunchtime and filling time by watching Disney cartoons. Looking at the overnights, it looks like "Resolution" did very poorly, dropping below episode ten's fairly low initial ratings, but it was still fourth most watched for the day. It looks like New Year's Day is a terrible day to be scheduling event television these days, which might also suggest moving away from Christmas was a foolish idea.

All that aside, "Resolution" (a title that works on several levels, although "Resolution of the Daleks" would have better warmed my fan heart) was a very entertaining episode, providing the big stakes, high spectacle finale that series eleven really needed. Keeping the Daleks - or rather, Dalek - back for the special was a sensible move, although I'm in two minds about whether it was a good idea to keep mum about its inclusion for so long. I'm put in mind of John Nathan-Turner's turning down of a Radio Times cover for Earthshock in 1982, so as to better keep the surprise of the Cybermen returning. Top marks for maintaining the surprise, but less successful in generating viewer interest.

Suz managed to avoid the spoilers and still guessed it was a Dalek as soon as it was described as "like a squid," and most fans guessed it was a Dalek once the trailer hit with the line about it being the deadliest creature in the universe. Was there really any benefit in staying quiet on the matter?

Nonetheless, the episode worked. There are plenty of viewers who think the Daleks are becoming tired and overused, and it's hard to argue with that. We've had an appearance by them almost every year since the series returned in 2005, whether it was a two-part Dalek extravaganza or an extended cameo. They've very nearly been done to death, and so the initial announcement that series eleven wouldn't feature any old monsters (still technically true) didn't bother me. On the other hand, if there's one monster that every Doctor really has to face, it's the Daleks. There's a sense that a Doctor doesn't really count until he/she faces them. Of the eleven previous main Doctors (ie starring in an ongoing series on TV), eight had a Dalek story in their first season. McCoy only had to wait till his second, Pertwee and Davison hung on till their third. The various eighth Doctor media wasted little time in pitting him against the pepperpots, and the War Doctor was defined by his enmity with them. The Doctor exists in opposition to the Daleks, even if there have been long stretches when they haven't appeared.

So they had to come back at some point, and bringing them back for the special/finale was a good move. It was also a very good decision to feature a single, lone Dalek, to once again show the that they could be a genuine, frightening threat. This is the exact tactic used by Eccleston's 2005 episode "Dalek," the episode to which "Resolution" is most clearly indebted (and to significantly less effect by Capaldi 2014 episode "Into the Dalek"). Daleks, like most villainous hordes, suffer from the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu - there's only a finite amount of badassery allowed onscreen, so that one Dalek can kill a planet but a thousand of them can be mown down by human resistance or Cybermen.

In most respects, the Dalek scout - a new variation created to have extra-awesome abilities for this one episode - is successful in making the Daleks a threat again. At first, crawling around outside its shell and then hitching a lift on the unsuspecting Lin, commanding her in a sneering baritone (spectacular work once again by Nick Briggs), the Dalek is scarier than ever. It's made clear this thing is a deadly threat even without the armour and weaponry we normally associate with it (even though it's hard to see how it didn't get squashed when Lin was driving it around). It rebuilds itself in increments, first recovering its (miraculously intact) gun stick and using it for prolonged execution of human obstacles, before rebuilding its shell from bits and pieces lying around. The finished junkyard Dalek is a design triumph, still recognisably a Dalek but just different enough to be effective, and clearly a cobbled together version rather than some old prop that's been dirtied up.

On the other hand, the fact that the Dalek was defeated back in the ninth century by a bunch of primitives with swords and flaming torches reduces its threat significantly. I'm fine with the Doctor using Chekov's oven to blast it with microwaves sine that's the sort of improbable techno-wizardry we expect from her, just like the Dalek being able to fight off tanks when it's wearing a few old bits of Dalekanium and some farming equipment. A bit of steel and fire though should not have stood a chance. The opening is frankly strange in any case. Aside from the question of what the hell a Polynesian, a Russian and a Briton are doing interacting in the ninth century, it serves only to provide a cool and epic opening monologue. The Dalek is hacked into three bits and buried in opposite sides of the globe, only to beam itself back together as soon as one chunk is revived. Narratively, it's almost entirely pointless.

However, for the most part it works, because not only does the Dalek get to be a threat, but it gets to have a character, and, crucially, it has achieves no redemption. In both "Dalek" and "Into the Dalek," the eponymous creature is tainted with humanity and becomes, to some extent, redeemed by the episode's end, forcing the Doctor to end hostilities. It would have been very easy, and entirely wrong, to allow Whittaker's Doctor to come to a similar conclusion. The thirteenth Doctor has been unequivocally pacifist during this last season, at least in word if not always in deed. Talking a villain down or giving them a serious telling off is not something that can be allowed to work with a Dalek except in very, very unusual circumstances. To have the Doctor offer the Dalek one final chance to flee before giving it a microwave suntan without pity is exactly right. We desperately needed the Doctor to be pushed to the point where she'd actually fight, and if the Daleks can't do that, nothing can.

Whittaker's a joy to watch as usual, and gets to finally own an episode, but her companions aren;t given the same opportunity. The best served is Tosin Cole as Ryan, who finally gets to sit down and confront his absent father (Daniel Adegboyega), and while he's hardly the best actor in the ensemble, he shines with personal, family material like this. Whether he should have forgiven his father is a matter for debate, but Doctor Who should be a hopeful show, so I think it's the right conclusion. Bradely Walsh gets less to do as Graham, being deliberately left out of the main action for a while so that he can talk to his stepson Aaron, but his performance remains one of the best elements of the series. It's Mandip Gill's often overshadowed Yaz who is seriously overlooked her, with very little to do, even though there was a perfect opportunity to have her deal with her police connections. Chibnall desperately needs to find her some material that she deserves.

Even though the series continues to struggle to give three companions enough material, here we get three more pseudocompanions. Nikesh Patel as Mitch is essentially companion number four for this episode, and he's charming enough to convince as a potential returnee, but it's Charlotte Ritchie, who is magnetic as Lin and unnerving as the Dalek puppet, who steals all her scenes. It has to be said that Lin and Mitch display more chemistry in their initial scene than Team TARDIS do all episode. Adegboyega does well as Aaron, both sympathetic and rather pitiful, although shoehorning him into the TARDIS as well is a bit of a contrived way to give his story some, (sorry), resolution.

Still, with the usual Chibnall caveats that the writing is at best competent and at worst baffling, this was a fun and exciting special that gave series eleven the finale it needed. It's going to be a long wait till 2020 (another bizarre decision), but at least 2019's sole episode was a hit.


Wardrobe Department: Yes, the Doctor's new scarf really is very snazzy, but Graham's got some good scarf game this episode too.

The Shallow Bit: Yeah, big crush on Charlotte Ritchie.

The History of the Daleks: The arrival of the Dalek scout on Earth in the ninth century pushes Dalek activity back a lot further than previously thought (assuming that the Dalek isn't a time traveller, of course, which is never stated but is by no means impossible). Parkin and Pearson's AHistory suggests an eighth century date for Genesis of the Daleks, which is not too hard to fit with Dalek scouts travelling in space in the ninth but would suggest that they weren't entombed beneath the Dalek ciity for very long at all. The Dalek scout is far more advanced than an immediately post-Genesis specimen ought to be, though, even if it is a souped-up special version.

On their more recent history, I guess we just have to assume that neither the earlier Dalek appearances in the 21st century just never happened anymore. Moffat realised that it was basically impossible to allow "Journey's End" to exist and maintain any kind of sense of reality for contemporary scenes, so stuffed it down a crack, and "Dalek" was hard to reconcile with "Doomsday" from the get-go. Maybe with UNIT in suspense due to funding cuts and Torchwood seemingly defunct there won't be anymore retcon in the water and people will start remembering the periodic alien invasions again.

Dialogue Triumphs: 
Dalek: "Who are you? Identify!"
Doctor: "Oh, mate. I'm the Doctor. Ring any bells?"

Dialogue Disasters: Jesus, did no one think to cut the line referring to the Dalek as a refugee? That is tone deaf in the extreme.

WHOTOPIA issue 33 out now

The latest issue of the ongoing Doctor Who fanzine Whotopia is now available for download. This issue's overall theme is "Out of the Shadows." It looks at long lost characters' returns, and at moments when underutilised or underexplored characters and elements came into their own and realised their potential.

Amongst the many articles, on characters as varied as Adric, Mel and the Brigadier, is the latest column in my "Master Who" series. This time I look at Sir Derek Jacobi's quietly sinister incarnation of the villainous Time Lord. There's also a look at the latest series, the beginning of an epic trek through the entire series from 1963 onwards, and a farewell to Whotopia editor and top gent Jez Strickley.

Click on the link to download and read for free.

WHO REVIEW: 11-10 - "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos"

Well, I found that quite enjoyable. It was an unchallenging, pacy episode which had some interesting elements. What it wasn't was a season finale. Given that the series has been altogether quieter and less bombastic than previous runs, a relatively low-key final episode isn't a huge problem. Nonetheless, it's hard to argue that there wasn't a better way to end the thirteenth Doctor's debut series than with an episode like this. RTD went all out with his finales - hordes of Daleks, armies of Cybermen, the imminent destruction of the universe. While Moffat gave us introspective season finales, they were also major event episodes - the collapse of history, the Doctor's last stand against storming aliens, the raising of the dead as Cybermen. This episode does present us with a threat to the planet Earth, but at such a remove that the threat never really hits home.

Not that there isn't plenty going on in this episode. More ideas are thrown at the screen than we've seen before this season (with the arguable exception of the universe-frog episode that precedes it). The Ux are an intriguing new addition to the series' mythos; a race of beings that only ever exist as a pair, seemingly Sith-like, as master and apprentice. Blessed with enormous powers, they provide some much needed sci-fi spectacle, although their nature is in dire need of further exploration and explanation. How can a species only exist two at a time? How did they even develop a culture, and most bizarrely, how can they exist on only three planets of the universe? Even if they stood on one planet each, they'd still not manage that. Not to mention that, even with a religion that supposedly values doubt, they immediately believe the first alien who lands on their doorstep is god and proceed to do what he says for three thousand years. Intriguing beings, but utterly stupid.

The shrunken planets, held in tenuous equilibrium as part of a gigantic engine of destruction, is a fantastic idea, although it was an even better idea when Douglas Adams first did it in The Pirate Planet in 1978. Still, if you're going to steal, steal from the best, and the visual presented here is provocative. The concept of a planet that messes with your memories and perceptions is a brilliant one, and while Mark Addy's character Paltraki sells some of the horror of losing your sense of self, the concept simply isn't explored far enough to make it worthy of inclusion. Illustratively, the characters have to wear neural inhibitors to stop them losing their minds, but when the Doctor and Yaz give theirs up to help free the Ux, there's no sense of jeopardy at all. This could have upped the ante of the episode significantly, providing powerful imagery and raised stakes for two main characters, but in the event, they just get headaches and then put the things back on again after a few minutes.

Bringing back Tim Shaw as the villain is an unsurprising move, but not a foregone one. I feel he works much better here than in the first episode, as a vengeful, twisted manipulator than a rampaging killer. Having spent 3407 years sitting and stewing (I'm assuming he didn't get chucked back in time, making it the year 5423 now), he's got nothing more on his mind than accruing power to get back at the various planets he thinks have wronged him. Aside from the usual outlandish coincidences that just need to be accepted in Doctor Who (Tim Shaw lands right by the only two individuals on the entire planet; the Doctor picks up the distress signals left by the soldiers of his victim races), this is a solid plot for a finale, but tooth-face just isn't a strong enough villain to hold a climactic adventure. He's a strong villain as presented here, but strictly middle-episode fare. He wouldn't last twenty minutes against the Daleks of the Master, even with the Ux on his side.

A finale doesn't need to hinge on apocalyptic events, however. Emotional stakes can be just as earth-shattering. It's Graham who carries the emotional weight of this episode, shouldering and eventually finally coming to terms with Grace's death. Fortunately, Bradley Walsh is capable of taking the emotional burden for the whole cast. The grieving man's revenge plot might be a hoary old cliche, but it has emotional punch and, while predicated on violence as a response to violence, it entirely understandable. There's also a good argument to be made that Graham is right to hunt down the alien. While it's absolutely right that he finally decides to be "the better man" and spare Tim Shaw's life, we're talking about an individual who has dedicated his life to hunting, killing and abducting innocent people across the universe. I love how Graham refers to Tim as a creature, and "it," refusing to even speak of him in human terms. It's a perfectly understandable response to the alien and his philosophy of violence.

It's the Doctor who comes off worst in this episode, in a way that provides real potential for future exploration. The thirteenth Doctor has been rigidly pacifistic in her words, but has slipped from that ideal more than once in action. She remains hypocritical, pledging the wrongs of violence when confronted with a being she set up to die by liquefying his DNA. The script at least takes her to task when she orders everyone to put down their guns, but saddles up with grenades, and notably she doesn't have a good answer. All the Doctors have been hypocrites when it comes to their use of violence, but none have been so vehemently pacifist in philosophy while failing to back it up with any alternative. It could be very interesting to see what happens when this Doctor comes up against a foe that truly can't be reasoned with or talked down. (If the New Year's special really is Resolution of the Daleks, we might see that very soon.)

It's hard to credit that Graham and Ryan could outmanoeuvre killer robots and the Stenza when waves of soldiers were captured (and immediately ran away once freed), but this is par for the course in Doctor Who, which sees teenaged girls outwit Autons and Silurians. It's still great to see them trap him in his own stasis prison, although again, the moral philosophy deserves exploration. Is this really more humane than killing the guy? And doesn't it just mean that, one day, he's going to get out again, ready for revenge once more? The Doctor singularly failed to deal with Tim Shaw when she zapped him away from Earth with a malfunctioning teleporter, and again, the threat has been subdued but not ended. Even so, I can't imagine many people will be clamouring to see the third part of the Tim Shaw trilogy.

Neither Yaz nor Ryan seem very well used here. At least Ryan gets to work on his relationship with his grandfather while they fight for their lives, but Yaz is mostly there to parrot the Doctor's words back. She's suffered a lot from that this year, but this episode was the most blatant, and it's a pity, because Madip Gill is clearly capable of handling strong material when she's given it. Mark Addy is a welcome face, but he's wasted with his part here, just as so many brilliant guest actors have been wasted on undeveloped minor roles on this programme in the past. Phyllis Logan, as the Ux elder Andinio, manages to bring some real gravitas to a fairly ludicrous part, while he co-Ux Percelle Ascott commands much sympathy as the more downtrodden, more self-aware of the two.

So, a flawed episode but fun, one that has the promise of something better with a polish and more room to breathe. Hasn't that been the case for most of this season? With both Chibnall and Whittaker back next season, but not until 2020, there's some considerable work to be done to tighten up the scripts so that this iteration of the series can reach its potential. The series has clearly been a hit with the general viewership, and there's something to be said for more straightforward, more accessible adventures. But there's been a lack of punch to most of the episodes, with even the best of them ("Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab," for my money) showing clear room for improvement. Given the drop in interest that will doubtless come from making audiences wait for over a year (and with no Christmas specials), they really need to make the most of the series' best elements for maximum impact on its return.

Title Tattle: "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos" is surely the most blandly sci-fi title the series has ever had. It's hardly a memorable planet name either (I'll memorise it, of course, but that's my brain problem).

The Timeless Child: What was that all about then? Was that put in "The Ghost Monument" just to give us something to latch onto as an arc phrase, because it's not been mentioned since.

Best line:

"Tim Shaw, how long's it been?"
"Three thousand, four hundred and seven years."
"I bet the seven really dragged."

Season eleven rankings:

1. Demons of the Punjab
2. Rosa
3. The Witchfinders
4. The Tsuranga Conundrum
5. Kerblam!
6. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
7. It Takes You Away
8. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
9. The Ghost Monument
10. Arachnids in the UK

WHO REVIEW: 11-9 - "It Takes You Away"

This, it seems, is series eleven's Marmite episode, with friends and critics alike either praising it as the greatest episode all year or an irredeemable pile of rubbish. As for me... well, I'm not quite sure whether I liked it or not. There was an awful lot to like about this episode, but the overall effect didn't quite gel for me.

Ed Hime's first script for the series is not short on ambition, charging from one idea to another. The episode is really four entirely different, barely connected settings: first it's a Nordic thriller threatening to become a horror story; then it's suddenly a creepy adventure in a goblin's maze; after that, it becomes an emotional and philosophical piece about love and loss; and finally, it's a woman standing in an empty room talking to a frog. Whether any of these elements actually manage to work together is a matter of opinion. While it's great to see the series really displaying some imagination and throwing ideas at the screen with abandon, the result is pretty incoherent.

The first segment of the episode takes inspiration from the many Scandinavian dramas that have become popular across Europe, a genre that Doctor Who hasn't previously explored but that seems absolutely ideal for the series. After a bit of fun silliness from the Doctor, getting her bearings by taste like her Tennant incarnation and winding up her companions with tales of the Woolly Rebellion, events rapidly move into unsettling, tense territory. There's something out there, it seems, the thing that "takes you away," and Hanne is alone in a boarded-up house fearing for her life. One thing that can't be argued with is how brilliant young Ellie Wallwork is as Hanne, portraying a bolshy, frightened, likeable girl who grounds the episode and shoulders a lot of the emotional work. She's really quite excellent, and it's good to see the series' commitment to diversity still going strong (two years ago we had a deaf actor playing a deaf character, now we have a blind actor playing a blind character, although this time her sensory disability is more significant to the plot).

Ellie's relationship with the regular cast is illuminating, bringing out distinct elements of their characters. The Doctor, for all her oddness (and she's at her most deliberately strange this episode), is primarily a reassuring presence, and acts as such here, putting Hanne at ease even while she's coming to concerning conclusions about her situation. Graham even more so, providing a grandad figure (and I absolutely love that he's carrying his own sandwiches around. He'd have got on well with Tennant's Doctor, at least they could have gone for chips). Yaz reassures Hanne in a more calculated way, utilising her police training to fix on something she finds comforting to distract her. But Ryan does nothing but antagonise her, immediately assuming her dad has just abandoned her. Of course, this is a perfectly natural assumption from Ryan given his family history, but he also happens to be absolutely right. He and Hanne remain at loggerheads until he proves he has her back, making him the only character (including her dad) who actually has any kind of relationship with her.

There's plenty of scope for a solid fifty-minute episode just here, but barely twenty minutes in, the cast jump through a magic mirror into a subterranean troll dimension. This section is the most visually and atmospherically effective part, mainly because of Kevin Eldon's turn as the sinister creature Ribbons of the Seven Stomachs. Eldon is one of those actors, like Alan Cumming, who you'd swear blind had been in Doctor Who before, he's such a perfect fit for it. In fact, he has once, as a companion of all things - he voiced Antimony in the webcast Death Comes to Time - but this is his first time onscreen, and quite rightly, he gets to be a monster. The question of just how Ribbons, the flesh moths, and the various other critters managed to be in the Anti-Zone between universes remains frustratingly unanswered. It's perfectly fine to have unanswered questions, of course, but this seems more like something has been overlooked. There's more to this peculiar new cosmology than we get to know, and without it, the episode struggles to make sense. There are effective set pieces but they don't fit together.

WHO REVIEW: 11-8 - "The Witchfinders"

This season's third historical adventure continues to show that the thirteenth Doctor's best episodes are those set in the past. Unlike “Rosa” or “Demons of the Punjab,” though, “The Witchfinders” is an episode that relies heavily on an alien influence. That's not to say that a purely historical episode set during the witch trials wouldn't work, but it would be a very different story to the one we enjoyed on Sunday night. While there's a moral side to the story, “The Witchfinders” is unashamedly in the mould of the theme park history romps of the previous few Doctors, and that's great. As good as the more serious historicals this season have been, it's worth reminding viewers that trips to the past can be a lark as well.

Even especially silly historical episodes like “The Unquiet Dead” and “The Unicorn and the Wasp” had impressive death counts, and you don't visit a seventeenth century witch hunt without some horrific moments. The strength of this episode lies in its balance between the outlandish and the realistically grim, with the gruesome but ridiculous Morax making for a threat that's easy enough for the Doctor to defeat, while the more frightening and far more real danger of the witch trials is something she has no way to stop. The Doctor rids the unlikely-named Bilehurst Cragg of the unearthly monsters, but it's they who destroy the more human threat of Becka Savage, even if the Doctor does twig the truth just beforehand.

Most damningly, the Doctor fails to talk her way out of her own execution by King James. It's hardly the first time the Doctor has been on the verge of execution, and only escaped by ordinary luck or extraordinary ability, but it does come after a series of adventures where her impact on events has been minimal. It's a good thing that at last we have some good old-fashioned monsters for her to beat (in rather perfunctory fashion), to show she can still do the essential Doctoring. She does manage to talk down the King for a moment, but the Doctor's moving words aren't a match for his combination of religious zealotry and fear. This comes in an episode where, for the first time, the Doctor has to really deal with the different attitudes faced by women.

The witch hunts were, of course, as mired in misogyny as they were in religious mania (as with King James) and personal vendetta and survival (as with Becka). While plenty of men were tried and executed as witches, far more of the unfortunate victims were women. While the real life trials at Pendle Hill weren't nearly as devastating as those in its fictional neighbouring village, the numbers speak for themselves: eleven were tried as witches, nine of them women, and only of one the twelve was found innocent. The rest were executed (another woman never reached trial, dying in prison). While the use of the ducking stool as a method of trial is historically unlikely – these were generally used as a punishment for unfaithful wives and similarly victimised women – the unsurvivable method of attempting to drown a supposed witch and then executing her if she survived – drives home the impossible situation and sheer cruelty an accused witch faced. The folkloric confusion between the two actions stems, no doubt, from the fact that they were similarly spurious accusations used to dispose of troublesome women with enemies.

It was essential that the Whittaker had the opportunity to simply strut her stuff as the Doctor before having to explore the difficulties of being a Lady of Time, but equally a story like this had to happen before the year was out. The simple fact is that the world was (and is) a very dangerous place for women, and there are many eras and places where being female will damage the Doctor's standing. I'm pretty sure that Capaldi's Doctor would still have been strung up if he'd been waving his magic wand around during a witch scare, but he wouldn't have faced the dismissal and patronising attitudes of men. Unfortunately, to follow this up with the Doctor unable to win out against the King using her wit and words, even if only temporarily, makes her character appear weaker when she needed to show what she was made of. At the end, the Doctor has one the King's respect, but too late to have saved her from a ducking.

It's interesting that this is the first of the season's historical adventures to be set in Britain (although “Demons of the Punjab” intersects profoundly with British history). The episode could have been set as effectively in the Salem witch hunts, and Doctor Who has visited these events in the past (in the first Doctor novel The Witch Hunters, by Steve Lyons), and this has overtaken the British witch hunts in popular culture. However, it's clear that both writer Joy Wilkinson and director Sally Aprahamian are drawing more on older British cultural artefacts like Blood on Satan's Claw and Witchfinder General (which have been subject to much parody in the past before the era fell out of fashion – both Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Black Adder (in “Witchsmeller Pursuivant”)had elaborate witchfinding stories) but all this had faded in popularity by the mid-eighties.

Of course, setting this Britain means we get to have King James as our historical celebrity guest. In contrast to the rest of the cast, Alan Cumming plays the King as larger than life, fruitily arrogant and unashamedly camp. When it matters, though, Cumming allows the King quieter, more serious moments. King James (VI of Scotland and I of England) is a fascinating figure, one whose life was plagued by violence and threats. His fear of those who would hunt him is underplayed, as is the tragedy of his background, but it allows some context to his actions here. In reality James had become less zealous in his witch hunting by 1612, but he was committed to his faith throughout his life and was a major proponent of the fight against evil, as he saw it, during his time in Scotland (a country he all but abandoned to his underlings once ascending to the English throne). Of course, you can't have King James onscreen without flagrant gay flirting, and his coming on to Ryan doesn't disappoint there (Ryan, for his part, takes it all in his stride). James' sexuality has been subject to rumour and debate since his youth, so the accuracy of this portrayal is something for discussion. Nonetheless, if you're going to write King James as a flamboyant gay demon-hunter, there's no better casting than Alan Cumming.

Siobhan Finneran also makes for a fine guest star as the unethical but desperate Becka, playing her hard enough to be a compelling villain but with enough sympathy to make her motives understandable. Tilly Steele is equally good as Willa, the next in line for Becka's persecution until the Doctor draws the attention. There's an interesting angle to Willa's characterisation, with her following a sort of earth-based faith that would now be called pagan and then would be called satanic. Judeo-Christian religions have a long, long history of (literally) demonising other faiths and belief systems, and while Becka's attacks on the villagers are motivated as by desperation, personal interest and classism, they are fuelled by religious fanaticism. James was fanatical in his belief he was doing God's work, and the many commoners who rallied behind the witch hunts were driven by both unquestioning belief and fear. The Doctor takes a more rationalist stand against blind faith in the supernatural, in keeping to how they were portrayed in earlier incarnations.

There's a problem with using Doctor Who to criticise religion, though. Yaz shouts down the faithful: “They're not possessed by the Devil, but by alien mud!” In the words of Dave Lister: “Oh good, something sensible at last.” A bunch of alien criminals made from dirt is no less ridiculous than possession by demons; it's a bit hollow for the Doctor to dismiss belief in Satan when she's actually met him. Still, her focus on the “twist in the sequel” to Christianity being “love thy neighbour” is a very nice touch, even if that phrase did originate in the Old Testament. At the end of the day, as much as I have problems with religion, using faith for good instead of harm is a far better message than believing in technobabble monsters over demons.

WHO REVIEW: 11-7 - KERBLAM!

Funny one this. On the one hand, it's a solid, highly enjoyable episode with a style and premise that would have slotted in quite happily at any point in the series in the last few years - in fact, as a few have pointed out, it's possible to imagine it as a seventh Doctor story with minimal tweaking. On the other, it's as brazenly political as the year has been so far, but with a muddled message that eventually comes down on very much the wrong side of the debate.

What's good? Well, eerily cheerful robots creeping about policing workers is about perfect for an episode of Doctor Who, and the revelation of explosive bubble wrap as the weapon of choice is basically perfect. If anything, showing it earlier would have made even more of the concept, but it still works as a sudden shock reveal. Some strong direction from Jennifer Perrott helps us overlook the fact that this isn't the most visually scintillating episode. We spend an awful lot of screentime amongst warehouse shelving and the climax is filmed in a car park from the looks of it, but some clever direction makes it look effective. Pete McTighe's debut script is snappy and witty, moving at a pace that's been lacking in some of the recent episodes.

This is the first episode where the regular cast hasn't felt too big. Maybe Graham gets a little less to do than usual, but since he's dominated much of the previous stories that's not such a problem. Yaz shines when she gets to investigate on her own, bonding with Dan (a fun turn from Lee Mack, and quite right that the bloke with the stupid sense of humour shares my name), and she finally gets to use some of her police skills both in investigation and holding a suspect. Ryan, too, fits nicely in this episode, and it's good to see the writers haven't completely forgotten about his dyspraxia.

While there are any number of corporations that could be viable targets for this episode, Kerblam! is so transparently a parody of Amazon it's surprising they didn't just call it Shamazon or something. Amazon's record for workers' rights is appalling; they're well known as one of the worst employers in the top rungs of companies, actively blocking workers from joining unions and by all accounts putting profit and efficiency above fair treatment. On the other hand, they're not exactly known for rampant automation, a much more general concern that has existed for decades.

And let's look at the actual story. McTighe tells a tight story but the allegory lacks a focus. At first, it looks like he's taking a pop at the profits-over-people corporate mindset, but the in the end the episode comes out firmly on the side of Amazon and its ilk. Don't get me wrong, as much as Amazon pisses me off with its policies and its tax dodging, I still buy half my stuff through them. Capitalism exploits a market, and there's a market for speed and convenience. They might not quite be at the stage of teleporting drones to other planets, but give them time. (Although the Doctor must have ordered that fez before getting stuck on Trenzalore, so it's taken Kerblam! a good two thousand years to deliver it. Not exactly Amazon Prime.)

It's not as though young terrorist Charlie (Leo Flanagan) is a good guy, by any means. It's entirely right that the Doctor lays into him for being prepared to murder innocents to further his political aims. But it's not as if his politics are in themselves wrong. As someone living in a society with rampant unemployment, being told to be grateful that there's a company committed to 10% human hiring, it's entirely right that he pits himself against the System. It's his methods that are wrong, not his ideology. Yet the Doctor leaps to the defence of the System - and there's some semantic difficulty here, since that refers to both the AI that runs Kerblam! and the politico-economic system that supports it. The Doctor makes the point that it's not the system that's at fault, but the people that exploit it, and she's not wrong, but isn't that splitting hairs? And when it comes to the System AI, let's not forget that it murdered Kira - played with maximum adorableness by Claudia Jessie to really hit home - just to spite Charlie and hopefully make him change his ways by breaking his heart. (Which doesn't even work.) How is that any different to Charlie's own murders to further his principles?

Indeed, it's bizarre seeing the Doctor squeeing over the Kerblam! man even before she came out firmly on the side of the company. Yes, she's on great form during the investigation, climbing the walls like a bored child and taking down the workplace bully a peg or two, but otherwise she's seriously against character. Let's imagine for a moment that this was a seventh Doctor story. Yes, he'd have strung up Charlie by his own petard, but no doubt have organised a workers' revolution before he left, probably blowing up the warehouse as well. The episode starts as a critique of Amazon, before ending up in support of it. It's an episode with a decent story but an incoherent message.

Best joke: Kerblam! is shut down for a month, and grants all workers two weeks' paid leave. Judy (Julie Hesmondhalgh) even manages to make it sound like a grand magnanimous gesture.

Title-Tattle: "Kerblam!" is the first Doctor Who episode to sport on onscreen title with an exclamation mark. I could have sworn "Boom Town" had one, but it turns out I imagined it. There have been plenty of non-TV stories that use exclamation points though.

While we're here, can we please address the rumours and reports that Doctor Who is losing viewers and is in trouble? The latest series is doing spectacularly well, drawing in viewers in consistently higher numbers than since Matt Smith's early days. As you can see in this article, although the series has seen a drop in viewers since it started this year, this is by no means a surprise, nor a concern. Every season of Doctor Who has lost viewers as it ran; in fact, pretty much every TV series suffers this as long as it's marketed properly. It gets its biggest audience for the first episode, then interest gradually wanes, and then there's often a spike for the finale. It's normal, it's expected. What's more, Doctor Who series eleven has seen higher figures than Capaldi's run, and been higher rated, consistently making the weekly top ten programmes. Since the above article was published, "Kerblam!" achieved overnights of 5.93 million, an increase of 0.13m on the previous episode "Demons of the Punjab."

While it's also true that more viewers are being counted in this year's ratings, as non-TV based viewers are being included in the full count for the first time, they don't amount to enough to change the fact that the ratings are much higher than the last couple of years. Doctor Who Magazine goes into depth in its latest issue (#532 if you wish to read it), and while obviously they're going to have a vested interest in pushing the popularity of the show, they also get viewership reports directly from the BBC. The opening episode "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" has a consolidated rating of 10.95 million, which is to say these were the full figures over the course of the week from its broadcast. In contrast, "Rose" had a consolidated rating of 10.81m, making Jodie Whittaker's debut the highest rated episode for a new Doctor this century. While there might be some allowance made for differences in viewership stats measurement in the intervening thirteen years, it's still a huge result. The week's consolidated ratings for Capaldi's last episode were 7.92m, while Whittaker's debut, using the same metric (TV viewers only) still achieved 10.54m, a huge increase. Sliding down to around 8 million sees series eleven averaging out where series ten hit its best. Even the overnights are higher than they have been for years, before you take into account time-shifted viewers. So any bloggers and YouTubers who are claiming that fans are desperately insisting the series isn't failing (with rows of laughing face emojis as their counter-argument) are simply wrong. Indeed, it's mostly fans of previous series who are complaining about the show, and while they're obviously entitled to dislike the new direction, the general viewership - you know, normal people who don't pour over it like us - clearly like it. They don't seem to have a problem with a female Doctor, a Muslim in the TARDIS, diverse casts and socially aware stories either.

WHO REVIEW: 11-6 - "Demons of the Punjab"

"Demons of the Punjab" is, by far, the strongest episode of the season so far. The only episode to rival it is "Rosa," and there's a clear indication that this new version of Doctor Who is strongest when presenting historical, socially aware stories rather than escapist adventures. More cynically, I might point out that these two episodes are the ones with the least involvement from showrunner Chris Chibnall. "Rosa" was co-written by Malorie Blackman, while this has a sole writing credit for Vinay Patel. On the other hand, the episode feels very much a part of the new Who; while there has been quite a variety of stories in just these six episodes, series eleven still feels consistently part of one vision for the programme. Chibnall has stated he's using the open writing room approach to brainstorm ideas, and while this episode seems very much the work of Patel, others doubtless had influence.

Some have questioned why the two writers of colour this season have written scripts specifically concerned with their racial backgrounds. Patel, at least, is on record stating that this is very much the story he wanted to tell. This is surely not a shock, to anyone except the most parochial viewers. The Partition of India is one of the most significant events in the history of the world, one that continues to have repercussions for people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) and the United Kingdom. The rights and wrongs of the British Empire and its actions worldwide are far too big a subject to go into here, but the Partition is a singular event that triggered astonishing violence. It was, of course, intended to prevent conflict, but human nature is far more aggressive and complicated than that and the idea that drawing a line through a map would somehow leave a community happily divided is tragically flawed.

Such world-changing events are impossible to really comprehend by individuals, so stories like this - seeing the effects on people's lives, on their families - let's us understand it in personal terms. I have friends who's parents and grandparents experienced very similar events to Prem and Umbreen, with the border line drawn right through villages, splitting communities down the middle. What's surprising about Patel's script is that it doesn't give much time to the British Empire's responsibility here. There's the odd line about Englishmen not being very welcome, but it's not followed up, and there's the Doctor's slightly ill thought out line about the Viceroy Mountbatten. Overall, though, the British responsibility for the crisis is overlooked in favour of placing the responsibility for the violence on those who became radicalised. Which is not wrong, by any means, as the responsibility for violence lies at the hands of those who perform it, but all such situations exist in context. As well as the British officials, there were Hindu nationalists and an influential Pakistan Movement calling for a two-nation system. It's complicated, and, like with "Rosa," this is just too big a subject to examine properly in a fifty minute TV show.

Which is not to say it isn't worthwhile. It's frustrating how little most people in Britain know about an event that is a significant part of our history, not least because of the large numbers of Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani people, and their immediate descendants, who live here. I only know a little myself, although the episode has encouraged me to read into the events more. I imagine the episode will prompt others to learn more about it too.

So, while the subject is a worthwhile one, it would be wasted on an episode that was poorly scripted and realised. Fortunately, this is easily the strongest script of the season so far, and the performances are, for the most part, very strong. The weak line, unfortunately, is Amita Suman, who is captivatingly beautiful but sadly very wooden in her acting with some poor delivery, which is a problem when her character demands so much screentime. Fortunately, both Shane Zaza as her husband Prem, and Hamza Jeetooa as his radicalised brother Manish are more than capable of carrying their share of the episode. Zaza in particular commands real sympathy and charisma.

The regular cast are as good as ever, and it seems like every episode I point out just how brilliant Bradley Walsh is, particularly in the heartbreaking moment he consoles Prem, knowing what awaits him. Tosin Cole doesn't get very much to do this episode, and Ryan is suffering from the same problem as Yaz did earlier in the season; there just isn't enough story to go around for this many regulars to have much focus each episode. This is, of course, Yaz's episode, and Mandip Gill holds it admirably, but there's still the frustrating sense that we don't really know her character. While this episode and "Arachnids of the UK" gave her much needed focus, she exists almost entirely in relation to her family.

Jodie Whitaker is effortlessly charming as the Doctor, especially the hen party when she revels in being included in things like henna painting, and things she never got do when she was a man. Her sense of powerlessness is palpable as events play out, and there's a lot to be said for an approach to historical stories that don't involve famous and influential figures. There's no moral or scientific argument that history must be maintained, no fixed points in time or immutable chronology. The Doctor and her companions are simply in no position to affect the grand sweep of events here, and any direct intervention in Prem's fate would almost certainly negate Yaz's existence. There's nothing they can do but accept that he will die and that the family's story will continue. The Doctor's lack of direct impact has been a talking point this season, but it's exactly what this episode needs (nonetheless, I hope she has the chance to show what's she's capable of before the year is out).

Why the Doctor is so easily persuaded to take Yaz back into her personal history, in spite of the obvious dangers, is another question. For those who ship the Doctor and Yaz, it's worth remembering that the last time the Doctor did something like that, it was because he fancied Rose and lost all judgment. Whether it means anything like that now remains to be seen.

The aliens of the week, the Thijarans, are both very effective and essentially unnecessary. I suppose we're just not going to see pure historicals anymore, but even more so than "Rosa," this is an episode that could have worked perfectly well without any other time travellers or sci-fi elements beyond Team TARDIS. Nonetheless, they are excellently realised, easily the most visually effective monsters of the season so far. Making them physically monstrous but actually rather pleasant is a nice touch, and I like how the two aliens were both voiced and physically portrayed by women, which when combined the masculine, alien Shredder look, adds to the unearthly quality. On the other hand, their mission to observe the forgotten dead, while noble and effectively portrayed, is very similar to the Testimony and their actions in the most recent Christmas special.

If anything, the fact that the Thijarans, while being both simultaneously effective yet surplus to requirements, shows how well Doctor Who could pull off a return to the purely historical adventure. "Demons of the Punjab" shows that this is where the series' newest iteration's strengths lie.

Play Segun Akinola's haunting Punjabi-inspired arrangement of the Doctor Who theme.

WHO REVIEW: 11-5 - "The Tsuranga Conundrum"

Halfway through the season, and we have what is the most divisive episode so far amongst fans, with many decrying it as absolute rubbish and the worst episode since the return of Doctor Who in 2005. While there's certainly no argument that "The Tsuranga Conundrum" is ever going to be counted among the series' classics, it's hardly the stinker that some are making it out to be. It's solidly a filler episode, and one that's a damned sight better than last week's effort. It doesn't set out to do anything more than provide fifty minutes entertaining diversion on a Sunday night, and on that count it's a great success.
There's the case for ambition, of course, and aside from "Rosa," we've had nothing so far this year that's really tried to push the envelope. But come on, this is episode five; at this stage in the golden year of Christopher Eccleston, we'd just had two episodes of farting green monsters. Of course, that was then followed up by "Dalek," a stone-cold classic, and I guess the question is whether we'd prefer a decently entertaining and consistent season or a wildly inconsistent one with huge ups and downs.

Those who didn't like this episode probably just didn't appreciate the scatty, less-than-serious tone. If "Arachnids in the UK" looked very much like what Doctor Who would have looked like as an outsourced 90s production, clumsy eco-message and all, then this is a live action version of the Doctor Who Weekly comic strip. Fans of said strip are comparing the oddly-named P'ting to the comics villain Beep the Meep, but the voracious omnivore is a clear steal of Nibbler from Futurama (only without the ability to poo dark matter, so far as we know). That's an entirely consistent set of inspirations, since both DWW and Futurama were light-hearted sci-fi romps with the occasional bit of more serious material thrown in to up the stakes and make us care about the characters. Complaining that the Pting is too cute to take seriously as a threat is missing the joke and the jeopardy, and Doctor Who is hardly the first sci-fi production to use a cutesie alien as a surprise threat.

Then there's the B-plot, with musical actor Jack Shalloo playing Yoss, a pregnant man almost ready to pop. Half the overly vocal internet are taking this as transphobic, the other half as pushing trans issues on viewers. I sincerely doubt that Chibnall had any message at all that he wanted to convey here (and if I'm wrong and he did, given his commitment to diversity so far this year I'd favour him being pro-trans); it's another well-worn sci-fi joke that primarily exists to give Ryan and Graham something to do while the ladies save the day. There's something appealing about having female soldiers and doctors saving the ship while the men fret about childbirth, but really, the pregnant man trope is a sci-fi staple joke that's appeared in everything from Enterprise to Red Dwarf to the Schwarzenegger favourite Junior (certainly, to my mind, his third best film).

There's some oddities in the Doctor's character here. It's deeply strange to see her hero-worshipping General Cicero; the Doctor is generally anti-military until he gets to know soldiers on a personal level, although the boasting about also being in the Big Book of Heroes (or whatever it was called) is completely true to form. Having her join in on the prayer at the end is a surprising move as well, since the Doctor has generally shunned such things. It's also interesting to have her more physically damaged by the sonic mine at the beginning of the episode; all those extra organs clearly being a weakness in some cases. (The fact that the Doctor sets off the mine and has no way to disarm it or get her companions to safety is another example, after her initial accidental deep space diving session with them, that she's worryingly careless about very, very dangerous situations.)

There are some elements that seemed to have been dropped halfway through: Ronan the android, in particularly, seems to be set up to either stop the Pting or die nobly battling it (being the only character at risk from a creature that only east inorganic material), but his redemption moment never comes and he just sort of becomes surplus to requirements. Ryan and Yaz almost seem to be so as well, memorably stopping for the clumsiest character moment ever and having a long chat right in the middle of a crisis, the episode crashing to a halt as a consequence.

Still, this is an episode where a couple of "Chibnall, FFS" moments don't detract from the overall fun. A perfectly enjoyable middle episode, before what promises to be something more serious next week.

Weird Science: Why hide a bomb under the antimatter engine as a failsafe? You've got an antimatter generator, that is a bomb! Just turn off the containment field or whatever and the ship will be blown to kingdom come.

Title Tattle: We probably should have expected a Futurama riff when we saw the episode was seemingly named after Turanga Leela.

WHO REVIEW: 11-4 - "Arachnids in the UK"

Well, that was distinctly average. Not that there's anything wrong with an average episode, but when there are only ten episodes in a season, an instalment that hits as mediocre as this brings the average down noticeably. It looks like some people really loved this, and fair play to them, but it just didn't do that much for me.

In fairness, part of the lack of impact is just that I'm not scared of spiders. I mean, an eight-footer coming at me out of the bathroom would give me pause for thought, but I just didn't get the creeps from this like a lot of people did. That's no fault of the episode, of course; attack of the giant spiders is about the most Doctor Who idea you could do. The spider animation was pretty spot-on, though. I actually like spiders, they're some of my favourite creatures and I appreciated that the episode didn't portray them as outright monsters, merely as animals that could potentially be very dangerous if they were to, you know, suddenly become ten feet long.

This is, though, pretty much the episode I'd most suspected we'd get when Chibnall took over. He's a writer with a broad range of genres on his CV, but his comfort zone is the procedural, or, in sf terms, the paraprocedural. Programmes were police or investigative work combine with paranormal or alien elements; for instance, Torchwood (which was Chibnall's show to begin with), Fringe, The X-Files, Sea of Souls (which actually matches his version of Doctor Who fairly well). It's also hugely derivative of Pertwee-era Who, which is not, in itself a bad thing. The Silurian two-parter from season five was tremendously derivative, but still one of Chibnall's most enjoyable Who scripts. "Arachnids" pulls a lot from 1974's Planet of the Spiders (I did wonder if we were going to get a reveal they were from Metebelis 3, in spite of the "no old monsters" writ), and also 1973's The Green Death, with its toxic waste creating mutant arthropods plotline. There's nothing wrong with this though; Doctor Who has always nicked ideas, and now it's being going long enough to nick from itself.

Still, the negative trends of Chibnall's writing are all too evident here. Extremely clunky dialogue, plotlines that go nowhere, characters that exist solely to deliver exposition. It can't be argued that the script here is seriously flawed, and the guest cast are wasted. Chris Noth - always and forever to be known as "Big" - plays a thinly-veiled Trump analogue. Well, Robertson's serious hatred of the Donald marks him out as almost the anti-Trump, and one could hope that someday they might come into contact and mutually annihilate. At the end of the day, though, although he's a complete bastard, he's nowhere near as appalling as Trump. He's the watered down kids' TV version. Building a hotel over a rubbish dump just isn't much cop in terms of villainy, and if Chibnall had wanted to make a point of attacking Trump, have his firing of Yaz's mum be because of her race, not because she turned up for work at an inconvenient time. (Also, it's actually pretty hard to just fire someone in the UK, even if you are an American oligarch. Equally, it's pretty difficult for a civilian to bring a gun into the country and wander around shooting things, something which Yaz, the police officer, should perhaps have had something to say about.)

The spectacularly-named Tanya Fear does her best with the role of Dr. McIntyre, but she has nothing much to do but deliver reams of exposition, and struggles to make this engaging. Shobna Gulati is another good actress left with very little to work with as Yaz's mum Najia. The Doctor's character suffers too, with the anti-gun rhetoric - something I'm heartily in favour of, most of the time - coming at the expense of character logic. There's a very good argument that shooting a creature to put it out of its misery is a more humane action than letting it slowly suffocate or starve to death. While this is clearly not Robertson's real intention, the sloppy dialogue makes it seem that the Doctor has lost a pretty basic moral argument with the supposed villain. Again, though, he isn't actually nearly as big a villain as nice Dr. McIntyre, who experimented on spiders, altered their nature, then threw them away without actually checking to see if they were dead. While the toxic waste in the dump apparently caused them to mutate further, Robertson's isn't directly responsible for that either.

It's not that there's nothing to love here. The subplot focusing on Graham, confronting his now empty home and the fact of Grace's death is rather beautiful. It's helped no end by Bradley Walsh's understated performance, and the "ghost" of Grace is a nice touch, if rather cliched. It's good to finally get some development for Yaz, and it's interesting to get a hint of possible romance between her and the Doctor (something that the Doctor is unable to quite deal with, unsurprisingly a little confused considering how often their female companions have fallen in love with them). After hints of chemistry between Yaz and Ryan last week, it's nice to have Yaz's sexuality be open to question, instead of simply spelled out in a character bio. I also really like that the Doctor is openly emotionally vulnerable, in a way we haven't seen much before (Matt Smith's Doctor being the most emotionally honest previously), and that her companions decisively choose to carry on travelling with her.

But it's hard to celebrate these moments much when the rest of the script is so aggravatingly poor. After the big mumma spider is disposed of, the plot simply stops, with Robertson swanning off, no resolution for McIntyre and her careless laboratory, and possibly thousands of giant spiders roaming Sheffield. There was apparently some brief dialogue that suggested they were all going to scurry into the caverns (presumably to suffocate/starve/eat each other), but given that I and everyone else I've spoken to missed that, I wouldn't call that sufficiently clearly written. At the very least, there's a whopper in Yaz's neighbour's flat, kept at bay by only a thin layer of garlic paste.

Best bit: Without question, Ryan randomly making shadow puppets in the background of the lab scene. Although that should be pretty challenging for a dyspraxic person.

Spider science: Kudos for correctly stating that a spider, expanded to the size of the big mumma, wouldn't be capable of absorbing enough oxygen through its carapace to survive. A big fat facepalm for not realising that none of the spiders in the episode would be able to breathe due to that problem. There's a reason terrestrial arthropods only get to a certain size in this era (they used to be able to get somewhat bigger when the atmosphere was denser, geological ages past).

Title Tattle: "Arachnids in the UK" is a play on Anarchy in the UK. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love a punning title, but "arachnids" and "anarchy" scan differently because of their inflection, so I'd call it a qualified success.

WHO REVIEW: 11-3 - "Rosa"

Some supposed fans are decrying this episode, calling it "deliberately PC," among less polite terms. Talk about missing the point. Yes, it's deliberately PC. That's the idea. The fact that some angry viewers (every single one I have seen being a white male, of course) are upset that Doctor Who would take a political stance and use one episode's worth of runtime to look at the horrors of racism and the legacy of a black activist demonstrates exactly why episodes like this are important.

While Doctor Who has dealt with racism, and its cousins xenophobia and ethnic cleansing, before, it has generally done so in allegorical fashion, with the Daleks more often than not. While the expanded media have occasionally tackled the issue head-on, on television it's been like that with some fleeting exceptions. When the topic of racism has been explicitly remarked upon, it hasn't always been handled well: the twelfth Doctor punched a racist Victorian last year, and sheepishly accepted that he wasn't the person to ask when it came to allaying Bill's fears of being in that environment, but a few years earlier, the tenth Doctor advised Martha to "just act like (she) own(s) the place, it always works for (him)," in a spectacular moment of tone-deafness. And that's without delving into some very dodgy choices in the classic series that wouldn't have been so noticeable against the background of the time, but stick out when viewed now.

Things change, though, usually, but not always, for the better. This is exactly the sort of thing that Doctor Who should be doing. Chris Chibnall has stated that he wants to take the series back to its roots in some respects, engaging in more educational material than it has done since the earliest series. This is certainly light years away from the celebrity historicals of the Russell T. Davies or Stephen Moffat eras. The Doctor gets the odd name drop, but this is far from being a glamorisation of an historical event, or a sci-fi adventure set against the backdrop of one. Rosa Parks isn't so much a character here, but a portrayal of a real person. Necessarily dramatised, of course, by two writers who almost certainly never met the woman, but working from historical materials and real footage of interviews.

It could have horrendously wrong, of course. The finished episode isn't perfect, by any means, but it's a fine hour of television and for the most part is pitched just right. I had my concerns before watching it, though. I mean, it's co-written by Chris Chibnall, who's just about the whitest guy ever. There was a definite risk of a well-intentioned embarrassment. Thankfully, he writes this with Malorie Blackman, former Children's Laureate, who is one of the most celebrated writers of children's and young adults' literature today, and who has previously explored racism through science fiction in her acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series (one of those book series on my list of "things I really, really ought to have read by now"). As a black woman, Blackman is clearly going to have a different and more immediate perspective than Chibnall. Even watching and reviewing this, as a white man, is going to be different to how a black viewer would experience it. Of course it is, because I've simply never experienced the sort of treatment that is portrayed here.

There are certain moments when it's clear that the reception of the episode has been considered very carefully. The Doctor very sensibly asks Ryan and Yaz to stay in the TARDIS, knowing full well the danger they're in just by being out in public in 1955 Alabama. It's different for her, she admits that, and to attempt to ignore that or even leave it unsaid would have been catastrophic. A scene that worked particularly well sees the young companions hiding behind some bins, in fear of being found by a police officer. They note how much better it is in 2018, but how it's very, very far from perfect. Ryan, in particular, has dealt with the kind of discrimination commonplace in this era, being a young black man and being viewed as a criminal by dint of his appearance. He notes that he's stopped far more often by the police than his white mates. Yaz, on the other hand, is a police officer, and being of Pakistani descent experiences her own share of racist abuse, usually from people she's trying to help. It's an even-handed conversation that shows that this kind of thing can hit people in any position. Yaz talks about how in fifty-three years there'll be a black President of America, but the unspoken follow-up is just look at the shit that followed. Things are better in the US than they were in 1955, but they're worse than they were even in 2005, and there's the ever-present risk that things will slide backwards. After all, it's already started.

This is the closest Doctor Who has come to a purely historical story - where only the Doctor and co. provide any kind of sci-fi element - since Black Orchid in 1982, and that was an outlier. It's a brave move, and allows much more focus on the events and issues than bringing in an alien threat would ever have allowed. The inclusion of the villainous Krasko (Joshua Bowman) almost seems like a misstep. It would have been just as workable for the mere presence of the Doctor and her friends, bumping into Rosa Parks, to have derailed history by interrupting such delicate events. I think, though, that the inclusion of a racist villain, whose motive is to "put your kind back in their place," is actually a necessary inclusion. While it's a deeply depressing idea that we'll still be dealing with white supremacists in the 79th century, it's also a very important reminder that this is a problem that will not go away without a fight, and that the fight has to continue any time it rears its ugly head. Krasko's insistence that "this is where it all started to go wrong," and that things would just be better if there weren't black people around causing problems, is a familiar rhetoric. It's not unlike the (more common in Britain lately, but these things come in waves) tactic of lazily blaming immigrants for somehow causing all the problems in a society. Some commentators have pointed out that Krasko, artificially made incapable of violence like Spike from Buffy, is a weak villain and is dispatched too easily. Again, though, isn't that the point? He's pathetic, but sometimes pathetic men can do a lot of damage.

It would have been so easy to fall into the trap of having the Doctor and/or her companions be the saviours here, and that would have been terrible. Instead, they do little things to keep pushing events back on track, but do not actually cause any of the vital events. Rosa still makes her stand herself, triggering a series of events that have lasting impact on the Civil Rights movement and the rights of non-whites in the US. It was essential that this be maintained, or the point and purpose of the episode would be lost. Equally, though, the time travellers had to be affected by the environment. Most obviously, this is evident in the treatment of Ryan, forced to sit at the back of the bus and almost attacked for innocently trying to speak to a white woman. The most frustrating moment is watching him, trying desperately to get people to wait for the bus and just being dismissed, before aggressively chastised. Yaz's experiences in the episode are illustrative as well, being essentially uncategorised in the segregation system, uncertain just as to what she is allowed to do, which is potentially even more dangerous than for someone who has clear-cut rules to live by. I particularly liked how the locals called her Mexican, lumping her under the general category of "not black, not white, but brown and foreign-looking" that sees almost any other background as interchangeable.

With all the necessary attention on Ryan and Yaz, it would be easy for the Doctor and Graham to be given little to work with. However, both characters fare very well, with the Doctor balancing flippancy with deadly seriousness when required. Again, it could have been very easy for her character to be overbearing here, but instead, there's the sense that she's dragged down by her responsibility to history. It's handled better than the "fixed points in time" approach though, more an understanding of the delicate nature of important events, and how history could have proceeded very differently if circumstances and choices had been slightly different. Graham also fares extremely well, with another excellent performance from Bradley Walsh, portraying incredible discomfort as the scenes of history unfold around him. As a white man, Graham is of course the safest and least constrained in the setting, but is still affected. Indeed, he doubtless received his share of abuse due to his mixed marriage, even in 2018.

All the good work of the episode would have been wasted if it weren't for the right casting of Rosa Parks. Thankfully, Vinette Robinson is more than capable of giving the role the dignity and power it deserves. It's a very respectful, understated performance that underpins the episode. There's some question as to whether Parks's story is the one to tell in a British series. After all, we never had official segregation in the UK, and the very idea of it seems bizarre to us now. However, the themes resonate throughout our culture and the problems we have and have had in the UK are not divorced from the Jim Crow Laws and the oppression in the US. As Yaz says, it was Rosa Parks and "people like her" who made a measurable difference to people's lives today. While there were other people who could have been the focus of the episode, Parks is an emblem of the Civil Rights movement and as such deserves this episode (not forgetting the huge following the series now has in the States). On a related note, I applaud the decision to include Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ray Sesay), but not make the episode about him. He was, after all, the figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement and led the Montgomery bus boycott that followed Parks's protest, but to give him more than a short part of the story would have drawn attention away from her character. Again, it's a tough balance, and it's possibly a mistake to suggest that Parks was so important to the Civil Rights Movement that it would never have happened without her specific actions on that night; however, the event was a catalyst for change and Parks was hugely important to the ongoing struggle; and it's probably wise not to overcomplicate a 50-minute family drama too much.

Some have said that this is too political for children, which is of course rubbish, and frankly, the treatment of black people in this episode is significantly less horrific than a more adult-intended production might. The little we do have is limited to mention of Emmett Till, whose brutal murder (and the subsequent acquittal of his killers) also contributed to the anger of black Americans. And please, let's not forget that this is an episode that was broadcast on the same day footage was released of a British flight where a white man verbally abused a black woman and refused to let her sit next to him, while the white staff failed to effectively intervene. While reports from the southern states of America see local government changing voter registration laws to disenfranchise black citizens and make it impossible for them to vote. And filmed in South Africa, which had its own segregation laws until 1991, and is still one of the most racially divided countries in the developed world.

Hopefully, there will be a time when this sort of behaviour is just history, but for now, we truly need television like this.

Title-Tattle: The episode title is, of course, only one letter away from the first episode of the revived series, "Rose."

Continuity points: This is the fourteenth attempt by the Doctor to reach Sheffield after leaving Desolation, so there's a nice big gap for future novels, fanfic and Big Finish audios to slot in.

Space and Time: To that idiot on Facebook in the Geek Asylum, asteroid 284996 is indeed named Rosa Parks, an honour that bestowed four years ago, and the idea that it was a step too fair in making her "seem important" is spectacularly ignorant. Admittedly, a lot of people have asteroids named after them; it might have been better to show more of Rosa's life, such as her receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, to represent how she was honoured.

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.

WHO REVIEW: 11-1 - "The Woman Who Fell to Earth"

I love Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor.

Straight away, she's endearing, exciting, and 100% the Doctor. She doesn't get to do much with the character yet beyond some pretty basic Doctoring, and that's perfectly fine - this is her first episode, and more in-depth exploration can come later. She has a puckish charisma that steals every scene she's in, and she absolutely nails it from the outset. Refreshingly, she doesn't have to spend half the episode dealing with regenerative fallout. Aside from one collapse and a nap, and struggling to remember her name, she's straight into the action. Indeed, the name lapse isn't an example of the Doctor forgetting her identity; it's purely there so she can have a triumphant "I am the Doctor!" moment.

The multiple companion characters don't really stand much of a chance against Whittaker. They're all quite well drawn and performed but being consciously realistic and ordinary means they make less of an impression when there's this remarkable alien charging around. Still, it's a breath of fresh air to have recognisable characters again; aside from Bill, it's been a long time since we had an ordinary person on the team. I particularly like Ryan (Tosin Cole), who comes across as a believably frustrated but likeable young man. I'm interested in the reaction to the dyspraxia angle; I'm hardly an expert in the condition, but my girlfriend and several of my friends are dyspraxic and it's rare to see it portrayed on TV. Feedback from them suggests it's pretty positive so far, with Suz pleased that he's a pretty cool character and that it's not just being used to cheap laughs (although she did point out that there's no way he'd be going up that ladder so fast).

Yaz (Mandip Gill) is also very likeable, but her character is very sketched in so far. I get she's the capable one, who wants to prove herself, and having her in the police is a potentially interesting set-up, but nothing's really done with it. I'm hoping she gets to develop as the series continues. Other than Whittaker, the one who had to prove himself was Bradley Walsk, unfairly labelled as just a gameshow host when he's an established actor. As it is, he's perfectly good here, portraying perhaps the most real of the three companions; just an ordinary bloke who has believable reactions (although how anyone can possibly doubt the existence of aliens in Doctor Who at this stage is hard to credit).

The character I liked the most, though, was Grace (Sharon D. Clarke), Ryan's nan and Graham's wife, who's the most likeable and positive character in the episode. She brings everyone together as a team moreso than the Doctor, in fact), but she's not part of the companion group, so I guess she was doomed. However, this is a more personal, character-focused script than we generally got in recent Who, and the death of a character is genuinely saddening, even though we've only known her for a short time. Even dorky Karl (Johnny Dixon) is a sympathetic character.

It was never Whittaker or Walsh that made me worry, but Chibnall's past form. He's not, to put it politely, a writer who has provided consistently strong material. His strengths seem to lie more as a showrunner than a scriptwriter. I've never seen Broadchurch, and now it'll seem like the weirdest multi-Doctor story ever, but I've heard very positive things, but the first two seasons of Torchwood, which would seem like the most obvious point of comparison, were all over the place in terms of quality. On the whole, though, some clunky dialogue aside (and there's plenty of that), this is a pretty decent script. Utilising the industrial North provides a different feel to what's gone before, although still thoroughly British, and the grim night setting, along with more understated music than we're used to, intensifies this. If anything, it has the air of early Torchwood, which perhaps isn't surprising, albeit without the painful attempts to seem "adult," which is a mercy. It's an odd mix of the real life procedural, kids' telly sci-fi and some gruesome horror, but it works. 

It's a straightforward story, to be sure, but that's no bad thing when it comes to an introduction. The almost complete lack of references to the past make this a sharp break; even "Rose" featured an old monster, and lately the series has become very inward-looking. There's hardly anything here that calls back to what's gone before. There's a reference to having been "a white-haired Scotsman," and she's running around in his clothes (I love it when the new Doctor is still in their predecessor's clothes, and Jodie actually looks amazing in the battered suit), but otherwise that's pretty much it. Even mentions of the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver are pretty much standalone. It really does work as a jumping-on point for new viewers, and I have a few friends who sat down to watch it with their kids for the first time ever and loved it.

 A fairly standard runaround with a monster or two is a safe bet, and that's what we got. I liked the electrical cable beast a great deal - it'c clearly alien but almost unrecognisable as a life form, a very uncanny effect. I wasn't so sold on Tim Shaw - although that joke was great - but again, a generic Predator-esque alien is a simple concept to put across in an episode that's busy introducing other things. The tooth-face thing was horrible though - I'm not alone in finding that genuinely disquieting. If he was such a massive cheat, though, why didn't he just pull all the teeth out of his victims and stick them in his head to make it look like he had loads of trophies?

Tooth-face Tim might have been a step a little too far for the kids, but this otherwise hits the right balance for a family show. It's accessible and a lot of fun, and although it lacks the colourful verve and newness of “Rose” and the sheer bold skill of “The Eleventh Hour," it's just different enough to successfully kick off a new era of Doctor Who.

Some observations about the Doctor:

I'm pleased that not much was made of the Doctor's change of gender. A couple of jokes, but barely a mention really. A nice line about change and how it's just something we all have to deal with. Plus, the costume choosing scene. I love that the Doctor picks out her clothes from a charity shop - is this the first time she's ever actually got her clothes from a shop, rather than already owning them or just nicking them? It would be even better if the costume actually had been collected from charity shops instead of being the result of an intensive design process. Also, when does she get her ears done?

The new Doctor is more immediately compassionate than her predecessors. She says sorry an awful lot - not the dramatic "I'm so, so sorry," of Tennant, but genuine concern for people having to see terrible things. On the other hand, she's exactly as holier-than-thou as her forebears. She lays into Karl for kicking Tim Shaw off the crane, after the guy was hunting him and after she just tricked him into liquefying himself.

Is it me, or does the Doctor have a serious Holtzmann-from-Ghostbusters vibe when she puts on the goggles and apron and builds her own screwdriver?

Some general observations:

This is the first time on TV that we've had an Asian British companion, and the first time we've had a regular companion who appears considerably older than the Doctor (although Tennant had several one-offs). Am I right in thinking this is the first disabled companion in any medium? Correct me if I'm wrong.

So far, the music is a big improvement. Not to say I didn't like Murray Gold's work, but god, it was relentless sometimes. It's nice to have something you can hear the dialogue over. I like the theme too, but it'll be nice to get a title sequence next week.

The aesthetic is a bit weird when compared to the promotional material. That was colourful, the episode itself is dark and sinister. The promotional reel after the episode is strange as well, focusing on the actors rather than monsters and exciting visuals.

Number Thirteen gets her togs

I have to say, this isn't at all what I was expecting. There were two options for the creative team, one of which was to just put her in a traditionally Doctorish gent's outfit to hammer home that it was the same character, and the other was to give her a more feminine costume that no previous Doctor would have worn. I'm glad they've gone with the latter, but even so, I kind of expected something that was more like one of the old Doctor's costumes, in a feminine cut.

This, though, I like very much. It's feminine, quirky, and fairly practical. There's a certain Doctorishness to it, but quite unlike any of the outfits before, which is just how it should be. There are bits of old Doctor influence in there, though. Most obviously, the braces call back to Matt Smith, but moreso to Patrick Troughton. (I was a bit intrigued when someone said the new Doctor would be wearing suspenders, but that was just a bit of Americanism/Britishism confusion.) The long coat calls back to David Tennant. The stripes across the top might be a nod to Tom Baker's scarf, and the boots could recall Smith or Eccleston. I'm not sure what's going on with the top of that coat - is that a hood swung back? - but it does have a somewhat Time Lordly quality to it.

Some people don't like it, which is fair enough, although attacking it by saying it's too silly or doesn't have enough gravitas seems to ignore how ridiculous some of the earlier Doctor's outfits were. I've seen it said that it looks like something out of Rainbow, which isn't totally unfair, but compared to the sixth Doctor's costume, it's very sedate. Someone else has said it makes her look like a circus performer, and a friend pointed out that Sylvester McCoy not only acted like a circus performer in some of his episodes, he basically was one before he started acting. Again, fair enough if that's not something you like in your Doctors, but it's hardly without precedent.

Various commentators have been pointing out similarities with other characters' costumes. Mork is the most common comparison:

but I'm seeing more than a hint of Wesley Crusher:

Either way, there's a definite eighties style to the costume, which actually fits quite well with the out-of-time vibe we get from various Doctors. Capaldi wore a costume which hinted at styles from both the 50s and 70s, while Hartnell's turn-of-the-century style was similarly 50-60 years out of date. Something that has a suggestion of 1987 is forty years out, the same sort of dislocation. In any case, I like it. It's different but still says "Doctor" to me.