13th Doctor Overview.

The Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), with "The Fam."

I'm writing this just shy of two years from the end of the Thirteenth Doctor's era, just as I'm preparing to move on to viewing and reviewing Ncuti Gatwa's first season as the 15th Doctor. Before I move forward, I'm feeling a need to look back, because many of my thoughts about the tenure of showrunner Chris Chibnall and star Jodie Whittaker are not fully represented by my reviews of the individual episodes.

Fair warning: This is neither a hate post nor a love letter. If you're looking for relentless negativity, I suggest finding a YouTube video, probably one with googly eyes on the thumbnail that uses the word "woke" a lot. If you're looking for only positive comments, then do the same, only avoiding those particular search cues. I'm going to discuss both what worked for me (and a lot did) and my frustrations about elements that either didn't work or that I thought fell short of their potential.

As ever, this represents my own opinion, and other views are available.

The Doctor confronts a Cyberman - and Whittaker shines
with a script that lets her get properly angry for a change.

JODIE WHITTAKER AS THE DOCTOR:

The announcement of Jodie Whittaker's casting came during my burnout period, in which I was neither viewing nor reviewing Doctor Who or anything else. I will admit that the announcement caught my eye. Whittaker is an actress whose work I've generally enjoyed, and I found her to be particularly good in Chris Chibnall's Broadchurch. It took me another year to recover from my malaise, but her casting was one of the reasons I decided to return to Who when I was ready to start reviewing again.

My response to her first appearance was... well, mixed. She was fine in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, with excellent individual moments... but she also had several deliveries that struck me as either flat or just plain misjudged. It wasn't until Rosa that she won me over. Even then, Arachnids in the UK (in my opinion, her single worst performance in the role) made me doubtful all over again.

Her performance improves whenever a script avoids reducing her to "the nice Doctor." There are glimpses throughout Series 11: Her scenes with Krasko in Rosa, her interactions with both the Thijarians and Manish in Demons of the Punjab, her confrontation with King James in The Witchfinders, and her general grumpiness in Kerblam!  All of these moments saw Whittaker's performance noticeably improve.

Thankfully, that became explicit characterization in Series 12 and 13, as it became clear that this Doctor's friendly smile was a shield to protect her from getting too close to her companions. She may have labeled her first companion set "Fam," but she kept them at a distance, avoiding anything that resembled a meaningful personal question. If they pushed harder, as Yaz often did in Series 13, she became snappish and even hostile. The more these beats were played, the better both character and actor became.

Whittaker was excellent at showing the character's defensiveness, and I think she exceled in moments of frustration and anger. On the other hand, I don't think she ever quite got the handle of delivering sci-fi Technobabble. In her first season, her Technobabble scenes often reminded me of actors phonetically reciting foreign language dialogue. She got better (and the scripts wrote less of it for her), but it remained a weakness.

Her worst performances came whenever she was written as "Dr. Exposition." Her acting flattened in episodes like Praxeus, Revolution of the Daleks, and Survivors of the Flux, in which she was little more than a vessel for explanations. I got the impression she couldn't engage with reams of exposition, and I wasn't surprised when excessive exposition was one of the only complaints she voiced in interviews after her exit. 

The Doctor officiates a wedding in Demons of the Punjab, easily my favorite episode of this era.

WHAT WORKS:

When the Chibnall era gets discussed, particularly after a couple years' distance, I see a lot of the sentiment: "Jodie was good, shame about the scripts." There is truth to that, but I think it's reductive.

There are a handful of fine scripts in these three-and-a-bit seasons. The stories from Vinay Patel and Maxine Alderton would stack up well in any era, and I hope both writers get a chance to submit for the series in the future. Chibnall's own stories include a solid new Doctor introduction in The Woman Who Fell to Earth; a terrific time-loop story in Eve of the Daleks; and, in War of the Sontarans, the best showing for the potato-headed warriors since their introduction during Jon Pertwee's tenure... though, as my review noted at the time, that doesn't clear the highest of bars; my pick for their previous second best story was the enjoyable but heavily flawed The Two Doctors.

In my Series Eleven overview, I stated some of my issues with that first season. Still, while I had quibbles with the execution, Series Eleven's attempt at a grounded and character-focused approach was something I had wanted to see from Doctor Who for a while. When the Doctor introduced herself as "just a traveler" who helps where she can, I wanted to applaud. I also love that all of Thirteen's companions are ordinary people - no dark secrets, no paradoxes, no alien plots. Just a group of average but highly decent human beings.

Revolution of the Daleks. Like a lot of episodes, it's fine. Just... fine.

A LITTLE TOO CONSISTENT:

Chris Chibnall wrote a higher proportion of the scripts than his predecessors did, which results in an era that's very consistent in tone and quality. There are relatively few episodes that I think are truly bad. Even the worst don't approach the awfulness of other eras' stinkers. Gun to my head, I would choose to rewatch both Orphan 55 and Legend of the Sea Devils before I sat through either Victory of the Daleks or Fear Her again.

The flipside of this is that there are equally few standouts. The only "10/10" I awarded across three seasons was for Demons of the Punjab, while there are individual RTD and Moffat seasons that feature multiple episodes that I gave full marks. Most of the shows range from "okay" to "pretty good." That doesn't sound bad on the face of it, but a steady diet of "pretty good" becomes numbing in practice.

By the time Flux rolled around, I no longer felt excitement at the prospect of a new season. Ironically, and despite its flaws, that ended up becoming my favorite Chibnall season. But I came away from the era reflecting that the occasional ghastly dud was something I was willing to put up with, if it also meant that something truly brilliant might be around the corner.

Graham (Bradley Walsh) and Ryan (Tosin Cole) get Series 11's
character arc, leaving the Doctor and Yaz to just carry the plots.

CHARACTERS:

Up to this point, most of my thoughts tilt toward the positive, albeit with a side of, "This could have been better." Shifting to the regular characters, however, moves into an area that left me feeling frustrated.

I liked all three of the initial companions. As of Rosa, I thought this was a promising new set of regulars, just waiting for scripts that would bring out extra layers that would make them "pop." Sadly, at least for me, that "pop" never happened.

Some of the reasons are easy enough to determine. There's a lack of interaction, particularly among the "Fam" of Series Eleven and Twelve. Too many episodes fall into a familiar pattern of splitting them into teams - usually with the Doctor and Yaz working on the plot while Graham and Ryan received moments of character (in Series Eleven) or comedy relief (in Series Twelve).

The results tended to be good whenever an episode broke away from that pattern. Ryan and Yaz get some well-written exchanges in The Woman Who Fell to Earth and Rosa. Yaz and Graham share terrific moments in Demons of the Punjab and Ascension of the Cybermen. But Yaz is the only companion who gets significant one-on-one time with the Doctor. Even before the "Fam" leaves, it feels as if Yaz is her actual companion, with the other two just along for the ride.

Yaz also doesn't come properly into focus until Graham and Ryan leave. In those first two seasons, it often feels as if she's competing against them for screen time... and even in her supposed "spotlight" episodes, it tends to feel like she's losing that competition.

This improves with Flux and the specials, which see her interacting with new companion Dan in a way that feels a lot more authentic. It further helps that this shift happens at the same time that she starts really pushing back against the Doctor's secretiveness. At this point, the character starts to work... but by the time Flux starts, there are less than ten episodes remaining in her tenure.

Yaz falls hard for the Doctor, and it doesn't seem entirely unrequited. It also doesn't go anywhere.

BOLD IDEAS, TIMID EXECUTION:

And on to my single biggest frustration.

On paper, Chris Chibnall's ideas for Doctor Who are ambitious. These three seasons deliver: the series' first female Doctor; a massive retcon of the Doctor's origins; and the first same-sex romantic attachment between a Doctor and a companion. You can like or dislike any of these, but the ideas are unquestionably bold.

So why does it all feel so damn timid?

The first female Doctor spends too much of her first season being characterized as a blandly inoffensive "Doctor Fluffy." The Doctor, in all incarnations, has always been arrogant, more than a little judgmental, and often downright rude. In Series Eleven, she's rarely allowed to show any of these traits. She's so busy being "the nice Doctor" (right down to checking during a confrontation with a Dalek that she's nice, right?) that she too often doesn't feel properly like the Doctor.

As with other problems, this improves in her later seasons, as it becomes a major point that her surface niceness is a shield that keeps others at a distance far more effectively than the 12th Doctor's surface grumpiness ever did. But even then, she's rarely allowed to show the arrogance that the Doctor should possess.

The Doctor/Yaz relationship never actually comes to much. Yaz refers to the Doctor as "my person" in The Haunting of Villa Diodati, and her feelings for the Doctor are a character point in Flux and the first two 2022 specials... only for that to be cut off at the end of Legend of the Sea Devils when the Doctor tells her that relationships with short-lived humans end up hurting too much, something Yaz just... accepts.

Now, I've never been fond of the New Series phenomenon of Doctor/Companion romances, because they by definition can only go so far. Still, if you're going to go down that or any route, then do it! I don't think queerbaiting was the intent - but the refusal to commit to this as a direction made it come across that way. Either do a thing or don't; just half doing it will be enough to annoy those who don't like the direction while failing to satisfy those who do like it.

More than any other single element, this era's bizarre tentativeness is what holds it back. Chibnall seems to have conceived a fearless vision of Doctor Who - but instead of diving into the deep end, he keeps dipping a toe over and over before deciding the water's too cold, drying his feet off, and going back inside. Doubly frustrating for me was that I started watching this era on the heels of Broadchurch, a show from the same writer, showrunner, and actress that was emotionally fearless. His Doctor Who badly needed that same quality.

The Thirteenth Doctor's last sunrise.

OVERALL:

Given how critical the latter half of this post has been, I feel that I should emphasize that I enjoyed the 13th Doctor era on its own terms. I liked Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, particularly when she was allowed to be a little spiky and snappish later on. I loved seeing some historically based stories that were actually centered around history. I'm a Hartnell fan, and I can easily mentally transplant the original TARDIS team into stories like Demons of the Punjab and Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror.

Still, despite liking a lot more of the individual episodes than not, this is the most frustrated I've ever felt with an era of Doctor Who, including a couple that I think are qualitatively worse than this. What I said about Whittaker in Series Eleven equally applies to the era as a whole: I think there's a genuinely great take in here, if it had only been willing to commit to its own ideas.

It's been announced that Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill have joined Big Finish, so maybe some of their upcoming audios will redress this. Certainly, thanks in large part to COVID sending Whittaker's final season into disarray, there's a sense of an era that's only half-finished, so this was an extremely welcome announcement for me.

At its best, Big Finish has made some great Doctor Who. Fingers crossed for that, and for something of substance to be done with the 13th Doctor and Yaz, rather than them just battling Rutans and Krynoids to fill monthly slots.


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#29: Legend of the Sea Devils.

The Sea Devils return to television! After this story, it might take them another 40 years to try again.

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Ella Road, Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Haolu Wang. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT:

The TARDIS finally brings the Doctor and her friends to a beach! That beach, however, is at a Chinese fishing village in the year 1807 - a village that has just been raided by the infamous pirate known as Madam Ching (Crystal Yu)!

Ching has come for a very specific target: a stone statue of a sea monster whose base holds the key to the location of the fabled treasure of the Flor de la Mar. What she doesn't realize is that the statue is actually a prison. When she chips away at the base, she frees its captive: A Sea Devil who has been held in place for more than 200 years.

Now the Sea Devil is free - and unless the Doctor can stop him, he plans to use his technology to flood the entire planet!


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: When she confronts the Sea Devil, she bluffs that she knows the location of the "keystone" he seeks, talking at a million miles a minute while at the same time fishing for any scraps of information he might divulge. The Sea Devil is smart enough to catch on to her game: "You talk to secure yourself time to think."

The "B" plot sees her grappling with Yaz's feelings. Yaz's interest doesn't seem entirely unrequited; if it was, moments such as showing her companion the bottom of the ocean floor while beaming that she's "not such a bad date" would smack of cruelty. Still, as she explains - and, really, as the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors' eras repeatedly showed - her long lifespan means that any such relationship could only end in pain.

Yaz: Is a little too eager to act as "mini-Doctor," the role she effectively filled during her separation from the Doctor during the Flux. However, she isn't on the Doctor's level.  During the confrontation with the Sea Devil, she gives away information that the Doctor planned to hold in reserve.  She later attempts to replicate the Doctor's use of Sea Devil technology but can't remember which switch to use. If this era wasn't ending in just one more episode, this story would have me actively expecting her to end up on a collision course with her own limitations.

Dan: Quickly bonds with Ying Ki (Marlowe Chan-Reeves), a young man whose father became the first victim of the Sea Devil. His compassion gets the better of his judgment, though, when he follows the youth onto Madam Ching's ship, separating him from the Doctor and Yaz for most of the rest of the episode. The climax sees him battling Sea Devils with startling enthusiasm... but in between, it's back to Flux territory, with Dan mostly just an amiable presence rather than an integral part of the plot.

Madam Ching: Crystal Yu as the Historical Figure of the Week. The historical Madam Ching is a fascinating figure who rose to become head of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, and who is sometimes credited as being the most successful pirate in history... which frankly sounds like the basis for a much more interesting and exciting story than this one. Yu does a fine job with what she's given, but she isn't given much, with the historical figure's life and background almost entirely unmentioned. Compared with this same era's treatment of historical figures such as Rosa Parks, Nikola Tesla, and Mary Seacole, this is disappointingly shallow, and the climax reduces her to little more than an extra.


THE RETURN OF THE SEA DEVILS:

The Sea Devils' design is extremely faithful to the Classic Series, only more polished. At first glance, the monsters looks terrific: menacing and strangely beautiful in a single image.

Then the lead Sea Devil talks, and the illusion is broken.

The problem is the full face mask. Compare with the (at the time) much-vilified redesign of the Silurians. That revamp left the face and mouth uncovered to allow a full range of expressions. The Sea Devils here are not granted the same luxury, and actor Craig Els is left with no ability to convey any subtlety because expressions are impossible. Also, because the mouth doesn't move well, his speech is indicated by a blinking light hanging around his chest. Which is very Classic Who... but in all the wrong ways.

As for the characterization? Well, the Doctor pays lip service to them as a peace-loving culture (though I'm frankly not sure how she arrived at that from either of their previous televised appearances). Despite that, the only speaking Sea Devil here is pure evil, sneering "Land Parasite!" at humans, keeping one man alive indefinitely just to torture him, and gloating about his planned mass extinction event. All that's missing to make him a silent movie baddie is a mustache to twirl and a scene in which he ties Yaz to some railroad tracks.

If Series One's Dalek served as a masterclass in bringing back a potentially silly monster and making it menacing and relevant to modern audiences, then I'm afraid this story represents the opposite. Their last major televised appearance was in 1984's Warriors of the Deep. After this, it wouldn't surprise me if it took another 40 years for their next return.


THOUGHTS:

Though this is not a good episode, there are good individual elements. Even if Dan is persistently underused, I really like the dynamic of the current TARDIS team. All three actors share a good-humored screen rapport. I actually believe these three enjoy traveling together, while in Series Eleven and Twelve it too often felt like the Doctor and Yaz were on one team and Ryan and Graham were on another.

For the first half or so, I mostly enjoyed this. The early scenes are fun: Yaz tricking Dan into wearing a pirate outfit (complete with hook), while the Doctor expresses exasperation with both of them; the reveal of the Sea Devil's flying pirate ship; Dan's compassion letting him get roped into an ill-advised misadventure with Ying Ki; and, most particularly, the entire sequence in which the Doctor takes Yaz 200 years into the past to locate treasure at the moment of its sinking, followed by a lovely pause (the episode's only one) at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Even in the early going, however, there are plot holes. I was immediately put off by Madam Ching operating her ship with no crew at all. A frigate isn't a private sailing boat, and the crew did not exist merely to repel boarders and to give the captain someone to flog when feeling peevish. You'd think the script would at least lampshade this with a couple lines about modifications. But... nope! She's sailing a full-sized pirate ship all on her own, and that's all there is to it.

The script has quite a bit of sloppiness. Characters reference information they shouldn't know. The Doctor and Yaz realize why the stars are in the wrong place, which would be an interesting reveal... except that they weren't present for the scene that showed the stars in the wrong place, and they had no opportunity within the episode to make that discovery for themselves! Much is also made of the Sea Devils' pet sea monster, but the creature conveniently disappears for the action climax.

The entire story feels rushed, which becomes particularly problematic near the end. First, the Doctor and Yaz escape from the Sea Devil's ship by jumping across to Madam Ching. At this point, the story should really take a moment for the characters to bond and pool information. Instead, it launches almost instantly into the final fight.

The incredibly poorly edited final fight.

Editing is somewhat jagged throughout (likely covering for issues caused by COVID restrictions), but here it becomes all but incomprehensible. I replayed bits to try to figure out how the Doctor escapes certain death in one part or how Dan knocks over Sea Devils in another part. After a few times doing this, however, I gave up and just let the images pass unchallenged; in some cases I found the answers, but it frankly wasn't worth the effort.

As if the ending hadn't been botched badly enough, the main story closes with Doctor Who's most tiresome and overused trope: a Heroic Self-Sacrifice (TM). This case feels particularly superfluous. The problem that requires a character to nobly die occurs all of a minute before the sacrifice. It may not be as poorly staged as the one in The Timeless Children, but it makes up for it by feeling entirely narratively unnecessary.


OVERALL:

Legend of the Sea Devils plays very much as if the crew shot a rough draft. This may not be far from the truth. One of the three 2022 specials was an "extra," commissioned when the BBC asked for one more episode. Given that the other two specials are the traditional Chibnall Dalek New Year's special and the epic finale, Legend of the Sea Devils seems the most likely candidate.

It might actually have been better if it hadn't been made. Eve of the Daleks left the Doctor and her team soaring into their final adventures. Legend of the Sea Devils sends them crashing back to Earth, left to stumble in a daze into their final outing.


Overall Rating: 2/10.

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#28: Eve of the Daleks.

Dan confounds a Dalek.

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 58 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Annetta Laufer. Produced by: Sheena Bucktowonsing.


THE PLOT:

The Doctor initiates a TARDIS reset to repair the damage left by the Flux. The plan is for her, Yaz, and Dan to enjoy a beach vacation while the timeship resets. But the TARDIS has materialized off course (again), leaving them in a far less luxurious setting: a storage facility on New Year's Eve.

They are not alone. The Daleks have tracked the time travelers, resolved to execute the Doctor and her companions. Which they manage with great efficiency within minutes of finding her...

Only for everyone to be resurrected, back where they started.  They are in a time loop, repeating the brief interval between their arrival and the New Year. This leaves the Doctor only a few minutes at a time to figure out how to stop the Daleks, save all of her friends, and escape the storage facility. And with the loop gradually collapsing, her time is running out...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: In the midst of the crisis, she tells Yaz: "My actions are catching up with me, time is catching up with me." Once the situation is resolved, she immediately returns to her increasingly strained show of cheerful obliviousness, however, claiming that she doesn't remember saying that. I'm actually glad that that Thirteen has emerged as the most guarded of Doctors. It's a note that builds on her first season (whether intentionally or not, Series Eleven saw most of her best character bits happening when her companions were not present), and it's both more interesting than the early "Dr. Fluffy" characterization and better suited to Jodie Whittaker's acting strengths.

Yaz: The most notable character beat for Yaz is that she finally confesses that she has feelings for the Doctor... to Dan. In fact, in this episode, all of Yaz's best scenes are opposite Dan. The two share an enjoyable bickering sibling vibe, with her lightly mocking him when a Dalek labels him as "the inferior human," yet leaping to his defense when the storage facility's owner, Sarah (Aislin Bea), snaps at him.

Dan: After being basically "the extra companion" for the entire back half of Series Thirteen, he finally receives some strong material here. I love his "delaying tactic" against the Dalek; there are echoes of Morton Dill in The Chase as he confounds the metal monster by treating it as if it's an employee and asking to speak to its manager. He gently coaxes Yaz into admitting her feelings for the Doctor, and later takes on the Rory role of calling the Doctor on her BS when he grumbles that he knows she notices things: "You do, but for some reason you pretend to me and to her that you don't."

Sarah/Nick: The two bystanders. Aisling Bea is terrific as Sarah, the grumpy owner of the storage facility, who would rather be anywhere else even before the Daleks show up. She behaves in a refreshingly human fashion, taking one Time Loop to run for her life instead of staying to help the Doctor. Nick (Adjani Salmon) is a long-time customer who always comes by on New Year's Eve. It's instantly apparent that he fosters a massive crush on Sarah, though it takes that being shoved in her face for her to actually notice. Oddly, both characters parallel the Doctor in different ways. Sarah is grumpy and keeps Nick and her mother at arm's length, the same way the Doctor does to her companions; Nick is more than a little odd but is also fundamentally decent, descriptors that could be applied to all of the Doctor's incarnations.

Jeff: The offscreen Jeff becomes both the episode's running joke and possibly its key character. We never see him, not even a photograph, but his presence is a constant through the episode. Sarah and Nick are both at the facility because Jeff never shows up to work on New Year's Eve. As the Doctor and her friends explore the facility, they discover that he bunks in a storage unit, and that he keeps canned food and other items in further empty units - including a few items that play a key role in the resolution.

Daleks: Targeting the Doctor for her actions during the Flux crisis... although the Doctor has thwarted them so often that she has to stop and ask exactly which action prompted them this time. Though treated comically, particularly in the scene with Dan, they aren't made into jokes. The entire episode sees them ahead of the Doctor, thwarting her plans and escape attempts. When the Doctor tries to stop them using old tactics, they are ready, telling her with audible smugness, "Daleks learn!"


THOUGHTS:

"Groundhog Day!"
-Dan's first words upon realizing that he, the Doctor, and Yaz are caught in a time loop.

With only a few exceptions, I have never been a fan of the New Series' Dalek stories. One of those exceptions was Chris Chibnall's own Resolution, the first of his New Year's Dalek specials... but even that one fell apart at the end, while I found his following Revolution of the Daleks to be entirely competent but utterly uninteresting.

Which makes Eve of the Daleks all the more pleasant a surprise. This is easily the best of Chibnall's three New Year's episodes, a well-paced, fun, and funny story that held my attention from the first scene through to the last.

"Daleks learn!" is intoned at the end of the teaser, and that one line sets up much of the rest of this. All the characters - Doctor, Daleks, and even humans - retain the memories of each loop, leaving them to use their knowledge to try to succeed in the next loop. The Doctor has jammed Dalek weaponry with her sonic screwdriver once before; the Daleks have upgraded to circumvent that. Sarah tries to change her route to avoid getting killed (again); the Daleks anticipate that change and intercept her on a higher floor. Even the episode's resolution plays into this, with the Doctor using the information gathered over each loop to set a trap for her enemies.

There is one "Doctor speech" about three-quarters of the way through that fails to land for me. It goes a little too heavy-handed in making sure we don't miss the (already well-established) theme of learning and adjusting to challenges - and while Jodie Whittaker is very good through the rest of the episode, her delivery of this speech was a bit too earnest for my tastes.

Outside of that one nitpick, this episode is great fun. Performances are good, dialogue (not always Chibnall's strength) is sharp and often amusing, and the pace doesn't flag.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

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#27 (13.6): The Vanquishers.

Azure and Swarm torment the Doctor.  Well, one of the Doctors...

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 60 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Azhur Saleem. Produced by: Pete Levy.


THE PLOT:

The Doctor's escape from Swarm (Sam Spruell) and Azure (Rochenda Sandall) is successful... partially. Swarm touches her just as she transports back to her universe, and the combination of the Ravager's destructive power with the transport has the effect of splitting her in three. One Doctor ends up on Karvanista's ship just as the Sontarans assault the Lupari blockade. Another Doctor reunites with Yaz, Dan, and Jericho in the Williamson Tunnels beneath Liverpool.

A third Doctor, however, remains on the station outside the universe. As her other fragments of work to unravel the plans of the Sontarans and their ally, The Grand Serpent (Craig Parkinson), Swarm and Azure bask in the opportunity to torment their old enemy, taunting her:

"This is better than we could ever have hoped. We have everything we need. Division... The power to destroy your universe... And you!"


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Split into three personas, which she admits is confusing, exhausting, and frightening. That doesn't stop her from using it to her advantage - as when she deliberately sets herself up to be captured and interrogated, all so that she can be rescued after she's gathered needed information - rescued by another version of herself. Much like Amy in Steven Moffat's Space/Time sketch, she seems to fancy herself; she mentions having "a crush" on herself and, even when her form is adopted by a sinister entity, she pauses to note how good she looks in that variant's dark jacket (the dark jacket does suit her, by the way - Maybe we can get a wardrobe change for the specials?).

Yaz: The episode opens with her still emulating the Doctor, as when she thinks fast to open a particularly dangerous door to deal with a squad of Sontarans. Is overjoyed at the Doctor's return... until the Doctor begins rattling off technical terms with no explanation, leaving Yaz complaining, "normal service resumed." When the Doctor apologizes for shutting her out earlier in the season, saying she should have confided in her, Yaz doesn't fully let her off the hook; "Yeah, you should have," she says flatly, but makes clear that she's still willing to listen if the Doctor wants to start including her.

Dan: John Bishop continues to make the most of every small moment Dan gets... Which is fortunate, as for most of the season, small moments are all he does get. He's particularly sidelined here, with releasing a prisoner being the most significant moment he receives. There's a lot going on, so it's understandable that some characters end up underserved. Still, I'm left to wonder why he was even introduced if the season wasn't going to do anything with him.

Professor Jericho: At the opposite extreme... in a mere three episodes, Kevin McNally's Jericho has come to feel like an integral part of the series. He's emerged as my favorite character of the season: a mild-mannered, somewhat fussy academic with a core of steel. He gets some strong scenes here, thinking nothing of putting himself in danger to save his friends. I love his confrontation with a Sontaran who sneers that he's a "nameless human," to which he proudly declares himself to be "Professor Eustacius Jericho, scourge of scoundrels" - only to immediately regret not having written his autobiography, as that would have been such a good title.

The Grand Serpent: Has allied himself with the Sontarans as part of a long-range plan to install himself as Earth's ruler. He is unruffled when the Doctor points out that the Sontarans will inevitably betray him; he's already anticipated as much and plans to beat them to it. He is thrown, however, by how unbothered the Doctor is by his interrogation. When he realizes that she's actually getting information from him rather than the other way around, he tries to just kill her - but it turns out he's picked the wrong day to use his favorite parlor trick...

Swarm: Delights in inflicting pain, both psychological and physical. He teases the Doctor with her hidden memories, using his abilities to obliterate those memories - which manifests as physical agony. He literally disassembles the Doctor, only to rewind her to whole so that he can do it all over again. He and Azure boast that they'll do the same to the universe, rewinding the Flux until everything is intact and then unleashing it again, all to revel in the destruction. Not a smart boast, in this case, as this very plan provides the solution (although that solution is not very clearly communicated by the episode itself).

Azure: Every bit as sadistic as Swarm, as she dangles the Doctor's fobwatch in front of her. But she also has an inquisitive side, glimpsed in an excellent scene in which she asks the Doctor to explain why her valuing of life is better than the Ravagers' appetite for destruction. She doesn't seem to be sneering at the Doctor in that moment.  She is genuinely curious - and when she returns to taunting and tormenting her afterward, there's a sense that she's angry at how unsatisfactory she found the Doctor's answer to be. Rochenda Sandrall has been good all season, and I'm glad this episode allows her this one moment in the spotlight.

The Sontarans: Chris Chibnall again proves how good he is at writing the classic villains. He repeats the balancing act of War of the Sontarans. On the one hand, they are funny and even occasionally ridiculous, as when one Sontaran takes delight in raiding a convenience store's supplies of chocolate. At the same time, they have never been more ruthless. At one point, one gloats to Karvanista about ejecting Lupari out of airlocks to die in space, then mocks his prisoner's fury. Also, the Sontarans' plot to use their enemies to gain dominance over the Flux is genuinely clever, and it might well have succeeded.

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: The Grand Serpent ends up fixating on Kate, who announces herself as the head of the resistance against the Sontaran Occupation. I can't help but wonder if something was left on the cutting room floor, however, because Kate ends up doing very little - certainly nothing that should draw the Serpent's personal attention. At least Jemma Redgrave remains a welcome presence, making the most of her confrontation scene with the Serpent. I just wish she was a bit more central to the episode, and that she had more scenes opposite Jodie Whittaker's Doctor.

Karvanista/Bel/Vinder: Speaking of underserved characters... It's appropriate that these three end up forming a sort of group of their own; after all the setup earlier this season, none of them gets enough of a payoff. Karvanista at least gets a good scene opposite the Doctor, bemoaning that there was a time that he would have done anything for her, and that she rewarded his loyalty by leaving him. Bel and Vinder don't even get that much. On the one hand, their story doesn't go to the obvious ending I had anticipated (once the unborn baby was revealed, I fully expected them to end up being the Doctor's parents); on the other hand, it doesn't particularly go anywhere else. In the end, this season would have been much the same had they not been present at all.


THOUGHTS:

Appropriately enough for a finale, The Vanquishers not only concludes the Flux arc, it also more or less represents it in miniature. All the season's strengths are evident. The episode is fast-paced and well-acted, with a genuine sense of urgency. All three villains are effective: The Sontarans, the Serpent, and the Ravagers all work well, and each group has its own separate agenda. The Doctor is central and proactive, getting at least one good scene opposite each of the villains.

However, the finale's multiple underserved elements make clear that the season tried to do too much. Look at the characters that this episode failed to use. The Bel/Vinder plot comes to nothing particularly interesting; had it been excised from the season, the main thing we'd have lost would have been the Grand Serpent's introduction, which could have been fixed with a slight alteration to Survivors of the Flux. Maybe then, more could have been done to develop the antipathy between the Serpent and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, who is so little-used here that I'm not sure why they bothered. Even Dan, one of the season's regulars, has spent half a season being eclipsed by the more interesting Professor Jericho; why not introduce Jericho in Episode One and make him the male companion for the season, given that unlike Dan he actually does things to advance the story?

I like both season and episode as they stand. Across all six episodes, I've remained engaged and sometimes quite gripped.  Jodie Whittaker is in full command of the role at this point, and every episode has offered at least a couple of very strong dramatic scenes.

The Vanquishers is ultimately a decent finale to an overall pretty good season. I just can't help but feel that, had the redundant threads been removed, the arc might have been tighter and more focused - and the resolution (which I didn't fully catch until my second viewing) might have been a lot clearer.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

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#25 (13.4): Village of the Angels.

Professor Jericho (Kevin McNally) is attacked by an Angel in his television!

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 56 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall, Maxine Alderton. Directed by: Jamie Magnus Stone. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT:

"The Angel has the TARDIS!"

A Weeping Angel has taken control of the TARDIS. Thinking fast, the Doctor manages to expel it - but not before she and her friends are re-routed to 1967, to the quiet English village of Medderton. Strange things are happening in Medderton. The cemetery has too many gravestones. A young girl, Peggy (Poppy Polivnicki), has vanished without a trace. And Professor Jericho (Kevin McNally) is conducting psychic experiments on a young woman - Claire Brown (Annabel Scholey), the same woman the Doctor met in 21st century Liverpool.

While Yaz and Dan join the search for Peggy, the Doctor tries to learn more about Claire. But she's barely entered the Professor's house before it becomes besieged by Angels. All the Doctor can do is barricade them in first the house, then the cellar, buying time to learn exactly why Claire was targeted by the Angel in the future and what the Angels are after in the past.

But even when the Doctor gets answers, they only lead to more questions. And not everything about this situation is as it appears...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: As in co-writer Maxine Alderton's previous episode, there's an emphasis on the Doctor's lighter, more flippant side early on... all the better to contrast with the rest of the story, which puts her in an increasingly desperate situation. "I'm pretty good at stopping the unstoppable," she brags. But as she sets up barricades, then improvises a closed-circuit TV system to allow continuous observation of the Angels, it becomes clear that all she's doing is buying time.  She's keeping herself and her charges alive long enough to find answers - but an answer is not necessarily the same things as a solution...

Yaz/Dan: Her police training shows as she focuses on the search for the lost child even as the situation surrounding her and Dan becomes ever stranger. She insists that the Doctor will be able to "sort this, save us. She always does" in what sounds less like a prediction than a statement of faith. Dan is more or less along for the ride this time, but he remains an engaging presence even when given little to do.

Professor Jericho: Kevin McNally gives the standout performance as Jericho. Initially seeming to be a befuddled and somewhat blustery middle-aged nonentity, he emerges as a man of courage and strong will. A World War II veteran who saw the Nazi concentration camps first-hand, he is not intimidated by the Angels, even when they taunt him in his own voice. "I am not blinking!" he declares as he fixes his gaze on them, and his voice and stance convey that he not only means it, but he's somehow capable of following through.

Bel: Her search for Vinder leads her to Puzano, a world that was once the intergalactic equivalent of Venice, complete with canals. Now the canals are gone, as Flux survivor Namaca (Blake Harrison) explains, along with most of the people. When Namaca promises a potential means of escape, Bel investigates and makes a startling discovery which propels her to the next stop on her journey...

Azure: No Swarm this week, but we do get an appearance from his sister, Azure (Rochena Sandall). Azure is gathering survivors, presenting herself as someone offering salvation. She's even framed standing on a mountaintop like a prophet as she addresses the desperate remnants of humanity. We don't learn why she's collecting people, but I can't imagine it's for anything pleasant.

The Weeping Angels: That which contains the image of an Angel, is an Angel." That statement, introduced in 2010's The Time of Angels, proves central to this story.  Director Jamie Magnus Stone handles them well. There's a haunting beauty in a single Angel we see when the Doctor converses with it on a beach. Another moment, that seems taken straight from a horror movie, sees Angels' hands and faces coming out of the walls of a tunnel. Then there's the Doctor's confrontation with the full force of Angels, who remain stationary even when she turns away from them because, as Claire explains, they're cruel. They want to savor the Doctor's helplessness.


THOUGHTS:

One area in which Chris Chibnall's era has consistently done well is in its use of returning monsters. Resolution made the Daleks feel threatening again after years of being little more than the butt of jokes; War of the Sontarans fused the comical New Series treatment of them with their more formidable Classic Series origins; and Village of the Angels continues the trend by reintroducing the stone horrors in a tale that advances the season arc while also succeeding as a good, old-fashioned, atmospheric monster story.

The script tightens a vice around the Doctor while also tying the current plot to the larger arc. We learn more about The Division, and what we learn makes them seem far more dangerous than just some rogue Time Lord section. "The Division uses everything and everyone. Every species, every world, every moment. They are everywhere, present and unseen." The previous episode told us that the Flux was not an accident. Was the Division somehow behind it? Or someone trying to strike against them?

I've come to expect strong visual moments this season, and this episode does not disappoint. The quiet village is creepy both in night and day, particularly when it becomes a little too empty. An Angel emerges from a paper drawing, only to be set aflame in a genuinely disturbing image when the Doctor burns the original paper. Another Angel jumps out of a television screen. Then there's the surprising reveal of exactly what lies beyond the town's sign - a sign that we are told keeps moving closer and closer to the village itself. Finally, there's the last image before the credits roll, which is both beautiful and terrifying as we are delivered yet another excellent cliffhanger.

I didn't much care for the bickering old comedy couple, ill-tempered Gerald (Vincent Brimble) and his wife, good-hearted but ineffectual Jean (Jemma Churchill). Outside of quickly getting Yaz and Dan into the subplot searching for the lost little girl, they add nothing to the story. In an episode that otherwise features well-written and well-acted guest characters, I found these two to be teeth-grindingly unbearable.

That quibble aside, Village of the Angels is another good episode in what is shaping up to be the best season in a long time. With only two episodes left, I'm looking forward to seeing where everything leads... while at the same time, feeling a bit of nervousness as to whether the arc will be able to stick the landing.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

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#24 (13.3): Once, Upon Time.

The Doctor's companions become unstuck in time...

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 49 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Azhur Saleem. Produced by: Pete Levy.


THE PLOT:

"You don't mess with time. You don't put yourself and your friends in the midst of a time storm... Unless there's no alternative."

In the Temple of Atropos, Swarm and Azure have placed Yaz and the astronaut Vinder (Jacob Anderson) directly in the path of a time storm, prepared to unleash the full force of time through their frail bodies. To rescue them, the Doctor does the unthinkable. She grabs Dan to keep him out of the way of her new/old enemies and hops into the storm, taking the burden on herself while hiding her friends within their own time streams.

It's not called a "storm" for nothing, however, and none of them are able to remain at any fixed point. Dan finds himself in Liverpool, reliving his not-quite relationship with Diane (Nadia Albina), in a city that feels not quite right. Yaz experiences moments from her past, but details are not quite right - and she's somehow being stalked by a Weeping Angel.

The Doctor is also thrown into her past. Specifically, her past with the Division, on the day that the Division Doctor (Jo Martin) confronted Swarm and Azure at the Temple - the beginning of the current conflict tucked within a memory that's been hidden from her...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Earnest in her concern for her friends, but at the same time desperate to learn more about her past. Once she realizes that she is reliving the actions of the Division Doctor, she stops resisting. Jodie Whittaker gets to vary her usual performance, adopting the cold swagger of Jo Martin's variant while threatening her enemies with "execution... erasure of identity... (or) isolation prison terms for the infinite duration of the universe." Once the crisis has passed, her secretiveness reasserts itself, and she snaps at Yaz twice in short order for pressing her for information.

Yaz: Really needs to get the Doctor alone for a full, uninterrupted conversation. Not just about the secrets, but about the frankly shabby and disrespectful way she's been treated. The Doctor has been either dismissive or hostile on almost every occasion that Yaz has attempted to get information from her. In this episode, she yells at Yaz: "You don't understand anything!" Well, how can she, when you refuse to tell her anything? At this point, the friendship/relationship between Thirteen and Yaz feels exponentially more toxic than the one between Twelve and Clara ever did; at least with Clara, I felt the mutual affection, whereas here everything seems to be flowing exactly one way.

Dan: Mostly sidelined this time, though I did enjoy the scene in which he gradually realized things were "off" while reliving conversations with Diane. Dan remains positive and enthusiastic. Of all the people gathered in the Temple, he's the one who comprehends the least. But when Swarm gloats, Dan is the first to insist that they will stop him.

Vinder: We learn exactly why he was stationed alone at the edge of nowhere. After receiving a commendation for heroism, he was granted a prestigious assignment at the side of the Grand Serpent (Craig Parkinson), a high-ranking political figure. The Serpent proved to be as cold and untrustworthy as the title implies, and when Vinder attempted to do the right thing... Well, it didn't go well, hence both his isolation and bitterness in The Halloween Apocalypse. Given his best material so far, Jacob Anderon delivers his best performance in the season to date.

Bel: A separate thread follows the adventures of Bel (Thaddea Graham), a survivor of the Flux. She narrates her thoughts to "Tigme," a recording device, as she evades Daleks, Cybermen, and strange blue particles that devour everything in their path. Her goal is to be reunited with her lost love. That person's identity is no particular surprise, but it is withheld until the final moments - likely to create a sense of pieces of falling into place in an episode that otherwise resolves fairly little.

The Division Doctor: Jo Martin is only briefly glimpsed, just long enough to establish that the Doctor is reliving the events of this incarnation. In her short screen time, she manages to again project both intelligence and toughness. In both her moments and the scenes in which Jodie Whittaker re-enacts her confrontation with Swarm, I'm left with the same thought as in Fugitive of the Judoon: This may be the Doctor's past, but there is a coldness and ruthlessness here that doesn't really feel like our Doctor. I'm both suspecting and hoping that consistent thread is leading somewhere.

Swarm, Azure, and Passenger: "Ravagers." That's the designation given to them during the raid on Atropos, and it seems a fitting title. In the past, we again see the older form of Swarm (Matthew Needham). He and Azure gloat before their downfall, just as they do in the present, with the rejuvenated Swarm (Sam Spruell). We also learn what "Passenger" is: Basically, a plot device, but one used to good effect in two different scenes.


THOUGHTS:

Readers of my reviews likely know by now that I have a particular affinity for shows that nod at the surreal. Sudden jumps in time and space, rapid shifts from day to night, things that are askew and even confusing... For whatever reason, I tend to respond to these types of elements.

Which is to say: Once, Upon Time is a perfect fit for me. I also think it's largely well-constructed. There are three main threads: The Doctor reliving the raid on the Temple; Vinder's backstory that led to his assignment; and Bel's attempts to evade danger in a post-Flux universe while searching for her lover. Vinder's thread is purely focused on the past, on finally letting us know who he is. Bel's seems to be in the narrative's present, showing us the devastation caused by the Flux. The Doctor's links past and present; she's reliving events from long ago, but they are connected to the current conflict and experiencing them provides her with a solution. All three storylines are effectively paced, and the ending leaves them feeling all of the same piece.

On a less positive note, I've become impatient with the recurring appearances by Steve Oram's 19th century character. His scene at the start of The Halloween Apocalypse intrigued me. But his scenes since have done nothing to flesh out his role; he just seems to be popping up for a minute each week to make sure viewers don't forget about him. In a busy but otherwise well-controlled episode, his appearance here briefly throws the structure off-kilter for no good reason.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of this installment. For the most part, this was delivering exposition, but it did so vastly more enjoyably than The Timeless Children did, carrying the same sense of momentum that has been the highlight of the season thus far. Oh, and it ends with another good cliffhanger.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

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#23 (13.2): War of the Sontarans.

Parlay on a battlefield: The Doctor and the Sontaran commander, Skaak (Jonathan Watson).

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 59 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Jamie Magnus Stone. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT:

The TARDIS crew survive the Flux... somehow. Thrown clear of the TARDIS, they are on Earth. Specifically, they are Sevastapol during the Crimean War. They are found by Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole (Sara Powell), who takes them back to her "British Hotel." On the way, they have to hide to evade the enemy. Not the Russians, as the Doctor naturally assumes, but a very different foe - The Sontarans!

Under the command of Skaak (Jonathan Watson), the Sontarans have used the time instability caused by the Flux to claim the Earth. From the perspective of Seacole and the British general, Logan (Gerald Kyd), the Sontarans aren't alien invaders. They have always been here, within the borders of "Sontar" - an Empire that occupies the territory that should belong to Russia and China. The Doctor realizes that time itself has gone very wrong.

She has barely gotten a grasp on the situation before Dan and Yaz are snatched away, each taken to a different part of time and space. Dan finds himself back in present day Liverpool, which is also overrun by Sontarans. Meanwhile, Yaz appears in The Temple of Atropos - a mysterious structure on a planet called Time...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: When Dan and Yaz are snatched out of time, she runs straight for the TARDIS, for a scene that's the exact opposite of the one that ended The Ghost Monument. There, she greeted the TARDIS like a lost lover, all but weeping in gratitude and relief at being reunited. Here, she's frantic and horrified when she is unable to gain entry, barred not only from rescuing her friends but from the only home she's ever known. Jodie Whittaker is particularly good in this scene, and in her confrontation with Skaak, sneering at him for his attack on Earth amounting to little more than a cowardly sneak attack. She strives to find a way to end the attack without bloodshed, and is enraged when Skaak and the human general, Logan, continue to thwart her attempts.

Dan: Shades of Jamie from the Troughton Era. Dan is obviously confused by all the strangeness surrounding him, but he remains game for whatever might be thrown at him. Whisked back to his present only to find it under Sontaran domination, he resolves to fight back. Thanks to a timely intervention by his parents (Sue Jenkins and Paul Broughton, both wonderful), he is armed with critical information and a weapon: a steel Wok. John Bishop's comedy background shows in his interactions with his parents and his attempts to bluff the Sontarans, but he stays just the right side of serious for us to also feel a sense of danger.

Yaz: Draws the "spare" card this week, transported to The Temple of Setting Up the Next Episode. We see more evidence of her hero worship of the Doctor, in the form of some letters she's inked into her hand: WWTDD. She glances at this reminder to herself - "What Would the Doctor Do?" - and then acts on it, confidently telling a mysterious probe that she's here to "repair" and letting it escort her to fellow time refugee Vinder (Jacob Anderson), an astronaut we saw fleeing from The Flux in the previous episode.

Mary Seacole: The Historical Celebrity of the Week.  The script downplays some of Seacole's more colorful attributes, though it does nod to at least two things: Her strained relationship with Florence Nightingale, whom she dismisses as being unwilling to actually come near the front lines, and her willingness to use her position to turn a profit, as she freely admits that sales of alcohol in her "hotel" help to pay for medical supplies. Like the real Seacole, she does not restrict her treatment to only the British... though instead of a wounded Russian, she is seen tending to an injured and apoplectic Sontaran.

Sontarans: Chris Chibnall's script nods to The Time Warrior as Skaak insists that his race has a right to Earth because of the claim Linx placed way back in that classic serial. It's an appropriate reference, given that this is almost certainly the best Sontaran story since then. The potato-headed clone warriors remain comical, notably when Skaak declares that he chose the Crimean War as his point of assault for a very important reason: "I wanted to ride a horse." At the same time, the aliens are a force to be reckoned with. When they engage a large force of disciplined English soldiers, they defeat them with ease. Seacole later observes with horror that all of the casualties on the field were English, with not a single fallen Sontaran among them.

Swarm, Azure, and Passenger: The season villains are only briefly seen, but they remain effective. Azure (Rochenda Sandall) is Swarm's sister, and she might just be scarier than he is. She seems to take pleasure in killing, with Swarm almost having to hold her back. Passenger (Jonny Mathers) is the third of this group, and the one we know we know nothing about right now, as he seems to be a silent onlooker. In this episode, we learn that not only does Swarm know the Doctor - He also knows who Yaz is, and knows what she has written on her hand. He is amused at her shock, dismissing her as limited in her perception of time.


THOUGHTS:

In my review of The Halloween Apocalypse, I wondered if that episode couldn't have done with an extra ten minutes to better unify its many moving parts. War of the Sontarans makes me even more certain of this; it runs almost exactly that extra ten minutes, falling just short of an even hour, and manages the same sense of momentum without ever threatening to lose control of its narrative. I was just as caught up in events as in the previous episode, but I never the lost the sense that all the characters and strands were connected.

It opens with mysteries: Why are the Sontarans effectively taking the place of the Russians in the Crimean War? What happened to Dan and Yaz? What is happening to the TARDIS? All of these questions are addressed as the episode progresses. We get a firm answer to the first, linking the Sontarans' invasion in this episode to the events that concluded the last one. We also follow Dan and Yaz through their threads, so we know where/when they went, even if we don't yet know why. The question of the TARDIS is the least addressed, though its damage and ongoing odd behavior receives a prominent mention in the scene with Swarm that closes the episode.

The episode looks terrific. One area in which the Chibnall Era has improved upon its predecessors is in production values, and War of the Sontarans is particularly cinematic. The Doctor parlays with Skaak on a mist-covered field, the two looking like miniature soldiers as they face each other in wide shots. Dan discovers the Sontaran fleet, docked in Liverpool, and the camera rises to really showcase the power of the alien ships. British and Sontaran armies face each other in battle, in spectacular (if definitely CGI) large-scale shots. If there were ever a big budget Doctor Who movie, this is about what it would look like. If we were lucky.

A few things keep me from awarding full marks. The Yaz/Flux scenes, though well-presented and effectively intercut with the Sontaran story, are the weakest in the episode. General Logan, commander of the British forces, makes MASH's Frank Burns look reasonable and thoughtful by comparison. An effort is made to draw a parallel between him and Skaak... but it doesn't go anywhere interesting, and the final exchange between him and the Doctor recalls the very worst moments of the Tennant era.

That aside, this is a terrific hour of television. The regulars are in good form, with Whittaker particularly strong and John Bishop continuing to prove himself an excellent addition to the show. The show has never looked better visually. It's well-paced, with energy and humor. As for the Sontarans themselves? Well, after a very long time of being relegated to silly comedy relief, this represents a major return to form.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

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