#10 (11.10): The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos.

Graham announces his intent to seek revenge on the alien who killed his wife.

1 episode. Approx. 50 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Jamie Childs. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT:

The time travelers come to Ranskoor av Kolos, a planet that is the origin point for several distress signals, and whose name roughly translates to "Disintegrator of the Soul." The planet is home to the Ux, a long-lived race that uses the power of its faith to bend reality - Which explains why the atmosphere is wracked with reality-distorting waves. The Doctor counters these waves by fitting her team with neural blockers that they must wear at all times. "Don't lose them," she admonishes.

They materialize on a ship, and are confronted at gunpoint by its captain, Paltraki (Mark Addy).  He has lost his memory, but starts to regain his faculties after the Doctor gives him a neural blocker. Looking around the ship, they discover a strange object - a rock of some type encased in a protective substance, which Paltraki recalls is important in some way.

The ship's communicator sounds, and a masked figure demands the captain return the object - killing a captive member of Paltraki's crew to demonstrate his seriousness. The voice is a familiar one: T'zim-Sha of the Stenza, the alien responsible for killing Grace. He is posing as The Creator, the Ux deity, manipulating and weaponizing their faith to serve his ends.

Hearing his voice, Graham becomes very still and reserved. As they move out to rescue Paltraki's surviving crew from the floating Ux shrine where they are imprisoned, Graham pulls the Doctor to one side and informs her of his intent: To kill T'zim-Sha if he gets the opportunity, to get justice for Grace. Even if that means the end of his time in the TARDIS.


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: It's clear how serious she considers this situation to be when, before entering the Ux shrine, she produces grenades and bombs. When Ryan calls her out on her willingness to use these weapons after chastising him for shooting sniper bots, she blithely replies that her rules are "flexible... (They) change all the time." One consistent trait of this Doctor is a greater respect for faith than previous incarnations. We saw her join in with a vigil in The Tsuranga Conundrum, and preside over a wedding while freely talking about faith in Demons of the Punjab. Here, she meets Andinio (Phyllis Logan), the Ux leader, and remains not just respectful but downright impressed at the feats she and her kind can perform through faith - While at the same time showing naked scorn for T'zim-Sha, for manipulating and weaponizing their abilities.

She behaves differently with each character in this episode. With Paltraki, she is cautious but compassionate, patiently explaining that she is here to help even as he points a weapon at her. With Andinio, she acts as a voice of reason, asking questions to challenge her belief in T'zim-Sha as The Creator, particularly the question of how he can possibly know her. With Graham, she is very direct: If he takes revenge for Grace - assuming he survives the attempt - she will not allow him to travel with her anymore.

Graham: Is very direct in telling the Doctor that he will kill the Stenza if he gets the chance. The way he does it, pulling her aside to talk to her privately, feels like a mark of respect. He knows she won't approve, but he will not insult or betray her by trying to hide his intentions. When Ryan calls him on his revenge plan, demanding to know what Grace would have thought of such a course, he replies: "Your Nan would want to be alive. She actually liked being alive, and she was really good at it!" For all of his anger at the Stenza, however, he does not neglect the task of freeing the prisoners to try to hunt him down. He focuses fully on the job at hand, not compromising the safety of his charges at any point. It seems clear his intent is exactly as he says it is: If he gets the chance to kill T'zim-Sha, he'll take it, but he won't go so far as endangering others to get that chance.

Ryan: When the others wonder what happened to Paltraki's crew, Ryan jumps to the worst possible conclusion and wonders if the troubled captain killed them. This is consistent with the previous episode, when his first thought was that Hanne's father had abandoned her. In that episode, he was right; in this episode, he is wrong - But taken together, it seems clear that he instinctively looks for the worst in people, likely as a result of his abandonment. Graham is the one male authority figure who hasn't abandoned him, despite his early efforts to push him away. By this point, he has accepted Graham as family, and even tells the older man that he loves him and doesn't want to lose him... and at the end of the episode, Ryan goes back for him, almost certainly saving his life in the process.

Yaz: "I'm with you, whatever happens." Said flatly and firmly, when the Doctor tries to send her away in the closing stretch. She has developed an unswerving loyalty to the Doctor. When the Doctor hesitates to disconnect the Ux from a Stenza device, Yaz prods her with all that is in the balance - But she doesn't try to override the Doctor's judgment or enforce her own. Instead, she seems to trust that the Doctor will find a way to do what's necessary while still staying true to her own moral code.


THOUGHTS

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos is the Series Eleven finale... sort of. Given that Resolution aired less than a month after this, and followed up directly on the Graham/Ryan character arc while also delivering a story that felt a bit "bigger" than the norm, I'd argue that it is the true finale in all but name. I'd also argue that this line of thinking helps the season as a whole. It certainly helps The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, because while this isn't at all bad when judged simply as an episode, it does not do the job as a finale.


WHAT WENT WRONG: MORE TIME NEEDED

This episode really needed to be 60 or 65 minutes. It has many potentially interesting ideas and plot turns, but most of them don't get enough time to make a proper impression. The last part of the episode sees the Doctor and Yaz attempting to stop the Ux from destroying Earth while convincing them of T'zim-Sha's true nature. They remove their neural blockers, which the Doctor modifies to interrupt the Ux's mental signal - but at the cost of exposing them to the planet's disruptive mental effects.

This should be a fantastic way to ratchet up the tension at the climax... Except that the episode does nothing at all with it. We should see the Doctor and Yaz fighting to keep their focus and even their sanity while still solving the problem - perhaps with Yaz succumbing to the effects and the Doctor having to incapacitate her while still battling to finish the job. That would convey a sense of tension, conflict, and jeopardy. It would also require at least a few minutes of screen time to play out. Instead, we just get a line from the Doctor about feeling "fuzzy" and a few constipated expressions from Yaz in the background, turning what should have been a terrific complication into... Well, nothing really.

In the same scene, after fitting the Ux with the neural blockers, the Doctor still has to convince them that their "god" is nothing of the sort. This turns out to be remarkably easy to do. The Doctor just tells Andinio who T'zim-Sha really is, and Andinio instantly believes her. Far too easy, and utterly undramatic. With more time, the episode might have found a more convincing and interesting way to convince her, perhaps with T'zim-Sha himself accidentally revealing the truth when taunting the Doctor. As it stands, it takes the Doctor a little over ten seconds to talk around a woman who should be desperate to cling to her beliefs, if only so that she can continue believing that all she has done has been for some greater good.


WHAT WENT RIGHT: ATMOSPHERE AND STRUCTURE:

Director Jamie Childs has been the big find of this season. All four of his episodes have demonstrated an ability to create a strong visual atmosphere. Given a script that's too often guilty of telling instead of showing, Childs creates tension out of a wasteland of destroyed spaceships, or out of the artificial, yellow-hued lighting inside the Ux shrine. The visuals of T'zim-Sha, framed always in the darkness, lit indirectly from light that's anywhere but where he is, make the Stenza more formidable and threatening than in his earlier appearance, and the use of close-ups is particularly effective.

I will also credit Chibnall's story structure. The first Act raises mysteries: What happened to Paltraki's crew? What is the nature of the object Paltraki took from the Stenza? The first question is answered quickly, kicking off the rescue mission that drives the story. The answer to the second question is held back until near the end, but the script continually returns to it, with the Doctor asking it of both Andinio and T'zim-Sha.

An attempt to ratchet up the stakes by threatening Earth feels forced and doesn't quite land, but the resolution of Graham's revenge plot is more satisfying.  He ultimately does not kill his target, but takes a more poetic justice - As with the Doctor's freeing of the Ux, he finds a solution that fits within his moral code while still satisfying his need for justice.


OVERALL:

I will admit that, as an episode in itself, I find The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos quite entertaining. Even with the weaknesses, I strongly suspect it would have been much better-received had it aired in the mid-season, perhaps as a set up for a final confrontation with "Tim Shaw" later on.

That said, I will acknowledge that this episode is all surface. I was entertained, but I was never emotionally engaged, and I never felt like the stakes were as high as the script kept insisting they were.


Overall Rating: 6/10. Judged as an episode. But at least one point lower if judged as a finale.


Previous Story: It Takes You Away
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#2 (11.2): The Ghost Monument.

The Doctor and her friends on an alien planet.

1 episode. Approx. 48 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Mark Tonderai. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.

THE PLOT:

The Doctor's attempt to use T'zimm Sha's technology to reach her TARDIS backfires rather spectacularly. Not only does she accidentally transport her new friends with her, she lands all of them in deep space. Without space suits.

Fortunately, someone must have activated an Infinite Improbability Drive, as two separate ships each rescue two of them. The embittered, selfish Epzo (Shaun Dooley) and the desperate Angstron (Susan Lynch) are participants in a space race. The winner will receive untold riches - enough to set Epzo up like a king or allow Angstron to secure her family's safety. They are the last remaining contestants, and the final leg of the race is across a world known only as Desolation. To win, they must traverse the planet and reach the site of the Ghost Monument, an object that appears only once very thousand rotations.

The Doctor has her suspicions about the Ghost Monument, which are confirmed when she asks to see a visual of it. The mysterious object that is the end point of the race? The TARDIS!


THE DOCTOR AND THE TARDIS:

Jodie Whittaker gets her first genuinely great moment. At the episode's end, she and her companions are left stranded on Desolation - no TARDIS, no apparent way off, no prospect for survival. The Doctor does something we've rarely seen: She gives up. "We'll be dead within one rotation," she announces, not one hint of hope or fight left in her.

Some take issue with this. I think it makes perfect sense within the larger context. Not only is it an accurate assessment of a bleak situation, think about how bad the Doctor's immediate past has been. In a very short span of time, the Doctor has watched one companion first be shot, then converted into a Cyberman; has been forced to leave another companion to a very uncertain future; and has seen a friend/rival who was reforming run back to the darkness to save her own skin (we know Missy had a change of heart, but the Doctor doesn't). The previous Doctor already held back regeneration, preferring death to going on living on a battlefield that's "empty, because everyone else has fallen." Regeneration brings not only a new body, but a new sex, and the last familiar thing to cling to - the TARDIS - vanishes. The Doctor is helpless to prevent the death of another friend, and now the promise of the TARDIS' return has been snatched away. The above has basically been her week. Who wouldn't give up?

Her new friends refuse to allow that, each stating that they "have each other" and don't accept the certainty of their fate - reinforcing the Eleventh Doctor's words: "My friends have always been the best of me." And then... they hear the TARDIS. And as hope returns, the Doctor is plainly desperate, begging her ship to stabilize: "I really need you right now!" When it does, she runs to it and literally caresses its shell like a lover's face before finally, with clear delight, inviting her friends to come and see.

It's the first perfect moment of the new era, and remains at the time of this writing Whittaker's single best moment in the role.


COMPANIONS:

Graham/Ryan: Graham continues to try to build a relationship with Ryan, possibly even more fervently than before as he no longer has Grace. Ryan rebuffs most of these attempts, saying that Graham "talks about this stuff too much." Graham replies that Ryan doesn't talk about it enough. Both are right - Graham is probably trying a bit too hard with his insistence that Ryan (an adult) refer to him as "granddad." Ryan does seem determined to push Graham away. Both men bond over Grace, agreeing that if she was there, she would be thrilled to see an alien planet. They also work well together in restoring power to the damaged battery of a ship they need to take them across deadly water.

Yaz: Gets the least to do of the regulars. Spoiler: I'll be writing that sentence a lot during these reviews. Remains a likeable presence, however, and we do learn a little bit about her family life. I find it amusing that some fans are shipping the Doctor and Yaz, when clearly more narrative seeds have been planted for a potential Yaz/Ryan pairing. Here, she bonds with Ryan over his difficulty with ladders, affirming her support for him when he thanks her for waiting for him to get down the ladder.


THOUGHTS:

After giving a rapturous reception to The Woman Who Fell to Earth, critics seemed to feel more free to attack the shortcomings of The Ghost Monument, a story people regularly rank among the season's weakest. Once again, I find myself in the middle. I liked The Woman Who Fell to Earth, but not as much as many reviewers did. I'll acknowledge that The Ghost Monument has a weak plot... But I still basically like the episode, in some ways moreso than its immediate predecessor.

Unlike Woman, I think this episode's plot is thin on purpose. I think Chris Chibnall wanted to focus on characters and world-building in this episode, and considered the "race plot" to be a good excuse to show the regulars interacting and solving problems without needing to waste much time on story convolutions. I also think it largely works. We get good bits between Graham and Ryan, the Doctor and Ryan, the Doctor and the guest characters, and even Yaz and Ryan, without any of these moments seeming forced. The race plot provides enough of a framework that there's a firm goal for everyone to work toward, without ever getting in the way.

We also get a stronger sense of this Doctor. She is protective of her friends, but is more willing to show a sterner side to strangers or rivals. I love the early scene on Epzo's ship. She goes from arguing with Epzo about their dire situation, to smiling and reassuring Yaz that all will be fine, then back to arguing with Epzo without missing a beat. When he challenges her to do better, she steps in and does so, successfully crash-landing his ship on the planet. She remains dismissive of him throughout the episode, mocking his tough guy affectations ("Do you practice those lines in a mirror?") and his selfishness ("Go take one of your heroic naps"), all while working to not only keep everyone alive, but to figure out why this planet is in a state that so insistently defies reason. It is an altogether stronger showing for both actress and character than her debut, and makes me far more hopeful for her Doctor than the first episode did.

This is also a genuinely beautiful-looking episode. The South Africa location shooting is used to good effect, creating a desert planet that's convincingly barren without simply looking like an Earth desert or a Tattooine clone. I really like the new composer's work, which supports the action and visuals throughout without ever once overwhelming them (and without ever once drowning out dialogue).

On the other hand, some of Chibnall's weaknesses as a Doctor Who writer show themselves all too clearly. He tells when he should show. The Doctor scans the water to declare it unsafe; literally any sort of visual demonstration of the danger would have been more dramatic. Couldn't a cannon fodder guest character have attempted to fill a canteen or something? I'd say the Sniper Bots of one encounter went to the Star Wars Stormtrooper school of shooting at things, but that would be an insult to Stormtroopers. Ryan's attempt to solve the Sniper Bot issue by playing Call of Duty with an alien gun is stupid to the point of being embarrassing.

Finally, it can't be denied that the main story is very thin. The Doctor, her companions, and the guest characters travel from A to B, navigating too few complications a little too easily, before reaching their destination and getting off the planet. The End. Even for an episode that's deliberately prioritizing character over incident, it really needs just a little more incident than that.

I still like the episode for its visual strength, though, and for its several very good moments, leaving me awarding a solid if unspectacular final score.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

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#1 (11.1): The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) tracks an alien menace.

1 episode. Approx. 63 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Jamie Childs. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT

Modern-day Sheffield, an ordinary night. Graham O'Brien (Bradley Walsh) and his wife Grace (Sharon D. Clarke) are on a train home... A trip that is disrupted by a mysterious ball of energy that Graham insists can't possibly be alien, because "We don't get aliens in Sheffield!" Grace's grandson Ryan (Tosin Cole) and young policewoman Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill) also arrive at the train - Just in time to see a mysterious woman (Jodie Whittaker) literally fall from the sky, through the train roof, into the compartment.

The woman can't remember her name.  Or the word for "tongue."  And is surprised to learn that she's a woman. She is quick to take charge of the situation, however, prompting the group to investigate both the energy ball and a bizarre, egg-like form Ryan discovered in the woods. The investigation brings them face-to-face with a hunt by an alien determined to prove his worthiness to rule his people - and who thinks nothing of killing anyone who gets in his way!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Jodie Whittaker debuts as the first female Doctor, which depending on which Internet forum you stumble onto is either the Second Coming or the Social Justice Warrior Apocalypse. Up-front: I've never been either strongly for or against the idea of a female Doctor (something that's been mooted, with varying degrees of seriousness, since around 1980). It seemed clear enough during Capaldi's tenure that the groundwork was being laid, so I wasn't particularly surprised - And as a fan of Broadchurch, I was mainly relieved that a genuinely good actress had been cast.

In her first story, Whittaker is... fine. She is terrific in her introductory scene and during a couple quiet, contemplative scenes centered around a funeral near the end. She has many effective moments throughout, showing good comic timing as well as an unsurprising (for those who have seen her past work) capacity for dramatic scenes. What she doesn't quite seem to have down, at this stage at least, is the ability to switch on a dime between the comic and dramatic, and she comes across a bit forced in scenes that call on her to do so... And also in moments that call on her to recite Technobabble. On the whole, it's neither a disastrous debut nor a triumphant one, but somewhere in the middle. I do note that this was one of the first two stories shot; perhaps the production team should have borrowed a page from the Davison and Smith years, and started with a mid-season episode to allow her to find the character?

Graham/Grace: There's nothing at all forced about the performances of Bradley Walsh and Sharon D. Clarke, both of whom are splendid and absolutely authentic throughout. The Doctor's arrival turns their lives upside down, and they have wonderfully contrasting reactions. Grace is thrilled by the excitement of this adventure, throwing herself in head-first and even asking, "Is it wrong that I'm enjoying this?" Graham's blunt response? "Yes!" Graham is the perfect audience stand-in, reacting as most of us would - Stumbling through, doing the best he can in the situation, but also reluctant to willingly put himself or his family in harm's way. I was already liking him, but I knew he'd end up being a favorite in a scene midway through the episode, when he wonders why they're running toward the dangerous alien instead of away from it.

Ryan/Yaz: Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill round out the regulars. Ryan struggles with dyspraxia, a condition that affects physical coordination, and also with his relationship with Graham, his grandmother's husband of three years. Yaz is relatively new on the police force, and is frustrated at the dull calls - hoaxes and parking disputes - that she's assigned. As a policewoman, she wants to take charge of the situation, but she fairly easily bends to the Doctor's force of personality and confidence. Both characters are likable enough, with potential for growth, but they make much less of an impression than Graham and Grace do.

Monster of the Week: T'zim-Sha (Samuel Oatley) is from a warrior-like race known as the Stenza, and is on Earth to fulfill a hunt for a "designated human target" to prove himself as leader. The Doctor sizes him up quickly, and finds him wanting. His hunt is supposed to be without aid, but he cheats - using the energy ball to locate his target and DNA bombs to cover his tracks. The Doctor taunts him for being a "cheat," and mocks him by referring to him as "Tim Shaw." There's not much more there - this is not a complex, layered villain, but basically a Predator that speaks.


THOUGHTS

The Woman Who Fell to Earth feels less like the start of a new season than the start of a new series. It's not just that the Doctor is female now - Except for certain dank corners of the Internet, that's honestly the smallest and least significant change. The entire tone, style, and approach to the series is starkly different. The pace is slower, with more time taken to establish characters and setting. Nonverbal beats are lingered over longer. Coupled with these shifts, new composer Segun Akinola favors atmosphere over bombast, making the entire production feel much lower-key than the Davies and Moffat eras. Finally, continuity has been stripped back, limited only to Whittaker appearing in (and looking fabulous in) Capaldi's outfit for the bulk of the story and a single reference to her having previously been a "white-haired Scotsman." It honestly feels more like "Season 1, Episode 1" than Rose did.

Again, my cards on the table: The Moffat era is my favorite period of the new series, and among my favorites of the entire franchise. Moffat was fearless, always willing to aim for big ideas, large scale, epic scope. At its best, his Doctor Who was dazzling. At its worst, it failed because its reach exceeded its grasp, which is vastly preferable to failures that just don't try at all.

For all of that, I feel that every one of these changes was needed. The epic approach had reached its height at the end of Series Nine (which, since I haven't yet reviewed it, I'll just note is my favorite new Who season), and started to run aground in Series Ten. If everything's epic, if every situation carries ultimate stakes, then nothing really matters much at all. If the Doctor is a superhero, then you need ever more powerful supervillains, and there's a point at which it's all gotten as "big" as it can reasonably get.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth brings things back down to Earth, and has a far more authentic feel to it than did the previous era.  As noted, it feels like an "Episode One," and I could easily imagine this being a jumping-on point for new viewers.  New showrunner Chris Chibnall takes the opportunity to re-align expectations.  When asked who she is, the new Doctor doesn't declare herself to be ancient, god-like, formidable, or the last of the anything.  She just simply replies that she's a traveler who helps out where she can - A needed rescaling of a Doctor who had, as the Eleventh Doctor once observed, gotten "too big."

If I'm not talking much about the plot... Well, it's because the actual story is very pedestrian.  This is no Eleventh Hour, which trampled all my expectations and had me leaning forward in my seat in exhilaration and delight.  But it does a good, solid job of relaunching the series with a new lead and a new direction.


Rating: 7/10.

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