A new era begins. Chris Chibnall has taken over as showrunner but more importantly (sorry Chris) Jodie Whittaker is now Doctor Who. Or The Doctor.
I haven’t watched this for a couple of years, and I enjoyed it a lot this time around. I think it might be the best introductory episode of a new Doctor in the post-2005 era. There, I said it.
It is nice that this story takes place in Sheffield and not London. It’s nice for Doctor Who Britain to be more than just the tourist version.
First episodes of new Doctors are always more about getting to know the new Doctor than the plot itself. It is interesting then that we don’t see Jodie Whittaker for the first ten minutes of the story. Instead, we meet Ryan Sinclair (Tosin Cole) and then after a short little monologue that sets us up with some nice assumption, we see him trying to learn to ride a bike at 19. Ryan has dyspraxia, which may or may not become a thing in the series. His grandma Grace (Sharon D Clarke) and her second husband Graham O’Brien (Bradley Walsh). They’re trying to encourage him. Ryan won’t call Graham grandad. Frustrated he throws his bike over the cliff and down into some woods.
Graham and Grace must head off to catch a train and Ryan goes to get his bike. That search leads to some interaction with something alien and then another alien thing appears. A big onion like ice cold thing. Ryan calls the Police.
Which brings us to PC Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill). She’s a young probationary PC with a desire to do more than just deal with parking disputes. So, they send her to Ryan. Who it turns out went to the same school as Yasmin.
On the train though something is amiss. A thing crashes through the engine. The train screams to a halt. Some passengers jump off and head into the night, but Grace, Graham, and Karl (Johnny Dixon) get trapped. A sparking tentacular thing is coming down the train and then…
The Doctor drops in. Through the roof.
It’s an impressive entrance.
Jodie Whittaker is a ball of face scrunching energy from the off. I like the fact they let her stick with her own accent too. There’s something very endearing about Jodie Whittaker.
The tentacular ball disappears but not before zapping everyone with – it will turn out – DNA bombs. An ugly way to dispose of witnesses. Why they don’t just try to kill everyone is moot. There must be a reason.
When they go to find the cold onion thing. It is gone.
It’s been taken by Asif, whose sister disappeared seven years ago. Asif thinks this object will help him answer the question of what happened to her. Well, it turns out what happened to her was a Stenza warrior. Like the one that pops out of the onion. This warrior kills Asif and we will find out rips out one of his teeth.
This it will turn out the Stenza push into their own faces as a trophy. So, when our alien warrior, whose name is Tzim-Sha, takes of his mask his face is full of teeth. Which suggests he’s killed a lot of creatures. It will turn of Tzim-Sha (who the Doctor winds up by calling Tim Shaw) is here to hunt. His target is Karl.
Whilst investigating at Asif’s the Doctor takes time to build herself a new sonic screwdriver out of bits and bobs and Sheffield steel.
Her memory is still not what it was though and she still finding herself. Whittaker gets a nice little speech about what regeneration is like, which she delivers well.
The rest of the story is a traditional Doctor Who monster hunt until near the end. In the final confrontation – high on cranes because Karl works as a crane operator – the Doctor gets a bit of an unsubtle speech about change, which is well-delivered but is obviously aimed at the watching audience trying to deal with a new female Doctor. She’s switched the DNA bombs from her to Tim Shaw and activates them and throws the recall device at him. Karl kicks him off the crane as he goes.
The Doctor tells Karl he had no right to do that. Now, forgive a little foreshadowing, but this is going to be one problem I have with this era of Doctor Who. The Doctor has just activated DNA bombs in Tim Shaw. Then she gets snotty with Karl who has been terrifyingly chased down by an alien monster for booting him off the crane. What right does the Doctor have to tell him off? It just feels wrong.
In the process of this fight though Grace has fallen to her death.
The rest of the episode is taken up with the consequences of that. We see that Ryan’s Dad isn’t there and Graham makes a speech, which Bradley Walsh delivers rather nicely. Then the Doctor gets to pick her outfit.
I have failed to note that the Doctor has lost her TARDIS. She fell out of it as it dematerialised. She is using Stenza technology to build a transport device to take her where the TARDIS last was. Yaz, Ryan, and Graham have been helping her, but she is intending to go off alone.
Except it doesn’t quite work out like that.
As I said I enjoyed this a lot. The central performances are all great. I feel comfortable with Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor. I don’t think she’s quite found her feet yet but the initial stumbling about is fun to watch. Ryan, Yaz and Graham are an interesting trio. Has the TARDIS ever had a more diverse crew? I’m not sure though if a TARDIS crew of four is too many. We shall see.
Yes, Tim Shaw isn’t the most terrifying of villains, but he’s only supposed to be a minor problem so we can get to know the new team. There is though something genuinely disturbing about the tooth thing. Also, and it goes by almost unremarked, it seems like the Stenza take their hunt back to their home planet and put them in stasis once they ripped their tooth out. Which means there are people rotting away somewhere. I suspect that’s something the Doctor would want to look at. The Stenza don’t seem to have a problem killing other people along the way and leaving them for dead so I’m idly curious about how it all works.
A
good start to the new era. Let’s see how it all beds in.







