Review

After the shambolic episode we had to live through last week it came as a pleasant surprise that this episode is not altogether hopeless. Yes I enjoyed this one and am putting last week's The Tsuranga Conundrum as a minor glitch on the season 11 Who timeline. Just when you think the season is stumbling writer Vinay Patel delivers a history lesson, wrapped up in a family drama, tied to our beloved Sci-Fi conventions. Before the Editor starts in about "it's not horror", no it isn't horror as we know it, but it does speak to prejudice and I'm here to dig this site's Whovian exploration out of the hole it has dropped into. So let's take a trip to the past and see how modern Who handles the past.

There are some heavy themes in this episode but the major problem is I just didn't believe we were in India! Call me cynical but I was thinking some sunny pasture in Wales perhaps, as it happens the episode for no apparent reason was filmed in Granada, a province of Spain. What director Jamie Childs does get right is setting his episode in a remote farm house with a very limited cast of characters involved. So on my list of things that make me go hmmm, the location clearly isn't the Punjab and we viewers are completely aware of this fact.

The episode opens with the altogether unnecessary Jaz having a birthday tea with her family and the birthday girl herself Jaz's grandmother. The older member of the family hands out a few keep sakes including n old broken watch for Jaz, informs us that Jaz is her favourite granddaughter and goes all cenobite with such stories to tell. Jaz naturally starts pestering the Doctor about going back in time to experience some younger grandma time. The Doctor finally capitulates, with Graham and Ryan up for a school outing. Using the watch Jaz got from her gran the Doctor puts the TARDIS into history mode and we are transported back to India circa 1947, which just so happens to coincide with the partition of India into modern day India and Pakistan.

Naturally things are going to get a little tense with Jaz's gran Umbreen being Muslim and her finance Prem Hindu, oh and just in case things couldn't get any more strange it's Umbreen and Prem's wedding day. Oh almost forgot, Doctor Who, so we have to have an evil alien to battle in the form of a couple of Vajarians, an altogether vile race. Seems the aliens are involved in a number of deaths and the Doctor may have to get all up in their space. See what I did there? But are things as they appear on the surface or is there something else happening here.

Quite a reasonable episode though with the odd issue that brought down my enjoyment

Hold onto your foundation garments peeps we have a return to the William Hartnell era with a gosh darn it history lesson happening on our television screens. For those who are new to the Whovian tribes, and don't even dare call yourself a Whovian if you have only dialled in this season, the original series why back in the 1960s was originally intended as a sort of Science Fiction classroom. Episodes such as Reign of Terror, Marco Polo, and The Aztecs were firmly in the teaching kids a bit about history and less about the fiction aspects. So what happened to change things to monster of the week, in short the Daleks, which drove the kids back in the day to new levels of fanatic support for the recently minted show. And not surprisingly in this at the time innovative show the franchise went outside the Corporate BBC with Verity Lambert having a leading role in development. Yes that's right, a female broke the glass ceiling way back in the 1960s.

While the history aspect is there, and real Whovians were all bouncy with joy, I'm not overlooking the family drama element which is pretty much the focus of the episode. While the times they are a changing the family unit is focused on the imminent marriage between Prem and Umbreen, which naturally takes precedence over one of the most disruptive periods in modern Indian history. Without giving too much away Prem is pretty much apolitical while his brother Manish is heavily into the concept of India sans the Muslim minority. Unfortunately for those of us viewing the episode the script by Vinay Patel isn't exactly blindsiding us on the family dynamic front, if you haven't worked out where this one is heading within the first ten minutes then you may need to seek help on your interpretation skills.

To the Science Fiction elements, well the Sci-Fi beyond the Doctor and a time machine at least, we have two Vajarians who we are lead to believe will be the villains of the episode. The Vajarian culture is about assassination on an intergalactic level, which naturally goes against Time Lord morals which is all about non-violence. But there's a twist happening which in the hands of a decent script writer, and I'm going to say it a decent Doctor Who, would have involved a lot of pathos and comparison to the fate of Gallifrey. I was so very disappointed that this aspect of the show was not handled any better, it could have made for one of the great episodes.

Besides the Tim Shaw character from the first episode, the being that imbeds victims teeth in his face, the alien danger has been pretty much on the mild side to say the least. Chris Chibnall has stated on more than one occasion that he will not be using traditional Doctor Who foes. Unfortunately for the season Chibnall and associates have not as yet introduced anything to rival even new Who created monsters let alone classic Who creatures. Fingers and toes crossed something like the Weeping Angels is injected before the Christmas special this year.

Summing up the episode, yes I had some fun with it and there was some more than acceptable aspects to it, but end of a summer day the episode hasn't got my blessing. At least it worked better than last week's abomination but it still wasn't the best episode of Who that I've ever seen. I had high hopes, yes Jman I get the reference, for this season but have been sadly disappointed over the course of the last couple of episodes. This episode is mutton dressed as lamb folks, on the surface it appears as excellent television but underneath there's not a lot to be excited about really. I still enjoyed what I was watching however, which has to mean something right?

ScaryMinds Rates this episode as ...