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NOTE: There are many speculating “leaks” ahead of the series launch floating around online – they will not be discussed in this review unless they have happened in the show already. If you want to talk about the leaks for future episodes, please use spoilers.

We have entered a new peak era of Doctor Who, same as the old Doctor Who.

Russell T Davies has a formula and it feels intentional – much of the structure of this series is following the structure of the last (character introduction, period drama where the villain is a member of the pantheon, sci-fi horror, and next week we’ve got a Ruby solo episode), recurring 60 something villain – Mrs Flood instead of Susan Triad – popping up here again, and it feels almost too similar to be laziness. Granted both series were written back to back – but is there perhaps something grander at work?

Belinda still can’t get home to Earth so she and The Doctor find themselves stranded on an alien planet 5000,000 years into the future where there is only one survivor of a massacre – self-inflicted, a deaf cook named Aliss, played fantastically by Rose Ayling-Ellis who you can’t help but feel sorry for – and every mirror is broken. With them is Shaya, an experienced good shot – but to their horror, and deepening the mystery, Aliss or the troops that have come with them have no knowledge of Earth or humanity. At this point the two species were meant to be in a coalition – but someone is tampering with history, as we’ve seen before, Earth is destroyed – by a mysterious unknown force – and some greater power is at play.

It doesn’t take The Doctor long to work out that his tenth incarnation visited Midnight, 400,000 years earlier, and what murdered the colonists is the same entity all those years ago. It’s a conflict that Davies finds a way to give something new even in an episode that feels very repetitive of what has come before – sometimes not every masterpiece of an episode needs a spiritual sequel; and this is the thinnest of connections, the villain doesn’t use the same motifs and is defeated differently. The not-so-subtle throwbacks to Midnight were obvious, we didn’t really need to see Tennant’s face again after all – it’s regarded as one of the most well-loved episodes of the entire series – yet at the same time the episode almost feels too short, it could’ve been much longer and easily sustained a two parter, something that the shorter episode count of this series is increasingly limited in.

I did like the internal conflict between Shaya and Cassio, Cassio mourning for his dead friend after anyone who moves behind Aliss is killed. It’s a devastating moment for Cassio that showcases that the entity is having fun playing games with its victims and creating unease and dissent in the ranks – it hasn’t lost any of its killer nature – and Cassio is a tour-de-force in how not to deal with a conflict. The internal conflict between The Doctor and Belinda is fascinating as well – making up for the lack of conflict between Ruby and The Doctor – and when she’s shot at the end of the episode it’s an emotional gut puncher.

The way to get the entity off Aliss was peak Doctor Who, using its own weakness against it by showing it what its reflection looks like. Yet at the same time it goes unnoticed that four lifeforms were present after boarding the escape pod, and it doesn’t end well for them. It’s especially harrowing with what follows – Shaya has to sacrifice herself now that the entity has attatched itself to her, and it feels so refreshing to see an old-school Doctor Who episode where we’re just watching characters we’ve grown to like and care for getting killed off one-by-one over the runtime in increasingly horrific ways. Shaya feels more fleshed out than most of last series’ main cast. Gatwa brought out his Tennant in this reflecting in the range of emotions displayed here – and his “what” was oh-so-very Tennant.

And then we have the ending twists. Mrs. Flood – groan-worthy in her cameos that don’t really add much to the narrative other than reminding us of Susan Triad and how similar the storylines were – but charming enough to be likeable thanks to the performance of Anita Dobson and ability to switch between innocent and evil at the touch of a button. She is invested in finding out that The Doctor was carrying some kind of technology that is unknown to Mo but in reality is using it to get back to Belinda’s timeline – but on top of it all – there’s something else at play. The lifeform escaped the planet Midnight, and ended up on the back of Mo. It’s game over for her and her poor friend, a trooper left behind on the ship.

I’d like to see more episodes written by Sharma Angel-Walfall please. Working with Davies she’s able to craft a fantastic episode that could’ve easily been a two parter. The only complaint is that it feels, much like what has come before, that it’s a tad rushed but that’s a limit of the series’ runtime more than anything else. Next up we’ve got a return to Ruby Sunday and UNIT – after they were one of the glaring weaknesses of last series, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not there can be a course correction. Either way – see you next saturday. I got to watch this episode in one of the most novel ways I’ve seen Doctor Who – and that was in the pub pre a gig, as they left BBC One on the screens after the FA Cup game finished for a solid forty minutes – so I’ve technically seen this episode twice now. One in varying degrees of soberity.

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