Holy shit this was the best doctor who episode in YEARS. I got tingles as as soon as they realized they were on the edge of the universe.
How about the fact that this whole episode was just our two leads. They both really showed their acting chops.
What was a really good peice of narrative for our Doctor was the fact that his fast and clever brain was a detriment to stopping our monsters of that week.
Just superb writing and acting through and through.
RTD has always understood well that the Doctor’s greatest adversary is himself. Here, they basically took the entity from “Midnight” and expanded that idea just about as far as it could go, while also alluding to some lovely cosmic horror concepts from the classic series - namely the Great Vampires, said to be great shapeless beings from beyond the galaxy who could take any form they chose.
With the Doctor’s ominous comment about invoking superstition out here where all things are possible, I wonder if he is afraid that he just created the Vampires. They might have come anyway, but he just gave them their name, and their ties to old world Earth superstitions. It’s another chicken and egg thing.
Absolutely amazing episode. Good mystery, clever answer, and it was creepy. Don’t even know where to start with the praise for this one… It’s nice to see the doctor without the sonic or the tardis, I don’t remember any episodes playing around with alien languages so it was cool to see them without the translation matrix.
Also I know some people are gonna be annoyed that the timeless child stuff wasn’t retconned, but honestly I’m happy with with they’re doing with it. Chibnall had ideas but didn’t do a good job of actually making it effect characters. For example, during Flux a few companions were stuck in the past for like 5 years and basically nothing changed about them - no trauma, no growth, nothing. RTD using Flux as a modern “time war” of sorts is exactly what I wanted from it in the first place - it’s something that gives the doctor immense guilt and we actually see that in this episode. I totally think that Chibnall’s era was horrible but if RTD can make lemonade out of lemons, I’m all for it.
But like, man that was a good premise. Good mystery, amazing setup - that moment when the doppelgangers are revealed was so well done, I thought it was just weird editing until I realized what was going on. Also the two parallel confrontations, knowing that one person in each is fake, but not knowing who it is in either group… Then turning the doctor’s need to figure things out against him… Good shit.
Loved it. The No-Things trying to mimic people but getting the arms wrong seemed like the creepy monster version of “AI” trained on manmade images or texts, yet don’t have a clue about the real world.
Amazing episode! I don’t really have much to say except that it felt just like old times. Loved it!
Really amazing episode, vibes of old Moffat’s episodes
