Doctor Who: The Tsuranga Conundrum

“It just ate my sonic!”

Well, I admit I’ve been waiting all season so far to say this, but, well, that was very Chibnall, wasn’t it? It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. It just... was.

The regular cast are as great as ever, of course. And the Pting is a great monster, very Pokemon, both a cool concept and (this may be controversial...) looks awesome. The whole thing looks classy and well made, although it’s rather obviously the cheap studio episode full of inexpensive but adequate sets.

There are some nice sci-fi concepts too- l loved the concept of junk galaxies and, of course, the pregnant bloke, obviously there so Ryan can slowly begin to think about fatherhood and begin to understand his father, just a teenager when he was born. Yet again the four-strong TARDIS crew works well, and they’ve established a strong bond. I’m glad that dialogue early on established they’ve travelled a fair bit since last episode. And yet... it all feels very much by the numbers.

The real saving grace, though, is Jodie, elevating a series of mediocre to quite good scripts by her sheer charisma and Doctorishness. I am already seriously impressed by her, but I’m beginning to become really quite concerned by the humdrum nature of the scripts. Yes, Chibnall make good showrunner decisions, but his scripts are as formulaic and unispiring as ever they were. That was fine when he contributed just the odd script but not when he writes the bulk of the season, as he has so far. He can do character, he can do the big picture, but he’s lacking in depth, coolness and fun. And, while his decisions to go for the family audience again are quite correct and clearly successful, I think in the medium term that the standard of scripts needs to aspire to be more than just good enough. This is Doctor Who.