Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth

As you're very well aware (even if you don't watch the show), the first episode starring our first female incarnation of the Doctor has aired, and even though I haven't done an episode review for Doctor Who in years, I feel galvanised enough by the event to share some brief thoughts.

1. As is the case for most premieres that feature newly regenerated Doctors, the episode opts to start by establishing a range of potential Companions long before the Doctor appears on-screen. It's a way of keeping things grounded and reintroducing the audience to the show's central premise: basically, that weird sci-fi stuff happens and a mysterious traveller arrives to help confused-yet-competent humans deal with it. You can't fault that storytelling logic.

2. Even without knowing via promotional material and press releases that Yasmin, Ryan and Graham were going to be Thirteen's Companions, it wasn't too difficult to deduce that Grace was marked for death. Already there's some Moffat-esque wordplay and misdirection at work, what with Ryan's solemn YouTube video ultimately revealed as being about Grace's passing, and the episode title itself (The Woman Who Fell To Earth) referring to Grace's fall from the crane just as much as the Doctor's arrival through the roof of the train.  

3. Interestingly, it's Ryan that provides the link between the other two Companions: he went to school with Yasmin and he's Graham's step-grandson, which puts him in the position of arbitrator and emotional anchor – whether he likes it or not.

Furthermore, with a 2:2 ratio of women/men on board the Tardis, it struck me that it's the men whose character arcs are the most clearly defined: both are short of confidence (Ryan through his lack of skills, Graham through a lack of raw courage) whereas Yasmin's craving for more responsibilities only got a few brief mentions (and her natural leadership role is already subsumed by the Doctor).

3. For any actor it's a challenge to play the Doctor in your pilot episode, as you're not really the Doctor yet: that is, you're playing a largely undefined larger-than-life persona who is essentially drunk on regeneration energy and confused about who/what/when/where you are. For all that, Jodie Whittaker got the basics right: her Doctor is a traveller and a chatterbox, an inventor and a detective; someone who makes friends, inspires trust, takes the lead, makes logical deductions and inevitably saves the day.

And thankfully, her newfound womanhood isn't dwelt on. There's nothing that even comes close to that "shatter the glass ceiling" promo that felt way too self-conscious and self-congratulatory to be taken seriously. Instead, every new element here, from the female Doctor to the diverse Companions to the new sense of pacing and tone was treated matter-of-factly. This is what it is, and this is how it will proceed.

4. The plot was fairly straightforward, even as it had a lot of stuff going on: two seemingly unrelated alien life-forms, microscopic bombs in everyone's collarbones, and a string of bodies missing a tooth – it all comes together in the form of an intergalactic hunter who is sending a data coil out to find his designated prey and taking trophies from his victims as he goes. The only thing that didn't make much sense was Ryan "inviting" him to Earth by pressing the holographic image in the woods – what would have happened if he'd just walked away, or if no one had been there at all?

But it makes for a nasty villain, and one with no honour or dignity on top of his gruesome impetus. As the Doctor points out, he's a cheat and somehow that makes all the murders even worse.

5. There are nice little humanizing touches that help ground the whole thing: Ryan's inability to ride a bike, Graham reaching out to fellow bus-drivers for information, Grace's enjoyment at getting caught up in an adventure; even the alien's first victim – who the rest of the cast never interact with – and his doomed mission to find answers for his missing sister.

Only Yas felt a little short-changed. We got a taste of what she's like in her ability to defuse the parking conflict, but apart from that she didn't get much to do.

6. The best scene would have to be the Doctor making her own sonic screwdriver. It was the one bit of levity in what was actually a pretty dour episode, and I have to admit it was a thrill to see a female character flip down her safety goggles, put on a pair of mitts and invent something extraordinary out of scraps. We still don't see a lot of that.

7. I suppose in the greater scheme of things, this is a basic reset/reboot of the show in its entirety. The would-be Companions may have been pretty blasé to the existence of aliens, but they certainly didn't act like people who had lived through various world-wide Dalek/Cybermen/Silurian invasions either.

8. What was the point of killing the guy with the salad? We already knew the alien was deadly, and the scene served no other purpose.

9. So it turns out that poor hapless Karl – the guy on the train who opts to walk away from the Doctor's hunt for answers and simply go to work instead – is the alien's true target. And I gotta say, the one false note in this episode is when he kicks the murderous alien off the crane and the Doctor admonishes him with: "you had no right to do that!"

It's 2018 and I'm out of patience with this sort of thing. Karl was about to be hideously murdered for little more than sport by a remorseless alien who literally wore the teeth of his victims on his face. Spare me the "take the higher ground" argument; he had EVERY right to take that shot, and the universe would have been a better place had he succeeded.

10. But it all came together with a single phrase: "I'm the Doctor!" I can't wait for more; especially since the after-credits sequence forewent the usual extended trailer, and opted for a montage of future guest stars instead. Strange choice, but an intriguing one.