This was the long-awaited Yaz episode, and perhaps my favourite of the season so far – though that's acknowledging that these episodes still lack the emotional ommph of seasons past.
I suspect that Chris Chibnall is trying to recreate the style of Old School Who in which every story is largely standalone (granted, they were also serialized, but in themselves were still also one-shots), and can even see the modus operandi of the show's original concept: to teach the audience something about history.
I'm low-key enjoying it, and appreciated the trip to a time and place I know next to nothing about.
1. So Yaz wants to visit her grandmother's youth, having received several gifts from her that come without any explanations, but which are tailor-made for "and here's how this came about," backstory. (Though do we ever get an explanation for the pressed flower? Was it the one Yaz wore in her hair at the wedding? Never mind, it's the cracked watch that's important).
But I like that it led to Yaz making a direct request of the Doctor: to solve the mystery of her own past.
2. They end up on the 17th August, 1947. That's the date the Partition of India took effect, something I knew barely anything about, but which focuses here on the impending marriage between a Muslim and a Hindu on the newly-created border.
Naturally the bride is Yaz's grandmother, but there's a hitch: the groom is not her grandfather. So we're looking at a typical time-travelling conundrum: does one intervene to save a life, or do nothing in order to protect the time-stream? What's at stake is Yaz's very existence; as the Doctor says: "we can't have a universe with no Yaz."
3. But there's further mischief afoot, with a pair of fairly demonic looking aliens flitting around. According to the Doctor, they're super-assassins (even though real assassins should look far less conspicuous) and I like their bat-like eyes and hand gestures.
In one of those familiar "humans are the real monsters" twists, it turns out the aliens are assassins no longer, but witnesses who travel the universe to mourn the forgotten dead. The Holy Man who was to marry Prem and Umbreen was on their list, and after a brief misunderstanding it transpires that he was actually murdered by Prem's brother in an attempt to stop the wedding.
4. The bit with the transporting devices was good: the Doctor figured out what they were and configured them to her own advantage without too much clunky exposition.
5. It was a nice episode for Graham: rather clueless about what the place/time meant for an Englishman, but able to give wise words to Yaz and get teary-eyed on the morning of Prem's wedding.
6. I quite liked the symbolism of the broken watch: you think it'll break at the time of Prem's death, but instead it's during the wedding ceremony. As Umbreen says: "this is our moment," fixed forever in time.
7. The stag/hen night was sweet too, especially with the Doctor realizing she would have missed out on the henna tattoos in her last regenerations.
8. It was a beautiful episode. I'm not sure where it was shot, but the colours, the forests, the costumes – all a feast for the eyes.
9. An odd omission was that Nani Umbreen didn't recognize Yaz in her old age as the girl who crashed her wedding. It was even set up, what with Nani saying something along the lines of "I'll tell you in time" when she handed over the watch, insinuating that she was waiting for Yaz to make the time-travelling trip before divulging the whole story.
It would have made a neat closed time-loop, but that... didn't happen. As much as I liked the final exchange between grandmother and granddaughter, it was a bit of a loose thread.
10. So it was a nice little episode, with some caveats. Yaz getting answers to her family history, menacing aliens that aren't exactly what they appear, and a fixed point in time that the Doctor can't interfere with. We've seen all these elements before, but never in this configuration, and certainly never on Partition Day in 1947.
As ever, the guest stars didn't quite come to life (the evil brother's motivation in particular was rather lost on me) and it's a shame since the show can be so good at this. Remember how much we all cared about Sarah Sparrow? Or Canton Everett Delaware III? Miss Evangelista? My heart should have broken at Prem and Umbreen's parting, but it didn't – though I was a little misty-eyed at the final scene between Yaz and Nani.
I think it is fair to say that writing believable, three-dimensional guest characters was RTD's strength, and the show has never quite been the same on that front since he left.
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