Doctor Who has never been to the Indian subcontinent; a region with some of the richest culture and most fascinating history on Earth, and the Doctor’s never set foot there. So “Demons of the Punjab” is overdue in that respect, and so far I’m liking the show’s prerogative to explore history foreign to typical Doctor Who. Not every time period the TARDIS visits has to be the Victorian Age. There’s plenty of stories to tell around the world.
And a story set against the Partition of India is an excellent idea. It’s something that not a lot of people, especially in the west, know of or understand, and so I applaud Doctor Who and specifically, writer Vinay Patel for bringing it to a wider audience. What’s also neat is that the episode functions as a quasi-Remembrance Day special, as war plays a big part in the subtext of the story and one thread heavily concerns the importance of remembering the dead. If only it didn’t seem constrained by the sci-fi format.
On Yaz’s request, the Doctor takes the team for a brief visit to 1947 Pakistan so she can see her grandmother Umbreen when she was young. But when they reach her homestead and Yaz discovers she’s engaged to be married to a man who’s not her grandfather, she’s determined to stay and figure out what her Nan’s been keeping secret from her for years. However, it’s also shortly after the Partition of India, prompting a divide between Umbreen’s Muslim family and her fiancés’ Hindu family, which is only exacerbated by the impending threat of territorial violence (they live by coincidence right on the border of Pakistan and India) and mysterious alien assassins showing up and apparently killing people.
“Demons of the Punjab” may well beat “The Ghost Monument” as the best looking episode of this series. It was shot in Spain but passes for Pakistan very well, with its scenic humble beauty really standing out. The cinematography is stunning, taking advantage of the vibrancy of the environment and shooting everything and everyone with crisp clarity. It’s really gorgeous to watch, and vividly brings you into its world. Even the effects don’t look bad. The Thujarians seem to be part of the scene if they’re not practical and the spiritual holograms on their ship are quite nice.
This is also a very well written episode. It’s the first of the series not by Chibnall, and Patel not only brings a welcome cultural understanding and sympathetic family drama, but also humour to the dialogue and actions. Once again, this is almost exclusively the Doctor’s domain. I particularly like how she stresses the importance of non-interference, but then when the aliens show up, does nothing but interfere -something pointed out by Yaz. “The alien assassin started it” is one of the best lines from this show in a while.
That same tenacity she displayed in “The Girl Who Fell to Earth” really comes back here as she outsmarts the Thujarians during her flight through the woods, collecting transmat beacons as she goes. And stealing their cannister of purple stuff without even thinking that it might be booby-trapped is a very Doctor thing to do. Curiously, the Doctors’ gender transition comes up again. When getting Mehndi hand paintings ahead of the wedding, she makes a comment on never doing that as a man, which prompts looks from the other women before she excuses herself with “my references to body and gender regeneration are all in jest”. A funny line; however she said it on Yaz’s prompt suggesting she was joking, and it made me wonder whether this was meant to indicate that Yaz knows about her previous regenerations. It could go either way on Mandip Gill’s delivery, but it was a questionable moment. Personally, I’d rather the companions didn’t already know, as something like that might be better revealed in a larger way.
Yaz is the one with the personal arc this episode, which in a way is for her what “Father’s Day” was for Rose Tyler. She’s learning about a secret history her Nan kept from the whole family, an engagement to someone she seemed to truly love and it messes with Yaz’s understanding a little. The added touch of Amita Suman playing the part with a similar manner and perception as Yaz makes the relationship more interesting, even if it’s a little unoriginal the idea of a parent or grandparent having a similar personality to their descendant when they were young. Mandip Gill is one of the biggest highlights of this episode, through her confusion, anxiety, and tender sadness at learning one of the most inspiring figures in her life didn’t trust her with a truth so important. And once again, one of the best scenes is a tete-a-tete between two companions, this time between Yaz and Graham who haven’t really established much of a relationship so far. Graham is starting to become something of a de facto therapist in the group, able to offer objective advice and support, which he does here for Yaz, reassuring her that everyone keeps secrets for good reasons, even from their families, and that she shouldn’t bog herself down in it. Bradley Walsh is really showing his strength in scenes like this, dispensing bigger picture wisdom with believable integrity.
The episode’s script really emphasizes the guest characters though, who like in last week’s show, often carry more of the dramatic weight than the regulars. Suman is really good, but Shane Zaza also delivers as her fiancé Prim, a veteran of the Second World War, which claimed his older brother Kunal. The bitter relationship between Prim and his younger brother Manish is the most compelling conflict in the story. Hamza Jeetooa (whom I saw live years ago in Teh Internet is Serious Business) is the most superb of the guest cast as Manish, dealing with a lot of inner conflict as he tries to enforce partition and sectarian ideas of Hindus and Muslims being separate. He ends up the primary villain of the episode, and his radicalization actually builds to a pretty intense climax that pits brother against brother with neither yielding their choices. I legitimately wondered whether we’d actually see Prim’s death or even if it would be Manish who kills him. Either one would have been a risky move, and while neither is taken the effect is still potent.
Odd as it is for a Doctor Who episode, the single weakest element of “Demons in the Punjab” is the titular Demons in the Punjab. I actually don’t mind the design of the Thujarians or their infamy as assassins, but two thirds into the episode it’s revealed that they aren’t killing people after all. The one victim they seemed to have claimed had been killed earlier by Manish. Rather, the Thujarians have lost their home world and now go around honouring the unmourned dead across the galaxy, arriving here in time for the casualties that will come out of the Partition, including Prim. I really do appreciate the notion of giving the episode a theme of remembrance for Remembrance Day, but it comes with the unfortunate side effect of rendering the Thujarians just about completely pointless to the story. All of its strengths would still be intact without their presence and there would be more potential to make the commentary a little more nuanced. I especially think it was a missed opportunity, with the Doctor’s crew being British, that there was little discussion of the British role in all this, excepting of course Prim’s killer line “maybe you’re the enemy now with the mess you’ve made of my country; carving it up, slap-dash in six weeks.” It’s with startling swiftness that the characters are accepted in this time and place, likely out of necessity to move the story along, but it stretches believability. I really feel like this could have been the best episode of the series if it had just done away with its alien plot. Even the theme of Remembrance could still be employed given the war history of Prim, his uniform wedding, and his death.
But purely historical stories aren’t something Doctor Who does anymore, which I think is a small shame as there is promise in them. A couple of the best early stories like “The Aztecs” and “The Romans” had no science-fiction elements at all. Of course the show had a definitive educational purpose back then, yet this seems to be coming back. This series already seems to be abiding by a pattern of contemporary, futuristic, historical, and repeat; and the two historical episodes so far both seem to have educational objectives. It’s not enough to visit a time period, the audience should be taught about it as well. And while that thinking poses some definite issues for storytelling and character priorities, it’s not impossible to do well. But ham-fisted alien threats isn’t going to help, and as is the case with the Thujarians, it could very well bring the episode down.
The end of the episode does good to remind us of Umbreen’s tragedy without actually showing her reaction to her new husbands’ death, and there’s a quiet, touching moment between her in the present and Yaz to bookend with the opening flashback of her bragging to the Khan family of being the first woman to get married in Pakistan. It’s very sweet. And it’s remarkable how Umbreen suffers the same memory condition as George and Lorraine McFly, rendering her unable to recognize that her own granddaughter bears more than a striking resemblance to a woman who entered her life on the most important day of it.
“Demons of the Punjab” is something of an inversion for Doctor Who as it shows how the historic context and one-time characters and conflicts can be the shows’ strength, while the alien villain and sci-fi pretext can be its weakness, as much as the other way around. When I think back to this episode, the Thujarians won’t be more than an afterthought next to the captivating cinematography, cultural celebration, and interesting portrayal of a family harshly torn by idiotic differences in a turbulent time.
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
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