Now that’s an old-fashioned Doctor Who episode title! And “The Tsuranga Conundrum” is an old-fashioned Doctor Who episode, being Chris Chibnall’s first entry into the base-under-siege story that’s popped up regularly on the show throughout the decades. The episode follows the basic formula, though skewing different occasionally in both good and bad directions. “The Tsuranga Conundrum” has some of the best stuff in the new series yet …though that Pting is pretty insufferable!
After being injured by a sonic mine while ravaging around a junk planet, the Doctor and friends are tended to aboard the Tsuranga spaceship operated by the 67th century equivalent to the Red Cross. But a small gremlin-like alien called a Pting manages to get aboard and feed off the ships energy, causing malfunctions and eminent danger towards both the doctors and patients as they try to gain control of the increasingly volatile craft.
By far the episodes’ biggest failing is the Pting, a little CGI monstrosity that’s like if the Adipose had the personality of a Despicable Me Minion. It’s not just that this alien makes strange noises and faces, that it’s little and trying to be cute, but that the episode frames it in such an in-your-face way. It’s shot with close-ups and rendered expressive in a way most Doctor Who aliens aren’t, really feeling like it escaped from a bad kids movie. And this creature is the troublemaker of the episode, evading capture and termination as easily as a xenomorph. The episode does at times try to resemble Alien, though in a more friendly way, which really doesn’t work (for all its blatant problems, “Last Christmas” had the right idea in this regard). Not only does the Pting in no conceivable way work as a villain, but it feels like a remnant of series one, when Russell T. Davies thought fart jokes were so funny he created an entire alien species around them. It’s also a little baffling that it’s not until late in the episode that the Doctor comes to the conclusion that the Pting feeds on energy -I should have thought that was glaringly obvious after it spit out her sonic.
The show doesn’t fare much better in terms of some of its plotting. There’s technology and functions never effectively explained (including tools called “stazers”), incoherent technobabble particularly between the Doctor and General Cicero, and sometimes the threat and what the characters are actually doing gets away from the story. At its core it’s simply another monster-of-the-week problem in a hospital. Something that isn’t unique to this show.
“The Tsuranga Conundrum” is a good episode for the Doctor however. We get to see some new sides to her that I appreciate, starting with her actions after being revived at the start of the episode, completely disregarding the doctors and protocol to take control of the ship and get back to the junk planet where her TARDIS still is. It’s completely selfish and careless of her, and it’s only when the physician in charge, Astos, makes clear there are sick people on board who need to get to Reecus One that she relents and apologizes. It’s a rash side to her that I haven’t seen in many a Doctor, but is understandable given her recent separation from the TARDIS which has always been an extension of the Doctor themself. But it’s not right and it’s good to see her humbled. We see more of her casual egoism (she can’t not mention she has a whole volume dedicated to her in the Book of Celebrants), but also her faith in others and encouragement -notably in her scenes with a nervous Mabli. Even if her method of finding a solution to a problem (imagining it and finding a way to make it real) isn’t exactly sound advice, her intelligence, sympathy, and authority shines. During this scene she lists off a number of things she’s a Doctor of to Mabli’s query, with a handful of jokes thrown in, but when she lands on “hope, mostly hope” it’s an honest sentiment, and Jodie Whittaker delivers it with the utmost earnestness it requires. This episode she really takes charge, and perhaps for the first time because of moments like these, instantly feels like the right person in charge. There are great little things too, like she actually uses a stethoscope at one point that she presumably carries around; and in Whittaker’s best moment of the episode, I love how emotional she gets over how the antimatter drive works. It illustrates a beautifully real love of science and the wonder of the universe.
The companions get some good moments this episode as well. On the Ryan Sinclair front, I was pleased to see the dip into his backstory actually coming naturally from context, namely his examination in relation to the pregnant man Yoss’ plans to give up his child to his own troubled relationship with his dad. It’s quite nice that the show was able to take what might have just been a lame joke about an alien species whose males give birth and turn it into a subplot played mostly straight and the facilitator of crucial development for Ryan (it also probably makes Doctor Who the only family show to actually have a male labour scene). Ryan initially sees Yoss’ relative age to both himself and his father when he was born, and it gets him thinking about how he couldn’t (both literally and figuratively) have children. Yaz manages to get out of him some of the details of this rift, and how his mum’s sudden death by heart attack provoked it. Ryan feels like it’s hard on his dad to be around him due to his resemblance to his mother, seeming to empathize with him to some degree. But that doesn’t stop him from later encouraging Yoss to keep the baby and be a good dad, to at least not let that child grow up feeling how he does. The words of confidence he gives Yoss during his labour may be Tosin Cole’s best acting on the series thus far. It’s a very neat but satisfactory arc, forcing Ryan to do some introspection, and more than ever setting up a confrontation between father and son for later in the series.
Yaz and Graham haven’t been getting the same kind of focus as Ryan (though next week’s teaser seems to indicate we’ll be exploring Yaz’s identity more as we travel to the Partition of India), but both are aptly utilized in this episode. Yaz is given more responsibility with the protection of the antimatter drive, and her conversation with Ryan about his parents opens her eyes to what she’d been ignorant to during their school years. And she gets a good funny scene with the Doctor when she accidentally chooses the time limit the Doctor programs onto the bomb they’re luring the Pting with. Graham is still offering assistance and asking the important questions whenever he can. In the last act, he and Ryan are tasked with taking part in Yoss’ labour where we get a few good jokes from him (“I’ve seen every episode of Call the Midwife”, “oh shoot I looked, can’t unsee that”). Bradley Walsh also has a scene with his former Law & Order UK co-star Doc Brown about secrets loved ones keep from each other that acts as a good showcase of Graham’s experience and insight into hard family relationships.
What’s another thing this episode has going for it is a number of good performances from guest actors playing strong characters. I’m reminded of “Tomb of the Cybermen”, and how Doctor Who doesn’t always give us memorable guest casts in its base-under-siege stories. Lois Chimimba is perhaps the most relatable as the poor medic Mabli in over her head as she’s thrust into a dire situation, remarkably portraying the fear and doubt that would entail; but Suzanne Packer’s General Eve Cicero is the most developed. Packer really brings the air of a famous, decorated military leader to this part so that it doesn’t require much suspension of disbelief as her accomplishments are listed. She has a secret condition, known as Pilot’s Heart -a kind of extreme adrenaline-induced arrhythmia it seems, which she’s ashamed of due to her prideful nature, especially around her resentful engineer brother Durkas. Indeed, Ryan’s issues with his dad isn’t the only troubled family relationship explored in this episode, and the whole arc between Eve and Durkas, broken up though it may be, is played incredibly well. Packer and Doc Brown (though credited as Ben Bailey-Smith) are good enough actors to really carry this storyline. That’s not quite true with Jack Shalloo’s performance as Yoss though, as much as he tries. And David Shields gives a pretty good performance as Eve’s android consort Ronan, though he serves little more purpose than as a physical wedge between the Ciceros.
Both the Cicero arc and Yoss’ pregnancy come to satisfactory conclusions, though the latter’s is fairly conventional. Eve’s heartfelt reconciliation with Durkas and subsequent death in saving the ship feels earned, even the funeral and rites which leave the TARDIS out of the episodes’ ending don’t come off unwarranted. Far better than the airlock ejection of the Pting in a comical manner which preceded it by minutes. I think that may be the biggest crime of the Pting and this episode as a whole. There’s a lot of drama and genuine pathos from both the regular cast and the guest characters in a story that really could be tense and compelling. The production design and directing by Jennifer Perrot even deserves commendation. But this terrible antagonist diminishes all that. The Pting isn’t even in the episode for a large percentage of screen-time, but its influence does cast an annoying shadow.
I’d have to say however for its characters and themes alone, I did like this episode a lot more than I disliked is; but that I feel Doctor Who should walk the line of insipid, highly commercial creatures less thinly in the future. As promising as Chibnall’s plan of introducing new monsters rather than returning to old ones is, this flaccid potato frog should not make a reappearance.
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