A few years ago, Doctor Who moved its’ annual Christmas special to New Year’s Day and I actually prefer the change. Christmas is already flooded with specials, the ones done up to this point never felt particularly Christmas-y (except maybe “Voyage of the Damned”), even when they directly incorporated Christmas as during the Moffat years. And as much as I love Doctor Who, there are other things I would rather do on Christmas Day than watch this show (also, it frees up my Christmas evenings from spending hours writing a review). New Year’s is a bit more novel, there’s generally less going on New Year’s Day, and it leaves the specials feeling like a beginning rather than an ending.
That said, I’m not too crazy about the fact that Chris Chibnall and his team can’t seem to come up with an idea besides Daleks for the New Year’s specials. Except for “Spyfall Part One” (which doesn’t really count because it was a series opener), each of the New Year’s specials he’s overseen have been about Daleks. I actually liked last years’ “Revolution of the Daleks” a fair bit, but that was the Daleks notwithstanding. Changing things up a bit would be nice.
Then again, maybe a plain old Dalek story is what’s needed after the overwrought and overbearing Flux. More of a straightforward, classic Doctor Who episode to reorient the show going into Jodie Whittaker’s last couple episodes, which will come gradually over the course of 2022 (the last one is apparently called “The Death of the Doctor” -maybe the least subtle in a line of extremely unsubtle Doctor’s-final-episode titles). And I was pleasantly surprised that that is essentially what “Eve of the Daleks” is. It’s not connected to the prior New Year’s Dalek episodes, it has a beautifully small cast -just three guest stars, and the premise is mostly an exercise in a simple but fun sci-fi concept: the time loop!
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Of course, this episode was off to a promising start the moment it opened on Aisling Bea as Sarah, a lonely, cynical woman running a storage facility called Elf Storage (inherited from her uncle) in Chester on New Year’s Eve. Bea maybe hasn’t quite broken through on this side of the Atlantic yet, but she’s been one of the fastest rising comedians of the last decade in the U.K., and for good reason, she’s exceptionally funny! Her appearing on an episode of Doctor Who gives it an instant edge -more so where it seems she was given substantial licence with her character’s dialogue. Everything from her sense of humour to the specificity of her attitude to even her relationship with her mother (Pauline McLynn) feels like material Bea wrote herself, and if not, Chibnall has clearly paid attention to her voice in her stand-up, TV series’, and panel show appearances. Less known is her scene partner Adjani Salmon, playing the awkward Nick, clearly infatuated with her, and who comes to Elf Storage regularly, every New Year’s Eve in particular, to store something innocuous. Apart from Sarah, the only other employee seems to be some unseen guy called Jeff, who keeps a very large and weird collection of items there and possibly lives in the facility -one storage unit being laid out like an apartment. It’s not a bad premise for a sitcom honestly.
The TARDIS materializes in the basement here, taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque where it meant to go to a beach (not the first time a beach getaway for the TARDIS crew was averted). The Doctor it seems needs to reboot the TARDIS to expel any remaining debris of the Flux, but instead of waiting that out in a paradise -and one where Yaz was assured the Doctor would tell her everything she’s kept from them- they wind up in this dingy cellar with the TARDIS unusually cracking on the outside from the process. Before too long and a few levels up, Nick is cornered by a Dalek …and it exterminates him. That Dalek then makes its’ way to the lobby where it exterminates Sarah as well. The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan come across both bodies, confront the Dalek, only to find that it has adapted a resilience to the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, and then shockingly, they too are exterminated. Cut to the credits.
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It reminds me of one of the great TV time loop episodes, “Cause and Effect” from Star Trek: The Next Generation -and I wonder if Chibnall himself wasn’t directly influenced. That episode too ended its’ teaser on such drama -the Enterprise being destroyed; and followed it up with a series of loops where the characters gradually figure a way out, incorporating what they learned from past iterations, but not before several more instances of them all dying. The Doctor, Yaz, Dan, Sarah, and Nick are killed by the Daleks a number of times in this episode. But each time, the loop restarts a minute later, giving them less time to evade the Daleks while also trapping them in the field of the loop surrounding the building, though also sending the Daleks back to square one -this isn’t in fact their doing. They’re only there to catch the Doctor, whom they’ve apparently scapegoated for the destruction of their fleet by the Sontarans in “The Vanquishers”.
The episode moves at a steadier pace than I feel the show has embraced lately, which is ironic given the ticking clock device it’s got going. Maybe it’s just that it’s less crowded, more comprehensible, more fun. It does get a bit funny each time seeing the gang die, with the Doctor at one point even saying “not like this” a la The Matrix. I love how quickly Dan just accepts the scenario -John Bishop gets to stretch his comedy, including in a playful bit where he distracts a Dalek by pretending to be a client. And everything that Sarah does is great, the episode taking advantage of the trapped nature of the premise to play around with less favourable aspects of personalities. In one of the early loops, Sarah forgets about Nick and is only concerned with arming herself, and in another abandons the Doctor’s plan flat-out. It’s a few loops in before Sarah and Nick even meet the Doctor, who poses the TARDIS crew as council control -leading to a few great U.K. specific jokes. But the episode is fun too in the ways in which it is clever, as the Doctor realizes they have to think a few loops ahead in order to stop the Daleks and get out of it, leading to them strategically sacrificing themselves a couple times. The stakes are fairly low but it’s fitting. There are no Dalek armies, no convoluted machinations, it’s not too difficult to decipher this was caused by the TARDIS’ reset, so there’s not much of a mystery either. It’s just a strange time travel conundrum that needs to be resolved.
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And in the midst of this, the episode is able to do a bit of character building, though perhaps more on the new characters than the old. Nick is, as Sarah puts it, a weirdo. His storage compartment is full of odd items that apparently belonged to ex-girlfriends or women he’s dated. When everyone is forced to hide out there, he is made to come up with an explanation that isn’t creepy -and kinda fails. I mean one of the items is a shoe -it doesn’t really matter then how much he says it’s just so he doesn’t have to deal directly with this stuff year round. He’s a hoarder of things that belonged to other women and it justifiably creeps out Sarah and Yaz. But Salmon plays it earnestly, at least enough so that you buy Sarah’s genuine concern for him later -even when he admits he comes to Eve’s Storage on New Year’s expressly because he knows Sarah works then. As for her, you get a good sense of how unsatisfied Sarah is in her life, how lonely and bored, but also how grounded she is. Again, Bea is tremendous, and her humour adds a lot both to the episode on a whole and the nature of her character. The relationship forecast between her and Nick did worry me, but the scene where she frankly rebukes how he’s been using the storage facility and where he’s called out for his improprieties delivers a needed conscientiousness. And there is a point where she is unfair and feels guilty. So in the moments afterwards where they’re forced together and Nick is telling her his feelings for fear he’s going to die for good, it doesn’t feel too bad.
Dan definitely seems more integrated now. Much as it was a bit of a cheat, fast-tracking his rapport with Yaz by stranding them in time for a few years, it does work out, Bishop and Mandip Gill have a decent chemistry that feels lived in. The moment where he bravely volunteers himself as a distraction for the Dalek, while the Doctor and Yaz figure a way out, not entirely certain if he’ll make it back in the next loop, is rather nice and noble too. And he finally seems to fulfil a certain honest, sensitive function for the TARDIS team, the guy who can be real with the others, who notices things that they don’t -particularly in a couple moments alone with first Yaz and then the Doctor.
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Which brings me to the other major character development of the episode, that will certainly be talked about if anything from this special is: Yaz as it turns out, is queer. And not only that, she is, as some including myself had suspected, in love with the Doctor. On the one hand this isn’t groundbreaking; Yaz is at least by now the third openly LGBTQ companion in Doctor Who (I appreciate how ahead of the curve this show was in that respect). Nor of course is she the first to have romantic feelings towards her Doctor -I think every Doctor of the last sixteen years except Twelve has had at least one companion fall for them. But its’ the combination of these that makes this reveal interesting and kind of exciting. The show has been alluding this way for a while now. Even when Ryan and Graham were in the picture, Yaz was particularly attached and loyal to the Doctor. And though it was referenced only occasionally, Flux did make a point to note her impassioned concern that the Doctor is keeping secrets from her specifically. But it’s here in “Eve of the Daleks” that Dan finally coaxes her to admit she has feelings for the Doctor -though it still dances around the term ‘love’ for whatever reason. Further, we find also courtesy of Dan, that the Doctor is aware of this -and both are not entirely sure how to address it.
Apart from just the reveal itself, the fulfillment of one of the fandom’s big ships, this adds a very compelling layer of drama to an already interesting relationship -and one that is not in a great place. It seems Chibnall is on some level aware of the sacrifices in this department that he made for Flux, as this episode seems very conscious of the fact the Doctor has been neglectful of her companions, and especially of Yaz. They spent barely any time together during that whole calamity and then they were separated for what was to Yaz, three whole years. And at the end of it, the Doctor still seems off in her own world, not wholly recognizing what she’s putting Yaz through. She formulates plans without wholly explaining them, she treats Yaz as more of an intern than a friend in moments, and of course orders her to stay put while she goes off and deals with stuff -not considering that maybe at this point doing that is traumatizing for Yaz. It’s now been twice after all where she’s gone off and hasn’t come back for long periods. “Stop leaving us all the time” Yaz cries after her late in the episode but to no avail. It’s something that needs to be dealt with, that I’m sure Yaz was intending to bring up on that beach vacation that didn’t happen. And I’m glad to see the Doctor is starting to realize that.
This all came at a time where the situation was getting more dire though, and I do think the episode could have done a better job setting up the Doctor-Yaz relationship as a major supporting touchstone of the piece earlier. Even just a couple lines or shot choices while in the TARDIS early on could have been sufficient to keep it from later coming out of nowhere in the episode’s context and sense of urgency -much more and with relevancy was given over to Sarah and Nick. The episode isn’t terribly strong from a visual sense, unsurprisingly the storage depot that Sarah hates makes for a drab setting, and director Annetta Laufer doesn’t make the best use of it. Also, for as much as I like the episode’s simplicity and relative lightness, it does take itself more seriously than it deserves at times -especially in the last act. And of course, the Doctor needs to intricately explain everything technical about how the time loop works, and the process of escaping it, even then not being entirely clear.
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Ultimately the Daleks are defeated and the time loop broken by just gathering all of Jeff’s shit, including hundreds of tins of beans, elaborate taxidermy, fancy costumes, and a ton of fireworks and other explosives -and tricking the Daleks into blowing it up, at the same time blowing up the building and themselves, the Doctor and friends managing to find a way outside just in time. It’s a nicely funny way to resolve the plot, a cute way to keep it on the theme of New Year’s Eve. The episode ends with the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan choosing a new destination in the rebooted TARDIS that looks generally the same but with a few small aesthetic changes. And Sarah and Nick start dating by taking a vacation together, both in higher spirits for now, though I do wonder if removed from the immediate threat of Daleks and a time loop, whether the relationship will last.
That’s where Doctor Who leaves us for now, and leaves us in an interesting place. No new series is coming out this year but two more isolated specials that will close with Jodie Whittaker’s swansong before presumably picking up with a new series, a new Doctor, and a new but old showrunner in 2023. It’s hard to believe Whittaker has just two episodes left, just two more hours of the Thirteenth Doctor, even if they’ll be spread out across a year. I have to say though, this final little trinity is off to a good start -I liked “Eve of the Daleks” probably more than any episode of Flux. It might even be the best of the New Year’s specials Chibnall has produced: a classic formula, some long-awaited character beats, and Aisling Bea dropping in to elevate what’s left. Hopefully, the strengths of this special can carry over and maybe gel with a few new ones. This is going to be a dramatic year for Doctor Who, between these new specials, the casting announcements that are sure to come and anticipation for a whole new Doctor; and the end of the important legacy of the one preceding them. What surprises, Doctor Who, do you still have in store?
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