The Tsuranga Conundrum

It's bad... The worst episode this series easily. The Tsuranga Conundrum initially displays promise, an interesting beginning leading to the main cast stranded at the mysterious Tsuranga, a hospital, without the TARDIS.

That's about where my positivity ends as far as this episode goes; the pacing is very slow, with the antagonist of the episode rarely seen, nor really feeling particularly threatening despite its reputation. The side characters are bland and seem to lack personality; including one of the characters who gets a whole side-plot that seems completely out of place and is quite cringey in my opinion.

The dialogue? Poor, really poor; it's strangely tired and delivered a bit weirdly (perhaps this is the fault of new to the show director Jennifer Perrot). The character development moments seem very crowbarred in, with characters having a chat about each others' feelings right in the middle of a supposedly dangerous situation without even any sign of the danger. Maybe as a result of this, the character development that has been consistently good in this series so far fell short in this episode.

I feel no desire to watch this episode again.

A ravenous gluttonous being, without morals or ethics or feeling, incessantly scours, for sources of power, a binge feasting thing called a Pting.

Male humanoids who come from Gifftan, gestate their generations of man, a week for the girth, then time to give birth, delivered through caesarean (how else!).

Here we have a cute-Alien remake, with dull characters and awful writing and an episode which is a new low for this disappointing season. So many aspects need to change if the BBC wants to keep its flagship.

As a fan of the re-boot I found something to love about every Doctor (maybe except for Capaldi's misery guts first season) but try as I might here, I simply cannot. It's a sorry state when you find that the most likeable character is a game show host; the other supporting characters aren't bad, they're just dull. Having three assistants is probably too many to allow sufficient interplay development, but the show doesn't revolve around the support characters, it's all about the Doctor.

Alas Jodie Whittaker, underacting her way superbly in Broadchurch season 1, plays the Doctor as a mix between a thigh-slapping pantomime Peter Pan and a nursery school teacher. She gives the character no command, no gravitas and crucially, no light and dark. Her face seems to be fixed on the gormless, and her questions when figuring stuff out should sound rhetorical and not like she's actually asking for a comment on quantum physics, from a teenager. And as for the constant galumphing around and over-exaggerated sonic gestures, it's just all so wrong.

Even worse, Whittaker and the cast are completely let down by the writing. Simplistic dialogue and storylines and overly PC, there's nothing so far that has felt universe-threatening, virtually no clever twists the Doctor saw coming which we didn't, and no running thread (how I miss River Song, the crack in time, Bad Wolf) - they could have even made a thing about the Doctor being a woman for the first time after 1000s of years, maybe there being a universal or existential reason for it that she has to figure out. Essentially, there's nothing that makes this season feel epic. The producers have even dispensed with the pre-credit sequence which felt cinematic and set the stories up wonderfully, instead going straight to the titles and a 1980's re-hashed theme and look - and not even a TARDIS being bucketed about in worm hole. In fact, 5 episodes in, the TARDIS has hardly featured at all.

I applauded the BBC sweeping the decks - new blood, a female Doctor and new writers - that's all well and good, but they need to remember what made the show great in the first place.

I was definitely optimistic for this new season but it's just not the Doctor Who we've come to know and love.

The writing really isn't helping either and I still feel like I know nothing about this doctor and I feel so little for the companions of which there are two too many.

The trouble with the current series is a writer that can't seem to get to grips with, or doesn't care about, complex sci-fi characters and plot elements. It wasn't the worst, but I'd still describe it as fast food sci-fi, rather than anything that deserves the Doctor Who name.

I'd like to see future episodes contain more of the depth and intrigue we have seen in previous years.