Before reading on, make sure to watch the episode here. Spoilers ahead.
“Don’t be scared. All of this is new to you and new can be scary.”
What makes a good start to a new Doctor Who era?
I always find myself gravitating towards one of my favourite new Who episodes – The Eleventh Hour.
It didn’t have the most memorable monster, or the best special effects, but it set the tone perfectly for the Moffat era of Doctor Who. Funny, very funny. Clever, too, with an ending that didn’t rely on a magic button (or magic potion) to solve everything. It was also very Doctor-centric. He was the narrative driver. It was all about him.”
If you ask me now what single episode best summed up Smith’s era of Doctor Who, I’d point to that episode. It set the tone for everything that followed.
That’s actually true of pretty much all of these new-Doctor openers. And that’s exactly what The Woman Who Fell To Earth was.
“We don’t get aliens in Sheffield.”
This wasn’t the best Doctor Who story. A plot about an alien that’s come to Sheffield to hunt a nervous human – it was effectively the Yorkshire Predator, only with drunks throwing salad instead of soldiers throwing grenades. It was scary, though, certainly more so than expected. The episode’s antagonist is one that freezes people, breaks their jaws and steals their teeth to stick onto their face… so much for family-friendly.
But even with this, it felt relatable, in a way that perhaps more recent series had not. The episode’s working class characters and unromantic Sheffield setting made sure of that.
For all the pre-launch focus on the first female Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor was not really the centre of the action. She had her hero moments, but for most of the runtime she acted as the shepherd that ushered around the new characters from location to location.
She was exciting and promising and charming. A Doctor in the David Tennant mould – although we’ve yet to see any of the darkness or sadness that would come to define the tenth Doctor (at least not yet). And the humour (which didn’t always hit) was right out of the Matt Smith textbook of fast-talking comedy.
Thus far, she does seem to be the most polite Doctor we’ve had. No putdowns or mean nicknames, and constantly remembering to say please and thank you… the exact opposite to her grumpy predecessor.
But the big question was whether she felt like the Doctor? And the answer was a definite yes.
“Is it wrong to be enjoying this?”
But the focus of this episode was really on the four companions, which was a mild surprise. Perhaps the pre-launch emphasis on Jodie Whittaker had influenced my expectations… maybe even the episode’s title had led me to believe this would be a very Doctor-focused affair (as it turned out, ‘The Woman ’ in the title doesn’t necessarily refer to The Doctor).
This was an episode all about the new police officer Yasmin, who is eager to take on more interesting cases. It was about Ryan, the warehouse worker with the wayward father who wants to overcome his dyspraxia to become a mechanic. It was about Graham the cancer survivor trying to connect with his step grandson.
It was about real people with normal names facing everyday problems.
Even the support cast were made real, whether it was the doomed security guard happy to speak to his granddaughter, or the brother desperately seeking answers around his missing sister. This was an episode about human beings, and that really shouldn’t have been a surprise. This is by Chris Chibnall, after all, whose Broadchurch series was a traditional detective drama made brilliant by its focus on the people touched by the crime.
Were there too many characters? Perhaps in the context of a single episode… but over the course of a whole series, I somewhat doubt it. Because this is just the opening episode, after all. It’s not supposed to be the best Doctor Who ever. It is the prologue for things to come.
The scene has now been set. Let the adventure begin.
Dringo 