Review: Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Watching the opening episode of a new season of Doctor Who is always a pleasure, and when it's the first episode featuring a new Doctor, moreso.  But this year, with The Woman Who Fell To Earth, we not only had a new Doctor, but a new set of companions, a new Showrunner in the form of Chris Chibnell, new production team, new music composer, new title music, and new titles (although as of writing, I've not seen those yet as they weren't included on the opening episode). So there's lots to be anticipatory about.

One thing that is worth pointing out as well, is that unlike most previous Doctor Who seasons and episodes, this time, I knew absolutely nothing about it ... aside from the actors chosen to play the lead roles, not a single plot point, meaningful photograph, or anything much had crossed my path to either 'spoil' or generate excitement about the show. It was a total blank. So much so, that I had no clue when sitting down to watch it, what to expect at all.

So how did it fare? Not too bad overall. Opening Doctor episodes tend to be a little on the let-down side anyway (thinking Robot, The Twin Dilemma, The Eleventh Hour, Deep Breath) and this time there was so much to try and cram in, that a plot of any depth was probably asking too much ...

However a plot was there, and it was straightforward and understandable, if a bit of a steal from Predator. An alien (strangely called Tzim-Sha (Tim Shaw)) comes to Earth to hunt a human so that he can ascend to lead his race ... along the way he steals teeth from his prey and embeds them in his face ... So does Tzim only hunt humans then? If he hunted ... I don't know ... Elephants, then would he have their tusks embedded there? And what if the prey had no teeth ... what would he do then? Thankfully these questions go unanswered.

So Tzim arrives on Earth because a lad called Ryan touches a hologrammatical map thingy in a forest near Sheffield, and summons him there. I did wonder what would have happened if Tzim's summoner went untouched? Would he then try somewhere else? And why make it appear in a forest anyway? Why not somewhere that there were actual people? Anyway ...

So the map thingy makes a blue container thing appear in the forest - and initial thoughts were that this might be the TARDIS ... but no. It's basically a shuttle? Spaceship? Something in which Tzim-Sha travels ... but he can apparently teleport. So why does he need it?

Meanwhile, there's some sort of tentacled Cthulhuian monster attacking a train from Sheffield to London (it's unclear why), and the Doctor falls from the sky, crashes through the train roof, and is completely unscathed and saves Graham and his wife Grace, and a lad called Karl from the tentacle thing. They then hook up with a junior police officer called Jasmine to investigate. Along the way, the Doctor makes a new Sonic Screwdriver (in part from melted down Sheffield steel spoons), and the pod thing opens to reveal Tzim-Sha ...

Tzim (or the tentacle thing which seems to be working for him, or the people who sent Tzim on this mission) has apparently chosen Karl as the prey, and so the alien tracks him to his job as a crane worker, where he climbs the crane to get him (remember, he can teleport). In a neat bit of flip-floppery, the Doctor confronts Tzim and reveals that the DNA bombs he planted in them had been transferred to the tentacle thing, and from there into Tzim himself ... so Tzim leaves in a flash of logic.

The Doctor then decides to try and locate the TARDIS using Tzim's teleport device, but instead sends herself and her new friends into space!

The presence of a cliffhanger was lovely, I really missed those, and I hope they keep it up ... and the plot was simple enough to follow.  I did feel that Tzim-Sha was a bit of a letdown though. He was too much children's teatime SF and not enough Doctor Who. He would have been completely in place in, say, Lost in Space, or Galloping Galaxies perhaps ... just something about it didn't work for me.

As for the other elements. I found the new companions quite likable. Ryan and Jasmine had a touch of 'Soap Opera' about their performances, but overall they were believable, and Graham I really liked ... a sort of 'everyman' just getting on with life before it's all turned upside down by the arrival of Tzim-Sha and the Doctor.

Finally, the new Doctor. To be perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure at the moment. After just one episode, Jodie Whittaker has yet to make much of an impact. I liked her arrival, crashing into the train (and I guess she's unharmed as she was still regenerating at the time), and I liked the way she took control of the situation immediately. There were flashes of David Tennant's performance in hers, with the mouth movements and facial expressions, and I liked her 'get on with it' attitude. I really liked that the fact she was a woman was really not made much of an issue of - and why should it, as far as we know, none of these people has ever met the Doctor before, so they would not know or realise any different.

But is she the Doctor? A couple of moments I felt, yes, she's got this, and then the next moment it's like watching someone cosplaying as the Doctor, someone pretending to be the Timelord ...

I think the basic issue was, with no opening titles, no TARDIS, nothing to actually tell you this was Doctor Who, it could have been the opening episode from Stranger Things 3, or a new Netflix show about saving the Earth from Aliens (Earth vs Aliens) ... and it would have been perfectly acceptable as such.

One thing which really impressed me was the sound design and music. Absolutely first rate, and a refreshing change from the orchestral approach since the show returned in 2005. I found Segun Akinola's score creepy and effective, and also modern and emotive. Can't wait to get a CD release of that!

In a way, it's nice to have such a clean slate to work from. Pretty much anything and everything which made Doctor Who, Doctor Who, was swept away, and we're starting completely from scratch, with no baggage, and no touchstones to the past at all (except perhaps from the Sonic Screwdriver) ...

A final comment to add: while I'm reminded of it ... the story actually has many 'touches' to Matt Smith's debut adventure: a companion dressed as a police officer, an alien who wants to take the Earth, a secondary alien working for the first, and the Doctor tells them to scarper at the end ... A very similar idea ...

Overall, then, a very promising start for the 13th Doctor, or is she the 14th? Or maybe the 15th?

One final thought ... the episode certainly didn't seem to be aimed at 8 year old girls ... so why are all the books and merchandise suddenly aimed there? Answers on a postcard ...