Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, Sacha Dhawan, Patrick O’Kane, Ian McElhinney, Julie Graham, Alex Austin, Matt Carver, Rhiannon Clements, Seylan Baxter, Kirsty Besterman, Paul Kasey, Nicholas Briggs, Jo Martin, Steve Toussaint, Matt Carver, Jack Osborn, Evan McCabe, Branwell Donaghey, Orla O’Rourke, Andrew Macklin, Coalyn Byrne, Matthew Rohman, Simon Carew, Jen Davey, Rochard Highgate, Richard Price, Mickey Lewis, Matthew Doman, Paul Bailey. 

The Doctor is a stranger, we may believe we know the Timelord renegade, we may think that all that has gone before is set in stone, but like our own lives, nobody really knows the full picture of our existence, they have snapshots, moments in which they were in attendance, or they heard the rumours of stories from a third hand, the idle gossip of the well intentioned who want to believe more than anything in you.

The Doctor is a stranger shrouded in mist, and thanks to the two-part ending for series twelve, Ascension of the Cybermen and The Timeless Children, and Chris Chibnall’s radical, some might say revolutionary, way of dispensing with what some might see as unbreakable lore, that stranger has stepped further into the fog whilst remaining arguably a dramatic presence in the eyes of the science fiction lover.

Keeping something fresh is harder than it looks, after almost sixty years at the helm of the B.B.C.’s viewing, the thought of being stale, of once more facing cancellation as it was with dubious ceremony by the powers that be at the time, will always play havoc in the back of the mind of the writers, the showrunner and the fan alike.

If revolution is required then let it be done with the shedding of some established lore, the cumbersome act and weight perhaps holding back future writing. For unlike our own lives, science fiction is open to change, we can either see it for what it is, or we can turn away, perhaps in fear of that change, of the mutiny and what it holds.

The two-part ending is arguably as beautiful a way to show such revolution as the final days of David Tennan’s tenure as the time travelling hero, and for Jodie Whittaker, who has shown incredible depth in the majority of the episodes that this season has offered, this pairing of stories sees her truly established as The Doctor. The inner grief, the anger that rages, the moment in which she confronts her fiercest foe and supposed best friend, they have been glimpsed at, even revelled in before, but to see such emotion from the female perspective, that raw energy to which can be manipulated and moulded into the pressure of what is considered a violent act; such is transferred in what is so far Jodie Whittaker’s finest moment in the role.

The Doctor is a stranger, however, with excellent performances by the returning Sacha Dhawan as The Master, Ian McElhinney as Ko Sharmus and Seylan Baxter as the mysterious Tecteun, Ascension of the Cybermen and The Timeless Children clears a path through the fog and sets up an explosive reunion at Christmas. Bigger, bolder and willing to cause a stir of opinion, The Doctor awaits.

Ian D. Hall