Regular readers may recall that over the summer I went rogue and suggested that if the BBC couldn’t deliver a radically revamped template for Doctor Who for the 2020s, it would be better off canning it.
The episode was big on introducing characters and setting up a disparate set of situations – via some gorgeous CGI of outer space and planetary destruction – but didn’t have much of a story to tell.
Yasmin has clearly toughened up a bit since the end of the last episode.
There wasn’t much more to his character than having weird alien stuff happen to him, and responding with sardonic comments.
Sam Spruell’s turn as Swarm was the scariest monster of the day, and looks set to be a sinister opponent in the weeks ahead.
Karvanista’s appearance prompted much hilarity on social media for looking like Chewbacca in the publicity images, but he came across as gruff round the edges, rather than much of a threat.
The redesign of the Sontarans saw them go back to their original 70s look, and caused speculation that they would once again be a mighty warrior race, rather than the butt of a lot of jokes.
And I can’t be the only person whose ears pricked up when Annabel Scholey’s mysterious character Claire said that she had come “the long way round”, a phrase associated in the show with the Doctor’s own journey and the search for Gallifrey.
Shada should have been a six-parter the following year, but industrial action halted production, dooming the story to an endless loop of being almost definitively completed via a whole series of almost definitive remakes .
It isn’t a surprise that the Doctor Who universe has an alien species of dog people.
It introduced the much-missed Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and was the first story in which the Doctor mentioned the name of his home as Gallifrey.
More “I’m the clever one, you’re the potato one” action as we reach chapter two of Flux and witness the War of the Sontarans.