This chapter opened with a monologue in which Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor talked rapidly, explaining everything to the audience while up against a CGI background of a million Weeping Angels, and my heart sank again.
What you thought of the episode will depend very much on whether or not you care for the Timeless Child arc.
Barbara Flynn’s character was revealed to be Tecteun, the Gallifreyan who found the Timeless Child and stole its genetic secret of regeneration for the Time Lords.
I must confess, I wasn’t expecting to see Craig Parkinson’s Grand Serpent again – and certainly not on Earth, carefully manipulating Unit in the background throughout the organisation’s history, so that was a bolt from the blue.
The hermit in Nepal issuing a string of dad jokes, and Karnavista’s exasperation after they went to all that trouble to get a message to him, were amusing – but these sequences also made it clear that Yaz .
Plus, finally, we found out how Joseph Williamson had been making his slightly irritating 19th-century gobbledegook cameos in different times and places throughout the story.
The monster of the week had a very human face: Tecteun, the Doctor’s own “mother”, willing to destroy the universe to cover up her actions.
In many ways, this brings us closer to what William Hartnell told us in 1963 about him and Susan Foreman being exiles “cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection”, rather than the idea that the Doctor just got bored and wanted to see the stars.
It seemed odd to cast someone as brilliant as Barbara Flynn as Tecteun and then have her bumped off after just a few scenes opposite the Doctor.
He later played Colonel and then Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart in Doctor Who, from 1968’s The Web of Fear to 1993’s Dimensions in Time, featuring in 24 stories alongside every Doctor from Patrick Troughton to Sylvester McCoy.
I should have pointed out last week that McNally has been in Doctor Who before – he played Hugo Lang in Colin Baker’s first story as the sixth Doctor, The Twin Dilemma.
But can Chibnall stick the landing? Will the Doctor end up saving Earth and her friends, resetting the universe, finding out who Bel’s baby is going to grow up to be, and restoring her lost memories? I would bet on at least two of those things happening, but the jury is still out on where the Timeless Child arc is going.