Leaping into the timestorm, the Doctor seeks answers – but only finds more questions…

SPOILERS

In the DWM preview, it was noted that you couldn’t possibly do this episode of Doctor Who at any other time. I’m not totally sure that’s true of the entirety of the series but it certainly is of the 21st century incarnation. We’ve had running threads through an entire season (Bad Wolf, Torchwood, how many times can Rory die?) but not a serial – and it does seem to have passed by a lot of people that that is what this is. It’s not a season of six one-hour (or so) episodes – it’s a single story that is divided into discrete chunks. Sometimes those chunks can stand alone (last week’s Sontaran episode, and, from the throwforward, next week’s with the Angels); at other times they’re in service to the grander story. Is there seriously any other serialised story that would have people up in arms because the third part of six isn’t accessible to an audience tuning in on the off chance? Have you tried watching a random episode of Line of Duty or The Fall? Or indeed any of the MCU Disney+ series?! (And on that subject, can you imagine what social media would have been like if it had been around when Warriors’ Gate went out?)

It’s an episode about backstories – a little bit for Yaz (a really little bit); a certain amount for Dan, fleshing out his friendship with Di so we empathize with his annoyance at the Doctor towards the end; and a great deal for both the Doctor and Vinder. Dealing with the latter first, we discover why he was out in the back of beyond (having annoyed Craig Parkinson’s Grand Serpent – a character that hopefully will return to get a vague second, let alone third dimension), and who he was messaging – Thaddea Graham (from The Irregulars) excellent as Bea, who’s desperately searching for him, and not caring if there are Daleks or Cybermen in her way. Vinder’s actions may feel a bit cliched, but we have all been aware in recent time of how little whistle-blower protocol can actually be followed when people’s livelihoods and wallets are at risk.

As for the Doctor? Well, any suggestion that The Timeless Children was leaving questions to be answered at some nebulous point in the future is out of the window – but it was great to see Jo Martin’s Doctor back. The use of the glitching memories made a virtue of a necessity – one of the first times that the COVID protocols really seems to have impacted storytelling – and Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor’s frustration both at what she learns and what it might mean was palpable. And then you throw in Barbara Flynn as an annoyingly enigmatic figure…

Azhur Saleem’s debut as a director brought a different visual style, most of which worked well (the shot of the Doctor and the Mouri weirdly seemed to lessen both parties), and Segun Akinola’s score was suitably bombastic when required.

Verdict: Very much an instalment of an ongoing serial than a standalone episode of its own, there’s plenty to admire. 7/10

Paul Simpson