An unspeakable act of cruelty is met in kind and an opportunity presents itself. The first race to live on Earth has woken up and they don’t feel like sharing. Not unless the unlikeliest possible ambassador, transport specialist Barclay Pierre-Dupont (Russell Tovey) and a member of the Sea Devils, now re-named Homo Aqua, Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) can find common ground.

Our last Doctor Who for a while is an often fascinating, more often confounding mess. Russell T Davies’ previous experimentations in the form, Children of Earth and Miracle Day, dug in on the logistics of sudden worldwide Singularity horror and produced one of the most memorable pieces of modern genre TV drama in the former and an often strong season in the latter. This is unfortunately neither.

Looking at the cast first gives us the strongest elements of the show. Tovey is fantastic, as he always is, as a likable, profoundly decent man far out of his depth and learning to swim. He has, by far, the heaviest lifting to do, especially in the startlingly weak third act and he’s one of the only reasons the show makes it across the finish line. He has two moments in the final episode which are flat out superb and feel like they’ve been dropped in from a much better show as Barclay reacts with abject horror and honesty to the way the world is changing.

Mbatha-Raw is excellent too but is given far less to do. Salt speaks In The Exact Way All Doctor Who Ambiguous Characters Of The Past speak and is required to do little more than glower. It’s a shame as she’s Tovey’s equal in talent but is forced to play with far less agency. The same is true of many of the supporting UNIT characters, brought back here and asked to do little more than read screens and look worried. Colonel Ibrahim is especially badly served as is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. Jemma Redgrave is the most worked cast member besides Tovey and must contend with her previously established character being completely overhauled. When she first showed up, she was a civilian advisor. Now Kate is a spymaster running an organisation of jackbooted UNIT soldiers who carry out surveillance on everyone and are always fully armed and far, far less interesting than they’ve ever been before.

The plot is where things really fall apart. This feels like a ten-episode season cut down to a five episode season, as the situation accelerates and deteriorates, often off screen. Homo Aqua kill and eat every dog on the planet (SERIOUSLY) and it merits under a minute of dialogue. Repeated references are made to Barclay and Salt finding each other familiar and it’s never paid off. At one point Salt is shown to be able to change gender and it’s never mentioned again. What should be high impact intrigue is often little more than two groups of character actors in different rooms, hitting their marks and doing their best. By the time we get to the dismal final episode, humanity commits genocide, Barclay is offered an unprecedented change, it’s denied him and he gets it anyway and there’s no sense of anything mattering. The second episode, which is superb, finishes with Homo Aqua ejecting every manmade item from the ocean. By the end of the final episode, the only sense that anything has changed or even matters is some plastic bottles on a beach and an overwhelming sense of confusion. Torchwood’s opening lines include a plea to be ready because of what happens in the 21st century. The show wasn’t, and it shows.

Somehow, despite all this, there’s some fun stuff here. The first couple of episodes are very good and Tovey and Mbatha-Raw are great throughout. But if you’re looking for big spectacle, big ideas and a new perspective on the Doctor Who universe, this show will only ever give you one of those things.

Verdict: Great performances, great ideas but it just never comes together. 5/10

Alasdair Stuart