Man, hard to believe this season is already over. The wait between the reveal of Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor and her actual first episode sure felt excruciating, and even once she was firmly in the role it took a little getting used to, as it always does whenever a new faces takes over the TARDIS controls. And just as it felt like everything was finally settling into its proper groove, BAM, season’s over. God, and who knows when we’ll get anything new.
…oh right, New Year’s. Well, that’ll tide things over a bit. And hopefully that special will help wash the taste of this finale out of our collective mouths.
Yeaaaaaaaaah, sorry to say but “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos”, written by showrunner Chris Chibnall is a near-complete dud of an episode. Every Doctor Who season has its share, but A) normally the duds are the one-off, Monster of the Week stories, not the big event arc episodes, and 2) it’s rare for the show to end on such a bum note. Again, thank goodness there’s another new episode in a couple weeks that could leave us with brighter memories to tide over until the next season. This current season has had its sporadic problems, but “Av Kolos” doubles down on everything that has been problematic while ignoring and abandoning all the strengths Doctor Who has built up with The Thirteenth Doctor and her crew of Companions.
We open with a couple Star Trek-y aliens (Sidenote: I know budgets are limited, but please don’t just clue random shit to your day-players cheeks or foreheads and call it a day), who we will later learn are known as the Ux, doing rock-magic or something on a desolate planet. The older woman (Phyllis Logan) explains to the younger man (Percelle Ascott) that they do this eye-glowy, rock-shifting magic in service to The Creator. Right as he gets all Dragonball Z-y, though, their ritual is interrupted by something blue and person-shaped crashing to the ground just beside the pair.
Smash cut to 3,000 years later (one of the things that I adore about Who is that it can pull moves like smash-cutting to 3,000 years later) and The Doctor notices a distress signal coming from that same planet. Every other ship is steering well clear, but The Doctor never heard a distress signal she wouldn’t sprint towards.
When the TARDIS lands, The Doctor notes that the planet is projecting some kind of reality distortion signal that makes even stepping foot outside a lethal prospect. The Doctor fits the fam with neural-blockers and the group heads over to the abandoned ship, quickly discovering that it’s not so abandoned. A gun-wielding, paranoid captain (Hi, Mark Addy! How have you not been on Doctor Who before) has no memory of where his crew is or why he is on the planet, but The Doctor discovers a strange crystal with some kind of orb intensely vibrating within it.
Just when things couldn’t get any weirder, the lady from the 3,000 years ago skypes in to demand that Mark Addy return what he stole (the crystal) or else “The Creator” will kill his remaining crew. This so-called Creator steps into view and reveals himself to be Tzim-Sha (Samuel Oatley), the first foe ever faced by The Thirteenth Doctor. That encounter ended with the death of Grace, and with The Doctor using Tzim-Sha’s (which sounds like Tim Shaw, every time) own technology to zap him to the ass-end of nowhere. Which, it turns out, was here.
The TARDIS team and Mark Addy race to rescue his crew, but Graham is less concerned with their well-being than he is with confronting Tzim-Sha for Grace’s death. He pulls The Doctor aside to tell her in no uncertain terms that if he is given a chance, he will kill Tzim-Sha. The Doctor in turn tells Graham in no uncertain terms that if he does so, if compromises a rescue operation so he can take personal revenge, then he is done, finito, off the TARDIS.
As they enter the big Arrival-looking ship where Tzim-Sha is lurking, The Doctor divides the group up into teams. Yaz and Mark Addy will investigate the ship, Ryan and Graham will try to locate the hostages, and she will take the weird crystal thing and confront Tzim-Sha. Ryan and Graham hash out their conflicted feelings over being so close to Grace’s killer: Graham still wants his revenge, while Ryan demands that Graham not destroy the family dynamic of the TARDIS by giving in to these dark impulses. The heart-to-heart is interrupted by an attack from the sniper-bots from “The Ghost Monument”. Despite the name, these things make Stormtroopers look like marksmen, and Ryan and Graham flee.
The Doctor runs across the lady Ux, who is aghast when her “Creator” somehow knows The Doctor. It comes out that there are only ever two Uxes (Uxs? Uxi?) in existence at one time, but individuals of the species live for thousands of years and possess the ability to warp reality with their psychic abilities. The extent of those abilities are revealed when Mark Addy and Yaz discover a chamber filled with more of the crystals and vibrating orbs. Mark Addy finally remembers that he was sent to the planet to rescue these items, as they are actually planets that have been ripped out of time and space and claimed by Tzim-Sha.
The Doctor final confronts Tzim-Sha, half-dead and fuck ugly. Tzim-Sha sends lady Ux to complete another assignment, then thanks The Doctor for exiling him. You see, the Ux mistook him for their god, and so Tzim-Sha merged their powers with his race’s weaponry to enable his planet-stealing scheme. And now he plans to complete his revenge by having the Ux rip Earth out of the universe and added to his personal collection.
The lady Ux heads over to the crystal chamber where Yaz and Mark Addy are hiding. The dude Ux is crucified to a cube thing, which forces him against his will to activate his powers, sending a red beam to strike the Earth. While Mark Addy and Ryan lead the freed prisoners to Mark Addy’s ship, Graham remains behind to help the last few prisoners and The Doctor and Yaz remove their own neural blockers to shut down the Uxs’ powers and save Earth.
The stolen planets are starting to crack under the dimensional pressure of being shrunken, frozen, and placed next to each other, hurtling everyone towards a singular kaboom. The Doctor manages to summon the TARDIS back to her, then cracks open the console to use the mainframe circuits to amplify the repentant Uxs’ abilities and timey-wimey the planets back into their proper orbit.
As Graham clears the prison of the last few hostages, a bitching guitar sting announces the arrival of Tzim-Sha. Graham has his opportunity for revenge, but finds that he can’t kill in cold blood, even when it’s this asshole. Ryan rushes back into the chamber just as Tzim-Sha makes to attack Graham, which spurs Graham to shoot the tooth-faced asshole in the foot. The triumph is marked by Ryan finally returning a fistbump, and it’s a testament to this dorky show’s beautiful heart that, yes, the fistbump got all me choked up.
After locking Tzim-Sha in his own containment unit, Ryan and Graham rejoin the others. Graham confesses to The Doctor that he was “too weak” to take revenge, but she responds that his actions (or, his willingness not to act) mark him as one of the strongest people she knows. Mark Addy and the survivors head back home, agreeing to take the Ux with them to explore the universe beyond (I guess everyone is cool overlooking these two facilitating interplanetary genocide but OK, no harm no foul).
The Doctor encourages the Ux on their travels, urging them to “Travel hopefully”, as perfectly phrased a mission statement for this character and this show as has ever been uttered. And then it’s time for the TARDIS ‘fam’ to head out once more, ready for their own new adventures.
Episode Thoughts:
-Oof. While “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” gets a bit of the Who magic back in its last act, the first two-thirds of the episode combine all the weaknesses of Chibnall’s early tenure and mute almost all the strengths. The plot is a dour, sluggish mystery that leans too hard on lazy crutches (like Mark Addy’s wildly sporadic and nonsensical amnesia. What a waste of a strong actor) to stall answers and manufacture obstacles. Everything feels rushed and slapped together, from the cheap look of the Ux to the dank, anonymous set design. And because the crew gets split up early on, and because Graham is in a dark mood for almost the full hour, there’s none of the usual interplay between The Doctor and her friends, which can elevate even the weakest of episodes. The final act attempts to synthesize the entire season into one cumulative tale, but Chibnall does a clumsier job that Russell T. Davies ever did during his finales, and the sudden threat to Earth feels like a Hail Mary to manufacture stakes and tension in an episode that just does not have any.
-Part of the problem might be Tzim-Sha being the villain around whom the entire season spins. Tzim-Sha (Tim Shaw) isn’t scary as a monster, but he’s also not interesting as a character, but he’s also no fun as a villain. And that’s before you get into how clunk-headed the plotting around him is (what the hell was he doing for 3,000 years?). I appreciate Chiball deciding to keep this season clear of any returning monsters, but Tzim-Sha is essentially just a repackaged Dalek without even a fraction of the iconic status.
-This episode calls back not only various episodes from this season, but “The Stolen Earth” from David Tennant’s run, and “Boom Town” from Chris Eccleston’s lone season.
-“Ranskoor Av Kolos” turns out to mean “Disintegrator of the Soul”. “Oh another cheery one,” Graham quips.
– “What happened to no weapons?” Ryan asks as the violence-despising Doctor rigs together grenades and bombs to storm the ship. “It’s a flexible creed,” she shrugs.
– The Doctor “half-invented” Wellingtons.
– “Whatever happened to doors? Don’t aliens do doors?” Ryan has had it with alien interior design.
– The Doctor, upon coming face to face with the gurgling ruin of Tzim-Sha: “You look in a bad way. Meanwhile, I’ve got a new coat!”
-“We’re family. And I love you.” “What’d you just say?” “I’m not saying it twice!” Even in this bummer of an episode, the Graham-Ryan relationship is the show’s unfaltering North Star.
– “I’m with you! Whatever happens.” Yaz has had very little to do all season, and nothing to do this episode, but I ship her and The Doctor super hard.
– “Yippee kai-yay robots.” Graham is the best.
– Graham, after shooting Tim Shaw in the foot. “Just in the foot! Just to shut him up! Don’t tell the Doc! She’d be livid!”
– And here’s The Thirteenth Doctor’s closing speech: “None of us know for sure what’s out there. That’s why we keep searching. Keep your faith. Travel hopefully. The universe will surprise you. Constantly.”