The Tsuranga Conundrum review
Synopsis: after accidentally detonating a sonic mine, the Doctor and companions are rescued by a hospital ship. Then, somewhat predictably, things go wrong.
Here be spoilers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
OK, so I was wrong last week when I said that this was the first of a run of episodes written by guest writers. That, is not a good thing.
Remember in my review of The Woman Who Fell to Earth when I complained about Chibnall constantly adding reasons for hating the bad guy and his species? Substitute hating the bad guy for dangers to the ship. Life pods gone, alien possibly destroying the ship, head office threatening to blow the ship up, no onboard controls, only pilot has a serious condition and the shortest route to where they’re going is through an asteroid field, it’s less adding to the tension and more that they’re stuck on the Most Unlucky Spaceship In The Galaxy. Again, pick one or two and trust in your damn audience.
Come to that, weren’t we told that if the alarm was triggered four times then the ship would automatically blow up? Why did that not happen? Why bother with introducing that as a plot point and not following through?
The alien destroying the spaceship. The Pting. It’s absolutely adorable. I just want to smoosh it’s cheeks and make baby sounds to it. That’s it in the entry pic. That pic is supposed to be it at it’s most frightening. It’s still cute. My friends boyfriend, however, found it to be completely hilarious. How seriously can we then take it as a threat when it’s not in the slightest bit frightening? Yes, Monty Python had a cute fluffy rabbit that was a killer, but that was done for comedy.
Now for my big bugbear of this episode. The pacing. Chibnall has always had pacing issues in his episodes and now I have a clear demonstration of it. The lecture about the anti-matter drive. It added nothing to the episode. It had no relevance to anything whatsoever. It didn’t figure in the resolution of the episode. All it really did was grind the episode to a halt at a moment when they’re supposed to be moving fast to do what was needed. Completely ridiculous.
The pregnant man could have been removed completely. All it was there for was for the dissonance of a pregnant man and to add to the Ryan father issues storyline.
I like the actress, but Yaz could just not appear in any more episodes and nothing would be lost.
Yet, for all the complaints I have of this episode, it’s still not the worst episode this series thus far. Which is saying something.
Will