#dwe1

Another really strong episode! I just adore Belinda more and more, especially seeing her get so excited about watching the contest and reminiscing about her childhood watching it. It was pretty silly and fun to have Rylan cryogenically frozen and Graham Norton as a hologram. I also hadn't realised until I tuned in to the broadcast and saw the trailer right before the episode started that the actual Eurovision finale is tonight. This whole series has clearly been planned meticulously with regards to the dates that it's airing, especially given the 24th of May deadline.

Okay, I have to deal with this first because !!!!!! SUSAN!!!! I've been saying for YEARS that Carole Ann Ford needs to come back, and there was so much teasing of it last series that I'm just overjoyed to see her again! I got a little worried that it would turn out to be Mrs Flood who was Susan, but thank god no. I wonder if Susan will be involved in the finale or if she's being set up for something beyond. God, I'm just so overjoyed to see her in the show again!

I've already mentioned Mrs Flood, but that's fun. After all of these years of people speculating that various characters are The Rani, one of them finally is! I guess it's time to check out her episodes, of which there seem to be three different serials. I'm kind of glad to get a bigeneration this time because I do really enjoy Anita Dobson, but it's interesting to see that she is seemingly subordinate to the new incarnation. I don't have much to base this new actress' performance on yet, but she seems fun in a villainous way! Also, a much more dignified split of clothing this time. The Doctor should take notes.

I really liked how dark the Doctor got this episode. Ncuti Gatwa said in an interview a little while ago that we'd see a different side to the fifteenth Doctor, and we sure have. I didn't think much of the line about him having ice in his heart initially, but him repeating that and saying it's still in there is interesting. Will we see a darker version of Fifteen going forward? I really loved Ncuti's performance throughout this, even if it was quite difficult watching a violent and vengeful Doctor as he dispassionately electrocuted Kid over and over again. That speech he gave over the video call was also very well performed, as was Belinda's "that's not him" response.

On that, I wish we'd had a little bit more from her about this whole aspect. She is horrified to find him hurting Kid and gets him to stop, then immediately hugs him. I was pleased she told him that he scared her, but I feel that the Belinda we've got to know over these past weeks would have a little more than that to say, including in the moment. I was also a little confused by Mike and Gary (who I really enjoyed as characters, by the way) clearly being terrified of him after his grandstanding speech (eg. Gary saying "oh thank god" after the Doctor says he likes him) and then pretty quickly moving on to being infatuated with him ("I'd do anything for you").

With regards to the Doctor's violent outburst, I'm also interested to hear him say that he was triggered because his species was wiped out in an instant, because is that still true? It was during RTD1, but since that got retconned and then Chibnall destroyed Gallifrey again, I don't think we ever got clarity on exactly the method the Master used to wipe out the Time Lords. I don't remember getting the impression that it was instant, but maybe that will be expanded on given the Susan appearance.

Onto the general plot, I like the angle of this corporation that destroyed a world for profit and puts about propaganda that the Hellions "did it to themselves", as well as silencing their voices. It is perhaps a little simplistic that Cora is able to sing a song and we get to feel that everything is now good because the galaxy is listening to a suppressed song, but so much is still left undealt with. Will the corporation still sponsor the contest? Isn't the contest complicit in taking that sponsorship and banning Hellians from participating in the first place? Still, I loved Cora as a character and her song did in fact make me cry, so there's that. Given how much else the episode was doing, there wasn't really time to go deep into the Hellians and their planet, but I would love to get a further exploration of it down the line, as with Planet of the Ood following up on the undealt with elements of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.

Still, an overall really good episode in an overall really good series. I'm looking forward to the finale! It may well be a disaster, as with last series, but I have hope. I'm sad we only have those two episodes (one story) remaining, but given the limited episode count I am pleasantly surprised with how well I'm gelling with this series. Fingers crossed for next week!

Little things:

I adored Mike calling the Doctor an "amazing little creature" while nursing him back to health. The Doctor really is just a weird little guy and we should acknowledge this more often.

Nice throwback to the delta wave! I think this is the first mention of one in twenty years, so that's fun.

One of the most effective parts of the story is the way his toys work. They play against Dodo and Steven, often cheating or being otherwise difficult, but they're people under there. It's ambiguous whether they had lives before they were toys - it's certainly possible, given that the threat is that our main characters might become like them - but Dodo points out that they do have personalities of their own even if they were created as toys. All they want is to be allowed to keep living. They don't want to go back to the toybox. The clowns becoming solemn when they realise they might lose is the first time this is evident, but perhaps the best moment is the "if we go, we go together" between the playing card king and queen. It makes you feel for these people trapped within the Toymaker's world!

The Toymaker himself is also such a good villain. His motivations make complete sense, and even when he's lost at the end, I really believe he doesn't care about losing his world; he just wants to spite the Doctor for beating him. He's also just a fantastically menacing presence, with a really effective, reigned-in performance. It makes me worry slightly just how big a performance NPH looks to be giving in the upcoming episode, but I'll withhold judgement till I've actually seen it. (I also wonder how they'll handle his face having changed, since he's not a Time Lord. Though for a character with the power to bring toys to life, changing his appearance is probably not all that difficult.)