Doctor Who Series 12 Episode Rankings
Thought I rank these episodes while they’re still fresh in my mind.
#10. Oprhan 55 (1/10)
An unfortunate return to the bland, forgettable, preachiness of Series 11. The plot itself could have worked brilliantly, but became victim to non-existent character development, pacing that goes faster than Barry Allen on steroids, and a botched and forced-on environmental message that could have been handled so much better. No wonder Benni didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
#9. Can You Hear Me? (2/10)
Again, another story that would have been incredible if only handled properly. The only interesting aspect of the entire episode, the two gods, takes up barely half the episode’s total runtime. The Syrian hospital seems, again, to be another rushed and botched-on attempt at more political correctness, which could have been integrated much better into the story if it served an actual purpose, and the nurse character had more time to develop. And the last half of the episode spent dealing with depression and mental health awareness seems extremely out of place and unnecessary. If you wanted this to be the main theme of the episode, intertwine it with the central plot, don’t dump it in afterwards. It would have been much more effective to see these character aspects emerge and develop over the runtime, instead of this massive chunky segment which tells us everything and shows us nothing. We do get some character development for Yaz, but it seems extremely forced and shallow with no substance to it at all. It has no impact on what we know of her already and so doesn’t build on her character, and spending this much time with having no personality at all, it’s difficult to feel something towards Yaz in this segment
#8. The Timeless Children (4/10)
I like the Cyber Masters. I like the main plot of the Master creating his own race of Cybermen. It’s been done before, but it works, and here it works quite well. My problem with this episode is literally everything else in it. Gallifrey didn’t need to be destroyed, and at this point it no longer has an sort of emotional impact.
I love the Doctor. I hate the Timeless Child. One clichè I cannot stand in any sort of story is the Chosen One™️. The Doctor has always been an outcast, a misfit, someone who left an unjust society to see the universe do some good along the way. Now, it turns out the Doctor was always fated to be special, and has and always will be the most important person in the enterity of existence. And I hate that. For me, the Timeless Child takes everything special about the Doctor away from them. Also, as a big fan of Doctor Who’s extended universe, it was disappointing to see the disregard of canon. With things like looms and the War in Heaven, I always headcannoned my way around it and it existed alongside New Who in canon, but this takes all that away. Frankly, if anything, I’m just disappointed that this is the point the show has come to; Chibnall essentially throwing his toys out of the pram, disregarding every bit of canon he can find (except the Morbius Doctors before some smart arse in the comments talks about how it was canon in Classic Who), so no one can deny his control of the show in the face of all the criticism he has received for this shoddy imitation of what was so good about Doctor Who.
#7. Spyfall, Part Two (4/10)
Too much plot, too little time. Ada’s place in the plot is never clearly explained and so seems unnecessary. The Doctor’s memory wipe is never mentioned again and so seems unnecessary. The Khasaviin’s place in the Master’s plan is also never fully explained, and so, once again, seems unnecessary. Daniel Barton suddenly disappears with no conclusion halfway through the ending, though Dahwan’s Master is given time to let his character thrive, and this is definitely where we see his Master at his best.
#6. Praxeus (5/10)
Average and disposable, but not really bad by any means. The plastic pollution message is well tied with the main plot of the episode, and is perhaps the best handling of such a message throughout Chibnall’s run so far. The character development leaves a lot to be desired, frequently telling rather than showing, and the blogger character is not only irritating and unfunny, but acted very poorly too. The other side characters are much more likeable, and we finally see some character emerging in Yaz. While we do see some of this in Can You Hear Me?, here it comes a lot more naturally, and there’s a lot more to engage with.
#5. Fugitive of the Judoon (5/10)
The first half of this episode sets up its own plot, but then it descends into pure setup for The Timeless Children, contributing almost nothing of its own story. The return of Jack was a very pleasant (though somewhat expected) surprise, but turns out to be fruitless later on, no doubt used to build up hype for the later episodes, or perhaps this year’s special. Either way, it didn’t help the story, and it certainly didn’t help the ratings. Jo Martin is brilliant as the Doctor (IMO even better than Jodie), although with so little script and screentime we definitely don’t see enough of her. While a solid story on its own, the weird and crowbarred-in attempt at a mid-series finale, an American tradition done here to appeal to the show’s massively expanding Western audience, really doesn’t work. In America, it’s a perfectly functional idea as TV series are more commonly made up of 20 or more episodes, though here, in a series of only 10, it’s unnecessary and doesn’t work.
#4. Spyfall, Part One (6/10)
An intriguing series opener, with a solid mystery plot, whose only downfall is not actually having a proper explanation in part two. Daniel Barton is bland and uninteresting, and the real interesting characters here are the TARDIS team. For what feels like the first time, we get Ryan and Yaz contributing to the chemistry of the team by actually doing something important, with later consequences, and in a brilliant and tense sequence that carries an ominous sense of threat throughout. Stephen Fry gives a great guest performance, which was criminally short lived, and it’s great to see 13 at a loss for explications here. She’s always had this sense of instantly understanding a situation with 0 evidence to back anything up; just there to explain the story to the audience rather than tell it, so having her go through this mystery plot with no idea what’s going on is nice to see. The biggie of this episode is obviously the Master reveal, but I think this came way too soon. There were three, nearly four, whole series between Davies’ last use of the Master in End of Time before Moffat brought him back with Missy at the end of Series 8. Not only that, but we left Missy off having redeemed herself and changed her whole moral compass. Having the Master return in the same evil way as before really undermines her ending. While Dhawan almost certainly comes before her, it would have been nice for them to confirm this on screen; at least then Missy would have been left with her well-deserved ending fully intact.
#3. The Haunting of Villa Diodati (6/10)
I would have loved this one. I would have praised it as one of Jodie’s best episodes. But unfortunately, it did the one thing I could never forgive. Retconned not one, not two, but four Paul McGann Big Finish stories, which focused on the Doctor meeting Mary Shelley the night she conceived Frankenstein, and subsequently met the Cybermen. Ever since 8 recited the names of his audio companions in Night of the Doctor, I have been desperate for more mainstream recognition of Big Finish, but alas it is once again disregarded. Despite this, Villa Diodati still holds up as a good episode. The pacing still leaves a little to be desired, but it’s creepy atmosphere and imaginative plot fill that void. That being said, it could have been just as easy to substitute Shelley & Co. for any other random characters, but instead we are left with a great void left in place in some of Doctor Who’s finest.
#2. Ascension of the Cybermen (7/10)
Oh, how I wish this was a one-parter. Ignoring all the backfire from the Timeless Child, this one’a actually quite good. I think here Chibnall manages to return to form and remembers how to write side characters like he did under Moffat, and unlike the empty personality-vacuums we’ve had throughout his run so far. The Cyber-Drones are stupid and I hate them, and the Cybermen have lost their unique angle which had just been recovered by World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, and they’ve gone back to being generic shooty-shoot kill-all-humans charicatures, but Ashad steals the show. We don’t get a lot of background for his character, which I would have loved to see; more of the inner conflcit of being a half-finished conversion (which Chbbs has done before with Torchwood), or some more background into how he came to be. And we could also do without the whole “makes other Cybermen scream” because it serves no purpose other than to make him scary and have the characters point it out blatantly and say “this villain is evil, look at him being evil, man, he really is evil, and pretty scary, be scared now audience.” But the pacing of the story here is handled better. It’s rushed, but that works this time round. It’s a high-stakes rush for survival, and there’s a real feel of threat and fatal danger, a feature that Jodie’s run has lacked signficantly. We get an enjoyable run-around with deadly consequences that keeps the audience hooked, right up until we get the inevitable return to Gallifrey and the unfortunate follow-up.
#1. Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror (9/10)
Among Davies’ or Moffat’s run, this story would have probably been considered average. Up there with the likes of Unicorn and the Wasp, and The Unquiet Dead; the standard famous historical figures meeting aliens stories; fun, and enjoyable, but by no means remarkable. But in Jodie’s era, Night of Terror stands out like a shining diamond in the wasteland of her severely underdeveloped and boring stories. If ever Chibnall’s era had a return to form, this is it. Finally, we can see 13 and Co come into their own, running around and having the opportunity to shine in one of their first good stories. We don’t get a whole lot of character development, but just the opportunity to see these guys in action in the first engaging way is just so much fun. Sure, the Skithra are a bit unnecessary, but they’re still fun nonetheless. Goran Višnjić is standout in his performance as Tesla, and we get a very human portrayal of the revered and mythical figure Tesla’s become, which creates a very engaging character. We also see this in Robert Glenister’s portrayal of Edison. He is the very standard bad guy, as well he should be, but he’s not the empty, uninteresting caricature that we got with Tzim Sha or Krasko, and so we can enjoy engaging with the three-dimensional development of his character; not liking him by any means, but enjoying seeing the human aspects in him, instead of just having him as this weeks’ insert villain here. Here we get some of the most in-depth, three dimensional characters of Jodie’s run, and the opportunity to see her and her TARDIS team in such a well fleshed out environment really makes Night of Terror stand out from the rest of her unfortunate tenure.
