Review of Can You Hear Me?
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I’m not a fan of the horror genre, whether it be on screen or written, nor have I ever found Doctor Who particularly to fit that description.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

I have to say, though, that whatever they’re doing this series—whether that’s the scripts, the effects, the scoring, or what—has been really effective in giving me that slightly alarming sense of foreboding that lets one know there’s something amiss. And I’ve even enjoyed it. But that chill factor is only the superficial layer dressing up the core of this story.

In one way, the episode is an example of the “visit home” type that has become more and more common over the years of modern Who. The Companions want to dip their toes back into their mundane lives, and the Doctor either gets embroiled in something odd happening where they are—often involving their families—or gets sidetracked on something completely different that turns out to be related. In this case, it’s the latter, and we end up with the convergence of four distinct threads stemming from the Doctor (random creatures in a mental hospital in 14th-century Aleppo) and each of her Companions (Ryan: “My mate’s been taken!” / Yaz: “There was a figure in our flat.” / Graham: “I keep seeing these images of planets like they’re being projected into my mind.”).

In another way, in my opinion, the episode hints at a larger series arc. Although there is eventually a clear reason for the Chagaska, the nightmare creatures of the opening, to be so enigmatic that even the TARDIS can’t identify them, it seems unlikely to me that such a thing happening more than once in a single series is coincidental.

Review of Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Last week we had a story that beat us over the head with its message, a moralistic cautionary tale. This week we are bombarded with notes on how brilliant the too-often-overlooked inventor Nikola Tesla was. All in all, I prefer the accolades.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

It seems to me that this series so far is all about the various writers’ favorite topics. Whether it’s championing a particular cause (combatting climate change) or highlighting the awesomeness of lesser known historical figures (Ada Lovelace, Noor Inayat Khan, Nikola Tesla), the focus for three of the four episodes to date has been more on the real world than the fantastical.

Not to say such focus is necessarily bad—there is certainly a place for those things, especially in a show like Doctor Who. I am simply feeling a little overwhelmed by what feels to me like the incessant drumbeat of authorial intent. As a viewer, I prefer to get so swept up in a story that such considerations only sneak into my consciousness indirectly. If I only notice them when I think back on it later—the sweet spot for that being in the few minutes after I’ve first finished the episode—then it feels like the writer has done their job.

But this series…