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.

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…

Aside from the first episode, it’s been hard for me to engage fully. Perhaps part of the reason is that as I write more fiction myself, I can’t help but analyze the structure of any given story as I consume it. Even so, I find if I’m really invested in the story, I can still turn off my “writer brain” the first time through. But this series as a whole has not yet immersed me in that headspace.

For what it’s worth, I loved Tesla. I’ve always been amazed by his brilliance, saddened by his lack of business acumen, and pleased that he’s beginning to get some recognition (and Edison is getting some harsher, more realistic light shone on him). This characterization gave me all sorts of warm fuzzies, too. I love how Tesla and the Doctor really grok each other, and how impressed-but-not-overwhelmed Tesla was by the TARDIS. I also quite enjoyed all the ways the writer sneaked in references to how many ahead-of-his-time ideas Tesla had (remote control, radar, WiFi…).

Anything having to do with Tesla and his brilliance had me on board. Several things about the baddies, however, did not. First, despite the fact that the Queen of the Skithra was portrayed by Rani Chandra herself, the fabulous Anjli Mohindra, she looked far too much like the Empress of the Racnoss to make a distinct impression. (Really—if your show has already done space spiders, does it need space scorpions, too? Apparently someone thought so…)

And here we have the Doctor overstepping bounds again. I see two ways to read her decision to target the queen and kill the entire hive, and I know which one I prefer if I’m going to go on loving this character.

The first, deeply problematic reading is that when the Doctor sneers, “When you die, there’ll be nothing left behind,” she’s not only putting the queen in her place, she’s announcing her intent to commit genocide (apparently without a second thought) because “I gave you your chance.”

I know that’s been a thing with the Doctor for a long time—to give a warning and then act without mercy if the antagonist doesn’t back down. But I don’t think we ever really saw the Doctor do that this time. Where was the “If you don’t knock it off, I’m going to stop you” moment? Without that, and without the Doctor showing any remorse for the death of some unknown number of Skithra, that whole bit made my skin crawl.

Instead, I chose to accept a different reading. I can believe that this was the queen of a single hive on a single ship. Maybe the species is made up of scavengers who have forgotten how to think for themselves, but the Doctor was only defending Earth, and “only” slaughtering a small portion of this species, one hive among untold millions throughout the galaxy. At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night…

Little moments throughout the episode made me smile, and I think on balance, I come out feeling positive about this one. But in a story that included not only the amazing Tesla but the shrewd Edison, I wanted sparks to fly. Instead, I left with only a mild buzz. I really hope the next episode has more juice.