Review of The Haunting of Villa Diodati
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

It’s my usual practice not only to watch an episode twice before reviewing it, but also to avoid reading anyone else’s reviews or discussing the episode in detail with anyone else before I write, so my reactions are as free from outside influence as possible. This time, that went out the window before the opening credits even rolled.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

As you may have seen in my Day Three roundup, I had the great fortune to be able to watch the episode at Gallifrey One, in a ballroom packed full of fans. Everyone was so keyed up that I don’t think any of us could help but love the episode. There were simultaneous gasps, raucous bursts of laughter, and immediate cessation of said laughter the moment dialog started back up (a room full of Doctor Who fans know it’s important not to talk over the lines). And it was exceedingly gratifying to have the whole room share my emotions as the story unfolded, confirming again that at this con, I’m completely surrounded by people who get it.

With all that coloring my initial experience, I knew I’d need a second viewing to gain any sense of objectivity whatsoever. Besides, I hadn’t been able to hear a large portion of the dialog and thus to keep track of everything that was going on. So with great anticipation, I dived back in.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to watch this one entirely objectively, simply because I’ll hear my Gally family’s reactions in my head every time I watch it. But even in broad daylight, with a critical eye out, and a clear understanding of every line of dialog, I came out of the episode with the warm glow of a great episode sitting snugly inside my chest.

Not to say it was perfect—the servants (the “unimportant” people) are still the only ones to die, and I never could quite figure out how the scuttling hand fit into everything—but I believe it was overall as masterful a script as we’ve seen in this era.

For example, even the first time through, I was struck by how skillfully writer Maxine Alderton (credited alone, despite this episode being the Utopia of its series, a nominal stand-alone that actually leads directly into the two-part finale) got the audience in-the-loop on the social dynamics of the villa’s inhabitants with that brilliant pope-in-the-pool quadrille. And the production team did a fantastic job making the atmosphere the perfect level of creepy and scary and tense without crossing into actual so-uncomfortable-I-don’t-even-know-why-I’m-watching-this territory (at least for most of us).

I also really enjoyed the trope-y elements like the folded-in-on-itself house that trapped our gang in loops and reminded me of Castrovalva or Heaven Sent, or the mysterious woman and girl who brought Graham food but no one else ever saw. Even the jump-scare with the skeletal hand going for Ryan’s throat was enjoyable for me, though perhaps that’s partly because I was already expecting it to go for someone’s face, and the throat was actually slightly less horrifying.

But I still had to look askance at the Doctor’s continuing questionable choices around non-consensual mental contact. Much like she did with the Dreg on Orphan 55, she just takes a peek inside Shelley’s mind at one point without ever pausing to ask for his consent, because she wants to know. Later, she does her “not very nice” Time Lord trick on him. One can infer that historically this was often, if not always, done without consent, likely as a punishment or attack. Not cool.

I understand her reason for doing so in this case, as a split-second, last-ditch attempt to save Shelley. She does, at least, apologize this time, but it still set my teeth on edge. Nor does it make me feel any better about what she did to poor Ada (who would’ve been all of six months old during this adventure; no wonder Byron looked a little unnerved that the Doctor seemed to know all about her).

The unexpected appearance of the Lone Cyberman before the series finale added an extra dash of tension, and made me look at all the details a little more intensely than I might usually. Is it significant that when the Doctor noted he didn’t have an inhibitor, his response was, “I do not need to be stabilized!”? And what part does he play in this war, if his own human children joined the resistance (before he killed them)?

Mostly, I’m wondering exactly what realization or decision went through the Doctor’s mind in that moment between her anguished “I can’t win!” and her reaction to the Lone Cyberman’s “We are inevitable.” The Twelfth Doctor said as much himself in The Doctor Falls: “They always get started. They happen everywhere there’s people. Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus. … some things are just inevitable.” How is she going to make use of that?

Because that experience is clearly at the forefront of her mind when she warns off her current best friends. “One Cyberman, but then thousands. Humans like all of you—changed into empty, soulless shells. No feeling, no control, no way back. I will not lose anyone else to that!”

Yet Yaz is starting to show signs of the same kind of recklessness we saw in Clara, though admittedly not (yet) to the same degree. When Ryan tries to toe the line and wait as instructed, Yaz points out, “Technically she only told us not to follow her.” In this instance nothing disastrous comes of that decision to ignore the danger, but with the fam’s willingness to follow the Doctor to the future to help her fight the Cyber-army, there’s no telling what awful things could happen to them next time.

And the Cybermen—rightfully—get under the Doctor’s skin. We haven’t really seen this incarnation light into her Companions before, but she finally lets loose on them here: “It’s not just his life at take; it’s yours. … You want to call it? Do it now. All of you. Yeah. ‘Cause sometimes this team structure isn’t flat. It’s mountainous, with me at the summit, in the stratosphere, alone. Left to choose. … Sometimes, even I can’t win.”

The Companions, as always, provide the support that the Doctor needs in order to make those tough choices. But if she takes them into the heart of a Cyberwar, will her choices always pan out in their favor? I’m kind of afraid to find out.