Review of Revolution of the Daleks
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Maybe I’m just feeling traumatized by all that 2020 threw at us and am thereby in a headspace where I am only prepared to find joy and not fault, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 2021 New Year’s special held up upon a second viewing.

Usually I can really enjoy a new Doctor Who episode on first viewing, but when I stop to reflect, particularly when I’m watching again and preparing a review, I find aspects that bother me on levels anywhere from mild annoyance to outright ruining the episode for me. (This is especially true of those written by Moffat, who specializes in pacing his stories so fast that you don’t have time to notice its flaws that first time.) This time, however, nothing killed the buzz.

Not to say I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I think I’m too numb these days to be that effusive. But since I didn’t go into the episode expecting great things—it was a holiday special; I wanted a romp, and that’s what I got—I didn’t come out disappointed. In fact, I came out feeling fairly impressed. Because the thing about Revolution of the Daleks is that its purpose, more than being a holiday special, was to be the farewell story for Ryan and Graham. And in that respect, it did a damn good job.

I think it’s fair to say at this point that the audience has become pretty inured to Daleks. (Terry Nation’s estate is doing no one any favors by insisting that Doctor Who use the damn things every calendar year in order to keep the usage rights.) Personally I kind of roll my eyes every time they show up again, so the entire Dalek storyline was very peripheral to my experience of this episode. What made the special special was the return of Captain Jack Harkness (as more than a teaser) and the ending of two Companions’ time in the TARDIS.

Let me start with Jack. I love that Chibnall found a way to bring him back that made sense. Who but Jack could afford to engage in a nineteen-year gambit to break the Doctor out of the Judoon prison where she’d been confined (staring out the window of her cell like all of us trapped at home during a pandemic)?

Jack is still flirty (but less so—after all, the Doctor presents female now, and it would somehow be creepier for him to hit on her, even if I didn’t know John Barrowman himself is gay), still ready to get in the Doctor’s face when he thinks she’s making a potentially bad call, still self-confident, but somehow mellower as well. I really hope his farewell mention of Gwen Cooper is a back door to relaunching Torchwood (another primarily Chibnall project), because that show deserves more than the-fourth-season-that-never-happened-let-us-never-speak-of-it-again.

We also have a returning antagonist in the person of Jack Robertson, the self-important, we-swear-he’s-not-Trump businessman we first met in Series 11. While I hate that he seems to be getting away with all his bad behavior (too much like the real world), it’s good that we’re getting some alternatives to the usual Western storytelling happy ending tropes. It seems likely that Robertson will show up again at some point in the future. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not he ever gets his comeuppance.

Most importantly, though, we see the Companions exhibit three very different reactions to their separation from the Doctor. Yay is determined to find a way to reunite. Ryan has already gone through all the stages of grief and has accepted that it’s over. Graham is not giving up entirely, but is trying to be realistic about their chances of seeing her again. When she does come back into their lives, then, their reactions are also distinct.

I think that’s what I love most about this story. It makes Ryan’s, and eventually Graham’s, decision to stop traveling with the Doctor feel real, well considered, and purposeful. Unlike many of the Doctor’s Companions—something Jack emphasizes in his conversations with Yaz—Ryan has real agency in this choice. It is still sad (and I’m glad Chibnall added Yaz’s line reminding the Doctor that “It’s okay to be sad”), but it’s not heartbreaking. Ryan (and Graham) is doing what’s right for him.

Nor is it spur-of-the-moment. It’s not the fact that Ryan’s been traumatized one too many times (à la Tegan) or that he suddenly finds a new purpose (Nyssa, Steven) or lover (Leela, Jo), but that he’s been turning this over in his head for months now. He already knew that even if the Doctor did ever come back, he would not be leaving Earth again to travel with her.

Further, it’s unambiguous. My daughters, who had not been privy to the press about the Companions’ departure, both saw it coming through the episode, and were bummed but unsurprised when it happened. How often do we get that? Combine all these elements—agency, telegraphing, lack of immediate trauma—and the result is what is for me probably the best Companion departure story ever. Now that’s revolutionary.