I am a much bigger bang than you bargained for

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2024

#17 :  Doctor Who

Having made a triumphant return to Doctor Who with last year’s spectacular anniversary specials, Russell T. Davies’ first full series back as showrunner breathed new life into the world’s longest-running sci-fi series. Driven by the magnetic central pairing of Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson as the Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday, Davies’ new-look Whoniverse — now backed by a Disney-sized budget — took in Beatles, space babies, bird-brained cosplayers, and literal Gods, effortlessly switching up genres whilst telling an emotionally resonant tale of foundlings and belonging. Standouts ‘Boom’ and Welsh folk horror diversion ‘73 Yards’ offered up some of the year’s best episodes of, well, anything, while an ambitious two-part finale saw Davies take some impressively big swings – and stick the landing. What’s more, it still seems the regenerated show’s best is very much yet to come.

Empire has a bit of a blind spot about Doctor Who - they put it at #17 last year and it was perfectly fine, but absolutely no more than that (and it was very silly in places). And as a result, I think this was the first season of Doctor Who I've not seen since it came back - I suspect Ncuti will be a fine Doctor, but it's just that I've lost patience with the whole thing even if I am a bit interested to see if the addition of Disney's money makes any difference. Either way - hey ho, here we go...

1. Space Babies
Well done, but pretty silly.

2. The Devil's Chord
This seems to have a cheesy premise with them going back to see The Beatles, but it's actually quite well done with them finding the band singing "I Love My Dog" nonsense and not being all that interested in music. I do hope all the right people were tremendously upset by the presence of a drag queen - bloody wokery nonsense, I tell you :-) Jinkx Monsoon actually gives a pretty good performance though in a role with an amusing potential to scare small children. It also has a nice musical "twist" at the end (which has had a LOT of work gone into it).

3. Boom
A nicely tense episode set in in a minimal location, this doesn't go where you expect it to, with a couple of nice twists in it. I'm not sure I'd agree it's one of the best episodes of the year of anything, but it's certainly a decent episode - with a much higher quality level than.I was expecting.

4. 73 Yards
This is nicely intriguing - it's quite Black Mirror-ish, but leaning more to the horror than the technology. And a very nice little horror idea it is too - ssmple but disturbing, with a nice tonal shift halfway through.  "73 yards" is an intriguing title which is explained nicely halfway through without actually explaining anything - it's also interesting because The Doctor hardly features in the episode. All in all, it's a neat episode with a great central performance from Millie - it also uses the word "liminal", which you don't hear often enough.

5. Dot And Bubble
Whereas this wants to be a Black Mirror level satire on social media, but it's just a bit silly. OK, very silly - but it does have a couple of surprisingly mean twists to it.

6. Rogue
Well, this one will have made the traditionalists mad - assuming any of them are still watching it, that is. It wasn't the best episode though - but they did well to get Jonathan Groff involved.

7. The Legend Of Ruby Sunday
Well, this does a load of scene-setting! Without, for the most part, actually explaining anything (although it did have a well-designed red herring). So it's a good job it's the first of a two parter, which took me nicely back to the good old days with a proper Dr Who cliff hanger (although they were often four parters back them).

8. Empire Of Death
Hmmm - they possibly go a little large on the peril and the mystery in this one, but they resolve it with some nonsense I didn't really understand, They don't half drag out the ending though and rhe CGI isn't exactly great either - so it wasn't a classic episode for me. There is a nice callback to episode 4 though - they've certainly rewarded the observant viewer in this season.

Ncuti and Millie have a good partnership and the mystery of Ruby's origin is nicely played through the season. Ncuti feels to have good potential in the role - he is a bit manic at times, but it's not as one-note a performance as some of the recent Doctors have been. It's also interesting that they decided against givin him an outfit and he's obviously good at crying because they make him do it a lot. Millie does a good job as the wide-eyed assistant - it's a shame she's not going to be back much for the next season because she's got a big role in The Forsyte Saga remake. 

It was nice to see Jemma Redgrave back as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (I could have lived without Bonnie Langford though) and Lenny Rush is a welcome addition to UNIT. It's also nice that the big bad from the finale is voiced by the same actor as it was in the 1975 Tom Baker episode based around the same character (FIFTY years ago!).

They also obviously had more money than usual here - sometimes it was used wisely and sometimes not so much, but it always looked pretty good. Overall, I enjoyed this a load more than I was expecting to - episodes 2-4 are the highlights for me with them all being up there amongst the best episodes of recent seasons for me. Whether it deserved its place on Empire's list will be down to your general opinion of Doctor Who, but I thought it was nice to feel there's some life in the old dog yet.

#18 - A well written mix of fun and tension