Doctor Who: Oxygen (10x05)

Hmm. I think this was my least favorite of the season so far. It wasn't terrible or even really bad in any way, it just felt like a lot of recycled ideas. Both not enough and too much happened at once. Let's take a look.

Cons:

So, there's a mostly abandoned space ship, a zombie crew trying to pick off the remaining members, a ticking clock, the Doctor comes up with a brilliant plan to save everybody but he lies about it, a companion appears for a short time to be dead, but of course there's a way to save her, there's a lesson about capitalism being evil and the dangers of trusting too much in machines... I feel like I've seen many of these elements in multiple Doctor Who episodes, often with greater success.

For example, the cold open shows a bunch of space zombies, and then later when Bill, the Doctor, and Nardole show up we see some of the space zombies in action, and then - surprise, surprise, there are other survivors that essentially become red shirts while the heroes figure out the scenario. Sooo many episodes of Doctor Who do this same thing.

The red shirts themselves were pretty unremarkable, I've got to say. There was a romance between two of them, one of whom died in the cold open, and there's this moment at the end where I think we're supposed to be touched by their tragic love, but I really wasn't. Not enough time was given to fleshing out these characters. There was this blue humanoid alien who accused Bill of racism when she had a surprised reaction to his presence. And then she brought up that she's usually on the receiving end of racism. Okay, cool, but where are they going with this? Apparently nowhere. The two don't share any more dialogue, and the blue guy gets killed off.

I was also pretty insulted by the implication that I'd actually be stupid enough to believe that Bill was really dead, but I guess that's par for the course. The Doctor had a sort of good reason for keeping his plan a secret until the last minute, but even then it felt pretty contrived.

Pros:

There is one thing that I really loved as a twist in this story, though. There are these creepy spacesuits that everybody needs to wear in order to have access to oxygen. The space station itself does not provide oxygen. Everybody has to pay for it separately. Air as a commercial good. The suits seem to be rebelling against the humans wearing them, and it seems at first like this is another story like "Smile," where the robotic suits are obeying a directive to keep things efficient, and so are killing off the organic components in order to preserve resources. But then, it turns out that the suits are actually not malfunctioning or growing beyond their masters' control. They were programmed to do this from the beginning. Suddenly the whole thing is a bit of a clumsy lesson on the dangers of capitalism. But despite the message being a little muddy, I liked that it ended up being a different message than I was expecting.

Oh, also, the space zombies were pretty unsettling. Good makeup work. Nothing too over the top, but enough for us to feel the fear. The opening scene in particular really got to me - these two unknown characters are already racing against the clock to get back inside before their oxygen runs out, which is one of the scariest ideas in the world to me, honestly... and then suddenly a creepy undead space zombie shows up and attacks!

I like that Nardole came along on this adventure, nagging the Doctor about his propensity to leave Earth and thus leave the vault unprotected. He gets swept along, and at every turn you can feel his anxiety. The stakes are much higher since he knows how terrible it would be if the Doctor couldn't make it back to Earth. There's this one great moment towards the start of the episode where the Doctor basically says "what do you want from me?" and Nardole responds with "the truth" which of course the Doctor says is an unrealistic demand. The Doctor seems to trust Nardole quite a bit, and he shares things with him that he certainly isn't willing to share with Bill at this point. And yet the idea of total honesty is not one he's willing to contemplate. That's an interesting and potentially dangerous worldview for the Doctor.

In many ways Bill was just a passenger along for the ride in this episode, which was a disappointment after all the agency she's shown in the other episodes. On the other hand, it was nice to see a companion be truly scared and helpless in a way we don't often encounter. The Doctor is responsible for bringing her into this really creepy and dangerous situation, and we shouldn't think any less of Bill for being afraid. I like that she and the Doctor had a couple of hugs in this one, especially given the Doctor's usual aversion to physical contact.

Finally, there's the cool added element that we get in this episode. In order to save Bill's life, the Doctor must remove his helmet and expose himself briefly to open space. He survives, but he does pay a price as he becomes blinded. He spends the rest of the episode without his sight, but luckily the TARDIS has equipment that can heal him up, right as rain. Only... apparently not. As the episode ends, Nardole admonishes the Doctor again for leaving Earth, and the Doctor then reveals that he's still blind. Peter Capaldi did an excellent job playing blind. He didn't make a big production of it, but he never looked directly at anybody, and there was an edge of tension to his whole demeanor. Knowing that he was actually blind in the final scene in the TARDIS, I went back to watch it again. He never locks eyes with anybody, and he remains physically connected to the TARDIS consul virtually the whole time. Nothing I would have noticed, but still there all the same.

Also, what does this mean? I'm going to assume that the Doctor's blindness will be solved in an episode or two, but there could be lasting consequences to this. I somehow don't think the Doctor is going to take very kindly to being physically limited. I hope they let the blindness linger for at least two or three episodes, because I think it would be really cool to try and see the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole adjust to this new reality and find ways to accommodate the Doctor. Or maybe he can get his eyesight back, but there's a terrible price to pay? Something connected with the vault? This story element has a lot of potential.

I'll end with the beginning, wherein we hear the Doctor say the famous line from the Star Trek intro:
"Space, the final frontier." But instead of continuing the inspiring refrain, he goes on to say that it's the final frontier because it wants to kill us all. A much more dour view of the universe than we're used to seeing from Doctor Who, but I like the way this long-running science fiction classic used the words of another long-running science fiction classic to create a bit of a dialogue about the nature of space exploration. A good detail, and a great line read from Capaldi.

Okay. Onward. I wasn't terribly pleased with most things in this episode, but I definitely didn't hate it. And, hey, there's a lot to look forward to as we move on.

6.5/10