Doctor Who: It Takes You Away (11x09)

I liked many of the individual aspects of this episode, but felt that when taken as a whole, it got a little muddled.

Cons:

There are just so many subverted expectations in this episode, such that just as I started to understand the story, it turns out that it was about something else all along. It's about a monster in the woods? No. It's about a creepy cave world? No. It's about an alternate dimension? Yes, but also it's sentient, and this is a story about letting people go. None of these ideas are bad or uninteresting, but I got whiplash a little bit trying to figure out where the story was going. That can be a good thing on occasion, but I wish we could have picked one idea and spent more time on it.

There's a moment in the episode where the Doctor puts together the truth of this alternate world because of a story one of her grandmothers used to tell her. Later, when it came time for the Doctor to confront this sentient world, I was really hoping we would be presented with the Doctor's grandmother, or some other person from her past. Instead it was a really fake looking frog, with Grace's voice, which felt totally random and disconnected to the Doctor herself. Graham and Erik were both confronted with people they loved and missed, so why didn't this entity do the same for the Doctor? I feel like this was a real missed opportunity to add some nuance and backstory to this iteration of the Doctor.

Pros:

I really liked Hanne, and I liked the understated relationship that developed between her and Ryan. She is initially wary of him, and perhaps for good reason, but he later manages to prove himself and be there for her. I also liked that Hanne's dad Erik was kind of a bad person, but it was ultimately very understandable, because we watched Graham fall into the same exact trap. Erik abandoned his daughter and let her think that something really horrible had happened to him. The thing is, something horrible did happen to him. He could have left, but we see how hypnotic the pull of this other world really is. It created a nuanced character. I was furious with him, but I also understood him.

Graham broke my heart. This actor is really good at playing understated yearning, and he creates a good balance between comic relief moments and genuinely deep ones. Seeing Grace again just totally breaks him. He doesn't believe it's really her at first, and of course we as the audience know it can't really be her either. Graham lets himself fall into that fantasy because he misses his wife so much, and watching that play out is really heartbreaking. At first I was miffed that we didn't get to see Ryan in this alternate world, seeing his dead Gran, but ultimately I like focusing on Graham alone for most of the episode. In the end, we get Ryan calling Graham "Granddad" for the first time, and it's a beautiful moment. It's quiet, soft, and totally earned.

While Yaz still didn't have anything particularly meaty to do, we do see her back the Doctor's play, and she does a great job in the weird labyrinth world of keeping cool and figuring out strategy. I like that Yaz and the Doctor get paired up a lot. This seems to be a consequence of the natural pairing up of Graham and Ryan, which is obviously also great. I'd love to see Yaz and Graham as a duo, too - hopefully that can happen at some future point.

In all, I think this episode wasn't quite as good as the sum of its parts, but I still greatly enjoyed it, and found lots of interesting and entertaining moments to appreciate.

7.5/10