‘Ada, wait till you hear about Noor. She’s as impressive as you.’ In theory, having the first female Doctor travelling through history meeting real-life inspirational women isn’t a bad idea. Cramming it in alongside a new Master, an RTD-style takeover of Earth, a shock reveal of the fate of Gallifrey and Moffat timey-wimey results in an episode that lacks a clear focus, and relegates its notable guest characters to near walk-on status. We get no insight into what makes Ada Lovelace or Noor Inayat Khan so remarkable besides the Doctor telling us they are. The result feels tokenistic instead of celebratory, something that might have been written by AI – it has the ingredients of a spectacular series opener but doesn’t really land the emotion or characterisation.

I had the same reservations about some of Chibnall’s Torchwood work. Lots of things happen, and if you’re not particularly invested this all looks like it’s zipping along well. But I wonder if that’s because if at any point you had time to stop and think about it you’d realise none of it really fits together. Take the Kasaavin – alien spies (that just happen to look like the Army of Ghosts) from another universe (like the Army of Ghosts). They remain as indistinct and ill-defined a threat as they look – there is no grand pay off or reveal (such as they’re really the Cybermen!), they’re just some aliens of the week that the Master’s picked up.

Take the fate of Gallifrey. It spent the first 10 years of the new series destroyed, until we finally saw it restored in Hell Bent (not in a bubble universe, as the Master says here, but at the end-of-our-universe). There it remained, safely out of the way for future showrunners to play with. But here, it’s returned to the status quo ante-Day of the Doctor. This seems to me a tiresome plot development – not because I’m a fan of Gallifrey, but because it does nothing new with the idea not already well explored by RTD and Moffat. The Master destroyed it instead of the Daleks, but so what? The Doctor gets to pout a bit when Yaz asks to visit, exactly like the 10^th Doctor when Martha asked. Same old, same old.

So, after being enthused by Part One, Part Two is a collapse into poor characterisation, weak plotting and well-worn story beats. But it’s not without highlights. The Master is, of course, horribly misogynistic towards the Doctor, forcing her to kneel in front of him and call him by his name in a consciously sexualised way. Whittaker, I think, plays the Doctor’s response perfectly. She’s not even angry with him, she’s just bored by his schtick (YMMV on whether this justifies her later revenge as she gleefully points out his non-Aryan regeneration won’t fare well with the Nazis, but in fairness he had just reminded her of Logopolis). I also like the Fam’s life on the lam, even if it’s very reminiscent of The Sound of Drums.

I’m less thrilled by the Doctor going back in time to make sure everything turns out right for her friends (I wasn’t a fan when Moffat did this either – why can’t she go back and save Adric?). The final scenes set up the notion that the ‘lie of the Timeless Child’ is going to be this year’s Bad Wolf. After this episode, I can barely contain my indifference.

Next Time: Orphan 55