Heavy Pting

"The Tsuranga Conundrum" by Chris Chibnallbloody hell another one? That's half the series now and he's bound to write the finale and New Year special as well. Even Rusty Davies had let a couple of other people have a go by this point, although admittedly he completely rewrote anything with anyone else's name on it anyway, but even so, all Chibbers has done so far is graciously allow Malorie Blackman to share a credit with him on one episode.

Directed by Jennifer Perrott. Spoilers after the cut.

Ugh, I mean not that I actually have anything to say about the episode, it's too dull to spend any time thinking about and the dialogue is almost entirely meaningless technobabble. The Pting seems designed to sell merchandise - I mean if it had actually had any presence in the story I might have thought otherwise but it mainly seemed to get described as incredibly dangerous and then forgotten about for a bit.

This isn't an exclusively Chibbers thing, it's been in Doctor Who for years but it's really irritating - when we first meet Durkas he more or less introduces himself by telling us how much contempt he's got for his sister's andoid/clone/whatever assistant. Is it me or are characters on this show constantly mentioning their unreasonable dislike for the resident robot/alien/clone in the same breath as introducing themselves, so that they can then Learn A Lesson about how intolerant they're being? Anyway Durkas is a character whose older sister is more famous than him. He's played by Doc Brown, whose older sister is Zadie Smith.

Also Jack Shalloo is pregnant, and Ryan and Graham are all "meep!" when they find out he'll have to have a caesarean, which does beg the question of where they thought the baby was going to come out from up to that point.