Still unable to get back to May 24th, the Doctor does at least fully charge the vindicator – much to Mrs Flood’s delight. Plans within plans. And where are our dynamic duo this episode, on Harmony space station where the Interstellar Song Contest is about to take place. There are a hundred thousand in the audience, and three trillion taking the broadcast. Seems the contest is comprised of shite pop songs and shite novelty acts, thankfully for the viewing public a terrorist attack by Hellions stops things, with everyone’s life at stake, the Doctor goes belligerent and another episode of poor writing splatters the TV screen of those of us unfortunate enough to be watching this travesty.

Surprisingly this episode scored an overnight viewer figure of 2.57 million, which is the best thus far for series fifteen. The jump in viewer numbers can of course be attributed to the F.A Cup being broadcast just prior to this episode, and the Eurovision Song Contest going to air just after. So the question is, how many people just left the tellie running as they made cups of tea, used the bathroom, and otherwise got things done between the two actual telecasts they wanted to watch. We’ll never know, but what is interesting is that the 7+ day figure of 3.75 million is looking increasingly dicey and quite frankly made up. Someone at Disney+ pulling figures out of their arse then! Regardless, confirmation that RTD is leaving for more gay fields, he has been announced as show runner for a new ITV4 series, which I’m thinking won’t get renewed after one season. So Gatwa and Davis abandoning this property that is going down quicker than the Titanic.

Get ready for the mother lode of social messaging, lets detract from the narrative by trying to score points with the much fabled modern audience. Mike and Gary are a gay couple, who naturally bicker – because why not keep to the tropes, and both naturally will do anything for the Doctor. Mincing soy boys being apparently an attractor to gay dudes.  Naturally we have to have pronouns, 100 thousand possibly dead, yes let’s focus on that shite that isn’t going to outlast the decade. Prejudice of course, people are pre-judging the Hellion population, because they have horns and the access media is regurgitating corporate ideas. And naturally an attack on capitalism, which is the only system that would allow Davis and his ilk any sort of a career, after failing completely and being bigots of the highest order. Yes, Davis attacks the normie audience, which by now has left the building, and keeps pumping out stereotypes of the alphabet community. It’s like the second coming of Benny Hill to be honest!

It’s quite interesting to follow this series, they keep making the same mistakes over and over and I guess expecting differing outcomes. Once again we get cameos from people we are meant to recognise, but who have zero profile outside of the U.K. Considering they are trying to generate an audience in the U.S that’s one heck of a major mistake. Like who the actual flock is Ryan Clark, we are clearly meant to recognise him. I knew about Graham Norton, but for the most part if you aren’t checking out YouTube specific to Norton then who the hell is this dude? And of course we get Mrs Flood again, same question, no idea who the hell the actress is. 

Just looking at my notes a few observations on the episode, and they aren’t good. Doctor Who gets sucked into space, which I thought was a good reflection of the episode, that sucked the life out of the galaxy as well. The Doctor saving himself by firing off a confetti canon, frack me this is about on the level of Princess Lea using the force to fly through space and back to the starship after that explosion. Both scenes are lazy as flock writing, and the visuals are down there with the running vampires in the forest in the deplorably bad Twilight movie. Could Belinda shut the frack up, notably Varada Sethu talks over the lines of other characters, which would indicate Sethu isn’t that good at what she is supposedly doing, another hire on other than ability grounds come to mind. How is the Doctor the last of the Time Lords, we had bi-generation, so there are at least two of them, did Juno Dawson forget that or did Juno simply not care? 

Another episode where we get music, and that music is middle of the road shite, nothing decent in the record collection Davis? The competition acts are cringe worthy, including the final bring a tear to the Doctor’s eye number and for fracks sake Bucks Fizz’s Making Your Mind Up, middle of the road slop just like the episode. 

We get some more pillaging of the classic mythos, because the makers of the last couple of series are basically arseholes wanting to recreate the franchise in their own image. Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter from the classic seasons, is used and abused to fill in for the Doctor’s conscious, she is reduced to a plot device for no other reason than the writer of this episode cannot write a single decent idea or scene. We do get Mrs Flood happier than Larry with the Vindicator, another plot device, fully functional and charged.  But the biggest reveal happenings toward the end of the episode, when Mrs Flood bi-generates, making even more of a mockery of the Doctor proclaiming he is the last of the Time Lords – and that would be a well-worn trope, and we find that another idea being pilfered from classic Who is the Rani! Seriously do the writers of modern Who have even a single original idea, or they just going to steal from the mythos and then wipe that mythos on their collective arses. 

Interestingly enough the Asian looking Rani, we now have two of them – for fracks sake, can state she is “the definite article”, which reflects something the Meep stated back at the start of the current era of the show. Don’t expect that to be followed up on, the Writers of this slop are simply incapable of building a credible series length plot arc!

So Kid, I kid you not – Dad joke, leading the terrorist incursion plans on mass extinction to highlight the plight of his planet and race at the hands of a naturally evil corporation, and this causes the Doctor to throw a tantrum. We’re talking toys out of the pram times folk, and he goes full on torture mode when he gets the best of Kid. Wow, very Doctor Who, clearly the writers have no fracking idea of the character! Naturally the Doctor gets talked off the edge by Susan, in some weird scenes that make no sense, and Belinda the Bitch. But hey no damage done, who cares about the history of the character.

If you have worked out I was pissed with this episode, then you would be right. Besides The Interstellar Song Contest being complete bollocks, perhaps one of the worse of the Disney era, we get more messaging than the post office can get through in a week, and the mythos being smeared across the screen in complete disregard of the existing mythos. Who the hell have allowed the last couple of show runners anything like control of this franchise, they deserve to be hung, drawn, and quartered. We do learn that the Earth disintegrated on May 24th 2025 with civilisation dying in a single second, no shite Sherlock, piss poor writing. And you know what I didn’t care in the least, was bored, and wanted the episode to drag its sorry bum across the finishing line. No recommendation, this is Doctor Who at its worse. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the writes plunge into new depths of ineptitude.