Doctor Who, episode 5, recap: pint-sized killers and pregnant male aliens
The best episode of the new-look series so far had it all: births, deaths and a burping gremlin. Here are all the talking points from episode five, titled “The Tsuranga Conundrum”…
Story was like Holby City in space
Team Tardis’s first adventure since becoming official full-time companions began in the 67th century, on a far-flung planet piled high with junk. They were searching for Tardis spare parts and bickering amusingly, like Detectorists gone sci-fi, when the 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) accidentally set off a “sonic mine”. There was an explosion and the screen cut to white.
The quartet regained consciousness in a shiny futuristic hospital under the care of medic Astos (Brett Goldstein, who you might recognise from Ricky Gervais’s “comedy” Derek) and his blue-haired colleague Mabli (Lois Chimimba, who appeared alongside Whittaker in medical thriller Trust Me). What, no Charlie Fairhead or Duffy?
Their spell of rest and recuperation was soon interrupted when the hospital came under attack. Although the Doctor and her “fam” were reassured that there was nothing to worry about, tension steadily mounted as their sanitised surroundings were shown to be not all they seemed. “This isn’t a hospital,” the Doctor realised. “It’s a ship. And we’re already in flight.”
They were trapped aboard a Red Cross-esque emergency medical transport vessel, heading towards its home planet of Rhesus One and taking them further away from the Tardis by the second. Oh and they’d also been unconscious for four days. Oops.
Pint-sized monster was merchandise-friendly
After last week’s spiders, this episode’s monster was another small-but-deadly creature. The hospital ship was breached by a critter known as a Pting. It might have looked cute, but that was highly deceptive. As the ship’s computer said: “Risk to life: absolute.”
Indeed, the feisty little fella’s first move was to kill poor Astos by jettisoning an escape pod with him trapped inside, and blowing it up. Resembling a cross between Pikachu and Stitch from Lilo & Stitch – or, in Who world, something like Adipose-meets-Slitheen – the Pting may have been pint-sized, but it had a prodigious appetite and a ferocious growl.
It could survive a vacuum, too, so it didn’t need oxygen; it could digest anything; it was impossible to wound or kill; it had toxic skin so it couldn’t be touched – and it began systematically munching its way through the ship like Monsieur Mangetout.
It even scoffed the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, although at least it had the good manners to belch it back up again. (Perhaps it didn’t enjoy the taste of Sheffield steel.) Kid-friendly with chronic wind, a flair for parkour and untamed Tasmanian-devil charisma, don’t be surprised to see toy Ptings on sale in time for Christmas.
Fellow patients were a colourful bunch
Our four heroes weren’t the only patients on-board. General Eve Cicero (Suzanne Packer, best known as Tess from Casualty, just to continue the medical theme) was an heroic former space fighter pilot, suffering from a mystery ailment.
She was travelling to Rhesus One for treatment, accompanied by her brother Durkas (Ben Bailey Smith, aka rapping comedian Doc Brown) and android servant Ronan (David Shields, pitching his robo-performance somewhere between Jude Law in AI and Bishop from Aliens).
Then there was pregnant man – yes, man – Yoss Inkl (Jack Shalloo). His species’s pregnancies only lasted a week, but, just to throw a further complication into the mix, he was a day overdue and ready to pop.
Teamwork made the dream work
At the heart of the mystery was that titular riddle, the Tsuranga Conundrum. Essentially, it was a multi-tasking puzzle: the rag-tag team of strangers banded together to try to defeat the deadly critter, while still keeping the ship on course.
Everyone played their part. We discovered that General Cicero was suffering from “pilot’s heart” (presumably a more glamorous, inter-galactic version of athlete’s foot). The decorated war hero and the Doctor formed a mutual respect, bonding over the fact that both appeared in heroic almanac The Book Of Celebrants. The Doctor made a point of mentioning that she had a volume devoted to her, not just a chapter.
Eve’s brother Durkas improvised a way to lash her up to the ship, neurally navigating and bringing it home safely. The effort killed Eve but she died doing what she loved and was reconciled with Durkas before she died.
Meanwhile, Yaz and Ronan kept guard over the antimatter drive that powered the craft. “This is the iPhone version of CERN,” explained the Doctor educationally. “Smaller, faster, cheaper.”
When the Pting appeared, plucky Yaz stunned it with a taser, wrapped it in a medical blanket and drop-kicked it down the corridor, with a nice namecheck for the England women’s goalkeeper: “Siobhan Chamberlain with a goal kick for England… Yes!”
Unfortunately, Rhesus One HQ was still primed to blow up the ship as a “precautionary detonation”, in order to prevent the Pting infiltrating the planet. The Doctor’s ingenious solution was to find the built-in onboard bomb and use it as bait to lure the power-hungry alien.
The creature swallowing the device was a lovely moment, with the sated Pting smiling and floating blissfully through the air, as if the explosion had merely tickled it from the inside. The Doctor promptly ejected it back out into deep space. Final problem solved.
Yasmin and Ryan had a poignant heart-to-heart
While roaming the ship’s corridors, Yasmin (Mandip Gill) tentatively broached the topic of Ryan’s (Tosin Cole) family tragedies: “Do you mind me asking, how did your mum die?” He explained that she’d suffered a heart attack while doing the dishes and 13-year-old Ryan had found her dead on the kitchen floor.
His estranged father “ducked out when I needed him” and was “a gap in my life”; and yet Ryan seemed to reach a sort of peace with this during the episode, acknowledging that he looked so much like his mother, it was painful for his dad to see him. In the midst of this hectic sci-fi romp, there was still time for small moments of human drama.
Happy birthday to Yoss
Who doesn’t enjoy a spot of Call The Midwife on a Sunday evening? Companion Graham (Bradley Walsh) certainly does. He’d seen every episode and described it as “bang on”, although he “always looks away at the squeamish bits”, so was in pole position to act as Yoss’ doula. “While you’ve been mucking around on YouTube, I’ve been learning useful life-skills,” he told step-grandson Ryan.
Yoss was having a son because: “Boys give birth to boys. Girls give birth to girls. That’s how it works.” “Not where we come from,” replied Graham. Yoss looked grossed out: “Eurgh”. He insisted he wasn’t ready for parenthood. (“Besides, it’s a dark world right now,” he added meaningfully. “Turbulent times.”) Ryan saw parallels with his own absent father. “You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be there,” the teenager told him.
Giving Yoss pep talks and reassurance (“Breathe deep, cockle”), the boys and Mabli delivered the baby together. It was a heart-warming scene, even if Ryan once again declined Graham’s celebratory fist-bump and Graham regretted sneaking a peek at the business end: “Shouldn’t have looked. Can’t unsee that.” The birth itself was noisy, messy and would have seen mothers on sofas nationwide give their partners “told you so” looks.
Happily, Yoss decided to give fatherhood a go after all, and named his new-born son Avocado. How millennial. Presumably its middle names will be Smashed On Sourdough Toast.
Snappy script contained cultural references aplenty
Penned by showrunner Chris Chibnall, who has written four of the five episodes so far and co-wrote the other, this was another instalment full of sparky dialogue, with the Doctor goofily cracking gags in the face of danger.
References included Broadway musical Hamilton (the Doctor had “seen all 900 casts”) and Agatha Christie (“You’re probably wondering why I called you all here... Sorry, bit Poirot”), as well as BBC stablemate Call The Midwife.
The episode’s best line, however, came when Mabli asked if she was a Doctor of medicine: “Yes. Well, medicine, science, engineering, candy floss, Lego, philosophy, music, problems, people, hope. Mostly hope.” Quite a list of qualifications.
Cracking episode was best of five so far
Steered by award-winning Australian director Jennifer Perrott, “The Tsuranga Conundrum” was the most successful episode of the Whittaker/Chibnall era thus far. Its confined, almost claustrophobic setting gave it the feel of classic Who, reminiscent of Tom Baker swishing around a spaceship battling an alien foe.
The plot was frantic and flat-out, barrelling along at a lick and sweeping up viewers in its slightly daft drama. It all built towards a bittersweet finale which saw a birth, a death, apologies and reconciliations. It felt almost like a Christmas special towards the end, with its cutesy creatures, new beginnings and closing prayer of hope “to all the journeys still to come, for now and evermore”.
The pristine white spaceship interior recalled 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Alien was another clear inspiration, as the aggressive extraterrestrial rattled around under floors and inside air vents, toying with the helpless humans. Shades of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Nineties male pregnancy comedy Junior, too.
Back to Earth next for another historical episode
“What’s the point of having a mate with a time machine, if you can’t nip back and see your gran when she was younger?”
The series enters its second half next Sunday with “Demons of the Punjab”, set in India circa 1947 and written by Vinay Patel – the first episode of the series without a writing credit for Chibnall. Yaz attempts to discover her grandmother's hidden history, while the Doctor finds something altogether scarier. See you back here to scan it with a critical sonic screwdriver.
Episode six of Doctor Who will air on BBC One on Sunday 18 November at 7pm.
