This week brings us to episode 10 of a 10 episode season.
This week is the finale of Doctor Who Series 11.
This week brings us to The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos.
What do we find at the end of this journey? What is the nature of this battle? What is being fought for? What is there to be gained and to be lost?
We'll look at all of this after the break.
Spoilers coming up.
The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos
by Chris Chibnall
The episode opens on a desolate planet (Yay! Rock quarries on Doctor Who?! Classic!) with a pair of aliens with facial application straight up out of Star Trek. Apparently they are practitioners of a faith waiting to be followed and can manipulate matter with their minds. Then an ominous dark figure surrounded by blue fire appears out of nowhere.
Then we get a helpful graphic that tells its now 3,407 years later.
The Doctor and friends arrive on Ranskoor Av Kolos in response to distress calls. The planet has psychotropic waves that messes with people's brains. The Doctor whips up some tech to help her and her gang resist the negative effects of the planet on their minds.
The Doctor and friends meet a space ship captain who can't remember his name or why he's even there because of the psychotropic waves. The Doctor has a spare piece of brain preserving tech and this guy eventually remembers his name is Paltraki and that his crew came to Ranskoor to retrieve a mysterious item. The artifact is a weird semi-opaque cubist thing with an orb in the middle. His crew is being tortured and held by an unseen figure who wants this artifact back.
That unseen menace is Tzim-Sha who we met back in episode one of Series 11.
Graham makes it plain to the Doctor: if he gets the chance, he plans on killing Tzim-Sha for his role in the death of this wife, Grace. The Doctor warns Garham off of that path, telling him if he straight up murders anyone, he can't travel with her anymore.
What happens next is... complicated.
Ryan and Graham are off to look for and hopefully rescue Tzim-Sha's hostages. Ryan has sussed out that Graham intends to try to kill Tzim-Sha which Ryan is not on board for. Yes, the alien bastard killed his grandmother but Graham's his grand dad and he loves him. He what now? Hey, don't make Ryan say that twice now.
Yaz is off with Paltraki on another part of the plot. (Hey, I'm working from memory here and I'm a little fuzzy on the details.) Paltraki's memory of who is and where he comes from are starting to come back thanks to the Doctor's neural balancer (I just remembered what that's called). Yaz and Paltraki find 4 more of the artifacts.
The Doctor is off on her own with the artifact Paltraki had with him, looking for Tzim-Sha. She encounters one of the two Ux beings who believes that Tzim-Sha is the Creator foretold by her faith. The Ux is a little off balance to learn that the Doctor and the "Creator" know each other.
The Doctor and "Tim Shaw" have their confrontation where our tooth faced villain lays down some exposition.
(Is it just me or the expository info dumps in Series 11 been more obvious than in seasons past?)
After the Doctor used both his DNA bombs and his transporter tech against him, Tzim-Sha wound up on Ranskoor Av Kolos which is not his concept of an ideal travel destination. But it's not all bad for our villian. The Ux who can manipulate matter with their minds think he is the "Creator" foretold in their faith. Using a combination of Stenza tech and the abilities of the Ux, Tzim-Sha has an ultimate weapon that he can use for revenge on the Doctor by targeting the Earth.
The Doctor leaves Tim to stew in his vengeance as she meets up with Yaz and Paltraki; the Ux are up to some sci-fi glowing stuff to zap a hole in space which in turns is zapping the Earth. The Doctor works out the orbs in the center of the cube things are planets and whatever Tzim-Sha is doing will destroy those planets, the Earth and for good measure, the universe.
That's a lot going on at one time.
Paltraki heads off to help Ryan and Graham with the hostages. The Doctor tells Yaz to go with him. Yaz insists her place is with the Doctor. And the Doctor does not argue with her.
(And all the Doctor/Yaz shippers go "Awwwwwwwww!")
Paltraki shows up to stop a bunch of sniper bots and lead to safety the hostages freed by Ryan and Graham. Graham holds back to set off a grenade to hold off another wave of sniperbots and quotes Die Hard in the process.
But Tzim-Sha shows up and Graham confronts him. Tzim-Sha assesses that Graham is not a warrior. Graham lowers his weapon. "No, I'm the better man." Graham does shoot Tzim-Sha... in the foot. Incapacitated, Graham and Ryan toss "Tim" into one of his suspension cells and sentences him to life in prison.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Yaz suss out that their neural balancers might help get the Ux to think clearly and stop doing Tzim-Sha's evil bidding. It works but the planets in the cubes are about to burst free which will destroy those planets as well (for reasons of plot) doom the universe. The Doctor cobbles together stuff from the Stenza tech, the powers of the Ux and the TARDIS in a last bid effort to save those planets and the universe.
Yaz wonders if this will work? The Doctor notes the TARDIS once towed the Earth across a galaxy and turned a Slitheen into an egg so why not?
Levers are thrown, lights flash, people scream, power sparks and the planets in the cubes are transported safely back into space! Ta-da!
The episode ends with Paltraki looking to return his crew home and the Ux hitching a ride to see what's going on there in the universe.
The Doctor and her fam (she has settled on "fam" for her group of friends) depart in the TARDIS, unsure of their next destination but the universe is full of surprises.
The End
So that was stuff that happened.
Surprisingly, there is a fair amount of references to prior episodes, the Woman Who Fell To Earth and The Ghost Monument plus Boom Town from Series 1 and Journey's End in Series 4.
As it tends to happen a lot during this season of Doctor Who, the details of the plot tend to get lost for me. There's a lot of frantic and breathless running around while the Doctor tells me things are pretty bad unless she thinks of something quick. As the Doctor herself puts it, there's too many things going on at once. Any one of the threats in this episode could've engaged the viewer for the whole hour.
Shrinking planets and keeping them in cubes? That could've been the focus of an episode and a great one to bring back the Master/Missy who had a tendency to shrink things in the classic series. Nope, planets in cubes are just a plot device in service to a larger, unnecessarily complicated story.
We got our first re-visit on the season with the return of Tzim-Sha who lacked a certain force or power to warrant us being that worked up about his return. He was serviceable enough as a villain in episode one.
His return did give us an opportunity for Bradley Walsh to explore more depths to Graham who calmly and rationally tells the Doctor that if he gets the chance, he will kill Tzim-Sha to avenge Grace's death.
There are good character moments for our cast. Jodie Whittaker getting a bad-ass Doctor moment as she remotely summons the TARDIS.
The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos is an effective coda to Series 11 for the Doctor's fam. Ryan gains confidence to challenge the Doctor and declare that he loves his grand dad. Yaz demonstrates her loyalty and devotion to the Doctor but on her terms. Graham growth as a character, hit hard by grief from the loss of his wife to now having his eyes open to the new possibilities of life. The Doctor herself seems to have lacked a development arc; other than getting a new outfit, the Doctor who crashed through the train roof in episode 1 is the the same person who disappears into the TARDIS at the end of episode 10.
However, in terms of the actual plot and story, The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos is not a powerful end to a season.
Coming up next time, a look to the future: the New Year's day special and the painfully slow arrival of Series 12 of Doctor Who.
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