Doctor Who: Series 10 Episode 5 - Oxygen
Trapped on a space station with no oxygen, the Doctor, Bill and Nardole are horrified to discover the automated spacesuits keeping them alive are also trying to kill them!
I think I will start off my review this week by saying that as much as I have been enjoying Series Ten, I think 'Oxygen' is by far not only one of the best episodes of the revived series of Doctor Who I've seen, but one of the best episodes of Doctor Who ever. We got a cracker of an episode this week. It was excellent. It was certainly one of the best episodes I've seen in a long time.
This was one which was meant to be dubbed as being "The scary one" for viewers, and there are moments in it which are very tense and claustrophobic. It's set on a mining station in space, the TARDIS receives a distress call. The Doctor decides to respond to it, taking along Bill and a rebellious Nardole with him. Once they arrive at the station, they soon discover that there were forty-two crew members, thirty-six of them have died and their corpses are still in the spacesuits are walking around the station like zombies. So the suits basically control them like puppets. That's a very sinister idea. What's interesting though is that in this one, Steven Moffatt came up with an idea which he thought was the best idea for a monster which he had ever come up with and for production value reasons that had to get scrapped. So it's almost as if it was like 'We've just thought of the best idea ever, but guess what? we're not doing it and we're going to go along with something else'.
I liked the opening pre-titles scene to this, it reminded me of outer space films like 'Gravity' and 'Intersteller' those kinds of space educational films, and we don't often get to learn enough about space, which is why I thought the doctor's monolog voice over at the beginning was a nice touch, his lecture on space was very insightful too, although I'm sure I fully understood it.
I think Capaldi's doctor has now really started to come into his own because in Series eight he wasn't whimsical enough, series nine he wasn't broody enough, but in these past five episodes of this series we've really seen a nice mix of the best of both worlds in his personality. The writer's now have a better understanding of what his doctor is like and Capaldi himself always performs so brilliantly. This is certainly one of his best stories.
Bill rather, unfortunately, kept getting stuck and if you haven't seen the episode yet, you'll know what I mean when you watch it. Nardole was good in this. This is probably the first time we've seen Nardole go up on an adventure this series, and the story actually works really well having him in it, and he's not too annoying either which is sort of like an added bonus.
I liked the dark undertones of the space station, the atmosphere of this episode was really quite chilling and uncomfortable. I liked the whole concept behind the spacesuits and the overall execution of the storyline was very well done too.
There's not really a lot to say really, I mean, I think I'll need to watch it again later but overall, Oxygen was an excellent story. I can't really fault it, I may be able to pick out little bits and pieces but in a nutshell, the best of the series so far. 9/10
Next Week: Extremis.
