Doctor Who recap: series 38, episode six – Praxeus

‘Planet Earth. Seven billion lives, separate and connected’

Welcome, as normal service resumes following last week’s spoiler-related hiccups. After the revelations and reveals of Fugitive of the Judoon, this week, perhaps wisely, dials back on all that. There’s no mention of the mysterious Ruth Doctor. But Praxeus is breathless nonetheless, another standout episode in the Chris Chibnall era, which has found its feet after a stumbling start.

The writers, Pete McTighe and Chibnall, once again play with the format; the episode begins with the “fam” already separated on separate missions, the Doctor having sent them off on errands (it’s normally at least the 10-minute mark before the companions get separated). But troubling events spanning London, Peru, Madagascar, Hong Kong and beyond, taking in a doomed astronaut and his deadbeat husband, a shifty scientist and two annoying travel bloggers, turn out to be connected. People are exploding and the birds are going haywire. As the disparate strands connect, it turns into a kind of twisted sci-fi Love Actually.

Praxeus shows off a scale rarely witnessed in Doctor Who – with a large and diverse guest cast – and convincingly stitches everything together.

‘An alien bacteria has come to this planet and found a feast’

There is a not-insignificant portion of the audience who are up in arms this series. In the spirit of bringing the country back together, we won’t call them gammons as such, but there has been some outcry about the “wokeness” of Chibnall-era Doctor Who. From the somewhat on-the-nose message about the climate crisis in Orphan 55, to the audacity last week of (shock horror!) bringing in a Doctor who was not only a woman but a woman of colour. Goodness knows what they thought of this week’s big reveal that the real threat was plastic pollution. About as well as they will react to seeing two gay kisses in the space of a week, I expect.

Life aboard the Tardis

Yaz is growing in confidence as she risks going solo, perhaps a foreshadowing of a growing recklessness that could prove her undoing. None of the companions have found themselves in that much peril yet this year. Ryan, meanwhile, enjoys the beginnings of another potential love interest with Gabriella that doesn’t quite happen. Could the hinted romance with Yaz still be on the cards? And Graham’s knowledge of intravenous drips surely references the health problems hinted at in Spyfall. We will see what becomes of that.

Fear factor

Props to the FX team – the exploding bodies of Zac and Jamila at the hands of Praxeus were some of the most horrific deaths I’ve seen in Doctor Who. Long may this series’ scares continue.

Mysteries and questions

Following last week’s cataclysmic events, there has been much speculation, not least on here, that Jo Martin’s new Ruth-Doctor is an iteration from some parallel universe and so not part of continuity. Not so, says Chibnall. The showrunner told the Mirror: “The important thing to say is, she is definitely the Doctor. There’s not a sort of parallel universe going on. There’s no tricks. Jo Martin is the Doctor. That’s why we gave her the credit at the end, which all new Doctors have the first time you see them. John Hurt got that credit.”

He continued: “There will be answers to some of these mysteries this series. But as ever with Doctor Who, answers often reveal new questions. It’s all very deliberate.” The question of why neither Doctor has knowledge of the other remains unanswered.

Chibnall had less encouraging news for the John Barrowman fans: Captain Jack will not be back this year. “I can categorically tell you that,” he said although he didn’t rule out a future return. “Who knows when he might pop up again? We love Captain Jack. We love John Barrowman. I hope this won’t be his last appearance and that at some point he gets to meet this Thirteen Doctor.”

Deeper into the vortex

• Like Spyfall, much of Praxeus was shot in Cape Town. The weather was not on the crew’s side, with the shoot near-crippled by windstorms – those shots of Jodie Whittaker’s hair blowing all over her face were not exactly planned.

• Captain Jack fans shouldn’t get too excited about the mooted reunion movie with David Tennant, either, with Barrowman admitting that talk was largely nonsense.
  

• With Time Lords at every turn, did anyone else suspect Suki to be another missing Master?

• I still miss Jodie’s costume from Spyfall.

• “That’s why you smell of dead bird. I thought you’d changed your shower gel.”

Next time

In Can You Hear Me?, Team Tardis take the time to visit the folks back home, while a sinister threat lurks in Aleppo in 1380. Me neither.