Doctor Who review: Turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters

As Doctor Who season 11 continues, Thirteen and company head off on their first official adventure as a team. But that’s the least interesting part of the story.

Five episodes into Doctor Who season 11, and “The Tsuranga Conundrum” can be quite accurately described as the new TARDIS team’s first proper adventure. Sure, we’ve seen them meet aliens and go back in time this season, but this is the first time that Yaz, Ryan and Graham are traveling with the Doctor of their own volition.

As first trips go, this isn’t the most successful of journeys. In fact, the story specifics of “The Tsuranga Conundrum” aren’t particularly compelling as such things go. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s part of what makes the episode so satisfying, in the end.

Why? Because the characters are what matter here, not the mystery they’re trying to solve or the monster they’re trying to fight.

The Chris Chibnall era seems determined to set itself up as something very different from what’s come before in recent years. Previous showrunner Steven Moffat was famous for many things, but was perhaps best known for his love of detailed, often overly complicated plots that left little time for things like character development. He also didn’t spend much time on secondary characters, which was, in and of itself, a shift from his predecessor’s time at the helm. (Russell T. Davies loved a secondary character. Or five.) Chibnall’s stories, at least initially, seem to look much more like the Davies era than the Moffat one.

Picture Shows: Graham (BRADLEY WALSH), Yaz (MANDIP GILL), The Doctor (JODIE WHITTAKER), Ryan (TOSIN COLE). Doctor Who production still. Photo: Ben Blackall/BBC America

The story of “The Tsuranga Conundrum” is pretty simple. After an accident on a junk planet, the Doctor and company find themselves stuck on a medical ship known as the Tsuranga, without the TARDIS. Thirteen, naturally, wants to turn the whole thing around to go look for her missing ghost monument, but the ship is subsequently attacked by an alien creature which is poisonous to humans, can eat literally anything, and feeds off energy.

Known as a Pting, this creature looks like someone crossed an Adipose from Doctor Who season 4’s “Partners in Crime” with a vibratingly furious Porg from Star Wars. It’s constantly angry, and strangely adorable, and is almost superfluous to needs in this episode. The monster could have been literally anything; its lone job is to provide a constantly creeping and slowly increasing sense of danger. That it’s a super cute rage monster is just a bonus.

But despite the fact that this is a pretty standard issue adventure — solve a problem, defeat a monster, and get everyone home safely — “The Tsuranga Conundrum” shines because of the characters within it.

This episode introduces us to multiple great secondary characters — from the doomed medic Astos who bonds with the Doctor in its opening moments; to the famed neuropilot Eve who’s keeping a medical secret from her engineer brother Durkas; to Yoss, a pregnant man who isn’t so sure he’s ready to be a father. The amazing thing about all of this is that despite the fact that the episode gives us a half a dozen new second tier characters in the span of an hour, it manages to tell us just enough about them to make their stories matter. (Spoiler alert: I will fight people for Yoss. Please let him send space telegrams to Graham and Ryan occasionally.)

Given that I can barely name half a dozen secondary characters from the entirety of last season this is something of a refreshing change. Doctor Who has always worked best when it not only tells us the story of an incredible alien who challenges us to be the best versions of ourselves, but also that of the people the Doctor meets and how that interaction changes their lives. That’s always been part of the wonder of these stories, just as much if not more so as scary monsters and twisty plots.

There’s an argument to be made that perhaps there are too many extra characters, and that the stories of Eve and her brother, for example, might have had a big more room to fill out had they had only two other subplots to compete with rather than three. But as someone who’s been starved for character pieces over the past few years, more is, at least in this instance, worth it.

Picture Shows: Durkas Cicero (BEN BAILEY-SMITH), Eve Cicero (SUZANNE PACKER). Doctor Who production still. Photo: Simon Ridgway/BBC America

In addition to providing us with some solid second-tier characters, the episode also does its best to give Thirteen’s new companions some meaningful development, at the same time. Ryan and Graham find themselves forced to serve as Yoss’ doulas, since in his culture, this is a position reserved only for men. And the little trio makes a charming group of friends, as Graham gets the chance to deploy the real-life birthing skills he learned from watching Call the Midwife and Ryan offers a heartfelt pep talk about how all it takes to be a good dad is just showing up and loving your kid. His speech, of course, possesses many levels, given what we already know about his own deadbeat father who skipped out on Grace’s funeral, a grim picture of lazy parenting that was only made more heartrending by Ryan’s description of life after his mother’s death to Yaz earlier in the hour.

(FYI, Ryaz is rising, y’all. Just saying.)

I’m a tremendous sucker for any and all Ryan and Graham bonding, and though someone somewhere is eventually going to have to address the fact that the older man is dealing with his grief by literally running away from it, I’m okay with it if it brings these two closer together.  Tosin Cole is this season’s secret weapon.

As for Thirteen, she herself continues to be a ray of dedicated optimism for everyone else. Perhaps this shift is a bit strange, considering how generally curmudgeonly and cynical the Doctor’s Twelfth incarnation could be, but, then again, his last words reminded us all to be kind.

So maybe it’s not as weird as evolution as it might initially seem. For her part, this Doctor is all about hope — unshakeable, undimmable hope, even in the face of terrible odds, insurmountable obstacles or ticking countdown timers. Her hope is not that things will somehow magically work out for the best. No, this Doctor’s hope is in herself — that she can come up with something clever, find an answer, discover last-ditchch solution. And her hope is in other people, that we’re stronger together than we are alone, and that’s how we’ll save each other.

“Hope prevails,” she says. And it does, in the end. But it’s because she never gave up on it.

 Doctor Who season 11 continues next Sunday at 8 p.m. EST on BBC America.