[initial reactions] Doctor Who 12x04 - Nikola Tesla's Night of Terrors

[grimorie]

I really, really enjoyed this episode! It didn't have any of the messiness and excesses of the last episode, it had just the right amount of cast and proper use of villains! I love Nina Metivier's writing and Nida Manzoor's direction, can we keep this team up forever???

Also, Metivier mitigated one of my only complaints about how Thirteen is written: excessive explanations. It was very light touch with her here, she didn't even explain what she was going to do or use the chemicals for to entrap the scorpion man, she just gave Edison an epic Side Eye and he got what he was going for.

Metivier also knows how to write an ensemble in a way that I've always wanted them to utilize the team for, and I love that each of them gets moments with the guest cast: Thirteen with Tesla (she had two moments with him, which was lovely), Ryan and Dorothy bonding about this wonderful experiences they're having. Yaz and Tesla before they get kidnapped, and during the ship; and then Graham and Edison.

I love how Thirteen bonded with Tesla without giving anything away, I guess she learned her lesson from running her mouth around Tesla. I've mentioned it before, I get why the Doctor didn't erase Tesla, Edison, and Dorothy's memories. It's because they didn't go to the future, this time around Thirteen was actually mindful about what she was saying. Also, Tesla's invented and thought of a lot of things already that the Doctor and other aliens won't be an influence on his work. Edison's too closed-minded to even consider or even back engineer anything he saw. He'd rather write this off as a fever dream.

Edison was a tool but also, I felt Metiever really wrote a balance in him. He didn't want his people to die, but he's not going to blink at exploiting his people's work. It's very much in keeping to the sensibilities of those men during this era like Carnegie who builds a lot of public spaces, library and theater halls and also one of the more brutal union breakers.

I also love Thirteen's confrontation with the Skithra queen, the destruction of Gallifrey has left Thirteen unmoored and her flexible morality's in play again. She's lost her patience and her action is straight-up brutal. And more brutal actually with the way Thirteen promised they'd be forgotten and as Killjoys pointed out, being forgotten is the worse fate to have.

Speaking of, I love Thirteen and Yaz going: "You can't kill us we're brilliant also Yaz knows what this is."
"It's a camera."
"Bingo."

Thirteen flashes the camera straight into the Skithra queen's eyes and high tails it.

I also like the moment when Thirteen tricked the Skithra queen holding the teleporter to draw them back to her ship so she could crispy fry them.