Demons of the Punjab - A Review

A few weeks ago I pondered if, come the end of this season, Chris Chibnall will have proven to be the weakest writer. Six episodes in, my suspicion has not changed. If anything, it seems more likely after this installment and the last two stories. This week we have a new writer on the show, Vinay Patel, and he has the script all to himself (though I suspect that Malorie Blackman can be credited with the best of Rosa).
I enjoyed Demons of the Punjab, but felt that it would have worked better as a purely historical story. It reminded me somewhat of The Massacre, wherein another country was torn apart by religious schism, and the Doctor was helpless to prevent it.
In fact, I would go further and say that Patel should have written a drama about Partition, showing its wider effects through the prism of two families on either side of the divide, and not bother to use it as the basis for a Doctor Who story. That's because, as a Doctor Who story, it doesn't quite work.
Patel is forced to include an alien presence - the Demons of the title - but they prove to be red herrings. The Thijarians (at least that's what it sounded like) were claimed to be the deadliest assassins in the universe - when it turned out they were nothing of the kind. (Nearly every threat so far this season is supposed to be the deadliest something or other in the universe, only be be shown to be patently not the case). They used to be, but that was a long time ago. Now they go round honouring people who die alone, who have no-one else to honour them. They reminded me a little of the Testament characters in Twice Upon A Time, who also appeared to be malevolent but turned out not to be. The problem was that neither of the two people we see them come to witness dying do so alone, or unhonoured.

It was pretty obvious from the start that the reason Yaz's gran married someone else was going to be because Prem was going to die. As soon as the Thijarians were exposed as not being a threat, it was simply a case of biding our time until Prem did die - and it was equally obvious that his radicalised brother Manish would be responsible (though he didn't fire the actual shot, but did call on others to do his dirty work). This left the story very much a character piece, about a doomed love affair.
As romantic, character pieces about doomed lovers go, it was very good - but was it Doctor Who? Did it need to be Doctor Who? As I said, Patel could have written a very good drama about this period of history, without aliens or time machines. The counter-argument would probably be that Doctor Who allows the general public (especially younger viewers) to be educated about periods of history they might otherwise know very little about. I have to admit, I know more about France in 1572 than I do about India in 1947 - and that's partly down to The Massacre prompting me to want to learn more. Hopefully this story will do the same for others.
The story might have benefited from a little more information about Partition. Too much background knowledge was assumed on behalf of the viewers.
One final criticism was the role of the Doctor and companions in this. Graham had some lovely moments, and we got to see more of who Yaz is, but Ryan was fairly redundant this week. Overall, we have to beg the question: what difference to events did the Doctor's presence have? She identified some alien villains, except they weren't alien villains at all. The tragic family dynamics of Prem and Umbreen played out as they were always going to play out, whether the TARDIS crew were present or not. Just as with Rosa, the Doctor, in the end, had to do nothing at all in order for history to keep its course. Using the same plot beat twice in such a short season is probably a mistake, as it makes the Doctor come across as rather impotent.
As usual for this season, the story looked gorgeous - the Punjab being played by Spain, I believe. Once again we did not have the usual end title music - but instead got the theme in the style of the score which had immediately preceded it, which was a nice touch.
A big improvement on the last couple of stories, well performed and ultimately quite emotional. Let's hope that things don't go downhill again with next week's episode. It looks like a rather silly premise, so hopefully it will be played for intentional laughs, rather than the unintentional ones of late.