Eve of the Daleks - A Review

A good episode - but not a great one. 

Let's get some negatives out of the way first. For a festive special, I expect a bit of spectacle. Apart from the building blowing up at the end, this didn't deliver. It was more like an ordinary episode, stretched to an extra 10 minutes. It looked cheap.

By its very nature, a story about a time loop is going to involve repetition - but it shouldn't feel repetitive. There came a point about half an hour in when I thought "Right, we know what's happening. We've got it. Time to move things forward now..." but we still had another 20 minutes or so of time loop to go. Perhaps this should have just formed part of a bigger story - or been used in an ordinary, shorter, episode as I've said.

Once again, the New Year theme felt totally shoehorned into the plot. There's no way that storage unit would be open at 23.52 on New Year's Eve.

The gattling guns for the Daleks might have looked good, but were a stupid idea. You can only shoot someone dead once. For an executioner squad, they were rotten shots - only hitting their targets when the script said it was time to have another time loop start.

Pauline McLynn quite literally phoned in her performance, so was underused. This episode was so obviously filmed under tough Covid restrictions - yet so was Flux, and that worked around the restrictions a lot better. 

The two guest artists - Aisling Bea and Adjani Salmon - were both very personable characters, well played. Which was a big help when it was only them and the regulars on screen for an hour.

The action picked up a week after the events of Series 13, with the TARDIS still suffering Flux damage - which was the cause of the time loop. It was also the reason for the Dalek presence - out for revenge after the Doctor allowed their war fleet to be destroyed in The Vanquishers. The TARDIS repaired itself, though sadly it didn't take the opportunity for a redesign.

At first glance it might seem odd that it was Dan who mentions Yaz's infatuation with the Doctor, when he's only just arrived, and Graham and Ryan were around a lot longer. But we don't know how long they were travelling in the TARDIS in real terms, and Dan did accompany Yaz (with Prof. Jericho) for four years, as he himself points out. Chibnall isn't breaking any new ground with a lesbian companion. Since both Doctor and Yaz are leaving in two episodes' time, at least this can't get dragged out for long.

The episode ended with a teaser for the next Special, which comes at Easter. I strongly suspect that for some people this was the highlight of the episode...