They all regain consciousness on the Tsuranga - a hospital spaceship - four days later. The Doctor is naturally concerned about the TARDIS as junk asteroids are regularly scavenged.
In charge of the ship is medic Astos, who is assisted by Mabli.
They meet several fellow patients, including celebrated military commander Eve Cicero, who is being accompanied by her estranged brother Durkas and her android consort Ronan. Also present is a man named Yoss, who is pregnant. He is a Gifftan, and both genders can give birth.
The Doctor is determined to get back to Seffilun 27 but Astos explains that they are on an automatic course for the main hospital on Resus One. Any deviation from their flight plan and the destination will assume that there has been a hostile takeover or an uncontainable virus outbreak, and the Tsuranga will be destroyed.
Astos then admits that they are close to an asteroid field, which is in close proximity to a disputed region of space. An alarm sounds, indicating a hull breach.
The Doctor and Astos go to investigate as scanners indicate a life-form has come on board.
Graham discovers Durkas trying to hack into his sister's medical records. He explains that his sister has an easily treatable illness, and has recently started acting differently towards him - pushing him away. He wants to know why.
Ronan, meanwhile, is pressuring Mabli into giving Eve extra medications. As a relative newcomer she agrees.
The Doctor discovers that the life pod on one side of the ship has disappeared due to damage. Astos reports that the one on the other side is still there. The Doctor warns him not to enter it but is too late. It launches with him on board. It has also been damaged and it explodes. Mabli is left in charge of the ship.
The culprit proves to be a tiny creature which seems to devour anything it touches. It rapidly moves through the ship's infrastructure, wrecking the systems.
Checking the database, they discover that it is an omnivorous Pting - one of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy due to its destructive behaviour. They have the added issue of being toxic to the touch.
The Pting triggers a preliminary alarm, which will be detected on Resus One. Three such alarms will see the ship automatically destroyed. Eve explains how she has experience of dealing with the creatures. Their priority is to stop it destroying their engines, then to get it off the ship before they get to their destination.
Graham and Ryan find themselves called upon to assist Mabli as Yoss goes into labour.
Eve reveals that she has a terminal health condition, and has been acting coldly towards her brother only to spare his feelings.
It is decided to take a short-cut through the asteroid field, with Eve piloting the ship using a holographic interface. Ronan and Yaz succeed in isolating the Pting as the Doctor removes the explosive device which would have destroyed the ship. The Pting eats it as it is jettisoned into space. The blast does not kill it, however - simply feeding it.
The strain of piloting the ship leads to Eve's death. Yoss gives birth and the ship arrives safely at Resus One, from where the Doctor and her companions can get passage back to the junk asteroid.
The Tsuranga Conundrum was written by Chris Chibnall, and was first broadcast on Sunday 4th November 2018.
I'll declare this right from the outset - I regard this as one of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time. I saw it on transmission, and again (grudgingly) when I bought the box-set, but since then I simply cannot bring myself to rewatch it. It finally convinced me - after some mounting concerns - that the Chibnall era wasn't going to be any sort of highlight for me.
The reasons are several, and in places are symptomatic of the problems which ran through much of Series 11.
The Doctor is at her most patronising, spouting glib platitudes left, right and centre. She awards her companions points when they say or do something she approves of - like giving a treat to a dog. As usual for this series, the companions are given very little to do. Despite being trapped on a damaged spaceship that could be destroyed any moment, Graham and Ryan stop in the middle of a corridor to have a chat - the sort of thing we see in any badly scripted direct-to-video dramas. The guest characters are walking cliches, assuming they have anything to do at all. What was the point of Ronan being an android? I assumed it would be relevant to the plot, but really wasn't. More could have been made of his ability to touch the toxic Pting. The only decent performance / character is Astos, who gets killed off after 15 minutes.
The Pting looks childish. The story really needed a more monstrous creature as a threat. It is all overly lit, which always lessens the drama. The sets look like JJ Abrams directed this.
The plot makes little sense. We have a hospital ship which has only two staff, one of whom is inexperienced, and no flight crew or security - despite operating in a potential war zone - and if anything goes wrong it gets blown up by remote control. There's far-fetched, and then there's far-fetched.
My biggest beef is the ending. A problem I've highlighted before is Chibnall's "tell, don't show" approach. Despite having a couple of nice spaceship shots, the thrilling denouement of this story is a woman waving her hands about in a white room. We could have seen the ship dodging through the asteroid field. We could have seen images of what Eve was seeing on her headset. We get neither.
The only good things - and there are a couple - are the aforementioned VFX shots (what little we get of them), and the fact that the Doctor actually does something this week...
Gripe over.
The totally wasted guest cast comprises Brett Goldstein as Astos; Lois Chimimba as Mabli; Suzanne Packer as Eve; David Shields as Ronan; Ben Bailey-Smith as Durkas; and Jack Shalloo as Yoss.
Packer is best known for a long-running role in medical soap Casualty - so probably felt quite at home here. Goldstein is a comedian as well as actor, now very well known for Ted Lasso. David Shields will be seen in WWII USAF drama Masters of the Air, which also features Ncuti Gatwa. Bailey-Smith also does comedy, as well as being a rapper. He performs under the alias Doc Brown.
Overall... I'll quote Radio Times, who called it "A dismal misfire". It's desperately trying to be Alien meets Casualty, but the emotional drama is all too superficial.
Things you really, really don't want to know:
- Chris Chibnall claimed in 2023 that he was planning a sequel to this story, working title "Ptings". Thank goodness the axe fell on his tenure when it did...
- One nice moment amongst the misery is the glimpse of classic era beings like Silurians, Zygons and Davros on the alien lifeform database. More recent creatures included an Ood and a Weeping Angel.
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