Who Review: The Tsuranga Conundrum

While hunting through the trash on a scavenger planet, the Doctor and her friends accidentally detonate a sonic mine. When they awake, they find themselves on a medical transport ship, The Tsuranga, on its way to a medical space station. The crew are able to treat them, but there are larger concerns, even than finding their way back to the TARDIS. A creature has entered the ship and is proceeding quickly to eat its way through important parts of the ship’s structure. With the power core of the ship in danger, the Doctor must help the medics deal with the threat and get the ship to the medical space station before they are left stranded in space to die.

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

Another Chris Chibnall story this time taking our heroes into space for another staple of Doctor Who: the facility-under-siege story. We’ve seen some excellent stories of this type before (“Ark in Space”, “Robots of Death”, “Midnight”) where the cast is confined to a closed environment, and their inability to escape increases the danger. Here, they are on a medical ship with limited crew and only a few other passengers. They are unable to leave the ship, and their lives are under threat from a small, toxic-to-touch, creature that devours non-organic material.

I’m sure smarter people than me will come up with a thousand ways this story doesn’t work (I try not to read other reviews before I write mine so I’m not tainted by what others say), but I’m hard pressed to think of any major problems with it. I think the stakes are set appropriately high. Not only is there a creature devouring the infrastructure, but there’s a patient on board about to give birth, and the only person capable of piloting the craft as systems go offline has a serious heart condition and will probably die with the next surge of adrenaline. If this isn’t enough, there is a bomb on board the ship that will destroy the vessel if the medical base believes it contains something that would be a threat if released into the wider population. Like the creature currently eating its way through the walls.

At the heart of the ship is the main power supply: an anti-matter drive. The Doctor explains to her companions how the drive works in terms that sound, at least to my untrained ear, scientifically plausible. I can imagine this pause in the action to explain something would annoy some viewers, but I smiled at this because it’s a direct throw-back to Classic Who. And I mean 1960s Classic Who. Remember, the original mandate of the show was to teach history and science through stories. This is exactly what the Doctor is doing here. Go and watch some old Hartnell and Troughton stories and you’ll see the exact same thing. “See, Polly… this is how it works…”

What really added to the moment for me was the joy in the Doctor’s face and voice as she explained it. This is a Doctor in love with technology, and to me this made what could have been a tedious moment engaging.

The creature itself, the T’Ping, looks like a plushie. Maybe a bit too cutsie for my taste. I like the concept, but not so much the execution. Okay, so that’s one negative criticism I have.

Even though I enjoyed the story and have little to complain about, it’s not what I would call “classic” Who. It doesn’t rise to the level of a “Caves of Androzani” or “Blink.” That’s not a bad thing. So far we’ve had five stories I would gladly repeat-watch. And I’m still impressed with Jodie’s Doctor. I think she’s doing a fantastic job as the Doctor with all the character’s quirky alienness, compassion, and love-of-life.

An element of the Doctor’s personality that shines through with Thirteen that has been largely dormant with others is humility. That ability to accept, when reminded, that she is not the center of the universe. When the Doctor insists to the chief medic she has to get back to her TARDIS and orders him to turn the ship around, the medic reminds her that it’s a medical transport. There are patients on board who need to get to the medical station. The Doctor is rightly chastised and apologizes. I can almost hear Troughton’s Doctor delivering a similar line. Maybe in our current angry, polarized culture, this is an attitude we need to see the Doctor exemplify for us more often.

In short, a good, solid, stand-alone Who story. Not a “classic” or “must-see” but certainly entertaining, and satisfying to this old Whovian. 🙂

What did you think? What are all the bad points I missed? Comment below…