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Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror
The Teenager really like Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror, certainly far more than any other thirteenth Doctor episode. I'm not sure I entirely share her enthusiasm. In many ways the most notable thing about the episode is that it doesn't really get anything wrong. It doesn't deliver the high of Spyfall but there's also a lot less to criticise.
While the episode was clearly on Tesla's side in his rivalry with Edison it managed to paint neither Tesla as a saint nor Edison as a villain. The story did a pretty good job of introducing the two men and their backgrounds. It was enjoying its steampunk aesthetic without going too over-the-top with it, and the thirteenth is definitely one of the steampunkier Doctors - with a clear predilection for goggles and construction. It was also nice to see a historical set in America that didn't seem to be trying too hard to emphasise how American it was being. In general, Doctor Who does historicals well production-wise and this seemed to be no exception.
The monsters of the week were a bit one note and largely forgettable (as well as being too similar in design to the Racnoss). However, this is a mid-season story that's not attempting to carry an arc plot and, as such, its monsters are not really required to do much.
Like much of series 12, this compares well to series 11, having a more proactive Doctor and a threat that can be tackled within the episode. I think series 11 was possibly trying to play with more interesting themes and ideas than series 12 seems to be (so far) but I can't deny that I prefer this version of the show.
I note that no one felt the need to mind-wipe Tesla or Edison and while one can construct a hand-wave to explain it, it feels like poor script-editing at some level, to have such dramatically different approaches in episodes so close to each other. I don't think this can be described as a flaw of Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror but it makes the story-telling choice at the end of Spyfall seem even stranger, if the idea isn't going to be carried through.
So, yeah, I would rate this as an absolutely solid-to-good early-to-mid-season episode that did everything required of it without fuss and without (big) mistakes. I'm not under-rating that as an achievement since Doctor Who has an illustrious 50+ year history showing just how hard that can be, but I wasn't that excited by it either.
This is the last of the now traditional season opening trio of one contemporary, one alien/future, one historical. Many NuWho series tend to switch things up at this point, though I'm not sure what we've seen so far has the consistency to identify a change of pace, theme or mood if it happens, but we shall see.
While the episode was clearly on Tesla's side in his rivalry with Edison it managed to paint neither Tesla as a saint nor Edison as a villain. The story did a pretty good job of introducing the two men and their backgrounds. It was enjoying its steampunk aesthetic without going too over-the-top with it, and the thirteenth is definitely one of the steampunkier Doctors - with a clear predilection for goggles and construction. It was also nice to see a historical set in America that didn't seem to be trying too hard to emphasise how American it was being. In general, Doctor Who does historicals well production-wise and this seemed to be no exception.
The monsters of the week were a bit one note and largely forgettable (as well as being too similar in design to the Racnoss). However, this is a mid-season story that's not attempting to carry an arc plot and, as such, its monsters are not really required to do much.
Like much of series 12, this compares well to series 11, having a more proactive Doctor and a threat that can be tackled within the episode. I think series 11 was possibly trying to play with more interesting themes and ideas than series 12 seems to be (so far) but I can't deny that I prefer this version of the show.
I note that no one felt the need to mind-wipe Tesla or Edison and while one can construct a hand-wave to explain it, it feels like poor script-editing at some level, to have such dramatically different approaches in episodes so close to each other. I don't think this can be described as a flaw of Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror but it makes the story-telling choice at the end of Spyfall seem even stranger, if the idea isn't going to be carried through.
So, yeah, I would rate this as an absolutely solid-to-good early-to-mid-season episode that did everything required of it without fuss and without (big) mistakes. I'm not under-rating that as an achievement since Doctor Who has an illustrious 50+ year history showing just how hard that can be, but I wasn't that excited by it either.
This is the last of the now traditional season opening trio of one contemporary, one alien/future, one historical. Many NuWho series tend to switch things up at this point, though I'm not sure what we've seen so far has the consistency to identify a change of pace, theme or mood if it happens, but we shall see.