And the 13th Doctor has her first genuine classic episode!
After weeks of dispiritingly surface level stories, in which everything has been exactly what it appeared to be and plot twists have been almost entirely absent, we finally...finally...have an episode with depth. At almost every turn 'It Takes You Away' subverted its own expectations, jumping from apparent base-under-siege, to alien world, to parallel universe, and finally on to something altogether different. In the case of 'The Tsuranga Conundrum' I had both major plot points worked out a full half hour before the story ended. This time, I didn't have a clue what was going to happen next, and that was so refreshing after the comparative banality of the rest of this series.
Not only that but there was actual thematic depth to the story as well; the conscious universe cast out from the rest of existence, the blind girl taken away from her friends in the city and apparently abandoned by her father, the grieving husbands drifting from their former lives following the loss of their partners, all of which serve almost as mirrors to the character of the Doctor herself.
It's just a bit concerning that we're back to a Chibnall episode next week (though an extra point for the 'Slayer' reference).
