What’s the dullard’s idea of retro-futurist thinking? Nikola Tesla is the face that closed off weirdos on the internet hold up because he died penniless with nothing but his idea of the future succeeding him. Yes, he invented and thought of many things that did come to life many years later once he’d passed, but he’s the most famous case of that. Catherine Hettinger in 1993 made the patent for “the spinning toy,” something that over 20-years later would be known as the Fidget Spinner. The patent lapsed in 2005 and she lost out on millions, just like many others, but Tesla is the famous case because dullards keep him alive.

The last episode was war, war, war, and then global warming, the end. So, let’s talk about “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror,” an episode I’m in two or three minds over. As an episode it was good; a bit like The Sarah Jane Adventures with a budget, but good nonetheless. I think what’s putting me off the entire thing is the formality, Tesla, and one major editing point when I was screaming “WHY!!!!!” I’ll cover the editing and I’ve already covered Tesla well enough to get some comments filled with bile and hatred. This series there’s just a formality to everything being Earth.

As I’ve said I like the episode, it wasn’t an all-time great that will live on forever, but it wasn’t “Fear Her.” I’ve already said that “Fear Her” is an episode that constitutes itself as torture along with Clara, and “In the Forest of the Night.” To go on a slight tangent, nothing will make me hate Doctor Who more than Clara telling The Doctor (an orphan) that he should go away and let kids be murdered because “they should be orphans than remember their parents,” which she says to an orphan, and her orphan boyfriend is standing ten feet away. If it weren’t for a no swearing rule I’d be calling Clara something strong right now.

Let’s get to the episode, shall we? After another title sequence opener (it is important to say), we have Tesla standing atop an actual soapbox proselytizing his rudimentary idea for hydropower from a Niagara Falls power plant. Again, I don’t like the character and that’s possibly a testament to the actor because he was engrossing. Of course, that’s just the pre-requisite for pulling in would-be investors for his projects that at the time were outlandish. Electricity sparking throughout the air freely? Only a madman and a fool would allow that kind of magic hogwash around.

I mean, that wouldn’t be a bad comment to make if Heinrich Hertz didn’t already discover radio waves a good 15-20 years earlier. It also doesn’t help that James Clerk Maxwell worked on electromagnetism years before that, with his equations themselves working from Michael Faraday, Weber and Kohlrausch’s work. In short, radio was possible pre-1903 as Fessenden sent the first to use the system to send audio in December of 1900. Yeah, strap-in because I’m going to bore you to death with some hard dream-crushing facts.

If I’m honest with the knowledge of why Tesla is there, I don’t get why he is really there at all. Other than to score some nerd-cred’ and tell kids, “Yeah, that Musk guy that runs Tesla didn’t come up with that name.” As the story goes, Tesla isn’t one to succeed, but he does discover a strange bit of alien tech floating about the power plant after everything breaks and a man is found dead. It is a fine set up, but we’ll talk about that alien tech when it comes to spoiler land after I’ve given my general verdict.

I don’t like the assistant, Miss Dorothy Skerritt, because she’s just there. She’s like a 12th quality assistant at this point. Part of the charm of these historical episodes such as “The Shakespeare Code,” “Victory of the Daleks,” and even “The Empty Child” is how helpful Shakespeare, Churchill, and Richard Wilson’s Dr. Constantine are. Here, with Yas, Ryan, Graham, Tesla, Skerrit, and another I’ll get to in spoiler land it is a bit full. It is almost as if we got everyone from the last episode back again, that is how full it was.

Bad American accents, endless counts of companions, and some dead bloke with a horrible mustache aside, Tesla finds the alien tech. Creepy Skerritt and the alien orb in hand, Tesla wants to leg it out of the place at one creepy noise. It is a power plant, it is going to make creepy noises as everything creaks and rattles. So they both leg it, a door is locked, someone is creeping down some stairs slowly, and The Doctor bursts through the door just in time to be shot at. Again, it is a fine sequence, and that’s what I have to say about this episode, it was fine.

The creepy guy coming down the stairs is an investor, chased by some shadowy git in a cloak, who shoots said investor. The danger is established, let’s run! Doctor Who trope, but good enough for me to set up a minute of running. Anyway, cut to the train. Wait, let’s hold up for a second because I have my video editor knickers in a twist this time rather than hatred of Tesla twist from earlier. That cut is jarring, at least use the title sequence to cover that edit and we can just assume they ran for a minute. It is a little thing, but it is uncomfortably there.

So aboard the train, we meet the two useless kids and Graham again to get the names out of the way. “Who’s Tesla?” to the chagrin of everyone online that wants to believe they are special and maybe one day they will end up like Tesla: penniless, dead, and loved by weirdos. It is all just a moment of rest before we’re on a bit of a chase again allowing The Doctor to point out something she knew. Tesla is holding something back. Sure the jump from train car to train car allows for Ryan to have a moment of dyspraxia, and the moment of bopping the cloaked figure on the head gets the team the gun, but it feels like filler after that cut.

See, I like Jodie when she has something to do. The line “If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch,” from the last episode was great. I think Jodie’s leading moment in this episode is her authoritative minute on the train, it gives an air of Eccleston’s strong plays with the undertone of fun at the end. Again that cut straight to the train rather than a running segment undermines it. I’d have rather avoided Niagara completely and we start in New York. The train is just to reconvene with the companions and steal an alien gun.

As usual, I’m about a good ten or fifteen minutes in so I think it is time to start talking about spoilers and broad opinions. I think this is the best episode of the series so far; I know I said that last time, but we’ve had some crap episodes so far. This is another episode on the creepy side and crap side, but the character work is done too well for me to not admire that. I don’t like the creatures and I don’t like Tesla, but overall it is fine. A good 6.5 out of 10, it would have been 7 if I wasn’t about to jump through the TV and choke Tesla to death at every smug line.

Spoilers Ahead – Read at your Own Risk

So the Orb of Thassor, what a pile of useless poo that was. It was the MacGuffin to MacGuffin all MacGuffins out of the universe and I couldn’t hate the Thassor more for it. With that came the big info dump as we now know where we’re going for the climax. Funding for Wardenclyffe (Tesla Tower) is pulled and one of Edison’s spies is caught in the act. However, again we’re tying everything to Tesla and Earth, not the sci-fi aliens. That, in particular, feels like a Chibnall decision as that lad makes dull BBC and ITV dramas about boring people looking off into the middle distance.

Let’s get back on the companion kicking train for a minute, because when it is time to go talk to Edison I have issues. Edison is played by the wonderful Robert Glenister of Ash “Three Socks” Morgan fame from Hustle, perfect casting and I love it. However, it is the The Doctor, Graham, and Ryan going to see Edison for an almost police-like “Why did we find this alien gun and your man taking pictures of us?” It is almost as if a cop (Yas!) would be good (Yas!) in one of those situations, someone like Yas, who is a cop! It is stupid the number of times this has to be said and go unheard.

As usual, they don’t really do anything because there’s too much work to share around Edison, The Doctor, Yas, Graham, Ryan, Tesla, and creepy Skerritt. You might as well call in the Village People for extra help. Edison’s character work by Glenister is ace, and along with some fine writing, the moment of finding out his workers were killed “I had dinner with this guy and his wife last week,” is nothing short of brilliant! It is little touches like that would put all the companions on a different level.

The ugly monsters are a confusing bunch of scorpions, literally. The cacophony as the Skithra Queen appeared is something I’ll never understand, is that to warn us? She shows up in two scenes with it and one is to introduce her with it. Unless she comes back later in the series, I don’t understand why we need that build other than to give it a bit of unnecessary mystery. If anything it is another piece of the Tennant-era knock-offs for this series with a scorpion variant of the Racnoss. Not to mention the biology is weird as she’s entirely humanoid with a tail but her minions are 100 percent scorpion.

I like the Skithra as a species, a bunch of scavengers who’ll kill you as soon as they steal from you, but their threat is minimal. If they took creepy Skerritt and Tesla rather than Yas and Tesla I’d have suspected another death, with those two it was the Dalek paradox. The Dalek paradox being one Dalek with one character equals tension, a room of them with a couple of characters makes ineffective.

With that, I think I’ll wrap up quickly here with the climactic end that was ok. The section where the Doctor explained how they set up their “weapon” to get the Skithra to move on was very Hustle-like, that was good. What puts it down for me is Yas trying to get everyone off the streets but can’t, again the cop is undermined by writers forgetting she should be seen as one. Instead, Edison has to yell that Tesla will kill everyone with Wardenclyffe if they stay outside. That is not to mention the chase, the chase where Yas knocks over a small cart of bread to slow down to massive scorpion.

Yeah, the Skithra were knocking each other around as a Plumber does with poo, but that wasn’t going to stop them. Ryan and Graham playing with Tesla’s “death ray” should have just been cut straight away. This should also go without saying but, everything Tesla made failed so why would that work? Of course, when it does work, the Skithra Queen is land-bound and there had to be something else going on. This is where I like The Doctor, outsmarting the foreign species of the alien with one last hurrah that’s already established. That’s a fine bit of passive fighting and good storytelling.

What I don’t like about the last two episodes, and it seems to be a return to the kids show aesthetic of yesteryear, involves the end speeches. I know Tesla dies penniless, it is the point of him and his weird cult-like following. Those last two minutes don’t need to be in the episode as we’ve established several times throughout the episode that he isn’t as famous or successful as Edison, one can glean why that is for a reason. If you want to do that same thing just let the conversation between Tesla and Edison at the end happen.

For a moment let’s look forward, as next week we bring back one of my favorite things from the Tennant-era. No, we’re not doing a “Love and Monster” redux and I will fight anyone to the death who says that was as bad as “Fear Her” or “In the Forest of the Night.” We’re bringing back the Judoon from “Smith and Jones,” the episode I’ve told our editor-in-chief to watch because gorram I love the Judoon. I love these space rhino cops, which is a weird thing to say but it is true.

One thing I’m not too happy about for next week is the setting. “Fugitive of the Judoon” will be 5th episode we’re on earth and we’re back to modern times by the looks of it too. Luckily Chibnall will be held back with either too much going on or nothing as Vinay Patel who wrote: “Demons of the Punjab” which annoyed a lot of little Englanders. I just hope as the Judoon are cops, that Yas remembers she’s a cop and does something worth her salt. However, that’s next week.

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Doctor Who "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror"

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Great character work.
• Perfect casting.
• Perfect character lines.

Cons

• Once again the companions did nothing.