You know what I miss, a good villain introduction. The Weeping Angels, were a great villain that defined Matt Smith’s era. The Slitheen defined Eccelston’s era, the reintroduction of The Dalek, following one episode with Eccelston was iconic for Tennant, and that horrible mistress of boredom mattered for Capaldi. We’re almost a full two series into Jodie’s run as The Doctor, and we’ve yet to have that villain to define her run. Tim Shaw (ok, Tzim-Sha) kind of did that for her last series, however, the Stenza don’t feel like an imposing race to branch over several series. You’d think by now there would have been one horror episode to give us that villain, but no luck.

“Can You Hear Me?” is a mix, not at the same quality of last week’s good episode, but not the liquid dreck that has infested Doctor Who before. If there was an episode I had to qualify it by, it would probably be Mark Gatiss’ “The Idiot’s Lantern.” Although it is a more contemporary take with dreams taking the focus, while still having that grim horror that The Doctor and companion(s) observe rather than take part in. Overall, the episode is much less about The Doctor saving the day, and rather her directing the chess pieces while companions flesh out their stories.

The episode starts in a pre-credits scene, that “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror” should have taken editing cues from. It begins with Tahira, a young woman that has traveled many miles to sign herself into a 14th-century mental institute, that looks more like a convent. She’s stolen from the local bazaar, and the hospital’s madam, Maryam, tells Tahira off with Tahira refuting her. She says that if Maryam tells her that happiness is good for her then condemning her stealing would be wrong. I like her playful manner, but for being the first episode to properly use the TARDIS to go back in time, her story and time-period are a bit sedate.

At night while everyone is meant to be in bed, something is creeping in the shadows. It is something Tahira knows is coming, but once again Maryam doesn’t believe her and thinks that’s the reason she’s in the institute. The monster itself isn’t all too impressive, as it looks like a slightly irradiated and mutated version of the Werewolves of Balmoral from “Tooth and Claw,” with slightly fatter bodies and smaller heads. The teaser last week with the long claws coming around Maryam’s face, that was unsettling, but once you see it up in the ceiling like Jim Carrey when he was painted green for a while, it isn’t as off-putting. The beast takes everyone but Tahira before the credits.

Then we’re back to the domestics of it all; dropping Yaz off for a family thing, sending Ryan to hang out with his best friend, and letting Graham play poker with his bus-driving friends. This leaves The Doctor plodding about in the TARDIS to be interrupted with the episode’s real villain, some guy. There’s nothing wrong with him, but it is just another humanoid to stand stock still and talk plot. I’ve said it before but the show is about running away from something, though given that our running this series has been lackluster, I can’t complain too much.

At least she knows she’s The Doctor and that means following where ever this strange sound came from; sure it’s across time, but she’s in a time machine. Yes, this is an episode that Chris Chibnall co-wrote that has a bit of sci-fi in it, I’m as shocked as you. I have to admit, I did enjoy when Jodie did her usual Doctor “this is X in the X century,” thing, only to then realize that the boring trio are all doing domestic things. This and one pun-based line, later, are all the character moments she or anyone else gets, everything else is exposition of the plot. That’s the bit I don’t like about Chibnall’s writing, its that dull drama your parents watch.

Meanwhile, Yaz is late for a family gathering in memory of something we’ve not been told about. I genuinely had a moment of trying to remember something with her family, it is impossible. “Demons of Punjab” was about her gran and the partition of India, but none of that was direct enough to hold an anniversary over. Other than “Arachnids in the UK,” there’s not much of a presence of the Khan family. I’m hoping that’s resolved at some point, but why reference something that’s implied to be heavy and not say what it is?

Ryan’s thing is less about him and more about his far more interesting paranoid friend. Graham is off playing poker and suddenly having headaches, visions, and talking about his cancer. I’ll come back to that later, but this is what people are the most upset about when it comes to this episode. If we have an episode talking about climate change one side is up in arms, if cancer is talked about in the way it is here, the other side joins in on the noise. It’s not “take an aspirin, go to the pub, and wait for all this to blow over,” if it was there’s something to say, but this was a realistic depiction of someone who isn’t quick with every answer.

Skirting around spoilers for later aside, The Doctor is interrupted by the voice of Tahari when she’s forgotten those three aren’t with her. Searching the desolate halls of the institute compound, she finds where Tahari is hiding from the monster. Of course, The Doctor being the ever-curious one, wants to find this terrifying monster of a weresloth. Luckily it is doing its Jim Carrey impression just outside.

Graham’s visions are of a woman with white hair trapped in a sci-fi golf ball prison, she’s distressed. This causes him to take a moment from dealing cards to his two friends and starts dealing to a further 37 people. Ryan plays FIFA with Tibo, who himself is distant, and hardly cares when Ryan is up and ecstatic with his ability to still play. Ryan notices Tibo isn’t really himself, letting this out become a mess, with the multiple locks on the door, and his general demeanor. Tibo opens up about the strange man at the foot of his bed at night, and his nightmares.

With that Ryan is asked to stay the night to watch if the strange man that’s appearing for Tibo, who also appeared for The Doctor, shows up again. Yaz, while having dinner with her sister Sonya suggests staying for a bit longer and watching a movie, something Yaz falls asleep during a majority of the time. She does so again, dreaming about a time when she ran away from home and a fellow officer of color brought her back from that metaphorical ledge. I won’t say what I think the situation might be, but I might have to talk about something quite heavy for a kid’s teaching program about travel when that’s revealed.

Waking from the dream, Yaz finds the creep that was at the bottom of Tibo’s bed in the room with her, before it vanishes in smoke. Appearing around a sleeping Tibo, the fingers from his left-hand disconnect from said hand, with one planting itself in Tibo’s ear (not the nail end). Ryan, hearing something happening in the next room, runs through finding creepy-fingers and Tibo disappearing in smoke.

Right, that’s the first fifteen minutes and it’s the cutting off point I usually give myself to say overall opinions and announce spoilers ahead. It’s not a bad episode, but much like the episode with a werewolf in Balmoral Castle, I’m not impressed. I’ve already said it, The Doctor isn’t the one to save the day, so it feels like she isn’t useful other than her owning the TARDIS. Last week was a good episode with not much to pick apart; this episode was good but had more that stood out. It would have to be a 7 out of 10 for me.

Spoilers Ahead – Read at your Own Risk

So with that out the way, The Doctor gets a call on the blower from all three companions about the visions, disappearing friend, and vanishing creepy hands. Sure, bring Tahira along to the 21st century, it is not as if she’s in a mental hospital because she says that weresloths at night take people away. However, it bothered me last week and it bothers me again that we have someone new to the TARDIS that doesn’t have that big reaction that 12 had around River. Once again it is the sedate disbelief that something like that is possible, not the mind blown reaction of anyone else in any other series.

From there on we’re just following Graham’s visions of something futuristic on the other end of the galaxy stuck between two planets. They take the group to a spaceship located just a little bit away from where Graham’s visions were coming from, a ship that’s the grimdark version of the observation platform from “The End of the World.” Of course, the platform/ship has a view of the ball the woman is in and has several dismembered fingers. This is something Tahira doesn’t know about because she’s gone exploring to find Maryam and Tibo strung up in cuffs, the weresloth behind glass, and creepy fingers materializing once again.

This is where you’re expected to know he’s the one causing the nightmares, the cause of the weresloth, and is the reason why Tahira isn’t dead because of the former. It’s also another moment of Yaz getting her dream state on with the so-far silent cop. Now, Mandip Gill who plays Yaz has said the story is about bullying, but the way the plot point is treated there has to be something else there. Otherwise, it is another Chibnall Chekov’s gun, where there’s too much added on to make it a mystery and not enough clarity to make it noticeable. I said I won’t go into it, and I won’t go too far. I think it’s more of an assault plot rather than bullying.

In Ryan’s fear, we see the return of the Dregs from “Orphan 55,” Tibo aged a lifetime, and fire, all to suggest he’s been away for too long. Meanwhile, Graham, with worries over his cancer coming back, is dreaming of Grace telling him he was a failure and that his cancer is back. I should make it clear, he’s not a failure because of the return of cancer, but because of her death in series 11. I don’t like that, it makes her as manic as The Master was at the start of this series. In “It Takes You Away” she’s (well, the frog was) forgiving and telling him that he shouldn’t be so depressed, that was a good moment slightly ruined by this induced nightmare.

Finally, The Doctor meets Ian Gelder’s Zellin, an immortal torturer that sees provoking fear in people as a game to feed off of. As a villain in anything else, fine. As a Who villain, he doesn’t match the space nazis, intergalactic trigger happy cops, or angels of stone that move when you don’t look at them and try to send you back in time. If it wasn’t for The Kandy Man, I’d have said he was a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

Zellin and his white-haired mate in the “prison” with the help of The Doctor can now run free and terrorize children with nightmares. What I don’t like about this is Jodie being strung up in handcuffs, her Sonic Screwdriver is in her pocket, and she now has force powers. Did I miss something at some point where this magic alien that travels through time is now a Jedi or Sith?

Once she breaks free, everyone else is let go as well so we can wrap up the Chagaska (weresloth), Zellin, and Rakaya, the black woman with long white hair plot. This happens quickly, ten minutes before the end so we can talk about the bits that have people up in arms. I’ve said I like the pun here about “lending a helping hand” as a few of Zellin’s fingers are used against him and Rakaya, but that’s all she does. Of course, there’s the Doctor Who speech about the episode’s theme, which this time is mental health. However, Tahira is the one to act and defeat them both, which would be the only way to resolve the episode so-far.

Speaking of mental health, one of the issues some have had would be the so-called “preachy” nature of talking about men and mental health. The reason I said Tibo is interesting, is that without Ryan he doesn’t talk to people, so for the months he’s away, Tibo is damaging himself. For once I liked Ryan and Yaz, but we’ll get to her in a minute, because they were impacting others. Ryan forces Tibo into a men’s group therapy-thing because he needs to talk to someone. He needs help, something a lot of men (especially men of color) need but won’t admit to.

Yaz, thinking back on the story behind the nightmare, she reminisces about Anita Patel (the previously silent cop) and what she did for Yaz. After running away from home, her sister is worried and calls the cops about Yaz’s runaway act, with Patel being the one to find her. After a lengthy talk about how it is ok to feel something rather than feeling nothing, Patel gives her a bet; find her in three years and she’ll give Yaz £50 if she’s wrong. If she finds her and Patel is right, Yaz has to give her 50P. Given this is one of the two health stories most people liked (including myself), you can guess which one was right.

Let’s talk about that bit I skirted around with Graham; because some are angry that The Doctor for not being quick with the perfect feel-good answer. After telling “The Doc” about his suspicions and fear of the returning cancer, he turns to her for some medical advice with reassurance. The issue I have with others being angry about Jodie not having the perfect line is, she’s not a doctor and she is as she says “quite socially awkward.” To which the response is “Well, the rest of them would have said the right thing.” No, they wouldn’t.

Eccelston was socially awkward when Jackie said, “There’s a strange man in my bedroom.” He was weird again around Dickens, Matt Smith hated waiting, and just last series Jodie said: “Never did this when I was a man!” It is almost as if a body regenerating alien might not be the best to ask for the perfect words about how to deal with a thing he or she (depending on the time) has never had to deal with. Before Graham, there was one episode with cancer and it was in 2015, something tells me she might not be the caring nurse people want her to be. It’s better that’s she’s “flawed” because then she’s got character.

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Doctor Who “Can You Hear Me?”

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• The Doctor can be flawed.
• Yaz and Ryan were enjoyable, for once.

Cons

• Grace's manic return.
• Another episode lacking a "It's bigger on the inside" moment