Ahh, the slump of Series 10, where all the dark and moody episodes come to bore the tears out of you. “Oxygen” and “Extremis” are the two episodes that with a good 30 minutes on the clock, few people would remember when naming all the episodes of Nu-Who. They are just too bland.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A traveler and their companion appear on a space station where X resources are running low, resulting in a crew of 40 dwindling to a very few left to be saved. I am awake, I promise, that totally doesn’t sound like every third space station episode. That includes “Sleep No More,” “42,” or the many others through the 269 stories of Doctor Who.

The truth is, I’ve never been too big on Jamie Mathieson’s episodes of Doctor Who: “Mummy on the Orient Express,” “Flatline,” and “The Girl Who Died.” Space zombies still don’t interest me. It is the first episode in a few where Peter does his professor thing. However, it is symptomatic of the overall issue I’ve had with Steven Moffat’s later run and Peter’s entire time as the Doctor. He’s not the fun “let’s go for an adventure” alien you fall in love with because he’s delightful and charming. This is the dark “you will boil to death, be very afraid of space” Doctor.

Space capitalism is ruining life to the point that the suffocated dead start roaming the ship, what else is new? Generally, that’s my problem. Not the anti-capitalism bit, sci-fi does that all the time and Star Trek is about a post-scarcity society where most forms of capitalism are disregarded. It is the basic concept that we’ve done this before and nothing new is being said or done with the formula to make the argument against it (in this case) stronger or louder. At best this is an episode to show the effects on Bill from an adventure out into space and seeing something grim happen.

Still, I’m not too fond of Matt Lucas, every line on the space station feels forced. Comedic lines fell flat and the exposition to move us along is stiff. Meanwhile, Peter gave it his all and actually makes the best of a paint-by-numbers episode. Pearl does her best to make Bill at least the typical companion in the best of a bad situation. Usually, when reviewing an episode like this, I can point to someone and say they exemplified themselves with this role or a specific few lines made the episode ten times better than it had any right to be. I don’t have that here.

Even what is left of the station’s crew doesn’t lend much in the way of someone to latch on to. It isn’t a story about them and thus they are nothing more than the scenery. The episode is trying to get across the idea that “capitalism equals destructive and evil,” despite being an episode about the Doctor being afflicted by something and his companion’s reaction to it. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea when summarized like that, but there is no way the Doctor stays blind. A blind Doctor doesn’t necessarily work well from the way the show works.

That’s not to say the cliffhanger wouldn’t try to hang on to some idea of that novel concept. It is just a shame I don’t really care. This is my point every time when it comes to a story about the Doctor or something that affects the Doctor. I ultimately don’t care because I know either in the next episode, a few episodes, or even the next series it is going to be reset so we can go back to normal. The companion can change, the companion could have a different perspective as a result, but that only goes so far when you know even the slightest bit of production. Bill is a one-series companion, and thanks to the advent of time being strictly linear for us, most of us know how that ends up.

I don’t like “Oxygen” and it isn’t because it is bad on a technical level. It is because it is not telling me something I don’t already know. Of Mathieson’s episodes (this being the last) I have to say this was also his most boring. If there was one glint of something done well, it had to be Pearl’s ability to make that “death” scene feel like Bill was really being let down. The trust she put in the Doctor was taken away by him just as easily as it was created. Otherwise, I struggle to get pulled in by the story.

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Doctor Who "Oxygen"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Pearl made everything of Bill's distress.
• Some decent Doctor work from Peter.

Cons

• A rather tired story with nothing refreshing about it.
• Matt Lucas given lines that come out stiff.
• A cast of extras that aren't doing much for me in the story.