Still, with no in-series competition coming close, “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” is the most-watched modern episode of Doctor Who since the show’s return and the highest peak since “City of Death” in 1979. Jodie Whittaker’s run has been lambasted time and time again. Often by those unable to articulate their valid issues, but mostly by those who think the bit between your legs determines how well you can fly a 1950s Police Call Box that travels through space and time. I’ll happily lampoon the run for its actual faults, but Jodie herself is a treasure that sadly was never fully discovered.

To settle those that want to scroll down so quickly their mouse will disappear off their desk before they can comment: Yes, Tennant’s specials did cross into 12-13 million in the UK, but they were also inward navel-gazing crap. Though it goes without saying, Jodie does have the most-watched first story of any Doctor, including Tom Baker. I will admit, I do love to rile up the “I watch’d all of dr Wo and I am nevr watchin’ another ep again #notmydoctorwho.” Especially as this crowd gets what they want from Chibnall: Introspective nonsense that doesn’t think much about the consequences of the actions taken, as long as it feels big at those moments.

Following my threats of drop kicking a man off a building for some of the worst writing imaginable (I’m still not done with Flux), it might be surprising to find that I’d call Chris’ first episode in charge his best. It is no “Power of Three,” but in terms of getting across the core concepts of Doctor Who quickly while establishing characters (all three of the six), this is actually one of the better ones. Nothing touches “Smith and Jones” as far as doing it quickly and giving us so much not only to reference but overall, and I’d never say “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” does. Though I am thinking top-3 for the simple fact it was done so well and by such an awful writer.

I’ll gleefully say that Moffat was overindulgent when it came to his writing, and despite praising this episode I’ll also get my punches in on Chris. Though at the very least, with RTD or Steven you’d get some easter eggs at the side of Ryan’s YouTube video, you always get those unrelated videos about how to survive in the woods or how to make cheese out of your own earwax. I would have put a clip from “The Bells of Saint John” in, someone riding by a TARDIS in a thumbnail, or something instead of making it look like the lad has the worst SEO skills imaginable.

Shall we talk about the companions? What is supposed to be the main two, and I’ve covered this in Jodie’s later two series, are some of the worst written companions in Doctor Who history. Between now and the end of series 12, Ryan’s development is that he can ride a bike because the Black lady died. Yaz, though, hasn’t really moved a jot in five years aside from finally telling the Doctor she’s in lesbians with her in the penultimate story before Jodie’s regeneration. Sure, she’s becoming a very lovely Rwandan-Scottish man next year, but is that another bury your gays from Chibbers?

Personally, I’d have loved Jodie to go on adventures with Bradley Walsh’s Graham, and Sharon D. Clarke’s fantastic and wonderfully charming Grace. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but Chibnall knew how to write quirky older white guys, and doesn’t understand young people of color. This is why Yaz and Ryan feel like nothing when they are leaving: Your heart breaks at Rose, Donna, Martha, and Amy leaving, but these two are like paper airplanes flying out the room – blank and you have no investment. Yet with just one scene I love Grace and Graham, two older love birds that can push and pull each other beautifully.

Even Karl has more character about him than Yaz has had over three series and five years. The bloke that looks to be the prime suspect if the UK hadn’t banned guns following the Dunblane shooting is listening to self-help books about being special. Of course he is, he is the working class bloke that sees everyone else as the action hero, while he has half a tin of beans on toast for dinner before his nightshift work as a crane operator. The big twist, however, is that he is special, he is the one that is being hunted in this noir where the darkness and mystery depress the whole show into a much slower pace.

I know it doesn’t matter now, but I think it is worth mentioning, especially ahead of Jodie’s final episode in October. The simulcast that was about as concurrent as a politician’s views on LGBTQ+ rights completely ruined the viewing experience for those outside the UK, particularly for the US viewers. One minute you have the suspense of a tenderly electric monster thing coming down the train carriages, the next you are being spoken to about insurance by a gecko that should think about getting life insurance for itself before I shoot it. Him, Jake, and Flo all need to GTFO. The episode was already long enough before ads, there was no need for that, BBC America.

As I said above, Jodie herself is fantastic and this is the only episode where the lack of character direction by Chibnall’s writing actually works. Every Doctor in their post-regeneration period has a haziness about them, almost as if every cell in their being is trying to reconfigure itself. The trouble is that Jodie never lost that and has never felt like anything other than a Doctor standing about as things happen to her: She is passive, even in her own story. She’s constantly standing about in later episodes waiting for Exposition 1 and Exposition 2 to question something, for Graham to say or do something funny, or for the villain of the piece to stand there doing nothing but long-windedly explain their plan.

Tim Shaw is a lovely bloke, but that Tzim-sha isn’t all that nice. As a first villain and for the joke Tim is actually not that bad: It adds a new race to the mix, he seemed like a threat for a whole minute, and generally, with the production budget moving up and making the show the standard dark drama, he looks unsettling. The biggest problem with the episode actually comes down to script editing and writing, unsurprisingly for a Chibnall-era episode. The bombs Tim plants in everyone’s neck via the train monster was a fine idea, Jodie’s Doctor disabling them is also great, but her planting them in Tim and then chastising Jonny Dixon’s Karl for attacking Tim doesn’t work.

She can’t claim the moral high ground by presuming he’s dead from Karl’s actions, especially when she plants a lot of explosives in his neck in the first place. Either she is the Doctor of non-violent actions or she’s like Colin (“Tom“) Baker in all those episodes where we had to be reminded he’s not the one we’re supposed to hate. That is the biggest problem, alongside the passiveness, going forward and even back to what I’ve already covered. She is the Doctor, but due to inadequate writing and insufficient editing, there is nothing to tell me that with any great amount of confidence.

I do love the line “Knives are for idiots,” and a few other lines that are reasonably quotable, but nothing spectacular stands out. I guess that’s the problem as we change showrunners. Moffat was a machine-gun of quips that didn’t assault you the same as Nathan Drake does, but Chris here has dialogue that is efficient yet doesn’t say anything that is character. There is no Jammie Dodger line followed up by Canton telling the secret service to “get the man his maps.” It is all plot, all the time, and while that works on a conceptual level of producing TV quickly, it doesn’t make it entertaining to watch.

I didn’t have hopes going into “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” about the writing, especially as Chibnall wrote the Torchwood episode “Cyberwoman.” As we’ve seen just two episodes ago, a Cyberman is a humanoid covered from head to toe. The metal bikini thing that he signed off on as the writer and producer of that episode really didn’t provide a great amount of hope when he was to take over and write for the first female Doctor. Though I have my issues: A lack of character, bringing back a Master-cosplayer, exposition by the handful, and the least exciting Doctor Who ever, he didn’t screw this one up.

Overall, I think “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” is brilliant at capturing the spirit of a regeneration episode, even if it crashed into a few problems of the writer’s doing. Jodie is fantastic, Grace should have lived on instead of being misery porn, Ryan really needed some actual character, and Yaz should have remembered she is the fuzz. A truly fantastic start with some proper energy, if I didn’t know enough about how “The Ghost Monument” is Jodie’s TARDIS already and a bland episode, I’d be excited. Misgivings aside, to quote the woman herself: “Right, this is gonna be fun!”

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Doctor Who "The Woman Who Fell to Earth"

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Jodie's Burst of Energy
• Grace and Graham, God I Love Them
• A good Jumping-On Point

Cons

• Script Editing, of Course