[Doctor Who Review] 12.7 Can you hear me?

I waited two weeks to see this one and give myself a mini-marathon.

This one starts with a scene in a hospital in Medieval Syria where the place is attacked by some werewolf-like creature. Made me think a little about the Van Gogh episode of the 11th Doctor. Intriguing start that got me to pay attention.

Then we move to "today" where the Doctor is bringing the crew for some appointments with their friends. Of course, all of them have some odd problem with a dude that appears in their room. Once again we end up with a bunch of extra NPCs crowding the plot particularly the now-distracting Syrian girl and Ryan's buddy.

The Dude is some god-like figure linked to previous villains. They are defeated by some "reason" and locked into some over-complicated plot device.

The Syria thing really served no purpose in the end... It could've been resolved with someone "today". The excitement of the opening turned out to be just fluff.

This episode is about isolation and mental illness. But as with the previous episode, the solving of the problem was done very quickly as if to move on for the moral of the story. The moral at the end fell flat.

Well let me expand on that. At the end, we see Yaz meet the cop that set her on the path to become a cop in a nice moment. Then Ryan's buddy speaks about his problem for like a minute to group therapy in something that really adds nothing to the episode.

But the worse of was the talk between the Doctor and Graham. In a genuinely good moment when Graham expresses to the Doctor that he is worried about his cancer coming back. He really hit it on the head and I felt for him really wanted for something to happen with that. In the cringiest scene I've yet to see on TV, the Doctor dismisses him completely. Telling him "this is where I say something nice." This shows how little the 13th Doctor cares about the crew and particularly Graham. So while the other two companions get a decent resolution, she dismisses him.

Weak.

Very Weak.

Until the final moments of the episode and the Graham scene, I was overall pretty excited and positive. Sure there were problem but comparing this to Orphan 55, this was pretty good. I was gonna go with a 3.5 (or 4) but that scene soured me immensely on this episode. It dropped down to a 2.

Would I re-watch? No (I was thinking "yes" until the moral section).

Rating: 2/5