13.15: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

In which people who grew up watching RTD’s Doctor Who make some Doctor Who.

Broadcast: January 2020

Watched: July 2022

It’s a shame it’s actually quite a good episode, as “I won’t lie, I was expecting more” would be a great line to sum up something rubbish. 

Didn’t appreciate it much on broadcast – must have been in a bad mood – but it’s actually rather lovely. The fam in gilded age costume (the Doctor, without explanation, is not); the jumping between carriages on a train; the action sequence of giant space scorpions chasing Yaz and Edison through the streets of old New York. Actually, it’s really nicely put together: love that it starts with the guest cast, then the Doctor bursts in, already in the middle of an investigation; later on there’s a neat use of a montage to both show the Doctor’s plan and move the plot forward.

Okay, as a celebrity historical it’s more “Madame du Pompadour?” than “Rosa Parks!!!” – unless I’m behind the times and kids learn about Tesla and Edison in school today. But it even has a theme, in Edison and Tesla’s argument about whether genius is enough or whether you need to be able to put your inventions into practice, and which is reflected in the Doctor’s argument with an alien scorpion whose race steals rather than invents. (The former ends with the two inventors grudgingly respecting each other, the latter on the Doctor zapping a monster she’d just been happily chatting to.)

Both the writer and director of this one are women aged around 30, so were just about young enough to have seen the Rose series as teenagers. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but... I wonder if this is the first story to be made by people whose first Doctor Who was the new stuff? It feels like a sort of a mega-mix of previous historicals, with stuff about progress and talk of how Tesla will be recognised in death if not in life, and in the RTD vibes of the chat about incredible clever strangers dropping into your life and everything changing.

Also, it’s striking that Yaz for once gets her own story, while Graham and Ryan just run around behind the Doctor.

Other things:

• I am entirely incapable of remembering the title, keep thinking it’s “the very long night of” like it's an episode of Babylon 5. I never had trouble remembering Doctor Who titles before the Chibnall era.

• This is the second episode this season to have a top-hat strewn “isn’t science BRILLIANT” bit. Cool.

• Also, “Have you ever seen a dead planet?” is a bit of a theme this season – Gallifrey, Orphan 55, etc.

• Goran Visnjic is actually Croatian, as was Tesla. That’s... unusually accurate casting.

• Robert Glennister, last seen as Salateen in Caves of Androzani, is having lots of fun playing Thomas Edison as an entirely believable corporate dick, who#s on the side of right and is genuinely horrified when his staff get killed, but still stands in the background looking sulky while the others talk about Tesla's inventions.

• I have never watched SJA so am unmoved by the fact the monster (who let's be honest, is queen of the Racnoss once again) is played by Anjli Mohindra/Rani

• Lot of nice red and green light in the alien ship, but the thing that struck me most about the design is the fact the queen has a mouth full of upside down molars

• I am getting a bit tired of Graham's “folk wisdom learned from working on the buses” bit.