strange_complex | New Who 12.6 Praxeus

Yep, another good one. It felt like a productive exploration of what the show can do with a four-person TARDIS team - certainly much more successful in that respect than last week, where the three companions were not-very-subtly side-lined for much of the episode. A multi-thread story conveying a global scale of threat and letting each of the individual characters do something challenging is a much better use of them. Nice to see the climate crisis message being sustained from Orphan 55 too.

The little things: Yaz quietly turning the device Graham was using around through 180 degrees so that he could read it correctly; Graham's man-to-man chat with Jake, helping him to confront profound truths about his relationship with Adam without ever making him feel like he was being pushed into emotional territory he'd obviously designated as off-limits.

The oversights: I felt that the emotional impact of Jamila's death on Gabriela had been all but forgotten by the end of the episode, but that's nothing to poor old Aramu apparently dying on the beach under an onslaught of birds, entirely unnoticed at any point by any of the other characters. I know Doctor Who couldn't function if we lingered over the death of every guest character, but come on! They could at least have expressed some regret over Aramu at the end.

It would obviously also have been nice to have any idea of what's going on with the Ruth-Doctor, or even any sense that the events of last episode had happened - but again, I get how functional filler-episodes work.