Praxeus: Rank - 286

              Praxeus

(Season 12, Dr 13 with Graham Ryan and Yaz,  2/2/2020, producer/showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writers: Pete McTighe and Chris Chibnall, director: Jamie Magnus Stone)

Rank: 286

Plastic not fantastic! A party political broadcast on behalf of climate change combined with a properly scary, moody story...

It's quite eerie in retrospect how much this episode, made in 2019 and broadcast in Feb 2020, foreshadowed covid and perfectly imagines an unsettled world suffering from an unseen virus caused by a climate change and made worse by disinformation. Now this is Dr Who we're talking about so the virus in the microplastics that litter our planet are being used to evil ends by an alien mastermind but the principle's much the same. It's legitimately scary too in a way that most of the Chibnall era isn't, with everyone taking this story seriously for once. Best of all there are some action scenes in between the dialogue - ones that are integral to the plot too. It just...doesn't feel like DW somehow. It's uncharacteristically joke-free and sombre, the use of voiceovers is (largely) new and the alien might as well have been Human given that they look just like 'us'. There was an outcry at the time about DW doing a story about climate change, presumably from people who'd never seen 'The Green Death' in 1973. It feels like exactly the sort of thing DW should have been doing. I just wish it felt more like DW when it was doing it, with everyone acting oddly out of character.

Positives + It's one of those rare DW stories set on earth but outside Britain, with some clever location filming in South Africa standing in for all sorts of countries and giving this episode real scope and makes the threat feel worldwide.

Negatives - Unfortunately, while worthy, it goes way overboard at times and is DW at its preachiest, with some scenes unwatchable. Even when it's right I hate the way Chibnall era DW assumes that I'm part o the 'problem' not the 'solution'.