The Doctor Who Review | Season 11 Episode 6

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WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! Welcome back to the Doctor Who Review, where I recap the week’s episode and give some thoughts and opinions on it. Please do not read if you have not seen this week’s episode. There are major spoilers ahead. You have been warned. Check out the rest of the Doctor Who Reviews here.

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Title: Demons of the Punjab

Written by: Vinay Patel

The opening scenes of this week’s episode are in Yas’ home; their grandmother is giving out gifts to the granddaughters (naming Yas the favourite). Yas receives an old broken watch that was given her grandmother by her husband/Yas’ grandfather, way back in the day. Just like many of the companions before her, Yas pleads with the Doctor to just pop back in time to India in the 1950s to see her grandmother as a young woman. Somewhat reluctantly, but ever ready for another adventure, Thirteen agrees and off the three companions go to what ends up being 1947 at the brink of the Pakistan-India partition.

After meeting a young man in a wagon on the road, and a quick encounter with an elderly man on foot, Team TARDIS find Yas’ grandmother and her family, and are weirdly welcomed in (I say weirdly because here we have only Yas who is from that part of the world, and three strangers from England, in clothes which were definitely not of the late 40s no matter where you are in the world). We learn that Yas’ grandmother, Umbreen, is set to be married to Prem, who isn’t Yas’ grandfather, so therefore is likely to be killed off before the episode is concluded. We also learn that Prem’s brother, Manish, is a bit of a loose-canon and who knows what’s going on with him.

And then there are the ‘monsters’ of the episode, which the team see killing the elderly man they previously saw on the road. From there, the Doctor finds out that they are Vajarians, and they have telepathic abilities that give the Doctor a super bad migraine, and can teleport people around. They’re pretty dominating creatures, all tall and shiny, deadly assassins which would normally be one of the biggest threats the team has come up against. Normally. But this is 2018 Who and so therefore, they’re not really monsters at all. They’re just watchers, witnesses for those people who would otherwise die alone. A bit grim, but sort of endearing.

The main ‘monster’ in this episode aren’t the Vajarians, but, once again, humans themselves. Manish is one of the first to put a stake in the ground, separating India from Pakistan, separating his family from their homes, and from each other. It doesn’t end well for Prem, who is killed, and for Umbreen, who is left without husband just hours after they marry. Later, back in the TARDIS, Yas asks about her grandmother, and Thirteen confirms that she got away from Indian, and that’s how she ended up in Sheffield, England (of all places).

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My thoughts on Demons of the Punjab

Every week we’re seeing more and more villains who aren’t villains. There are these monsters and evil-doers who seem like they’re there to wreck havoc and destroy nations, conquer worlds or eat people’s brains, but they’re not really. The ‘monsters’ this week could have been taken out of the episode and very little would have changed – India and Pakistan would have still split, Prem would still have died, nothing would have been that different. It’s like the writers of 2018 Who are teasing us with these awesome looking, sounding, and potentially evil-doing villains who aren’t nearly as cool as we hope. Where are they Weeping Angels? The Silence? The Slitheen?!

I understand the new feel of Doctor Who, and I do appreciate the lack of complex plot lines and interweaving, overarching stories that take a lot of brain power to digest; I get it, I do. But I’m missing the scare factor. I’m missing the weird and wonderful monsters of days gone by. While the themes of Season 11 are definitely more the-humans-are-the-monsters kind of vibes, I want a monster who behaves like a monster. Last week’s Pting was getting on the right track, but we’re back in the land of ‘meh’ this week.

Having said all that, the historical or earth-based episodes have always been enjoyable for me, and I especially liked Rosa back in episode 3. It’s a great chance to learn a little more about history (even if it’s been warped a little bit by so-called monsters and time travellers), and get a glimpse into the past. But that’s the trouble with heading back in time; our heroes can’t save the day. They have to let history play out, otherwise the future they’d return to would be completely different. They leave that time having achieved pretty much nothing; the only thing is now Yas knows about her grandmother’s past, and she got to have a nice wee heart-to-heart with Graham.

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Overall

You can probably tell I didn’t love this episode. I was excited for a historical episode again, and to learn a bit more about Yas’ family, but I don’t think we really got enough of it. There was something missing, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the lack of emotion in it? Rosa was so beautiful and tugged at all the heart strings, but Demons of the Pubjab just didn’t do that for me.

I also just have to reiterate the three companions issue again. I’m all for multiple companions, sure. If you’ve been around here for a while then you’ll know that I loved Amy and Rory travelling together with Eleven, and having Bill and Nardole together with Twelve was a blast. But these three? Yeah, it’s too many. In the past (and correct me if I’ve missed somebody), we’ve either had one or two human companions (think Rose, then Rose and Micky, Amy, then Amy and Rory, Donna, Martha, Clara, Bill) or we’ve had a combination of human companions with other species as the ‘other’ companion (think Clara and Missy for a while, or Bill and Nardole, or whenever River Song or Captain Jack Harkness made an (epic) appearance).

Three human companions is too much. I’m not against humans, team, but we’re not as cool as alien species. Having three companions means that most episodes are only about one of them. This week Yas had her spotlight time, meaning that Graham and Ryan were just backseat passengers, with very little development or, dare I say it, worth in general. There are too many companions for them all to have a good shot at being the companion. Does that make sense? There either needs to be one less companion, or two less and a different species. Without the extra layer of an alien (not including Doc) as part of the team, that humour and that miscommunication and that ‘we don’t do that on our planet’ type vibes aren’t there (not that the necessarily have to be there, but it is a lot of fun when they are). It’s like we have all the things for a funny team that are a bit dysfunctional, when all we get is dribs and drabs of some character development over the course of the six episodes so far. There’s not enough time for each companion to get the screen time or the development time they need in order for them to become truly likeable. Right now, any one of them could blow up or get lost in space forever and I wouldn’t care. Harsh, but true.

I’m also kind of waiting on the return of literally any character we’ve met in the past before. Who knows if they’ll show up.

On the whole I didn’t hate the episode, but I feel it was lacking in something (namely monsters who want to eat everyone or something along those lines), and could have been a lot tighter than it was. I don’t tend to rate TV episodes, but if I did, this one would barely be scraping a 6 out of 10 for me. And on that depressing note, I’ll leave you.

(Next week’s episode may be coming to you a bit late, as I’m gallivanting around the country. It’s called Kerblam!)

What did you think of this week’s episode? Am I being too harsh?