CONTAINS SPOILERS

Since Doctor Who crashed back on our Christmas TV schedules in 2005 with tenth Doctor David Tennent’s maiden voyage in The Christmas Invasion, the festive tradition of Christmas Who’s sat nicely alongside our turkey and Quality Street on the 25^th December. That was until Chris Chibnall took over and like an uncle who says you’re too old for Christmas presents, moved the special episode to New Year’s Day, when the leftovers are congealing in the fridge and the fear of returning to work is palpable. This year’s offering, Eve of the Daleks, is Chibnall’s third Dalek themed New Year episode completing a supposed trilogy of Dalek outings but with the Flux barely digested, did this adventure do anything to ease that nasty hangover?

While previous Christmas specials slavishly pandered to the festive period, even when it became obvious it was being filmed in sunny July, Chibnall and Thirteen’s new year outings don’t appear to be similarly hampered, so it was interesting to see this episode take place on New Years. We open at the aptly named Elf Storage Unit and meet owner Sarah played by Ashling Bea. An AWOL staff member means she must cover the unit for midnight on New Year’s Eve, much to the pleasure of customer Nick (Adjani Salmon) who seemingly enjoys storing old girlfriends’ possessions at strange times of the night. Meanwhile, the Doctor has decided following the events of the Flux to ‘reset’ the Tardis and unwittingly does two things; lands in the basement of the Elf Storage Unit as opposed to the alien beach resort she promised and secondly triggers a time loop which would be largely uneventful was it not for the executioner Daleks in the building.

Mike is dispatched first, and Sarah’s mother (a phone screen bound and criminally underused Pauline McLynn) rings her to complain about Sarah being single and phone lines being blocked at midnight just before being similarly blasted herself. Discovered by the Doctor, Yaz and Dan, they too meet a similar fate at the hands of a Dalek and are blasted back to 6 minutes earlier, stepping out of a resetting Tardis. All involved remember the prior loop and learn from it the Daleks right away having made themselves invulnerable to the Doctors sonic after their last run-in. During each cycle, we tour the storage unit and find out more about Sarah and Mike, destined to be together as well as the missing staff member who has been stockpiling tinned beans and fireworks. Obvious feelings of love abound, as Mike shares his feelings of devotion with Sarah, Dan calls Yaz out on her feelings towards the Doctor. After a tender scene with Yaz finally admitting to Dan and herself that she has these feelings, Dan follows up by outing Yaz to the Doctor, telling her about Yaz’s undisclosed feelings. Finally using their prior loop knowledge, the team band together to fool the Daleks into being in the wrong place at the wrong time and blow them and the storage unit sky high, breaking the loop and freeing the now loved up Sarah and Mike. The Tardis team enter a shiny new console room, the reset acting like a spring clean and as they jet off to what’s left of the galaxy, Sarah and Mike jet off to travel the world, with her mother’s blessing.

Ashling Bea saved this episode. To say the addition of the Irish comedian was a breath of fresh air would be an understatement – here we have a very competent comedic actor who brings a natural feeling to every scene she’s in (and that’s most scenes) with some fantastic ad libs on a largely dry script and it made me realize just how underdeveloped the characters we’ve become accustomed to are. It was like watching a real-life person walk circles around cardboard cutouts. Script issues peppered this episode – the Doctor had multiple obvious exposition dumps, sometimes framed as thinking out loud, sometimes just straight up explaining the plot to the audience. Chibnall loves confined spaces and a countdown (see series 4’s clunker ‘42’) and so was in familiar territory here, but the quirk of people not reviving if they die at certain times introduced mid-episode was explained and then strangely abandoned – what would have been more effective may have been people being required to not be killed by the Dalek’s after their original time of death – everyone dying in each loop bar the last one took any jeopardy that we would genuinely lose someone out of the equation. Dan’s outing of Yaz felt all sort’s of wrong. I understand the thinking behind this – Dan had lost Diane following the events of the Flux having not acted on his feelings early enough (we never actually saw this hesitancy) and he perhaps misguidedly thinks that the Doctor can reciprocate Yaz’s feelings, as opposed to opening a familiar can of worms for the TimeLord.

This troubling moment aside, we’re no strangers to companions having feelings for the Doctor in NuWho, even seeing ‘same sex’ attraction between Captain Jack and the Doctor, but those feelings can never fully be returned which is why Dan’s intervention only brings misery to all involved and spells the beginning of the end of Yaz’s time in the Tardis. To say this is unenjoyable would be wrong, it’s the strongest Dalek new year episode and one likely to appeal to new viewers, but I think that rests with the performance of Bea and Salmon as opposed to our regulars and as they appear to be one-off guest stars, it’s unlikely we’ll see them again.

A few mentions aside, the looming shadow that is the Flux series were largely ignored and as the Tardis spun off into the blue sky, I have a sneaking suspicion we the audience might be expected to forget the ramifications of the series unless individual events serve the purpose of the story. If that’s the case then I’m confident the new boss will draw a line under this era and reboot in 2023, hopefully breaking this bad storytelling loop.

Graham does weekly deep dives of Classic Doctor Who on our Patreon

DOCTOR WHO Series 13 – Eve of the Daleks