Doctor Who Series 12 First Impressions: Episode 3 (Orphan 55)

Ed Hime. You beautiful messy bastard. You're two for two. Spot on.

This is the future liberals don't want.

So yeah, we get to talk about Orphan 55 now! In the 90 minutes between the episode's end and me going to bed, I saw... a fair few takes. Most of them, a lot of them actually, calling this a goddamned mess. I don't think I can go quite that far. Nope, sorry. Is it messy? Yeah, a little, if we're being honest. The whole Chibnall-era aesthetic of a wild ride roller coaster with everything and the kitchen sink tossed in along the way is definitely still here, and the episode blasts through several different concepts/themes/ideas before eventually settling on something to anchor all this together... or attempt to, anyway. This is where the divisiveness comes in. If that anchor doesn't sell you, if you find it wanting in some way, then the whole ride is just a bunch of half-baked appetizers hurled into your face at 80 miles per hour with an ending that looks directly into the camera and preaches politics at you. You know what? I can just about see it from that perspective. I'm going to do my best to touch on the elements of the ride before getting into that political anchor of a main theme, but I have a feeling it may end up like the Spyfall Part Two writeup. There, after about three or four times of saying something to the effect of "Well this was part of the episode and was... okay... I guess...", I kind of just threw up my hands and talked about what I actually wanted to talk about. This episode is better than Spyfall Part Two for me. Why? Because the part I really want to talk about in Orphan 55 is better than the part I really wanted to talk about in Spyfall Part Two. Before we get there, I will do my very best to shotgun you through the ride the episode takes us, and the concepts left behind that still kind of resonate. Here's words on Orphan 55, and why I loved it. Yes. I loved it. I will bear the cross of being an easily-impressed contrarian if I must, but fuck it. I loved it. Here's why.



Tranquility Spa! Hell of a place! And then it becomes hell. The speed and intensity at which Tranquility Spa becomes absolute shit and overrun with Doctor Who monsters can give one whiplash. We're back down to a 45-minute episode for some reason, and that just makes everything a little faster and less defined than it might be with a 50-minute slot. One hopes for an extended edit or something on the Blu-Ray. Still, the Doctor and pals barely have time to settle down for their vacation before the alarm bells sound. I do, however, like the quick explanation and inclusion of the hopper virus. It's basically Mr. Chekov setting his gun on the mantle, but it's a bonkers sci-fi concept and a great bit of comedy for Tosin Cole. Then we get to the monsters themselves, and well holy shit. They're actually quite spooky! The direction for this bit keeps them mostly obscured, showing parts of the monsters and really amping up the spooky vibe. These creatures, the Dregs? Thinking on it here as I write, they may actually be the spookiest alien designs the Whittaker era has served up so far. The Kasaavin were close and were spooky by being unknowable light beam things, but as far as traditional scary monster things go? The Dregs are excellent design. I was actually thinking we were going to get an I Am Legend-style twist where the colonists behind Tranquility Spa were the antagonists, and the Dregs were only attacking them to survive or something. What we got was quite different, but let's talk about the Dregs and the colonists for a bit.


Tranquility Spa's a big holodeck/colony dome on the planet Orphan 55, an uninhabitable dead zone that these people are hoping to make livable. Well, the Dregs have learned to adapt... and that name choice is a thing. The Dregs. A name with connotations of lower class, of disposable nature. Seeing the bit where the armored vehicle is out looking for old man Benni, and its driver only continues on when his girlfriend pays up, only reinforces this idea of class and wealth and put that I Am Legend thought into my head. Hmm, I thought. Maybe this story is flirting with some sort of political message. How interesting! Before we can ponder that too much, more fun with the Dregs. They're apex predators, says the Doctor, perfectly adapted to the hell world outside. They also do some fuckery involving Benni that... well, here's where things arguably stumble. There's an ambiguity here. Are the Dregs dragging a wounded Benni off to play with their prey, or are they such good predators that they're mimicking him to lure the others out? The episode never says, though there's enough evidence to suggest A. Still, no explanation is given. It's all part of the ride and we move on from that, but this is what I mean when I say a lot of people found this half-baked. It hits on a horrific concept, but it's going at such a breakneck speed with about six other themes and concepts ready to go in the next 20 minutes that it doesn't explore this. Even some of those themes don't get as much breathing room as they could have, like the theme of family. We have three familial pairs in this episode, and the episode's doing something with them. Graham and Ryan we know of course, but we also have the green-haired mechanic and his green-haired son who is a better mechanic than he is but his dad doesn't want to admit it? Or something to that effect? Far more intriguing to me are Bella and Kane. Kane, having built up Tranquility Spa and neglecting her family to ensure her daughter has a luxurious birthright to inherit one day, and Bella resenting the fact that her mom wasn't around and deciding to blow Tranquility Spa the fuck up. Which, you know, I appreciate the radical anarchy of that. It seemed like they were setting this up as the big political twist, about colonialism and neglectfulness and resentment and other stuff. Okay, sure, I thought. I can roll with that. Sounds like a fun concept, right?


OH MY GOD, I WAS WRONG! IT WAS EARTH, ALL ALONG!!! This shit is wild. Partly because, hours before broadcast, I was watching a classic Doctor Who story. A little ditty called "The Mysterious Planet" featuring Colin Baker where, ten minutes in, we discover the titular Mysterious Planet that has been ruined by solar flares is actually Earth. Orphan 55 is Earth, and the Dregs are actually the mutated/evolved remnants of humanity that have adapted to survive. They even breathe carbon dioxide and exhale pure oxygen. What horrible tragedy befell Earth to leave it as a dessicated husk with Dregs running around? IT WAS CLIMATE CHANGE! IT WAS CLIMATE CHANGE THE WHOLE TIME! There's your fucking anchor, kids! This motherfucker's a topical hot-button political issues story once you get to the end of the wild ride with those other half-baked concepts! Let's shotgun through the resolution. There's some wild technobabble involving the green-haired mechanics and using Chekov's Hopper Virus to "infect" their teleport pad in such a way as to make it work again, and Bella and Kane end up fighting off the rest of the Dregs together while the Doctor and company warp back to the TARDIS. (Quite why the Doctor can't just zoom the TARDIS back to Orphan 55 to save them right after is never explained, and this is sure to be a bee in the bonnet for some.) Then we get to our ending, and... My god. The brass balls on Ed Hime. The Doctor, before explaining that the hell world of Orphan 55 is but one possible future (and speaking of bees in the bonnet, this explanation of time travel is going to stick in some people's craws), basically gives a speech to camera about how this shit isn't set in stone and humanity can fix it. This shit is not inevitable. You can do something about it. Do something about it. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, YOU FUCKS. It is absolutely political, and holy fuck I love it. As messy and as undercooked as some of the myriad concepts and themes Hime throws into the story to give us a wild ride, I can't not love an episode with an ending message of "DO SOMETHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE OR WE'RE ALL FUCKING FUCKED, YOU FUCKS!". It's hopeful in just the right ways. The Chibnall era has been... shall we say, obstinate when it comes to the idea of changing the past. One need only look at stuff like Rosa, Demons Of The Punjab, or Spyfall Part Two to see that. If it had offered Orphan 55 as an inevitability, something that couldn't be changed and wasn't worth trying to due to the unmoving power of History and Fixed Points, this would be a horrifically nihilistic episode. With that speech, with the Doctor saying that she can't fix this but humanity can, it offers a glimmer of hope via a direct call to action aimed at the audience. The Doctor's a made-up TV space alien. You're real, you can do something about it. Do something, or we're fucked. It's Doctor Who as Greta Thunberg. I fucking love it. That's Orphan 55. Is it perfect? God no. Is it messy? God yes. I'm willing to let all that slide. I don't give a shit, because I believe in the message it anchors itself around. I think it's meaningful, it's important, and it had to be said. For that, I loved Orphan 55. Wow. Goddamn, Ed Hime. Goddamn.