Spoilers Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror grade and discussion thread

That's... a leap. The Racnoss weren't space scavenging pirates iirc, and at this point in the timeline are supposed to be dormant. I think the skithra queen's visual similarity to the empress of the racnoss was a deliberate, knowing nod, even a hint that the two species were distantly related, but they trusted the audience to not need it spelt out to them because leaving some things ambiguous is fun for the audience and also it wouldn't have served this story in any way whatsoever?

 

My mother (mid 70s) had never heard of him either, beyond assuming he was something to do with the cars (as Ryan did), so it's not just the yoof, sadly. He was even mentioned on Taskmaster ffs but maybe she was asleep during Liza Tarbuck's spiel about him.

 

Besides, the Judoon are also a Davies creation...

 

Maybe someone in the know can correct me on this but I'm pretty sure Davies' contract wasn't a Terry Nation type deal where a species he came up with for one episode would be his intellectual property. I know the BBC is daft but it's not stupid. Ok it is stupid, but it does employ lawyers.

 

Suspect this will be the Chibnall era's epitaph.

Sad that we've pivoted from Moff's "Exciting, energetic, well-acted, convoluted bollocks" to Chib's "Simple stories, drearily told". God, this show needs a bomb under it. Took me three days to watch last week's because the first 30 minutes were so fucking boring

 

Oh well, I just put it there.

 

I got the impression thy were not a time traveling species and their interstellar capabilities had failed. So they had to "settle" for the best who could be found at that time, which proved to be Tesla because he actually answered the signal from Mars.

Maybe they had no luck waking up any Ice Warriors and couldn't work out the booty traps to the Pyramids of Mars.

 

Wow, I found this dull as hell but I see it was pretty well received so maybe I'll give it another go sometime see if my mood is any better.

"We look for things that make us go."

 

Nope, just the viewing figures. I am aware the landscape has changed. Just find yet another eighties echo funny (along with changed timeslot, multicoloured costumes etc.)

Tbh, satellite TV was already eating at the viewing habits then, not to mention the proto iPlayer that was called ‘taping it cos mum wants to watch corrie’.

 

Ah yes. Whilst I hated that and that episode, I would say she was a few levels above a talking sex toy.m

 

I’ll be honest, at first it made sense of the Silurian weapon if they had dug their way up from below.
And mars, as we know, is pretty much someone else territory.

Feels like there was some jinks in production, but this is such an improvement over last week I will not bother thinking too hard about it.

 

I thought the Doctor stole the TARDIS - not invented it. She did nothing to dissuade Tesla and Edison of that notion or maybe I missed it.

 

Didn't anyone else immediately say "the Pakled"? They steal things to make them go, then kidnap an engineer to fix it.

The business of only women having their minds wiped needs a thread to itself, but all sorts of thoughts. From women being more likely to end up in a lunatic asylum if they say anything, to them having possible greater influence if they are allowed to retain knowledge. Tesla was already deemed mad, what's one more episode of lunacy?

 

This was easily better than last week, but again it didn't particularly grab me. It was intriguing enough, though, and well-executed.

 

As I recall, the women were brought to the future so gained some knowledge of it. Neither Tesla nor Edison gained any knowledge of the future from their adventure with the Doctor.

 

One can compare the quality of stories, execution and performances, however.

 

Thoroughly enjoyable. Good guest stars, good pace, one of the best eps for Jodie thus far, fun if, as others have mentioned, somewhat Racnoss-like villainous aliens. Basically, it did the simple Dr Who things well. I do have to wonder how all of Edison's staff being wiped out seems to have caused not so much as a raised eyebrow, but maybe that's just me.

Hopefully Orphan 55 was a case of getting the weakest stuff out of the way early on. Bring on the Judoon!

 

It's funny. I just listened to an episode of a podcast called Throughline a few weeks ago that, in part, talked about Tesla and Edison's AC/DC feud and how it led to the current (pun not intended) state of the electrical grids in the contiguous United States.

Also, my rating went from 1 last week to 10 this week. So, there's that.