Doctor Who Series 10 Episode 5 - Oxygen - Review
Starring: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas & Kieran Bew
Written By: Jamie Mathieson
Directed By: Charles Palmer
I've
really wanted to look forward to Oxygen,
as there has been some promising stuff in the promotional material.
The trailers have hinted at a futuristic yet gritty and dangerous
space adventure for the TARDIS crew, and Jamie Mathieson, one of the
show's strongest writers at the moment and who has yet to deliver a
script I can call bad or even average, has returned to pen the
episode. Yet its main concept of spacesuits trying to kill everyone
onboard a space station feels incredibly gimmicky and I didn't think
it would really work. Boy how wrong I was...
Longing
to go on another adventure away from Earth, the Doctor breaks his
oath to guard the Vault once again. Bringing Bill and an angry
Nardole with him, the TARDIS crew respond to a distress call from the
deep-space mining station, Chasm Forge. Only four out of a crew of
forty have survived, as the spacesuits of the other thirty-six have
been ordered to “deactivate” their “organic components”,
turning them into zombies enslaved by their suits' programming. The
only source of oxygen available is in the suits themselves, meaning
the Doctor, Bill and Nardole have only a limited number of breaths
left to save the surviving crew...
While
Oxygen
is
a very good base under siege story on its own, the main concept of
workers in space having to buy their oxygen from the company they
work for, is what really sets it apart. Once again, it's an idea that
has a lot of political and social implications, and while I don't
think you can get away with episodes like this week in week out, I
tend to enjoy it when Doctor
Who offers
its take on politics. Plus given that the show as of late can
sometimes lack a clear purpose, Oxygen
is
another example of Series 10 taking steps to solve this. Capitalizing
on a life necessity like oxygen seems outrageous and it is, but it
gets you thinking about where we should draw the line. We already pay
for other life necessities. We have to pay for food and drink in
shops, we have to pay water bills and pay for gas for warmth – all
of these are necessities, so why shouldn't we pay for oxygen? The
idea is outrageous, but it's exactly the kind of thing I can imagine
a futuristic space corporation doing when I stop to think about it.
It's a thought-provoking and incredibly well-realized piece of
political satire, with the Doctor himself summing things up towards
the end of the episode: “Like
every worker everywhere, we're fighting the suits.”
- an all too true reality. To put the cherry on the cake, while I
don't want to spoil Oxygen's
resolution, I will say that it was very, very nicely handled and ties
really well into the episode's themes of capitalism and corporatism.
But
as I've said, alongside this political subtext is a brutal and
unforgiving setting which places our characters in a situation that
feels genuinely dangerous. Within seconds of starting, the Doctor not
only pleases Trekkies by quoting possibly the most famous line from
Star Trek, but also starts to hint at how this episode makes
space a dangerous place again. He's perfectly right when he talks of
how sci-fi in general can take the bubbles of air and little pockets
of protection that we put in space for granted. The Doctor tells us
that we can forget the dangers of space – I wonder if this is also
a subtle jab at how safe Doctor Who itself had become before
Series 10? Jamie Mathieson really gives us a bleak and hopeless
set-up here, going as far as to make the brilliant move of getting
rid of the Doctor's toys – he has no TARDIS, no sonic screwdriver,
and loses even more as the episode goes on. This is further reflected
in the fact that there's little to no cockiness, lame jokes or just
plain bulls*** this week, and even when Bill pleads with the Doctor
to tell her a joke before he has to leave her in mortal danger, he
doesn't. The deadly and hopeless outlook goes hand in hand with the
spacesuits that contain walking corpses: this week's main threat. The
spacesuits are our first genuine through and through villain of the
series, after the Heather water creature, the Vardy, the sea snake
and the Landlord all proved to be just misunderstood. After four
weeks of this, I'm glad to finally have a proper bad guy, and to see
the suits marching (in a way very reminiscent of the Cybermen)
through the station and is such an ordered, unrelenting and
unstoppable way really raises the stakes.
In
fact, Oxygen has such a strong sense of threat that the
stakes are taken higher than they've been all series. At one point,
Bill nearly ends up dying of oxygen starvation in the vacuum of
space. It's certainly a standout scene, and terrifying in the way
it's put together. Pearl Mackie's incredible performance, the ice
shown developing on her face, the blurry scenes of the Doctor and the
others trying desperately to save her, the loss of all sound apart
from that of her heartbeat, and her gradual loss of vision – it's
just a phenomenal moment. (Skip ahead now to the next paragraph to
avoid spoilers!) The fact that Bill is only saved by the Doctor
giving her his helmet, has severe knock-on effects for him. The
Doctor ends up exposed to the vacuum of space for so long that he
loses his sight for the last fifteen minutes of the episode. It's
completely unexpected and shocking as we've never seen anything like
this before in Doctor Who, not to mention it's a risky but
successful move from Jamie Mathieson to take the Doctor's sight away
after he's already denied him so much. Peter Capaldi's acting shines
as usual, and he never becomes over-the-top or melodramatic when
acting blind. What I loved even more about this twist in events is
that the Doctor isn't able to magically restore his sight at the end
of the episode like he said he would. The revelation that he's still
blind makes for a terrific cliffhanger, and has peaked my
interest in next week's episode Extremis, as to what
direction they plan on taking this in. Hell, Oxygen has
raised the stakes so high that it's bleeding into other episodes. It
gives more weight to the Vault arc, as everything Nardole had been
worried about has now come true and if whatever is in there does
escape, the Doctor isn't in the most able position to stop them.
It's
not possible to talk about everything Oxygen has
to offer without also discussing the quality of its technical
production. This episode features some simply fantastic production
values in almost every area, and at no point are they at a higher
standard then in the pre-titles sequence. The use of such eerie and
haunting music in the opening is really unsettling, while
periodically muting all sound to replicate the silence of space plays
off the familiar but still effective trope of “In space, no-one can
hear you scream”. Together with the amazing use of lighting, it's
like something out of a horror movie, especially when the spacesuits
appear behind their next victim and we see their shadows cast in
front of them. Charles Palmer also returns to direct on the show for
the first time in ten years, and does so with incredible precision
and does a stunning job throughout. It's incredible to think that
such a filmic episode was done in a BBC studio, because scenes such as
the pre-titles sequence wouldn't feel out of place in a Hollywood
film. The rustic and industrial look of Chasm Forge sits nicely with
the ever-looming sense of danger and threat, while the make-up used
on the corpses inside the spacesuits can be really uncomfortable to
look at. Especially on the first one the TARDIS crew encounter, the
make-up is horrifying, especially the huge glassy eyes and its veiny
blackened skin.
So
it would appear Oxygen has
all the makings of a modern day classic, but is there anything it
gets wrong? Well several people have argued that our supporting cast
this week aren't particularly well-developed or interesting
characters. Ordinarily I would agree, but in this particular case, I
think they were more intended as serviceable victims rather than
anyone to get invested in. Personally a bigger problem for me was a
certain revelation in the third act that didn't work all that well.
Throughout the episode, the characters claim that it was a hack that
causes the spacesuits to malfunction and “deactivate” their
“organic components”, but towards the end, the Doctor deduces it
wasn't a hack but just business as usual. The episode seems to treat
this as some grand reveal, but it really isn't. From the start I'd
thought it had been the company that ordered this – after all, I
doubt any company that's willing to monetize oxygen would stop at
killing off their workers when they become unproductive. Oxygen
is also the first episode to
bring Nardole off Earth with the Doctor and Bill in the TARDIS, and
the results are … mixed. On the bright side, he is being treated
like an actual character for the first time, rather than comic
relief, but he again has very little to do here other than crack
jokes, and with the exception of the “Some of my best
friends are blue-ish” line,
many of them fail to make me laugh, especially the whole Velma thing.
(Spoiler Warning!) Lastly,
there was also the problem of how to solve Bill's “death” when
she is “deactivated” by the suits. It was another shocking and
well-staged sequence when it happened, and while the resolution to it
makes sense, it still doesn't stop it from feeling underwhelming.
I've
seen other reviews of Oxygen that
have hailed it as a new classic, and while I wouldn't go quite that
far, I'm honestly not far off. There's a huge amount to enjoy in
Oxygen,
and it's another triumph of
a script from Jamie Mathieson (Chibnall, please keep both him and
Sarah Dollard on the writing crew!). Visually stunning, rich in
inventive concepts and ideas, and with a constant sense of menace and
dread throughout, Oxygen is
one fine addition to what I imagine will be a very solid and
enjoyable Series 10.
Oxygen
8/10