The Tsuranga Conundrum

Chapter The 126th, an exciting adventure with Holby City in Space.

Plot:

The Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham wake up after an accident aboard a hospital spaceship in the 67th century, travelling by auto-pilot through deep space. There are only two staff aboard - experienced medic Astos, and his nervous rookie assistant, Mabli - and no other crew. The other patients aboard are a war hero pilot, Eve Cicero, who's lying about how serious her illness is; she's accompanied by her engineer brother Durkas and her android consort Ronan. Also, there's a pregnant male Gifftan, Yoss, who's not confident about becoming a dad. A hardy little critter called a Pting breaches the ship's shields, jettisons the escape pods (including one with Astos in it), and starts to eat the hull. Ptings don't eat people, but they eat everything else and can't be stopped easily as they don't need oxygen, are too fast to catch, and too toxic to touch. The ship can't go onto manual or deviate from its planned course without activating automatic anti-hijack systems that will blow it up. Unless they can get to safety fast, or get the Pting off the ship, there won't be a ship left.

Despite still recovering from her injuries, the Doctor has to take charge. She inspires everyone to pool their resources: Eve pilots the ship on a short cut through an asteroid field using her brother's lashed-up controls, with a false signal being sent back to base thanks to the Doctor. Yaz and Ronan protect the ship's power supply from the Pting. Mabli, Graham and Ryan help deliver Yoss's baby. The Doctor realises that they've got the Pting all wrong: it isn't hostile per se, it just wants to consume all the energy the ship is radiating. She deliberately activates the anti-hijack bomb, extracts it from its housing and puts it near an airlock. The Pting is attracted by its energy, and gulps the bomb down just as it's exploding, absorbing all the energy. The Doctor ejects the momentarily sated beastie into space. The strain of piloting suffering from her previously undisclosed serious illness does for Eve. Everyone mourns her, and Yoss decides to keep his baby.

Context:

It was only recently, when the box set came out a few months ago, that I watched this story with some of the family; so, when it came up the other day randomly as the next story for the blog, I decided to watch it on my own. My original plan was to try something I'd not done before and blog a Doctor Who story while drunk. I was out one evening catching up with some friends at the pub, and when I returned everyone else had retired for the night. I popped on the Blu-ray and settled down on the sofa with a cheeky additional glass of wine and my notepad and pen. I lasted less than ten minutes before falling asleep, the wine half drunk beside me and some vague snail trails of ink on my pad in lieu of notes. I put this lethargy down to my age and the earlier quaffed beers, rather than anything to do with the story necessarily. At the weekend, I was on a trip away, so downloaded the story from the iplayer, but never got a chance to watch it (with or without booze). The following Monday, I was having a lunchtime walk round the park next to my place of work, and - as the episode was still stored on my phone - tried another new way to view. I stuck it on, stuck my headphones on, and watched it on my walk. It's probably not something I'll do again, to be honest - glancing at a tiny smartphone screen while still having to look where I'm going to avoid hitting a tree can make it hard to appreciate dramatic nuance. But, it was sort of apt: The Tsuranga Conundrum is full of scenes of characters walking briskly with purpose, just like I was.

 

First-time round:

Watched live on it's first BBC1 broadcast. This was a period where the youngest (girl of 7), wouldn't watch at all, after having got freaked out by Tzim-Sha in The Woman Who Fell to Earth. Middle child (boy of 9) also sat this one out, as he'd had a nightmare after watching Arachnids in the UK, poor thing. So, we left them watching something else downstairs, and I watched with the Better Half and eldest child (boy of 13) on a laptop in a bedroom. After having watched, we were sure that the younger two would be fine with it. A few days later, middle child caught up, really enjoying it. My daughter still wouldn't risk it, though; but, this was one of the stories from the series she caught up with later when the Blu-ray box set came out. 

Reaction:

With a little distance, and having spoken to a number of fan friends (albeit not necessarily a representative sample, but they'll have to do), the consensus on the most recent series of Doctor Who is that Jodie was great, but the stories were a bit boring. Based on the only hard data available (more on this later) The Tsuranga Conundrum would seem to be the epitome of that. It's a mid-season episode without any major audience hook (unlike, say, the following story Demons of the Punjab, which covers some less than familiar modern history, and invokes some strong emotions for one of the regular cast) - it's perhaps Doctor Who by the numbers: a runaround on a spaceship. Going in, I had fallen back on this general view, of this specific story, if not the series as a whole; but, then - even with a sub-optimal viewing experience - I was whisked along with the narrative. It looks excellent - sleek, futuristic production design - and it moves fast, keeping me engaged. And I'm sure that I felt so at the time too.

So, why did it fail to 'touch the sides' of my memory, once it was done. It might be that the featured monster is not so monstrous. In fact, from most angles, the Pting is cute; from some angles, even a bit silly. The series has done cute but nonetheless deadly creatures before on occasion, and done silly ones (usually inadvertently) more often, but they are usually still memorable. Nobody forgets the (rather cuddly) Taran Wood Beast in The Androids of Tara, for example. So, that can't be it. In general, the threat isn't very well realised or tangible in this story. This is despite the sets being some of the best ever featured in the series: it feels like a real ship being bombarded by fake attacks. It doesn't help that the gremlin in the works is CGI, but anyway things are a little too clean - not dark and explosive and desperate enough. You don't feel it. Again, though, Tsuranga isn't exactly unique in Doctor Who history for not quite visualising the action of a script effectively.

It's the characters, then? They do look like they've been taken from stock, specifically the stock of guest characters used for the BBC's two hospital-based continuing dramas, Holby City and Casualty. Each with a medical condition that echoes or complicates their emotional condition, or that parallels a drama for one of the regulars. It's textbook. The presence in the cast of Suzanne Packer, who was a regular on Casualty for 12 years, adds to the feeling. Even that's not necessarily a problem, though: those shows deliver decent plots with dramatic weight on a weekly basis, and The Tsuranga Conundrum has some good character moments, for guests and regulars alike. So, what is it it then? I think it's that everyone's just a bit too nice. Drama is conflict. You know that, everyone knows that. It's boring to even spell it out. But, though there's a bit of low-level interpersonal conflict at the start, once the Pting hits the fan, everyone works together calmly and effectively until they're safe. That might just work if the threat from without was darker and more explosive and more desperate, but it's not. So, although the story is very well made to the extent you don't even necessarily twig this as you watch, you are just seeing a plan run like clockwork without a hitch. Even the Pting is nice.

I believe I'm right in remembering (though, to warn you, I did a quick google and citation needed) that Russell T Davies wrote Midnight (where a group of characters are in a high pressure situation and turn on one another) as a reaction against his previous script Voyage of the Damned (where a group of characters are in a high pressure situation and help one another). He'd felt that the earlier story wasn't necessarily representative of how humans behave under pressure. But, even in Voyage of the Damned, there's one selfish bounder (who survives) and a terrible death toll to take the edge off the over-optimistic overtones. And it was, lest we forget, just a fluffy runaround for Christmas Day. The Tsuranga Conundrum needed a little more dirt under its fingernails, if it was ever to leave a lasting impression. For one night only, though, everything was nice. It feels churlish, in the times we're living in, to be too critical of that.

Connectivity: 

Very similar story title structure: The Something Dilemma, The Something Conundrum. Also, similar in that these titles aren't massively aligned to the content of the story to which they are attached. Is there any dilemma in The Twin Dilemma? And there isn't much of a conundrum here either - it's intended to be a race against the clock actioner, so there isn't much in the way of mystery. Both stories have also come bottom of a viewer poll - see next section for more details.

Deeper Thoughts:

Poll to Poll. Doctor Who Magazine runs an annual Season Survey, a chance for the readership to vote for their favourite of that year's stories, and other merchandise / tat. I have never voted, but I normally cast an eye over it every year: I don't always agree with the placings, but nothing much surprises me. Except this year. The results of the latest survey were published recently in DWM 539, which made me beg the question: why does everyone hate Chris Chibnall's writing so much? In the eras of the previous showrunners, their scripts - which would always include the opener and finale and probably a big tent-pole story in the middle - would get high marks, often topping the best story chart for that year. It would be an understatement to say that Chibnall's stories this year did not exactly emulate that pattern. He did at least have a co-writing credit on the poll winner, Rosa, but that story really feels like it belongs to the other credited writer Malorie Backman first and foremost. Four of his remaining six scripts take up the four bottom places of the list. This seems a little unfair to me. It feels like he's been punished - I don't know why: maybe for writing some slightly duff episodes in previous years, or for criticising 80s Who on TV feedback show Open Air back when he was an adolescent. 

The other two of his stories not languishing at the bottom of the hit parade are Resolution (at number 4 of 11, aided by the inclusion of Skaro's finest, no doubt) and The Woman Who Fell to Earth (at number 6, bolstered by a lot of novelty value, being our first glimpse of the new Doctor). I would have placed both higher. In fact, on reflection, I think that Resolution is probably number one for me, for managing - after 50+ years - to do something original with the Daleks. Then Rosa, then Kerblam! (second in the poll), then It Takes You Away, in all it's insane majesty (5th in the poll), then Woman / Earth. I'm making space at the top by bumping down Demons of the Punjab (which came third in the survey). It's not that I didn't enjoy it, and - please believe me - it's not because of any Little Englander 'how dare they criticise my Empire' bollocks (you'd think this wouldn't need to be said, but some people were spouting such rubbish online after it aired). No, it's because it was pointed out to me that my hero and her friends are passive bystanders in the plot: they don't influence proceedings one jot. Once you've seen that, you can't unsee it. In fact, I'd probably put Arachnids in the UK in 6th place and Demons 7th. I know, I know - I'm putting a monster mash with a little cocking of the snook at Trump over a beautiful and heart-rending tale of a family torn apart by history. Relative positioning is hard, but I can't lie about what I like.

I realise that despite coming to praise and not to bury, I still have three of Chibnall's stories in my bottom four. It's hard, he wrote so many, and inspired the other writers to do very well with their single scripts. I'd still bump up one a few places, though. The Tsuranga Conudrum came bottom of this year's poll. This really doesn't sit well with me. It has it's flaws, as I've laid out above, but it doesn't feel like it deserves the wooden spoon. There's too many nasty people thriving for me to demote something where everyone in it is nice. I'd put it at number 9, one below The Ghost Monument. That leaves The Witchfinders and The Battle of Thingummy Whatsit in joint last place. Now I feel bad about that, because they both had their moments. Perhaps this is why I never bother to enter this survey, year on year - it's just too hard.

In Summary:

Everyone's nice! Just this once, Rose, everyone's nice!!!!