Completing the adventures and excitement that follows the Doctor, a great and smart scientist, who travels across time, taking new and different personalities while fighting evils in the world. A new season begins with The Doctor goes in a dangerous mission to save the intelligence agents across the world from the horrible attack.
Doctor Who has always had a tendency towards corridor chases and the Doctor spouting exposition, but here it reached preposterous proportions due to a plot which was so overcomplicated when it should have been straightforward.
[Ed] Hime and director Lee Haven Jones go overboard with ambition, packing in about a season's worth of ideas and only five minutes apiece to execute them all.
There are fantastically wobbly sets, a pitched-battle clearly filmed in a quarry outside Who's Cardiff HQ and, best of all, people in rubber monster suits menacing the Doctor and her trio of sidekicks, Yaz, Ryan and Graham.
"Orphan 55" has all the components of a solid Doctor Who episode... Unfortunately, those pieces never come together into something greater than the sum of their parts. At best, [it] feels like the outline for a better, more nuanced episode.
"Orphan 55" surely won't go down as the weakest episode of season 12, but neither will it be one of the best. The cast is too big and some flawed editing limits its impact, but at least it has its heart very much in the right place.
This week might just raise the bar to its highest. Orphan 55 is not exactly subtle about its climate crisis message, but writer Ed Hime has a blast getting there.
