Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (2018) - Review

Here we are then. Ten weeks later and Doctor Who's eleventh / thirty-seventh series has reached an end in 'The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos'...and everyone seems a bit disappointed with it.

To be fair, this episode isn't really the sort of series finale we've been used to from Doctor Who in recent years. We expect a whole army of Daleks, or Daleks vs Cybermen, or the Master, or Davros and the Daleks, or the Daleks teaming up with the Doctor's other foes, or the Master/Missy teaming up with the Cybermen, or the Master, Missy and the Cybermen, or...hang on, this is feeling a bit repetitive somehow. It makes sense for Chris Chibnall to re-work the finale into a conclusion for its characters. Ryan and Graham confront Tim Shaw (who teleported away in Episode 1), and grow closer because of it. Graham's determination to kill Tim Shaw is very much the crux of the episode, but his decision not to felt like a key development in his shared arc with Ryan, whom he has finally grown closer to. It's a really nice way to end off that story-line.

But then we reach the Doctor and Yaz, and...well, they've not really developed. Jodie has (understandably) spent the whole series growing into the part, while Yaz has just never had enough focus to get any kind of character development to begin with. I like Yaz, and Mandip Gill is great in the role, but I'm glad she's staying on for the next series to (hopefully) get some more focus. They had very little investment in the Tim Shaw side of the plot, but instead were with the Ux - an interesting concept bottled-down to two rather flat characters. I wouldn't mind so much if the episode didn't keep highlighting their importance. A whole load of new Who lore was condensed into brief exposition dumps, and then left rather awkwardly at the end. Mark Addy too had very little to do in the episode, and he felt a little perfunctory for my liking. Oh, and Tim Shaw's just evil, which is refreshingly simple, but he's hardly a great villain.

I think the main problem with 'The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos' was that it didn't really resolve the leftover threads from the series. It alluded to some, with nine distress calls, the robots from 'The Ghost Monument' and Tim Shaw from 'The Woman Who Fell to Earth', but I was expecting this episode to serve as a proper sequel to 'The Ghost Monument'. Perhaps Ranskoor Av Kolos would become Desolation? Perhaps we'd get to see what happened to the scientists who created the Stenza's weapons? Perhaps we'd even get to meet the Stenza army? But alas no such luck.

As it is, 'The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos' is fine, but it highlights how by-the-numbers Series 11 has been as a whole. I've enjoyed the series, but it's been playing it safe. I hope that Series 12 actually pushes the overall narrative further and that we get to see more leftover elements explored, more character development for Yaz, and more of an ongoing story-line. The lack of cliff-hangers this series has definitely been felt. For the time being though, we'll just have to wait for the return of the Daleks - uh...I mean, the mysterious warrior race - in the New Year's Day special, 'Resolution'.