After last week's disastrous '
Orphan 55',
Doctor Who returns to form this week with '
Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror', and with a name like that, you can expect some historically inaccurate pulpy sci-fi fun, which the episode provides in spades. In fact, the word "fun" is the best adjective for this episode, as it manages to tackle a rather by-the-numbers alien story with a lovely history lesson on Nikola Tesla (
Goran Visnijic), courtesy of the Doctor (
Jodie Whittaker) fan-girling out throughout the episode. '
Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror' put me in mind of stories like '
The Unquiet Dead' or '
The Unicorn and the Wasp', in which the Doctor meets a prominent historical figure, gushes about them for ages and then teams up with them to fight a surprisingly appropriate alien menace. I didn't realise how much I'd missed these kinds of episodes, and whilst I appreciated the more mature '
Rosa' and '
Demons of the Punjab' last series, they're episodes I struggle to want to revisit, mostly due to just how tragic they really are. '
Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror', however, is an episode I can imagine sticking on with a cup of tea on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
The episode is admittedly not without its faults though. The Skithra felt quite generic, and there was a clear design disconnect between the CGI scorpions and the Skithra Queen (played by
The Sarah Jane Adventures alumni
Anjli Mohindra), which I found oddly distracting. There's virtually no similarities beyond the scorpion-like tail, which just seems odd from a design perspective. Saying that, I do like the idea behind the Skithra, that they are scavengers who use other races' inventions to their own ends instead of creating things themselves, and the episode nicely parallels this with Tesla's rival Thomas Edison (
Robert Glenister). The Skithra don't really seem to have "a thing" per say, which I appreciate is partly the point of them, but they seem to be able to do whatever the script demands of them, whether it be disguising themselves as other characters, using Silurian blasters (even though they have laser tails apparently) and shooting people with energy blasts (again, why do they need Silurian blasters?) at random intervals. First-time
Who writer
Nina Metivier seems to have random ideas about the Skithra rather than a full understanding of who they are, what their "thing" is and what they can do, but when you have nearly 60 years' worth of
Doctor Who monsters, its difficult to make yours' unique.
Metivier's script feels tight, focused and fits well into the fifty-minute timeslot, unlike last week's episode. There's no awkward exposition like in
Chris Chibnall's scripts, and there's a clear focus on Nikola Tesla as the central character, and exploring his dynamic with the Doctor. I absolutely loved the scenes between the two, as they discover one another's scientific genius. Yeah, sure, the episode really over-eggs just how amazing Tesla is, but it does a great job at putting his work into perspective for younger viewers, even if that means making Edison out to "the bad guy" as it were. Jodie Whittaker and Goran Visnijic are brilliant together, building on each other's excitable energy, and really keeping the pace up throughout the episode. Tesla even has his own "companion" character, who gets to play off Ryan (
Tosin Cole) and Graham (
Bradley Walsh), which nicely splits the characters off into different story-beats. Yaz (
Mandip Gill) gets some nice moments with Tesla, especially when the two are kidnapped by the Skithra, and even with Edison begrudgingly tagging along, the episode's cast never felt too large for the story it was telling - even if I'm not sure we need three companions.
I loved the screechy motif for the Skithra in
Segun Akinola's score, which also managed to pack in some really good action moments, whilst the visual effects were pretty strong for the most part. There was an awkward cut towards the beginning when the action suddenly shifted from Tesla's building at Niagra Falls to a train, and I did feel that the episode's colour palette looked very flat and dull, but the production and costume designs were solid, and sold the period nicely. It's hard to really summarise '
Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror' other than "lots of fun" and a nice dive into scientific history (I hope lots of kids get interested in Nikola Tesla after this episode), and whilst I'm sure it wasn't for everyone, I for one very much enjoyed it, and look forward to revisiting it soon.
8/10
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