"The Tsuranga Conundrum" – Doctor Who S11E05

The only conundrum I could figure out was... what was the conundrum?

I've seen some reviewers describe "Conundrum" as filler. And granted, quite a bit of Doctor Who is "filler". Because a lot of serials have been one-offs that didn't play into some season-wide plot. Heck, even season-wide plots like the Key to Time was made up of one-offs that barely played into the season-wide plot.

Okay, that's old Doctor Who. nu-Doctor Who is a bit more serialized. But even then, there's been plenty of episodes that didn't play into Bad Wolf, or the Crack, or the Mystery Girl, or whatever. And sometimes we'd get a brief mention tossed into the episode and that was it.

So I wouldn't call "Conundrum" filler. But... it doesn't mean much at the end of the day. Perhaps "disposable" is a better term. You watch it, you're entertained, and you forget it a week later.

Part of it is that "Conundrum" has a lot of stuff going on and it tries to make us care about the characters. And we kind of do. But at the same time, they're gone at the end of the episode and we'll never see them again. Barring that Mabli or Durkas spinoff I'm sure somebody, somewhere is waiting for. So Mabli has a crisis of confidence. And the Cicero siblings have a mild dispute that ends in one of their deaths. And Ronan will get shut down after the episode is over. And Yoss and his newborn, Avocado Pear, will travel the universe having exciting adventures. I know that happens in a lot of Doctor Who episodes.

I don't recall a time where I've been so manipulated into caring about someone and then having them ignominiously dropped. Take "Rosa", for instance. Yes, the script builds up a lot of empathy and caring for Rosa. But we don't expect her to show up again, or travel with the Doctor. With "Conundrum" I felt manipulated into caring about these characters that we'll never see again. I'm not sure if I can explain it: it just felt kind of hollow that we got all of these tender scenes between, say, Durkas and Eve on a show where we already have the Doctor and three companions to provide lots of tender scenes.

What am I talking about with all this? Glad you asked. The Doctor and Company are digging through rubbish on a junk planet for some reason that I didn't catch. They set off a sonic mine, and wake up to find themselves on a medical ship, the Tsuranga. The two-member staff, Astos (Brett Goldstein) and Mabli (Lois Chimimba), have put their internal organs back together. The ship has already left the junk planet meaning the TARDIS is four days away and fading fast.

We're quickly introduced to the other patients: Eve Cicero (Suzanne Packer), a general in some 67th century alien army. Her brother Durkas (Ben Bailey Smith) and android aide Ronan (David Shields). And a "Giftian", an alien named Yoss (Jack Shalloo) that looks completely human but is a male and pregnant.

Something bumps into the ship, and the Doctor soon discovers it's a short little pug of an alien called a Pting. Astos stumbles into a LifePod (the closed captioning and presumably the script are big on capitalizing letters), and the LifePod is ejected into space and explodes for some reason. The ship is heading for a hospital station, Resus One, and the station personnel will blow up the Tsuranga because the Pting is indestructible, has toxic skin, and eats any and all non-organic materials in its path.

Everyone goes into emergency mode. Yoss pretty casually doesn't want the baby after he gives birth and then goes into labor, and Mabli has to deliver the baby while Ryan and Graham serve as birth partners. Yasmin and Ronan guard the ship's anti-matter drive. The Doctor, Eve, and Durkas have to take the Tsuranga through an asteroid field for reasons that I didn't understand. To... get it to Resus One before the Pting destroys the ship by eating its way through it. But if they get there faster, Resus One will blow them up faster.

All this, and the Doctor is trying to figure out a way to deal with the Pting. There's also subplots ahoy. Eve has a medical condition that she's trying to keep secret from Durkas. Durkas is jealous of his sister, who is a hero in the army she comes from. Mabli isn't confident in her abilities, being a relative noob. And Ryan is dealing with the angst over his father abandoning him. Graham and Yasmin don't have much to do except look supportive and crack a joke or two.

To make matters worse, the Doctor figures out Resus One has a bomb hidden on the Tsuranga. I guess they don't take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously in the future. Or maybe ambulances are secretly rigged with remote-triggered self-destruct devices and I missed a memo. However, the Doctor also figures out the Pting feeds on energy. Why this isn't as well-documented--or documented as all--as its appetite and its poisonous skin and its indestructible nature, I don' know.

The Doctor removes the bomb, puts it in an airlock, and the Pting comes to eat it. When it does, it absorbs the energy output in its stomach and the Doctor ejects it out into space.

Eve is a "Neuro Pilot" (again with the capital letters!) but her medical condition means she can't do it without killing herself. She does it anyway, and when she dies Durkas takes it over after they have a scene where they say they love each other. Yoss decides to keep the baby anyway and names it "Avocado Pear" after the legendary Earth hero his people have heard about. And because "Ryan Graham" or "Graham Ryan" would just be stupid.

With Eve dead, Ronan will get shut down. But he does get to give a touching "decant" speech for Eve before he gets sent off to a junk planet. The Doctor & Co. join in, and yes, it's nice that they participate in a funeral ceremony for somebody who was offed during one of their adventures. No such commemorative ceremony for Astos, but oh well. I'm sure they sent his family a card.

And that's it. There's a brief bit about how Ryan understands his father a little more because he lost his wife and Ryan looks like a bit like her, so his father couldn't stand the sight of him. Graham and Ryan have some banter over Call the Midwife, but Ryan still won't fist-bump Graham after they help Yoss deliver his baby.

And Yasmin is good at kicking soccer balls.

It's all mildly entertaining, and Jodie Whittaker is playing the Doctor as if she was always meant to be. And maybe she was. But I like I said, it all feels... disposable. Like writer Chris Chibnall is trying to make me feel for these characters. But I'm not interested in caring about these characters. We'll never see them again after the episode ends and their feelings and subplots don't have any bearing on the main plot. Mabli lacks confidence, but she delivers the baby just fine and the baby isn't important to the plot anyway, other then to hit the trope of "life and death go hand-in-hand". Because Eve dies and the baby is born. Eve and Durkas have a touching brother/sister moment, but Eve still pilots the Tsuranga most of the way and Durkas takes over. If she had kept her condition secret and dropped dead of a heart attack, Durkas would still have taken over and completed the trip.

As a result, it all feels kind of soap operaish. Or they're being given all of these subplots and emotions just to pad the running time to a full hour.

And then there's the Pting. It's… okay, in a cute little alien pug kind of way. I suppose some aliens out there have to be cute: they can't all look like an Ood or an unhoused Dalek. Maybe it's just the combination of the cartoony CGI and the fact that it's a cute little beast that eats everything while spreading chaos that adds up to making it sound more like the Tasmanian Devil. Or Nibbler. Or Shaggy and Scooby. Or Dagwood. Or Blimpy. Or any of the other cartoon characters who can stuff their mouths with near-infinite amounts of food. Regardless, it's hard to take the Pting seriously as a threat. It makes cute little noises and it gets a goofy smile on its face.

And again, there's no real "conundrum". No more than most Doctor Who episodes, and a lot less than some. I've spent more time thinking about what Bad Wolf means, or what Turlough was up to, "Who is the Doctor?", or what the thing was or wasn't in "Listen". Then what some CGI cartoony character was up to.

So "Conundrum" is an okay episode that goes down a rating point or two just because it seems to be trying but I don't know what Chibnall hopes to accomplish. A soap opera with an alien threat, maybe.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?