TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Doctor Who New Year’s Day Special – Eve Of The Daleks

And so begins the last few adventures of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who. Yes, it technically started with Flux but…I think most of the fanbase are still trying to figure out what that was, so in that respect, “Eve of the Daleks” was something much simpler, more refined, and outside of a certain duo, a lot of fun.

While I can’t say for certain (as I missed Doctors 1-7) that a loop like this hasn’t been done before in Doctor Who, it certainly hasn’t been done like this. Because, long story short, the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan find themselves in a storage unit building on New Year’s Eve along with a pair of unlucky people, and the Daleks are here as well…and they’ll killing everyone in sight.

…then the time loop starts all over again. As I joked about in the excerpt for this piece, this (like the video game) is a literal Deathloop.

And honestly, that was part of what made the episode so much fun. Yes, you know that the five characters would make it out somehow, but seeing them die over and over again, and sometimes in surprising ways in terms of the Daleks finding them and killing them was shocking. Even the Doctor at the beginning was like, “Not like this…” because even SHE didn’t want to die by Dalek (though technically it has happened with a past life, but still, why die the same way?)

Then, with the fun twist that with each time loop they were literally losing time to try and make everything work, you wondered how they were going to pull it off. You could even hear the desperation in the voice of The Doctor when things started to fall apart at multiple points because the Daleks were ahead of her planning-wise.

Ending it with a literal bang and fireworks was a nice touch as well.

SO…what held the episode back. Well, two major things. One was the new characters of Sam and Nick. ..they were SO ANNOYING!!! Sam with her selfishness even up until the end at points, and then Nick was just so heavy-handed in how he was the “loveable loser” that you were supposed to cheer for…and I just couldn’t. Especially when he ADMITTED that for YEARS he came to see Sam in some form of “unrequited love” and because he KNEW she’d be there…that’s just weird man. And the “moments” bit? Just as weird, and it also doesn’t add up when you realize just how much stuff he had in there and when he broke up with these women. Then for them to get together at the end? …no, just no.

Then, sadly, there was Yaz. I’ve always liked Yaz, and I was fine with her having a strong connection to the Doctor after all they’d been through, but for Dan to call her out on having feelings for the Doctor…and then the Doctor playing it off…and we have literally two shows left in her run…why? Why do it now?

What’s more, this repeats a rather bad trend that’s happened since Eccelston in that there is ALWAYS a companion who falls for the Doctor. Heck, you could go back to Paul McGann in his movie (which had the first Doctor/companion if you recall) for proof that the writers are almost driven at times to put the Doctor in a relationship. Or at the very least, have the companions crushing on them at times.

Why couldn’t Yaz just be her BFF? Or a sister-like figure? And again, why do this NOW instead of say in the Flux event (or you know…not do the Flux event and do something else?) to flesh it out more instead of hindering it by containing it to these three end runs, especially since the final one is the regen episode?

Either way, unlike the Flux event, “Eve of the Daleks” was a fun, if not a bit grim at times, Doctor Who episode. We don’t know what the next one will be, but let’s hope the quality continues as Jodie deserves it to end her run.

4/5