A voice in the darkness is not always a good sign.

In Aleppo, Syria, circa 1380, a young woman runs through the city. An older woman named Maryam lets Tahira seek refuge, chiding her for stealing as a misguided attempt to improve her mental health. Tahira fears things that will attack as she sleeps, and (sure enough) a creature grabs Maryam after nightfall. The large, hairy, and claw-handed creature doesn’t surprise Tahira.

In Sheffield, 2020, the Thirteenth Doctor delivers her team home. They agree to reconvene the next day, and as the companions leave, the TARDIS shorts out as a bald man briefly appears and then disappears. As Yaz, Ryan, and Graham catch up with their lives, the Doctor chases the phantom man to Aleppo.

She touches down in Bimaristan, one of the oldest hospitals in the world that focused on mental health. Disappointed that she won’t be sharing this adventure with her companions, the Doctor finds Tahira and the creature. The creature doesn’t register on the sonic screwdriver and runs away.

Back in 2020, the companions have strange encounters: Graham sees a white-haired woman in chains; Ryan’s friend Tibo describes recurring nightmares with a bald man, the same phantom who then kidnaps Tibo; and Yaz encounters the phantom after a dream.

The Doctor calms Tahira as she investigates the hospital. Tahira has been in the hospital for a few weeks, seeking safety as an orphan. The companions each call the Doctor and she takes Tahira to retrieve them. Along the way, she analyzes a hair she found in Aleppo and the TARDIS tells her that the hairs do not exist. She uses the telepathic circuits to take them to the woman Graham saw.

The TARDIS lands on a space station in the distant future, but the location is not what Graham saw. The station is in a geostationary orbit in an area that is no longer populated, and as the Doctor explores, the image Graham saw appears on a monitor. Two planets are colliding, stopped by a small geo orb with the woman inside.

Yaz finds an area covered in fingers sending signals to the woman in the geo orb. A quantum fluctuation lock keeps the woman trapped by changing combinations trillions of times a second. As the Doctor analyzes the technology, Tahira wanders off. She finds the bald man, several trapped people (including Tibo), and the creatures (which the man calls Chagaskas, conceived from the prisoner’s worst fears). When the companions arrive, the bald man uses his fingers to trap them inside dreams. Yaz dreams of Sonya on a deserted stretch of road, Ryan sees an elderly Tibo and the Dregs from Orphan 55, and Graham finds himself going through chemotherapy with his doctor, Grace, who asks why he didn’t save her.

The Doctor continues to work as the bald man approaches her. He calls himself Zellin, which the Doctor recognizes as a mythical name from another universe. As an eternal, Zellin has been playing games to amuse himself, even name-checking fellow Eternal The Toymaker in the process. An alarm sounds, indicating that the woman in the prison has been freed, but this is all part of the game. The woman is another eternal named Rakaya and has been playing the same game as Zellin. The game involves the two planets, their populations, and a gamble of which will be destroyed first in the ensuing carnage. The populations trapped Rakaya as they each faced their own demise.

The Doctor is trapped as the Eternals begin a siege against Earth. The Doctor dreams of the Master’s Timeless Child story, waking when she somehow summons her sonic screwdriver and frees herself, her companions, and the prisoners. The Doctor realizes that the Chagaskas are elements of Tahiri’s dreams and works on a plan to defeat the Eternals.

The Doctor’s team returns to Aleppo and summons the Eternals to join them. Using Zellin’s floating fingers and Rakaya’s quantum lock, she traps the Eternals in prison to live with nightmares for eternity. She then returns everyone to their proper places and times.

Tibo finally sleeps well and attends a group therapy session after learning about Ryan’s travels. Yaz reflects on a bet she made with a police officer named Anita – Yaz had planned to run away three years earlier, but Sonya called the police out of concern. Anita made a deal that if Yaz’s life improved in three years, Yaz would pay her 50p. Otherwise, if Anita was wrong, she’d pay Yaz £50 – and then meets with Anita to pay her end of the bargain.

Finally, Graham confides in the Doctor about his fear of cancer returning. The Doctor has no idea how to respond, but Graham is happy to have talked to someone about it. Meanwhile, Yaz and Ryan discuss their mutual concerns about their lives with the Doctor. They’re interrupted as the Doctor gets excited about Frankenstein and sets course for a new adventure.

The family grows closer by confronting their fears, and even though the Doctor couldn’t display her concern to the satisfaction of some fans, the team is stronger for it. I found her response genuine: The Doctor is a beacon of compassion and empathy, but remember that her immediate predecessor needed cue cards to navigate human emotions. Many of the Doctor’s previous incarnations were more in touch with their companions, but even the First Doctor faced his granddaughter’s future by locking her out and saying goodbye through the TARDIS.

The Doctor may be an alien, but this echoes how humans handle major diagnoses and death. Reactions aren’t uniform, but they include shock, disbelief, anxiety, sadness, and loss of control, all of which (and more) the Doctor is processing in the wake of the Master’s revelation about Gallifrey.

Another tick in the plus column for this episode is the story twist. The woman’s voice in the darkness is a common trope involving heroes riding to the rescue of a damsel in distress. It’s a form of the Chronic Hero Syndrome trope, where every wrong in the line of sight must be righted, and it’s used to great effect against the heroes in this story. The eternal villains give credit to the Celestial Toymaker and the Guardians (setting up their power for fans of the classic era), and are defeated by their own means like so many of the villains in Doctor Who.

That resolution felt a bit rushed (as most Chibnall era resolutions have) but the coda showcasing the fears and growth of each companion was a good reason to shortchange the heroic huzzah.

Finally, in a meta nod to the story’s title, I loved the Doctor talking to herself at length with no one around. Can you hear me?, indeed.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Haunting of Villa Diodati

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

A lot of moving parts in a story where nothing is as it seems.

Picking up immediately after Fugitive of the Judoon, several plot threads are rapidly laid down.

A spacecraft plummets toward Earth. An astronaut named Adam Lang tries to salvage it, but his capsule begins to spin violently. On the planet below, a suspended police officer named Jake Willis tackles a shoplifter, but he’s scolded by his manager for his actions. Finally, in Peru, Gabriela Camara and Jamila Velez are disgusted by a river polluted by plastic waste. Later that night, Jamila is attacked by an unseen force.

Jake retires to a local bar and sees the news about Adam Lang’s crash. Jake is distraught, but his mood changes when he receives a text message from someone claiming to be Adam asking for help in Hong Kong. He tries to break into a warehouse and fails. Lucky for him, Yaz and Graham arrive with a set of skeleton keys. He questions Graham and Yaz, assuming they are from the European Space Agency, but Yaz explains they’re following some strange energy readings. They’re also being watched by a man in a hazmat suit.

Gabriela wakes up and searches for Jamila. When a bird falls from the sky, Ryan arrives and warns her away from it. Gabriela presses Ryan about her friend before introducing herself as a travel vlog influencer. She soon gets a message about an ambulance call-out a mile away.

In Madagascar, a lab worker named Aramu greets his co-worker Suki Cheng. They both rush to help the Doctor as the Time Lord rescues someone from the ocean. The stranded man is a member of the US Navy, a survivor of a recent submarine accident. The sailor is soon consumed by a rock-like substance and disintegrates. The two lab workers are very confused.

Ryan and Gabriela arrive at a deserted San Pedro hospital. Ryan finds another dead bird and Gabriela finds Jamila inside a quarantine area. Jamila is covered in the same stone substance, prompting Ryan to call the Doctor. The TARDIS arrives as Jamila disintegrates, leaving Gabriela upset as the Doctor realizes the severity of the situation.

Yaz and Graham track down the strange energy readings and find a room filled with alien consoles. Adam is strapped to a table, looking sick and still in his spacesuit. Yaz calls the Doctor as two figures in hazmat suits burst in and start shooting. Yaz distracts them with a control panel while Jake and Graham escape with Adam. Jake steals the rifles and shoots the attackers. The Doctor arrives and realizes the attackers and their weapons aren’t from Earth.

All of the players thus far board the TARDIS, but Yaz and Gabriela decide to stay behind and study the control device. The Doctor is hesitant but soon relents, sending the TARDIS on its way and examining Adam. She gets a call from Madagascar and returns to the beach. As the team heads for the lab, Graham learns that Adam and Jake are married but on a break. Meanwhile, the birds begin to swarm over the beach.

In Hong Kong, Yaz determines that the control panel is triangulating signals from two other places, including Madagascar. One of the hazmat aliens survived, and it stumbles into the room and teleports away. Yaz and Gabriela decide to follow, landing somewhere dark but safe amid equipment from the downed submarine

Ryan shows a dead bird to the Doctor and she asks him to dissect it. She asks Graham and Jake to give Adam an IV drip, then works with Suki to analyze Adam’s readings. The astronaut is infected with an alien pathogen and the Doctor has no idea how to stop it. Jake leaves and Graham tries to comfort him. Jake explains that he’s not good with emotions, commitment, or foreign travel, and knowing that his husband is an astronaut, he doesn’t believe that Adam could possibly love him.

Jake returns to Adam’s side as Suki analyzes Adam’s blood. Ryan finds that the bird is full of plastic, and the Doctor presumes that the alien pathogen attacked and metastasized the plastic. The Doctor rules out Auton interference before remembering that humans of the era always ingest microplastics. The pathogen has a buffet, but the Doctor notices that the bird’s natural enzymes are fighting the infection. Suki theorizes that she could make a countervirus.

The Doctor contacts Yaz and exchanges information. When she finds out that an alien signal is coming from Madagascar, she has an epiphany about Suki and learns that the infection is called Praxeus. Suki teleports away as the birds attack the lab. Everyone barely escapes with the samples and boards the TARDIS. Unfortunately, Aramu was previously attacked and unable to join them.

Adam volunteers for a clinical trial of the Doctor’s cure. The Doctor administers the antidote and programs the TARDIS to make more if it succeeds. She then leaves Adam and Jake in the TARDIS while the others search for Yaz and Gabriela. They discover they’re on an alien base under the Indian Ocean, centered under one of the world’s plastic pollution gyres. The birds are the infection vector and the travelers need to find Suki to stop them.

They find one of the aliens and suppose they’re also trying to find a cure. They soon find Suki, the last of her crew from a planet ruined by Praxeus. She traveled there to find a perfect lab and Earth fit the bill. The spacecraft was the source of the strange energy readings and the radiation that brought down Adam’s ship. The Doctor tries to help Suki but Praxeus overcomes the alien woman. Luckily, Jake and a cured Adam arrive with the antidote, and the team works together to distribute the cure with the alien shuttle’s organic engines. Everyone returns to the TARDIS as the shuttle takes off and floods the alien base, but Jake decides to stay behind when the shuttle’s autopilot fails.

The plan succeeds, but everyone thinks Jake has died after the shuttle disintegrates. The Doctor materializes the TARDIS around Jake at the last minute and the husbands kiss in gratitude.

Returning to the beach, Team TARDIS bids farewell to their new friends. They go their own ways, safe with the knowledge that no matter how far apart they are, the seven billion connected lives are safe.

This story has a lot of potential, but it gets bogged down with the varying plot threads, none of which gets enough room to breathe. It’s another example of a Chibnall-era story that would thrive as a two-parter with another editing pass.

The ecological message is definitely heavy-handed, but it doesn’t oppressively stifle the story like Orphan 55. We’ve had a preachy Doctor in the past, but this era’s interpretation lacks a degree of finesse.

Also missing in the finesse department is this story’s twist: I love adventures where there is no clear villain and the feint that portrays Suki as the villain is underwhelming because we learn that she’s a victim of Praxeus within minutes of her big reveal. With a little more subtlety, the twist could have been powerful on the level of other Doctor Who stories where the true villain is a force of nature instead of an army or single entity.

That said, I like the fast-moving mystery plot where the Doctor had to split her team to solve the puzzle. I also like the parallels between Praxeus and COVID-19, which was a full-blown pandemic when this episode aired.

Finally, I perked up when the Doctor mentioned the Autons. Their inclusion here would have made sense – we’ve only seen them in action three times in the franchise: Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, and Rose – but, while creepy mannequins are fun additions to Doctor Who, it was a good move to not have a story about plastic pollution lean on them as villains.

This story settled out at a high 3, and as I’ve mentioned over the years, I tend to round up.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Can You Hear Me?

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.