Doctor Who— ‘Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror’ [12x4] ★★★★☆
By: Dan Owen
Tags: Doctor Who, Television, Review, Culture, TV

Doctor Who— ‘Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror’ [12x4] ★★★★☆

After the sorely disappointing “Orphan 55”, Doctor Who rebounds with the enjoyable “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”. While broadly familiar and functional as a ‘celebrity historical’ that mixes facts with wild fiction, it was a relief to be told a story with a sense of pace, period flavour, good performances, and a narrative that held together well.

In 1903, Nikola Tesla (ER’s Goran Višnjić) and his secretary Dorothy Skerritt (Haley McGee) are trying to impress potential investors in Tesla’s idea for alternating current electricity, when they come under attack from red-eyed men carrying advanced weapons after they find a levitating device (later identified as an Orb of Thassar). They bump into The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) during their escape and all become embroiled in an adventure concerning a damaged Venusian spacecraft over New York City manned by a race of alien scorpions called the Skithra, led by their scavenger Queen (Anjli Mohindra), intent on kidnapping Tesla to fix his generator they’ve been using for power.

The threat and logic behind the enemy was the weakest element of “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”, but the script by Nina Métivier managed to overcome that considerable problem by not letting the ball drop anywhere else. The story championed the exploits of Tesla and provided a solid education for children (hopefully inspiring them to learn more), but without the heavy-handedness of similar episodes from the last series.

It was also great to see The Doctor taking a firm lead through the story and her rapport with Tesla was great — as both are essentially inventors fascinated by the future and possibilities. (I’m glad this element of the Thirteenth Doctor as a hands-on engineer type is being returned to more and more.)

The companions are a recurring issue for Doctor Who now there are three to involve in stories usually brimming with guest stars, but the balance felt good here: Graham (Bradley Walsh) cracked jokes and butted heads with Tesla’s professional rival, Thomas Edison (Robert Glenister); Ryan escorted Dorothy through the whirlwind of what’s happening; and Yaz (Mandip Gill) benefitted from an extended period in the story when she effectively became the “companion” of Tesla aboard the Skithra ship (proving she works in her role with the focus solely on her, and that Višnjić would make a decent Doctor too).

The depiction of Niagara Falls and New York City was adequate (with the episode actually filmed on sets in Bulgaria) and the VFX for the scorpions were marvellous — only let down by how ridiculously clumsy they were to keep allowing the characters to escape. But I was disappointed by the Queen of the Skithra, as the make-up was almost exactly the same as that used for the Queen of the Racnoss (so much so I mistook her for that old villain in the trailer), and it wasn’t even explained away by perhaps mentioning the two species share a planet or something. But while the Queen of the Racnoss was an impressive design, the Queen of the Skithra looked like the make-up team had slightly redesigned the Racnoss’s head and put the actress in overalls with two car tyres for shoulder pads. Why was she bipedal, if her species were otherwise all CGI scorpions scuttling about on numerous legs? It felt like the budget let the side down here, or they needed something that allowed the character to move around and couldn’t think of a suitable middle-ground.