Doctor Who Season 11: 10 Huge Questions After 'Demons Of The Punjab'

4. Did Prem Really Have To Die?

In a deliberate departure from Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who, Chris Chibnall is going out of his way to characterise the Doctor as powerless. She is far more respecting of her Time Lord vows not to interfere in history than any of her new series’ counterparts. This is something of a throwback to William Hartnell’s original Doctor who was always most insistent on not changing the course of history.

The TARDIS team have already been forced to resist interfering with Rosa’s arrest and ill treatment, and now the stakes are even higher. Shockingly, we watch them walk away with the gunshot that killed Prem ringing in their ears. The broken watch that must always stay broken is a symbol of this shift in direction. History can be experienced, it can be used to change how Yaz, Ryan and Graham see the present and how they shape the future, but the past itself can never be undone.

The Doctor gives a speech to the Vijarians that sounds very much like something Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi’s Doctor would have said. She claims that the Earth is under her protection, but soon discovers that she cannot make a decisive difference to the course of events. She can step in to facilitate Prem and Umbreen’s wedding, but she cannot make them live happily ever after. A very similar theme is explored in the series one episode Father’s Day where Rose learns she cannot prevent her Father from dying. Until now, the series has rarely kept to that logic, using the somewhat arbitrary ‘fixed point in time’ construct as the exception rather than the rule.

The Doctor insists that if they interfere in the timeline of Yaz’s grandmother there will be no Yaz and that a universe without her friend would simply not do. But it does beg the question could there not have been another way. Could the Doctor have found a way of saving Prem while faking his death?