Doctor Who: 8 Simple Fixes It Must Make For Series 12

6. Fire The ‘Unfired Guns’

If there’s one thing Chibnall liked to do, it was introduce a potential plot thread, be it deliberate or not, and forget about it five minutes later. Sure, these things don’t always leave glaring holes in the plot or anything, but they sure are annoying when the sting comes in, the credits begin to roll and you think 'wait, but what about that thing that happened then?' One of the first, if not the biggest of these guns we come across is Yaz being a police officer. It’s referenced later on about how she’s treated as a young, female officer, but in those moments when you’d think officer Yaz would kick in and stamp on s**t, nothing happens.

Think of President Prick being a prick in Arachnids in the UK, and when Dalek Lin was on the loose, why didn’t Yaz inform the authorities about anything, or even establish herself as a figure of authority? What about the water you definitely can’t touch in The Ghost Monument? Was that a pointless detail for the sake of a pointless detail? Or even The Doctor clutching her chest, her legs buckling, and crashing to the ground numerous times in The Tsuranga Conundrum? What was it for? Why did they make such a big deal of it for it not to be relevant at all?

I expected these moments of the Doctor crashing down and being nigh-on useless to come at a really critical life-or-death moment during the episode to add the tension Tsuranga sorely needed, but nope. Most of these things felt like a little world-building more than anything, especially the ‘killer water’ line, but if it’s not going to be relevant in any capacity, just don’t mention it? Either that, or actually use those tidbits of information. Put Yaz in a morally contentious situation. Her heart versus her duties. She’s a police officer for goodness sake, and they should've had that play into her motivations.