Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Big Questions After Episode 5
3. Why Did It Take So Long To Solve The Conundrum?
As soon as the Pting spat out the energy drained sonic it was apparent to many viewers that it was feeding off energy. That much is confirmed a little latter when the lights go out. It takes the engineer, Eve’s brother Durkas, to spell it out for the Doctor to realise how the conundrum can be solved. The whole episode seemed to be highlighting the Doctor’s ignorance and bravado, especially the Poirot scenario where the Doctor it turns out hasn’t even began to solve the case. This was partly to make the bomb solution an effective twist, but it wasn’t disguised enough to have the desired effect and made Yaz come across as surprisingly dumb.
In one sense it was no more than a plot point to stop the episode ending prematurely, after all the solution was quite straightforward to execute in the end. It was also tied narratively to the Doctor still recovering from the after effects of the sonic mine. The Doctor is still suffering from the physical effects on her alien ecto-spleen and walks or runs with some discomfort throughout the adventure. Her selfish insistence on turning around the hospital ship to get back to the TARDIS as quickly as possible is also put down to her injuries. Her mind, clearly affected by the aftershock (with her also struggling to remember where she knew the name Tsuranga from), may simply have been a bit fuzzy.
It will be interesting to see if this is a one off inconvenience for the sake of this story, or if rather like the Doctor’s temporary blindness in series 10 the effects will continue into the next episodes.