Doctor Who Series 11: 3 Ups & 4 Downs From 'The Tsuranga Conundrum'

2. The Sheer Lack Of Peril Or Tension

Before the revelation about why the Pting is wreaking havoc, as far as we know, it’s picking people off one-by-one. So who’s next? Who is the show pointing at to be the next victim of the Pting? Everyone, apparently. It goes from seemingly just Astos, to everyone. There’s no build to this moment. Everything comes down on the team at once.

Of course, we didn’t know that killing everyone wasn’t the Pting’s motives at the time, but leading the audience on to it being that could’ve worked so much better than suddenly everyone being in danger. First it’s Pting, then it’s their own destination lashing back. Resus 1 detects the Pting on board, and rather than take any other precaution, their approach to this is to destroy the ship, blowing the crew, patients, and whatever threat alike to smitheroons. This seems weird for a hospital. No Hippocratic oath in the 67th century then.

When Resus 1 sends through the warning, the crew can either acknowledge the threat, or deny it. However, if they deny but Resus 1 still detect a threat, they send it again. Deny it three times, and boom, the ship goes up. The big alarm and the screens going haywire could’ve been used a little better throughout to build some more tension, but it all happened at once. That’s what this episode was lacking. Tension. Before we saw the Pting, it was looking to be something really spooky, but once we saw it and from there on out, it was just a viewing experience.

There was a lot of running from place to place, a hell of a lot of exposition, and not enough of a feeling that any one of these folk could die at any moment, or something that needs to go right goes drastically wrong. Build to really tense point, like they’re about to catch the Pting, or someone might be on the brink of death unless they do x, y, and z really carefully, then boom - Resus 1 sends their final warning about this supposed on-board threat, or the Doctor keels over in pain exactly when she really shouldn’t - I thought that would happen after it was so frequent in the opening of the episode but, nope! There was potential in this area, but it wasn’t used.