Doctor Who Series 11: Ranking Every Episode From Worst To Best

Demons of the Punjab is perfectly balanced between the information heavy Rosa and the loose approach to history of The Witchfinders. By focusing on the effects of the Partition on one fictional family, it is able to teach us about the past without us even realising it. This is history told from the bottom up, from the point of view of a family who unlike Rosa have not received recognition. Quite the reverse in fact – Prem has been wiped from Yaz’s family history.

We are given a few facts about the momentous and tragic events behind the episode, but are encouraged by writer Vijay Patel to research them ourselves. Doing so helps us to understand better Manish’s conflict and appreciate how radical and brave Yaz’s grandmother was. This is preferable to the spoon-feeding approach of Rosa.

Once again it is humans who are the real monsters and not the aliens, but more radically it is ordinary humans who are driven towards such desperate and evil measures, not stereotyped racists or American presidential candidates – but our own brothers and sisters.

Even the Doctor gets it wrong in this one, writing off the aliens because of their past history. They function to hide Manish’s identity as the real villain, but they also invite us to believe in restorative justice and to recognise that it is wrong to dismiss an entire race, faith or nation simply because of the extremist few.

Paraphrasing a popular bible reading used at Christian weddings, the Doctor extols the virtue of love. Even in the darkest of situations some light can be found. The Doctor encourages us to own those moments, especially when there is little grounds for hope.

It’s a good way of reflecting on this series of Doctor Who.

How would you rank the episodes of Series 11? Let us know down in the comments.