First of all I have to apologise for the lateness of this review (real life getting in the way), and in the time we've been greeted with two terrific episodes of Doctor Who. We'll be starting off with episode 8: 'The Haunting Of Villa Diodati'.
This episode was interesting because it reminded me a lot of 'Utopia', in that it's an episode that stands by its own merit but gives us a greater story arc that leaves us on a cliffhanger leading into the finale. By this I, of course, mean the Lone Cyberman! Yes, the prophecy that Jack first mentioned four weeks ago finally has a face and, my goodness, how terrifying was Ashad?! What I loved was how this story did something new and different with the Cybermen, by making Ashad half-converted we are given all the menace of a normal Cyberman but with the added bonus of him having emotions. My main worry with this is that they were going to go down the 'Closing Time' route and have emotions be the victor, however we had nothing to worry about and Ashad was a truly evil character, even with his emotions intact!
I loved the setting for this story, all of the characters were given something essential to do within the story and it was great to see Mary Shelly represented on-screen in Doctor Who. I say this because the character of Mary Shelly had previously appeared alongside Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor in several Big Finish audios, most notably 'The Silver Turk' with which this story shares many similarities. Such as the setting, Shelly and a Cyberman. One aspect of the story which drew some attention before transmission was the ages of Shelly and Byron, however they were in their early twenties when Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in real life, so I appreciated that little nod to real life. It is also a testament to the historical stories being the strongest of the Jodie Whittaker era thus far.
There was also a great dynamic between the TARDIS team in this story. Ryan was given some comedic moments, Yaz proved useful to the narrative and Graham's lust for food admittedly made me chuckle. It has to be said that I was blown away by Jodie Whittaker in this story. Her speech about the decisions she is forced to make was really powerful and could be compared to Peter Capaldi's anti-war speech from 'The Zygon Inversion'. In short it really made me feel that she is the Doctor. Plus her new waistcoat was a lovely touch.
There were a lot of questions raised after this episode, why was Graham seeing ghosts when no one else could? What was Ashad's plan going into the finale? and does this mark the beginning of the end for the TARDIS team as we know it? Well, with only two episodes left we won't have long to (hopefully) find out all the answers.
If I had any criticisms with the episode it would be that almost too much happened. I'll be honest I was really enjoying the ghost story elements and then we were thrown into a Cyberman story. It's almost as if they could have been two entirely different episodes but that being said the episode did have a real pace to it and I didn't see myself looking at the clock once.
Overall, this episode was definitely my favourite of Series Twelve so far. It brought us an intriguing historical tale and reintroduced the Cybermen in a brand new and horrifying way that perfectly sets up the high stakes of the series finale. In short, I loved it!
9/10
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