Is it just me, or was that Doctor Who episode total crap?

It was crap. But it was nice to see Roger from His Dark Materials getting more work. He's someone to keep an eye on.

I've come across a rather interesting redemptive reading of Orphan 55, that claims the episode is more subtle than people are making out. It basically argues that the story is about the different generations. To wit:

• Orphan 55 - the youngest Boomers are currently 55. Points to the ep's central concern - relations between the generations and how it contributed to the climate change crisis.

• The Boomers in this ep are Benni and Vilma. Now, the setting is a planet largely bereft of oxygen, making it incredibly precious. Benni has an oxygen tank. Direct quote: "He is a wealthy boomer who is shielded from the effects of the devastation around him." And everyone else is put in danger because rescuing him is prioritised over their safety. He remains oblivious to the threat, tossing out a marriage proposal as if there's a future to look forward to. (I'd add: Vilma buying off Kane to continue the search. I think we're supposed to disapprove of Kane in that exchange, for only being willing to save a life when she's paid. But it could be read instead as the wealthy Vilma believing that she can solve her problems just by throwing money at it, no matter who else suffers as a result.)

• Bella and Kane, another generational confrontation. Kane believes that her responsibility as a mother is to provide her daughter with material prosperity. Bella rejects that - the price to her is too high. Not hard to read that as a parable on climate change.

• The scene with the Doctor and Wheezy in the locked room. They survive by breathing each other's respired gases. It puts Wheezy in the position of humanity and the Doctor in that of the ecosystem - the trees, the seas, the earth's lungs (to go poetic). Kill the trees, we kill ourselves.

I mean, that's a pretty nifty reading, and some of it may even have been intentional. I just wish that was the ep we actually got.

Yeah, no, I'm not buying that, and even if that was intentional, I'd think it was crap. Sigh.

Please tell me the person who came up with that interpretation is Black Dynamite!

Also, Crisis-related, justice for baby Sarah!

Yeah, that was nice. I wonder what else has changed.

So, looking at past adventures as they relate to Orphan 55. The Second Doctor had an adventure set at a holiday resort too, namely The Macra Terror. (This was a lost adventure, but the BBC released an animated version last year.) The Seventh Doctor too hit up a resort in Delta and the Bannermen. They're neither of them particularly well regarded, especially Delta; it's not a setting with which DW has had much success.

The Planet of the Apes reveal has also turned up in Doctor Who before. The Sixth Doctor started his final season with The Mysterious Planet, in which he and Peri discover that said planet is actually the Earth. (It's a somewhat more interesting reveal, in that the planet is nowhere near our solar system at the time. The twist also sets up a different mystery.) They even make the discovery from a sign in a railway station as in Orphan 55. It's not a terrific story but certainly not his worst, in part because Peri actually looks like she's enjoying herself and the Doctor treats her with somme affection.

Finally, there's the environmental theme. Two classic adventures did this to great effect. The Third Doctor era was produced by Barry Letts, who often brought his personal interests into the show (notably his interest in Buddhism). In the early 70s the big concern was pollution rather than global warming, so he co-wrote The Green Death (a.k.a. The One With The Maggots), where an oil company's efforts to increase the energy output of fossil fuels was creating massive quantities of chemical waste that created huge mutated maggots. It's my favourite Third Doctor adventure.

More relevant is The Curse of Fenric. This was the Seventh Doctor's penultimate adventure, and was something of a tour de force. It's stuffed with ideas, such as the Cold War, artificial intelligence and Norse myth, and manages to get them to work together. The cast is quite excellent, and very entertainingly includes Nicholas Parsons, host of Just a Minute, as a vicar. (I don't know if Just a Minute has made any impact in the States, but it's very funny.) It's my favourite Seventh Doctor story, which is a pretty common position to take. This adventure set in the dying days of World War II turns into a relentless horror story as a British army base is beset by vampires (or rather haemovores). The relevance here: these haemovores are in fact mutated humans from Earth's far future, the outcome of centuries of chemical pollution (which itself is being initiated right now as the villain's master plan).

Both of them, obviously, were much better than Orphan 55. In large part this is simply because they remembered what storytelling looks like. Fenric in particular has good characters and a somewhat complex, interesting plot that is conceivably about things. Green Death is exciting - the characters, outside the main cast, are underdeveloped but comprehensible - and also clearly about something. Green Death particularly is not overly subtle about its environmental message.

What I'm trying to decide here is if Orphan 55's preachiness is a fatal flaw, and I don't think it is - if done well. The Green Death was pretty much just as preachy in its own way, but not nearly as annoying. It too had speechifying, right in episode 1. Jo Grant has a go about the need to curb pollution. But: it arises from a story conflict. (She wants to protest the oil company, the Brigadier's been tasked with protecting it.) It's played for laughs - she gets lost in mixed metaphors and peters out. Even so, the entire adventure is saying "You know, she wasn't wrong". (Not to say there wasn't condescension, but it was by the Doctor towards Jo. As usual.) I'd add that beyond talk, there were characters trying to take practical steps towards making things better. (Developing protein-rich fungus to cut down on the need for meat, for instance.) That in itself raises an interesting parallel. Global Chemicals is all about the need for more oil energy. The Nuthutch is about fungus. Both oil and fungus are, in their way, products of decay, of putrefaction. The story is to some extent about what kind of decay - productive and part of nature, or destructive and a distortion of nature (giant maggots!).

Finally of course there's Oxygen from Season 10, which was an utterly over-the-top anti-capitalist rant, and a great episode to boot. Doctor Who is well capable of delivering political messages - including shoving 'em down people's throats on occasion - in quality adventures. Which makes the failures of Orphan 55 just that much more disappointing.

In conclusion, the Orphan 55 monsters should have been the haemovores, not because callbacks are cool, but because they were simply more interesting monsters than the Dregs.

(PS: I have seen Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror and am happy to report that it's a definite improvement on Orphan 55. It's an episode with little ambition but reasonable competency, and manages to be about something in a consistent fashion. So that's nice.)

ooh, I think there's going to be an actual Legends of Tomorrow episode on tonight - hope so!