Praxeus

On paper, this should absolutely work. An alien virus; multiple worldwide locations; frightening killer birds; a plastic menace; some terrifically grizzly death scenes. Like its eponymous contagion, Praxeus has Doctor Who running through its narrative veins. So what’s wrong with it? What doesn’t it chime? Why do we leave the episode feeling so cold?

The answer is one that is becoming more and more of a problem with Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who: his leading cast of characters. I’ve never been a huge fan of Jodie Whittaker’s fairly insipid Doctor since her Woman Who Fell to Earth inception but to my mind, she has made clear improvements this year despite still struggling with longer “inspirational” speeches and the attendant tech talk. Her three companions, however, have become absolutely stagnant. As I’ve mentioned several times in this series of reviews, Series 11 started well, with the first five episodes slowly unpeeling layers of character in our three TARDIS-travelling friends. Then, stultification. We opened in Spyfall with a fresh realigning of our regulars and some reminders of why they are travelling with our Doctor. Now, we’re back in the quagmire. Graham, Ryan and Yaz are utterly interchangeable. You could lift Yaz from her plot and swap her with Ryan and the story would play out in the same way. You could give Graham the job of dissecting the crow and Ryan the talk on the beach with Warren Brown’s character and I’m not sure how those scenes would differ. The three of them are simply Yes Men to the Doctor’s benevolent plans and fail to propel or affect anything approaching plot. Ideas and events happen at speed around them, and whilst there is, in Praxeus, much pace and excitement, we’re not feeling it with any of our characters because they’re all of them, to a man or woman, vacuous and that’s how Praxeus ends up feeling.

I’ve never seen three companions as a bad idea; indeed, I’m an advocate for it. Ian, Barbara and Susan work. Rose, Mickey and Jack work. Amy, Rory and River work. Hell, even Tegan, Nyssa and Turlough work. All three of those respective trios, however, have quite vividly different characters and different ideas about who the Doctor is. They highlight one another’s differences in their conversations and approaches. Here, Graham, Yaz and Ryan all have one protocol: to do as they are told. The Doctor asks them to join her on her adventures asking them nicely to do nice things, which they do nicely. Ryan’s voice is becoming more and more monotonous and his conversation more and more idiotic. Graham gets a scene where he’s nice to someone and Yaz is the Doctor’s sidekick when some faux-policing needs doing and Jodie needs someone to be slightly less nice. It’s all very lovely but there’s no drama, no politics and like last year, no propulsion. We may be going all over the world in Praxeus, but in terms of human drama we aren’t going anywhere. What the show really needs are some personalities in the TARDIS: Look how everything felt so much more alive when Captain Jack entered the room last week.

This might be why here, like in Tesla, like in Spyfall, like in Fugitive of the Judoon, the guest cast easily eclipse the regulars. Our leads are so thinly sketched that the relatively simple but bold story of one’s man trip around the world to rescue his astronaut boyfriend rings truer than anything Ryan, Graham or Yaz do; Warren Brown’s Jake gets the most real dialogue of the series so far.

There is also, it has to be said, a propensity for the recent series to produce cautionary tales in the vain of Doomwatch or The Green Death. Both Orphan 55 and Praxeus issue blunt messages with regards the future of the planet. However, The Green Death had a hopefulness about it: the thought of a mad professor and a bunch of hippies coming together to forge a better future alongside the Brigadier blithely acknowledging his happiness with “cheap petrol and lots of it, exactly what the world needs.” It was complex, optimistic and fun. Here, in 2020, the show is thoroughly depressing in its cynicism. The Doctor isn’t a beacon of hope. There are no humans being seen to change things. There are simply angry writers telling us we’re using too much plastic and destroying the world in out thoughtlessness. Frankly, it’s draining and a little patronising. By all means, highlight topical issues but at least make them fun and give us some fun characters to explore them with. Why should we take notice of the four most uninspiring regulars we’ve ever had?

There is much to applaud in Praxeus (far more than I’ve given credit for – not least the make-up, effects and genuine sense of scale) but by the end, it’s a tiresome affair. There may be a breathless pace and vastly different locales, there may even be a tragically unconvincing puppet and a one-sided TARDIS prop, but by the end, there’s nothing here to care about. For a story committed to highlighting the problems of plastic pollution, that’s a whole other problem its writers need to contend with.

4/10

JH