auroracloud | Doctor Who: Praxeus (S12 episode 6)

Just watched the latest Doctor Who episode, Praxeus.

I liked it, mostly! I feel a little... unconvinced that the method of spreading the cure would actually work with no big drawbacks, but I'm not a scientist and so I don't know, let's pretend it makes sense and focus on other things. (That's a crucial attitude for a Doctor Who fan.)

But look! Pete McTighe of the Kerblam! fame is actually capable of writing an episode without abominable politics! In fact about an entirely pertinent and important environmental issue! Yay! I don't know if Chibnall being a co-writer or not had some effect on that or not, but I'm glad, anyhow. Also I think for the first time in the Chibnall run, we got a same-sex couple who lived. And I thought their relationship and Jake's character growth felt believable and natural (at least considering the time-constraints of the episode) and I can believe they'll learn to make it work. Also, I'm glad Gabriela has new plans for the future, and the idea of her tagging along to the honeymoon trip is delightfully found-family-ish. I liked Gabriela a lot. Also liked that she and Yaz got to adventure on a bit together. And that she found it so cool they were in the bottom of the Indian Ocean. (Let's not think about the crushing pressure or other environmental conditions.) Too often the "universe is amazing" moments in the show are only reserved for alien planets, but you know, Earth is pretty darn amazing, it was nice to see a character who appreciated it.

One of the things I liked about Kerblam! before it went to the garbage with the fridging and the crappy message was that it handled the three companions well, giving them all things to do, and generally the pacing was very good. I thought this episode handled those things well, too. Graham was doing the emotional labour more than the adventuring, and it's nice that the show is nowadays able to give the job to men, too. Used to be the sole responsibility of women, mainly female companions.

I'm not super into "scary alien virus" storylines, because those really scare me, and I'm not good at tolerating body horror, but at least it wasn't too gross, just creepy. And I do like it that sometimes the threat is not a killer or an army but something entirely different.

Pete McTighe seems pretty worried about plastic, huh? First bubble wrap, now microplastic. The latter is a very real problem in the real world, too, so it's understandable.

Things that bugged me: no explanation for why the birds where attacking people like that. I mean, they don't normally, no matter how many times you may have watched Hitchcock's The Birds. Maybe the disease caused that, but I don't remember anyone even trying to explain that. And how did they find out how the virus spreads? Because the Doctor was warning everyone about getting infected if the birds scratch you; on the other hand it seemed to be quite fine for Adam and Jake to hold hands. I don't know about you, but when I hear the words "unknown lethal pathogen" or something like it, touching the infected person's hand without gloves or anything doesn't seem like the safest thing ever. I know they just wanted to show a close moment between them, but someone should have somehow explained how they know it's safe. I don't need a biology dissertation, just a throwaway line like "it needs to get into your bloodstream to infect you, it can't do it through the skin" would have sufficed. If there was one, it got lost in the shuffle because I don't remember.

The Doctor was being very Doctor-y, yay! I feel like Thirteen's really showing what she's made of this season - last season the scripts were still holding her back and making her feel too much just nice - but now she's great.

Not a hugely universe-changing episode, but a good, solid, and generally enjoyable one, about an important topic, and I liked the guest characters and their stories very much.

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Maybe the disease caused that, but I don't remember anyone even trying to explain that.

I think the virus was supposed to be controlling the birds' behaviour, since it drove them to attack the laboratory when the Doctor came up with the cure.

Could be. I just would have appreciated an explanation. I figured it had to do with the disease, but not everything that makes you sick also makes you rampantly attack other beings, so it was kind of coming out of nowhere. Though people seem to be constantly complaining that the Chibnall era explains things too much, so maybe those people are happy with fewer explanations. (I was post-ballet-class-exhausted when watching the episode, therefore I probably needed things spelled out for me. :-P)

I really liked this episode, compared to the dystopian one anyway.

Jake and Adam were very much my kind of thing, although I wouldn't touch someone who was infected either! Speaking of infection, I thought it was strange that Ryan and Graham didn't know what a pathogen was.

Agreed that the Doctor was very Doctor-y in this episode!

Speaking of infection, I thought it was strange that Ryan and Graham didn't know what a pathogen was.

Yeah, that was weird. I mean, in addition to that not being such an unusual word in general, Grace was a nurse, they're bound to have picked up some things. It was so clearly one of these "we've got to explain this to the kids so let's have the companions ask it" things but it could have been better written. It could have been something like "pathogen, that's like a virus, right?" and then the Doctor could answer that.

There are more problems I notice when I think about the episode in retrospect (they didn't ever really address what a terrible cop Jake made, so they shouldn't have introduced that part, at least not so crudely as they did; and why did everyone forget about Aramu? guess because the writers forgot about him?). But I still enjoyed watching it and enjoyed the Doctor and the fam, and it handled the environmental theme a lot better than Orphan 55 did - for one, it was weaved into the script throughout, rather than tacked on in the end. So I'm calling it a win, even if I'm not about to put it up for any awards. :-)

I was intrigued by your question of "Would the cure work"? It's the type of thing I'm willing to handwave in a Doctor Who episode, but I did a little reading (by which I mean twenty minutes of papers):

The characters mention using a virus to kill Praxeus. The class of virus they're referring to are bacteriophages. They're extremely common and have been proposed as a treatment for antibiotic resistant infections. I'd heard of them before but I didn't know a lot about them.

The way bacteriophages work is they replicate within a host bacteria cell, making a bunch of copies, then burst the cell open, then repeat. How effective they are depends on how well they bind to the target bacteria and the rate of replication. In contrast, antibiotics are effective either by how much time they spend bound to the pathogen or the amount used. If you tried dropping Cipro into the ocean, it would be useless because it would be too dilute to do anything. Presumably Suki and Thirteen got these right, and maybe the TARDIS did some further optimization.

Downsides to using bacteriophages: There may not survive in certain environments (e.g., the Indian Ocean), there may be an inhibitor present that affects their ability to replicate, and you run the risk of the virus infecting other organisms, potentially with toxic genes.

In short: dropping a bunch of bacteriophages into the ocean probably wouldn't work IRL, but they stand a better chance of antibiotics.

The research Doctor Who fans do for the show always delights me. :-) Thank you for digging up those things and sharing them - it's been ages since I studied any biology (I focused mostly on physics in high school science) so I'm not very good at this stuff. I did figure the "use a virus to kill Praxeus" thing probably was connected to something that exists in real life science as well, but I didn't know the details of how that works. I was very suspicious about the method of distributing the cure, but good to know at least that it works better for this kind of cure than it would for antibiotics. I also got the impression they'd just shoot the cure all over the world to cure any infected organisms (since there are already plenty of infected birds and the like) but to be honest, that part went over so quickly I wasn't quite sure in the end what was really said! Which may be the intentional handwaving "oh, don't look here so you won't notice any holes in the logic". :-D

I'm so glad that we got at least a much better environmentally focused episode this season and didn't have to leave it on the Orphan 55 note.

The Doctor was being very Doctor-y, yay! I feel like Thirteen's really showing what she's made of this season - last season the scripts were still holding her back and making her feel too much just nice - but now she's great.

I totally agree. I finally feel like I'm watching Doctor Who. I'm really excited about where Chibnall is taking us next. My only negative on this episode was the gross out infected body horror aspect. I felt so itchy watching that episode I had to take a shower immediately after. *shivers* I'm still freaked out lol

Sorry for the delay in my reply, I've had a hard time focusing on writing comments for some reason! I agree, I like it that we got a good environment-themed episode as well, because Orphan 55 really wasn't great and it would be annoying if that was how environmental themes got treated - tacked on, forced, and depressing.

This season has been so much better than the last one! I liked many things last season as well, but as a whole it wasn't that exciting.

I totally get feeling grossed out by the body horror aspect, though! I'm pretty bad at it myself. I didn't find this one too difficult to handle, but it definitely wasn't nice to think about.

This is all pretty much how I felt about it too. And it bugged me too that if they did explain how it was transmitted, I missed it. I felt like there was actually a lot of plot I missed (because I'm always far more interested in watching the character interactions) so it'll be interesting to see if I catch more of it upon rewatch)!

I felt like there was actually a lot of plot I missed (because I'm always far more interested in watching the character interactions)

Yeah, that happens to me, too! I'm really character-focused when I watch TV or theatre or anything, so I don't always register the plot bits properly in my head. I suspect this may be one of those that when you watch it more times, the logic holes become more apparent, but I still enjoyed it. :-)

(Sorry for the delayed reply, my brain's not been great at focusing recently.)

Doctor Who: Praxeus (S12 episode 6)

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