(courtesy Doctor Who Facebook page)
If you have ever watched a Doctor Who episode, and given it’s been around for about six decades, there’s a reasonably good chance you have, you will have noticed that there’s a certain pattern to how new companions are introduced.
They are always babes in the woods when it comes to space and time travel, and are unceremoniously dragged into some alien conspiracy to do something terrible somewhere, usually to the much put-upon denizens of Earth (who have seemingly pissed off the whole galaxy) and need the Doctor to rescue them.
By and large, while they are scared or angry, or usually both, they come around pretty quickly and decided pretty quickly to sign on for more adventures with our favourite Gallifreyan.
What marks the first episode of Doctor Who‘s second season on Disney+ or season 15 of the relaunched program – yep, it’s all a little confusing to be honest – is that the new host Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) doesn’t even remotely drink the time and space travel Kool-Aid and winds up just as furious at the end as she is at the start of the episode.
It’s a masterstroke because it establishes her as someone with inviolable agency, as someone who has a good heart and wants to do the right thing, even to the point of sacrificing herself as needed, but who won’t allow anyone, even someone as capable as the Doctor (currently played by Ncuti Gatwa), to determine how her life plays out.
She is certainly not happy that she’s been kidnapped by giant red and black robots from the planet Missbelindachandra One – why it is named after her is explained brilliantly well in the episode and involves some pretty cool timey-wimey world-building – and told she is the queen and has to merge with a monstrous AI program or the subjugated humans of the planet, currently rebelling, will get it, and while she appreciates the Doctor’s help, she is none too pleased that he then thinks he can dictate what happens to her.
In the hands of Varada Sethu, Belinda Chandra doesn’t come across as agnry or complainy but as someone fully-rounded and very normal who reacts to an extraordinary situatuon like any sane person would and who isn’t so seduced by the idea of travelling to different places in space and time that she’ll dump everything just to go with the Doctor.
So, after the events on Missbelindachandra One in ways that are deeply emotionally meaningful and searingly intense – while there are moments of comic lightness, this is, by and large, an episode full of lots and lots of impactful emotion – all she wants to do is go home and do her shift as a nurse at a new section of the hospital where she works.
She is having none of the glitz and glamour of whizzing through the stars or being a chrono tourist and just wants to be dropped home, thank you very much.
Of course, events play out at the end which make this a little tricky, if not temporarily impossible, and which set the season up with a great, big juicy mystery that is tantalising as hell, but you LOVE the fact that Belinda knows her own mind, guards her agency zealously and is having none of the Doctor’s charismatic nonsense.
You can tell the Doctor is surprised that she’s resisting the allure of time and space shenanigans but also kind of delighted too, and it sets the tone for a really interesting Doctor-companion dynamic that is, rather refreshingly not going to be remotely business as usual.
It bodes well for a thrilling second season to come.
Doctor Who streams on Disney+ worldwide and on the BBC in the UK.
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