Oh boy, here we go again. After a solid run of episodes we run face first into the dirt of bad politics. And, almost worse, a boring story.

My first thought as I finished the episode was, "Who was that for?". The main point of the story seems to be about misinformation and the alt-right pipeline, and how that's bad. But the Conrads of the world aren't watching this; they're too busy complaining on Xitter and in YouTube comment sections about how Doctor Who is too woke now. The people who are watching the show are likely already aware that misinformationis bad. It doesn't help that the message is incredibly heavy-handed, with the Doctor looking directly at the camera and saying Conrad is a terrible person.

I don't tend to speculate while watching, but Conrad was putting up a lot of red flags from the beginning. He got caught by the Shreek's marker and after hearing the Doctor tell Ruby exactly what it does he didn't immediately run out of his hiding place and ask for the antidote for himself; he took a very stalkery picture of Ruby and plastered it all over the internet; and while I don't watch many romcoms, it definitely read to me as off how much he pushed to get a date with Ruby after having her on the podcast. Safe to say, I wasn't exactly surprised when he turned out to be a prick, especially since we already had that twist earlier in the series (done a lot better, I might add).

Ruby is ostensibly the main character of this episode. Unfortunately, stopping the momentum of this series in its tracks to focus on a previous companion doesn't really warm me to Ruby, especially when she's one of the blandest companions to date in my opinion. After a full series and an extra episode I still don't feel like I know her, and that's made even worse in comparison with Belinda, who had only one or two lines in this episode which were already so full of personality. They tried for depth with Ruby discussing life after the Doctor, but her thinking she has PTSD felt very scripted and really fell flat for me.

UNIT is back in all its messy RTD2 glory. They didn't introduce any new child soldiers, which I'm grateful for, but they have yet to do anything with the existing characters, either. Shirley is back, but she only gets a handful of lines and is once again reduced to a punching bag to make a point about how terrible the villain is. Ibrahim has no character or personality beyond being Kate's boyfriend, and while I don't have very strong opinions on Kate's sexuality, I would like to say that at least dating a subordinate would be out of character for her - if only she had a consistent character in this era.

A big part of what bothers me with this episode is how entrenched in real life it is. Doctor Who, as a sci-fi show, has always commented on current issues, but usually with at least a few layers of metaphor. Darker episodes have always been set either in thepast, the future, or some alternate reality, being more character-driven. Episodes set in the modern day, even heavily political ones, always cussion it by either making the bad guys aliens or splicing in lots of jokes, going for a more lighthearted tone. This one is set in the modern day, in a world that is identical to our own except for the clear existence of aliens. None of it is played for a joke, the tone is sombre, and it just feels far more real than anything we've seen from Who before (maybe except for The Green Death, but that was before my time and as such I can't comment on how similar it felt).

And that leads me to my main problem with the episode, which is, of course, the politics. Setting aside the implicit racism of the fact that this is Fifteen's third Doctor-light episode in already short seasons and our new WoC companion getting sodelined for an old, very white one, the optics of the actual episode are terrible.

Because UNIT is, first and foremost, a military. They come in with uniforms and guns. Maybe the basic premise of the prank (make UNIT look stupid for reacting to fake aliens? Make it seem like UNIT are the ones who put those guys in costumes?) is kind of senseless, but everything around it is what actually makes UNIT look bad, not just in universe, but for the viewers as well. In our current political climate, you'd be hard pressed to find someone watching this episode who doesn't at least know someone who knows someone who ended up in conflict with the police during a protest, if they haven't been in that situation themselves. The imagery of armed soldiers taking away civilians, manhandling them and pointing guns at them while the civilians film or livestream it is one we are all familiar with from real life, and it paints UNIT as very much in the wrong.

The episode refuses to engage with that, however. It compares UNIT more to the WHO, a scientific organisation constantly under threat of being defunded. But scientists don't go around pointing guns at people. Usually, if you know where to look, you'll find exactly how much taxpayer money they receive and what tey do with it. Now, I don't know if Conrad is telling the truth about UNIT being completely opaque with that stuff (they don't dispute him, but it's also a high tension situation), but if he is he's making some really good points. Sure, he's doing it for attention and personal gain, and that makes him a bad person, but him being terrible doesn't automatically make UNIT the good guys.

But this darker side of UNIT isn't explored here. Maybe this episode was designed as a backdoor pilot for the spinoff, but a backdoor pilot doesn't work if the show it's in grinds to a halt. I'm not more interested in watching the spinoff because I want to see what's gonna happen - I'm just annoyed at this episode leaving me hanging.

The climax, while exciting, leaves a lot to be desired. I like this darker side of Kate, but it falls flat within the context of the episode. The Shreek is scary and the tension is good, but after seeing the Shreek costumes earlier in the episode the CGI version is obviously digital and lacks weight - it doesn't interact with the world the way the "fake" ones did. The highlight of the episode was Conrad's quick switch from begging for his life to once again being sure of himself, but when a single acting moment is the best part it's more telling on the rest of the episode.

Then comes the Doctor's speech. At first, I thought it was part of this darker UNIT, and they somehow projected the illusion of the TARDIS and the Doctor around Conrad's cell or into his mind as we've never seen a materialisation quite like it, but I don't think that's actually what was happening there. While Gatwa's acting during that scene was fantastic as always, the writing felt incredibly ham-fisted, and honestly, somewhat out of character. I'm interested in a darker Doctor, but I find it hard to believe that he would be perfectly alright with UNIT jailing someone for life (let alone the non-sapient aliens they appear to be keep in cells). The whole thing felt off.

Once again, I find Mrs. Flood to just be another Susan Twist. Whether Conrad return in the finale or not, this episode has proven itself to not be able to stand on its own. Its only purpose is to introduce a spinoff and deepen existing mysteries without giving us any new clues.

All in all, this was a boring waste of an episode in an already short series, with poor politics and even worse optics. The more I think about it the more it annoys me and the more I lower my rating of it. It's especially disappointing after a pretty solid run of episodes, and I can't say I'm looking forward to the spinoff.