I really liked this one! Not mind-blowing but a solid start for the series and a great first non-special episode for Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson.

Characters/Acting:

Ruby and Fifteen are sooo much fun. They already feel so real and fleshed out, and I think that mainly comes down to the fantastic job the actors are doing (welcome to the era of face acting btw we LOVE to see it.) The chemistry between them is perfect too - they feel more like actual peers on equal footing than any "best friends" TARDIS team we've had before. I could seriously watch them all day.

Plot/Writing:

Pretty boring plot overall but structurally sound enough that it doesn't read as truly bad and the acting really saved it. Every new series/Doctor/companion needs an exposition ep and this one did everything it needed to do very efficiently. Docking points for snot and fart jokes but it's a family show after all so whatever. The worst thing about this ep is the monster and its fate - I can get behind "the story needed a monster so the machine made one" because I love the meta stuff going on in this whole series but the jump from "the machine made it" to "it's beautiful and we have to risk our lives to save it" to "okay bye" was way too fast and incredibly shallow. I'm hesitant to interpret that are part of the "reality is falling apart and the story is telling itself" thing because it just felt like bad writing actually and if we start attributing all bad writing to that, we'll start excusing anything.

Overall very fun to watch though and makes me very excited to see more!