I don’t think I’m the only one to be thinking of Gaza and other colonized places watching this episode. I think that’s intentional. Helia is very much not Gaza. Nor is it any other specific place and that’s good. Sci-fi and fantasy shouldn’t present us with exact one-to-ones. (In Andor, it is important that Ghorman feels like both France during Nazi occupation and Algeria during French occupation, as Roxana Hadadi wrote in Vulture, because this gets us to deeper truths about power and violence.) But we are asked to think about specifics from our own world because this episode is set at the Interstellar Eurovision.

You have underpowered, marginalized people resorting to terrorism to strike back at the hegemon that ruined their world. Their plan will involve the deaths of innocent civilians. Their target is a live entertainment event. In this light, I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking of October 7. And if this is meant to be Oct. 7, then of course, the creatives cannot and should not come down on the side of “yeah, that makes sense, do it” however much the episode aims to humanize helions and grapple with their mistreatment.

But here’s where it goes off the rails. Because we are no longer sitting on Oct. 8, pondering the unspeakable violence of the day before. We have seen sustained, indiscriminate violence, justified in Oct. 7’s name, achieve unimaginable death tolls.

By making Helia’s response the outsized response, we have flipped the script. Yes, Helia was burned by capitalist forces. But now the survivors are threatening, effectively, the entire galaxy. We see Helia burning, yes, but we do not see Helians burning. We do not see Helian houses, with entire families inside, reduced to rubble as the song contest promoters cheerfully ask why everyone can’t just get along. While its defenders ask the galaxy not to make it political by mentioning the burning home over there. Violence against Helia is made abstract, while the violence of Helians is made visceral. All those people floating out into space is a horrifying image. We are given no such image of people suffering when it comes to Helia.

Still, there’s more the episode is straining to say here than simply: “You have two options, and you should make change within the system instead of doing a terrorism.” There are shades of gray that could really make this a five-star episode if they were allowed to sit in their ambiguity and discomfort. The Doctor tortures our Helian terrorist. If Helia’s response to their destruction cannot be excused, why is the Doctor’s choice to lash out with violence? If war-crimey violence is not acceptable when a corporation kills your family and you feel alone, why is it acceptable when a terrorist kills your friend and you feel alone? The Doctor should be in handcuffs too. Or neither of them should.

But ultimately, these are the politics of the episode we are given. Not as heinous as Kerblam!, which looks at the camera to say, “Stop complaining about Amazon,” because this episode does want to grapple with the issues it raises. But it ultimately needs a happy, neat ending and isn’t ready to stand in the gray that its subject matter demands.