Really enjoyed this one. It was a little bit disjointed in places, and I'm a bit worried about how it's all going to get wrapped up next week, but this was a really interesting concept that I found very fun and engaging. "John Smith" was an interesting character; I thought that Gatwa gave a good balance between this dystopian, human, heteronormative version of the Doctor with little bits of the original peeking through when the doubts start creeping in. I was a little disappointed by the limited scope of Belinda's role, though. She started off this season being very cautious and skeptical, it would have been nice if that had stuck around for this episode, or indeed if she'd had much of anything at all to do.

I really enjoyed Archie Panjabi's Rani. I've seen a lot of people complaining that she was too Master-y, but honestly, I couldn't see it. None of this was done for the sake of the Doctor's opinion, she trapped him and used him as a fuel source for her experiment, and then she disposed of him. Admittedly, the dance scene was a little Masteresque, but arguably that's just a staple of RTD finale villains at this point (e.g., the Toymaker). She's cool, efficient, and ruthless.

Conrad was also enjoyable; I thought that he was a lot more humanized than he was in his first appearance. You can see that he did actually feel bad about flooding South Africa, e.g. Obviously, he's still a terrible person -- his idealized world and how it treats queer, disabled, and female folks is enough evidence of that -- but he's more of a person here, rather than the very performative attitude he put on for his videos. I also thought that he was a good bit of commentary about how the people who crave this kind of control over others are generally uniquely bad at handling it; he doesn't want to cause another flood, so he just declares that the weather all over the world is 'nice', and he complains about how much hard work it is to just sit in a room and read aloud.

As for Mrs. Flood... well, she didn't have much to do, and she was rather used for comic relief, but I was interested by the way she seemed to bridle at her treatment by her future self. Could be interesting to see that manifest in the next part.

The ending bit with Omega... well, I suppose we'll see how that turns out next week. I am going in with low expectations to raise the odds of being pleasantly surprised. This rating may change in response to how that turns out.

Edit: Originally I gave this story 3.5 stars. In light of the second part, I have knocked it down to 3. It would have been by more, but given the immense disconnect between the two episodes in terms of plot, pacing, subject, etc., it felt churlish to knock this one too harshly based on the sins of its counterpart.