I love you experimental Doctor Who!!!

I remember enjoying this but not loving it on first watch. I expected a 4* at most. But after upping Punjab to a 5, I've realised this is in the same tier for me.

It's strange, it's a vibe, it's like nothing before or after. And I love it so much. It's character drama posing as traditional folk horror and sci-fi. It's about love and grief and the connections we make, lose and want to have.

There are no defacto good or bad guys in this story. 13 and Ryan mean well but do the wrong thing at points. Graham is prioritising his own needs and grief over the safety of the universe. Erik is prioritising the same over his blind daughter who needs his love and care. Even the Solitract meant no harm. Just a frog who wanted a pal. To be loved.Yaz is there. She continues to be sadly underutilised, though her having training to be good with kids was sweet.

There is one character who has zero depth, and is the closest to a defacto antagonist. But even then he's just a small factor in a story not about him. He exists solely to show the threat the moths are. He is functional and it's fine.

The direction is beautiful. The dialogue is not clunky for once. The episode is gorgeous visually. The music !!! Fantastic !!!

I would never want Doctor Who to be this every week. But when it is, it's a delight. This is just wonderful, thematically rich, beautiful Doctor Who. And it's weird. It's so goddamn weird.

I love it.

It takes you away

We get a development of Graham and how he feels after Grace's death in Woman who fell to Earth, allows his character to grow.

This is a pretty great episode, parallel Pocket dimension that wants to be like ours. Pretty terrible father, leaving your bind daughter to live in a pocket dimension to live with your fake wife while also creating fake fear to keep her locked inside, is awful parenting. Still it's a great episode.

i might feel highly of this because ive sat through so much mid since the beginning of this season, but this was genuinely a fun and exciting watch. i think it just really shows how lovable and fun this cast can be when chibnall isnt writing the script. the idea of the solitract in general is so interesting and fun to me and really genius for a one time episode villain!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“IT TAKES YOU AWAY: GRIEF, FROGS, AND FROZEN FEELINGS IN CHIBNALL’S STRANGEST HOUR”

With It Takes You Away, Series 11 takes a sharp left turn into the experimental. Written by Ed Hime, this eerie, intimate penultimate episode swaps epic stakes for an emotionally charged character drama dressed up in sci-fi and horror trappings. Set in a lonely cottage nestled deep in the Norwegian woods (seriously, Doctor Who, give Sweden, Denmark, and Finland a go sometime), this one begins as a traditional spooky yarn and gradually unravels into one of the strangest—and most poetic—stories of the Chibnall era.

ATMOSPHERIC HORROR WITH A DIMENSIONAL TWIST

The opening stretch is wonderfully tense, with shadowy cinematography, minimal dialogue, and a brooding sense of unease. A frightened blind girl, Hanne, hides from the ‘monsters’ that come each day. Her performance—sharp, determined, and never passive—grounds the story’s emotion from the off. The dilapidated house, shrouded in grey skies and silence, immediately creates that haunted-house-meets-base-under-siege vibe. The camera lingers on creaking doors and unexplained noises. We’re deep in horror territory… until the mirror in the upstairs bedroom flips the tone entirely.

Enter the Antizone, a jagged, glowing red-and-blue cavern filled with cobwebs and monsters. It’s beautifully designed, highly stylised, and very Classic Who-coded. But while the shift into sci-fi spectacle is exciting, it does slightly dampen the horror mood that was so expertly established. Still, the introduction of the Antizone does allow for one memorable new character: Ribbons, a deceitful, goblin-like trickster with Gollum vibes (played with slippery menace by Kevin Eldon). Sadly, he's dispatched a bit too quickly by the flesh-eating moths, but he leaves a lasting impression.

THE SOLITRACT: A FROG, A VOID, AND AN EXISTENTIAL METAPHOR

At its core, this is a story about grief and letting go. It’s a remarkably clever conceit: the Solitract, a banished sentience creating a reality of false comforts and familiar faces to trap lonely people inside. Erik, clinging to a copy of his dead wife, exemplifies emotional paralysis. The most affecting moment belongs to Graham, who must confront a too-perfect imitation of Grace—and heartbreakingly reject her to protect Ryan. Bradley Walsh is phenomenal here, capturing both longing and quiet strength as Graham realises this Grace isn’t real. It’s a scene steeped in emotion and memory, and a beautiful payoff to his grief arc across the series.

And then comes that frog.

Yes, the Solitract’s final form—realising it must let the Doctor go—is a talking frog perched on a chair in a blank white void. It’s surreal, ridiculous, and deeply moving all at once. Jodie Whittaker brings a strange, lyrical empathy to this sequence. Her monologue to the Solitract, about the pain of letting go and the joy of knowing something new, is one of her best moments. She delivers it with a blend of giddy awe and solemn heartbreak, walking that tightrope of Doctorly wonder and sad wisdom.

STRONG CHARACTER MOMENTS FOR TEAM TARDIS—MOSTLY

The episode is notably small-scale, allowing all members of Team TARDIS a moment in the spotlight. Graham, of course, gets the emotional centre. Yaz, while not deeply involved in the Solitract plot, contributes meaningfully and remains level-headed throughout. Ryan, meanwhile, gets less to do—most of his time is spent trapped in the Antizone with Hanne, although the closing moment when he finally calls Graham “Grandad” is a lovely, understated resolution to their arc.

There’s also a delightfully practical touch in Graham packing sandwiches for the trip. That’s peak Graham.

VISUALS, SOUND, AND STRANGE BEAUTY

Visually, It Takes You Away is stunning—though occasionally frustratingly dark. The Antizone scenes, while beautifully lit in theory, can be hard to follow due to under-lighting. Still, the visual contrast between Norway’s cold desaturation, the Antizone’s neon decay, and the clean white void of the Solitract world gives the episode a distinctive aesthetic signature.

Segun Akinola’s score is excellent, alternating between quietly unsettling and grandly emotional. His strings swell with beauty in the final scenes, helping turn the bizarre frog moment into something gently tragic rather than farcical.

SMALL STAKES, BIG THEMES

It Takes You Away may not feature universe-ending stakes or epic battles, but it trades spectacle for introspection, offering one of the most emotionally intelligent stories of the Chibnall era. It’s a bottle episode with teeth—willing to lean into the surreal and the sentimental without apology. It's not perfect—some characters are underserved, and the tonal shift may not be for everyone—but it's daring and memorable in a way few episodes of Series 11 are.

📝 VERDICT: 79/100

IT TAKES YOU AWAY is a slow-burning, genre-shifting story that swaps monsters for metaphors and thrills for themes. With a brave, strange script and one of Jodie Whittaker’s best performances, it’s a standout of Series 11—bold, beautiful, and not afraid to end on a talking frog. A minor classic of modern Doctor Who—if you’re willing to take the leap.

The horror vibes are pretty on point here. The lonely house in the forest with the lake behind... The mystery is gripping and the antizone is pretty cool. I especially loved the Doctor reassuring the little girl while writing on the wall a cold and devastating albeit rational message for her companions.

The thing that I didn't love is the discussion between the Doctor and the frog at the end. I was expecting it to be more whimsical and philosophical but no, it ended being quite shallow. At least the Doctor made friends with a conscious universe I guess...

This is the top 2 episode for the season, behind Demons of the Punjab. The next episode is a bit meh so I'll leave my thoughts on this season here. I actually have enjoyed it quite a lot, this rewatch has made like a lot more the 13th Doctor and Jodie as an actress, I like the fact that her incarnation is the most hopeful and loving Doctor of all, although she can be a badass when the moment calls for it.

This is my favorite S11 story, even if I think Demons Of The Punjab is the best piece of TV drama they made that year, and Witchfinders and Rosa are absolutely top notch, there is something so purely, perfectly Doctor Who about this mad blend of styles and emotions and big ideas. We are dealing with a sentient pocket universe made of energy fundamentally incompatible with ours to a destructive degree, it is lonely and seeks to gain either access to our universe or some company for its own solitary existence, and it tries to tempt people through offering them a convincing simulacrum of their lost loves (Graham and Grace break my heart here). Between our world and that one, an Anti-Zone grows as a natural barrier between incompatible energies, with flesh moths and The Actor Kevin Eldon scavenging for some kind of existence in that nothing place. And we start in Norway so we can get a little Scandy noir vibe going. There are two things that ping me here, one is why Ryan is quite so harsh about Hanna’s dad leaving (I understand character-wise what they are going for, but it feels better suited to a Ryan earlier in the series, he feels like he’s grown more by this point and wouldn’t be quite so blunt), and the other is how Erik initially found the portal, or why the Solitract picked specifically him, specifically that mirror. But not everything has to be answered, some things are better left vibey. I couldn’t love the concept of a toxic universe that wants to be friends more, and I can’t think of much that is more totally Doctor Who than that universe choosing to appear as a frog on a chair.I love this one. 4.25/5

It Takes You Away is a perfect example of an adventure done in by the flaws pervading this era. It's a great set-up. A lost child and a weird mystery in cool horror-movie-setting location where the characters are ultimately challenged by the false temptations of a sentient alternate universe. Great stuff. In theory.

But there are too many companions. I don't hate any of them. But very clearly this episode would be stronger if it focused on Graham. Yaz doesn't grow in this episode. And the episode wants us to think Ryan grew, but he didn't really. He just made an ill-advised statement at the outset and sort of made amends with the person he made the statement to. All of the Graham and Grace stuff would hit a lot harder if we were spending more time with Graham, sitting with his pain, his loss, and exploring how he and the Doctor talk about it.

13 essentially had three seasons. What if she had one of these companions each season. They traveled with her and by traveling with her became more whole. Jodie could have been the Doctor that healed.

But no, we have three companions and 10 episodes so we just waste a lot of time sending these characters places. This was a problem with the episode before, the Witchfinders, as well. The Doctor arbitrarily designates which companions go where and there's never any reason given. It's just for the plot. In fact, some of these designations don't make sense. In this episode, why was Ryan left with Hanne? The only interaction we've seen between them was brief and went badly. Meanwhile, we saw Hanne's reaction with Yaz go very well, we had Yaz comment on how to interact with children effectively; she even says she has training. And yet when the plot demands we split up the fam, Yaz goes with the Doctor and Ryan is left behind.

This makes sense in a "we want Ryan to make amends with Hanne and grow from this" way. But it doesn't make sense as a decision the Doctor would make.

On top of this, the writing and direction are once again weird. 13 pieces together what's happening not by finding clues but by remembering a story that explains exactly what's happening and talking, basically uninterrupted, at Yaz for like four minutes. This is the sort of contrivance that could be papered over with clever or snappy dialogue, of the kind Smith and Capaldi got to perform, but we don't have that here.

Jodie is a fantastic actor and these problems would be twice as bad if we didn't have her in the role. Graham is excellent, too. I wish we got to see more of him and feel more of what's going through his head.

To wrap this up as a compliment sandwich: Jodie's episodes are basically all shot like horror movies (intense close-ups with the character looking off screen, giving us this almost claustrophobic feeling), and that works well here. It sells the horror. For all its flaws, this is a gorgeous era of the show. And what a perfect genre for exploring loss against the possibility of making difficult bargains with unimaginable creatures. If only the episode, and era, lived up to this potential.

A completely wild and unique Doctor Who story which is beautiful in its construction and nature - a genuinely perfect story, which deserves so much more love.

A really unsatisfying, muddled plot, but several earnest emotional moments in the last few minutes. I teared up twice!