An abysmal episode of the show, and honestly deserves the reputation it has. I think a lot of the Chibnall era isn’t as bad as they say, but this is like a bottom five episode no problem. The Dregs are the most obvious problem. They look like s**t and are are not compelling whatsoever. Every shot is either a Dreg that looks like it came from a ps2 game, or a basic corridor except the color of the light is going crazy for some reason.

The twist is really basic and brings nothing new to the table. 13 and the fam are not on top form either. There is a little good stuff with Ryan, but it’s only like one scene where he’s trying to flirt with a girl who can’t act. The “Benni” line has been memed to death but again, it’s warranted. It’s very grating on the ears and it never succeeds in making me care about these two because that old woman can’t act. And then she dies for absolutely no reason.

Overall this is completely skippable. It tries to be an homage to JNT Doctor Who, but doesn’t have any fun with itself. It’s a bore and an annoyance.

Orphan 55 is a very strange episode, for sure, written by It Takes You Away’s Ed Hime, which is also very strange but more confidently & aggressively weird, so I like it way more. Orphan 55 has such the tone of a S24 McCoy for me, like the plot of this (a companion wins a holiday to a galactic spa which turns out to be in a climate controlled dome on an otherwise inhospitable world populated by aggressive mutants) could slot right in there with Paradise Towers or my beloved Delta. Plenty of things are well done about the production, from location shooting in Tenerife to the monster design and the way they are shot and teased for so long before we see them clearly (and man, these Dregs are freakin’ JACKED lol, they all have a full eight-pack). Several things are done in an aggressively silly way, like Hyph3n’s whole look and of course poor James Buckley’s wig. There is the lady endlessly yelling “Benni,” which is not the same as a character lol. And the saboteur’s plan seems quite a bit too intense and insane for the understandable human reason she’s doing it. Unclear why absolutely all characters have to go to so many of the plot points together, it’s weird to trundle like 10 people out into the dangerous wasteland to look for one person.

And then there is the twist, and ending. I don’t mind it particularly, I don’t even know that it does necessarily contradict The Ark In Space (could feasibly be long after or way before) or The Mysterious Planet (this is way before that) etc etc. It seems to me that what The Doctor says at the end is relatively reasonable, that on this show we’ve seen myriad future and alternate Earths and they may contradict each other because their future is still being written. Now, the actual message is certainly delivered with the opposite of subtlety, and I feel personally that the message of the story, which I’m of course fully on board for, could’ve been better explored if this was a completely fictional alien planet and the drama helped us understand what a rich and vibrant planet had been lost and turned into a cheap holiday facsimile. I also might have preferred if the saboteur’s plan was less familial and more about some kind of activism related to the planet or the mutants, essentially to make this more like S24 we’d want this to be some kind of corporate satire, the parent company is exploitative or even causes the disasters that create orphan worlds for their galactic hotel chain. All kinds of elements are here to play with, and I like lots of them, but the story or the edit doesn’t present them too favorably. Can’t manage much more than a 2.5/5, unfortunately.

This is generally considered one of the worst episodes in all of Doctor Who, and I'm quite inclined to agree.  With grade-school level politics, lame characters, disappointing acting, terrible editing, boring sets, and a complete waste of our main cast, there's not a lot to like about Orphan 55.  The monsters could have been cool but they aren't filmed very well.  I don't love the twist around this being Earth and the result of wicked humanity - aside from it being a bit against scientific consensus (the Earth will survive us - we just might not survive ourselves) - it's an old twist that is basically the same bit as the original Planet of the Apes.  Consider me unimpressed.

Sorry, I can't provide any sort of contradictory take to the popular sentiments around this one - it's just a bad episode.  Not even entertainingly bad, either.

Just making this review as a reminder to skip this episode in future rewatches. I thought I would like it a bit more than on my first watch. In my defence, some episodes of this era have gone up quite a bit in my estimation in this second viewing (Demons of the Punjab has become one of my favourite historicals, and I found it quite boring the first time for some reason).

But no, this is the worst episode this show has ever produced. Yes, even worse than some of the most infamous of the Classic Era (I actually quite like the Twin Dilemma). The dialogue is ass, the characters make no sense in their motivations and their choices (why do they all go looking for Benni only for them to get ambushed and get back to the spa?), the acting is extremely subpar, the pacing is non-existent... But the most egregious sin is that it is so boring. At least with some bad episodes like The Crimson Horror (yeah I can't stand it don't ask me why) you have good characters making do with bad scripts and dialogue, but there is nothing to grasp at here. Even the moral of the story is half-baked, with no real depth, just there to make it look deep and with substance.

Anyway, if you really wanna rewatch this, drink one shot everytime you hear BENNI!!! It will go down easier.

Horrible writing, horrible plot, horrible character writing, an overly telegraphed 'twist', a moral that is condescendingly simplistic and over-explained, honestly, is there anything of merit to find in this episode? I honestly, really do not think so, the only small comfort I can find here is that I never have to watch this episode again, because truly, once was more than enough.
1/10