The Haunting of Villa Diodati

There is no other word for that episode than utterly fantastic. I loved the spooky haunted house vibe, the stuff with the constantly changing house and Ashad The Lone Cyberman. Its design is impeccable, and the Cyberman  having no emotional inhibitor is  unique.

Jodie Whittaker's speech about sometimes not always being able to win and not wanting to lose someone else to the Cyber-conversion is going to go down in Who history as one of the all-time greats. Yet another instant classic after three already in one series.

It's stylish enough, and even a little substantive for the standards of Chibnall. In spite of others liking it I don't really get much out of this episode. It's fine. Unusually coherent for a 13th Doctor episode, but still kind of pointless. Ashad has some of the biggest build-up of any Doctor Who villain ever and it really feels like it doesn't amount to anything. He's just going to get tossed away in a couple of episodes. Who cares?

It reminds me a lot of some of the stuff we've heard about what production was like during this era. Rushed, to the point that scripts were delaying filming - and the writing shows for it in stuff like this. I bet people could watch this and be disengaged enough and unable to follow things to the extent they would have no idea Frankenstein's writer was involved in the story at all!

The good Chibnall-era episode, with sharp writing, humour and wit. With an honestly impressive ability to juggle characters and have them all be fleshed out, with added characterization for Thirteen (that genuinely makes me excited to listen to her inevitable Big Finish audios, providing they use this as a template as to how to do Thirteen right). With mood, atmosphere and stakes.
Similar in ways to a couple of my favourite stories from Doctor Who, Like The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon for the haunted house vibes of the second part, similar to The Chimes of Midnight for being about a house where weird stuff takes place filled with fleshed-out cooky characters and similar to Master for it being a story completely carried by the character-work.

Altogether, it is just brilliant writing, and It was a breath of fresh air to those of us who dreaded every new episode of Who after realizing that it had lost everything we held dear about it.
It was clearly an overwhelming success for those who didn't like Chibnall Who (like myself) as I heard several people say she should be the next showrunner, which I personally think is a bit far for a completely new writer to the show with one great episode and nothing else, but I certainly get the gratitude.
9/10