My ultimate opinion of this episode will depend on how well or poorly the creatives land the train in part two.

But what a beautiful queer idea that disabled folks, because they are cast out from the norm, can see through the bullshit. And what a beautiful ode to "doubt" as an antidote to an oppressive cultural hegemony.

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.

Surprisingly dark. Good characterization for the entire fam, despite the story's short length.

It's not a mind-blowing story but it is a lovely surprising, adding texture to the world we'll soon get to see. Doctor Who prose often feels divorced from other media. Sometimes that's to its strength (the 8th Doctor books have some real fun going their own direction), but it would be nice to see more crossover like we have here. Especially with the abbreviated seasons we have these days, which don't give us time for two-parters. Prequel, sequel, or addendum stories could really serve to flesh out what we get on screen.

What a mixed bag. Now halfway through McCoy's era on my first ever watch-through, I feel I understand its vibe a little better than I had simply absorbing the 7th Doctor through other media.

This season continues to outdo McCoy's first season even when it stumbles. Though I can't even truly say whether Silver Nemesis is a stumble. I find myself asking: What does it all mean?

For example, our opening shot and a decent amount of the plotting involve a neo-Nazi group from South America pursuing this powerful weapon. But why Nazis? Two stories ago, we got a Nazi-lite far-right group getting mixed up with Daleks in a way that intentionally drew parallels between the two. Here, the Nazis seem to be nothing more than a recognizable, definable and evil faction included because we can reliably count on them to pursue the MacGuffin du jour and expect our heroes to oppose them, Indiana Jones-style. There are definite themes you can pull out of a Nazi/Cyberman crossover. This adventure very nearly does that in Episode 2, when the Nazi leader speaks of supermen and superiority. But I kept expecting and hoping it would amount to more.

Relatedly, there's a level of confusion that pervades this era. Maybe I'm not as media literate as I need to be to understand these plots better, but basically every 7 story to this point has left me asking, at multiple points, why characters are doing what they're doing. Why are things happening? Why are characters going where they're going? Saying things the way they're saying them? Taking a step back, the plots make sense from a distance. But actually watching them leaves me with the feeling that there are steps missing. This is mirrored in the geography of some scenes. The clunkiness of yelling out chess moves as the Doctor and Ace twirl around Cybermen is definitely something that looked good on paper and absolutely falls apart as it starts happening on screen.

All of this said, I do appreciate what this episode does well. The characters are fun and better defined than in some other McCoy serials. I love an episode where we hop between different times. It makes the Whoniverse, and the concept of time-travel, feel very alive and less like a device to drop our protagonists in Pompeii or wherever.

Other reviewers have pointed our that this adventure adds little to the mystery of who the Doctor is, and I would agree and add it seems to be mysterious for mystery's sake, which is always annoying. But it is interesting to me, someone who came to DW through NuWho, how well the dialogue here gels with the Timeless Child revelations.

The Missy writers and performers continue to nail the balance between really quick-witted humor and really dark material. It's incredible that we get continually invested in the machinations of an objectively awful creature like Missy. Making the Monk a brain in a bag is the sort of inspired fun that works better in audio than anywhere else.

In the interviews that follow this episode, Goss talks about Michelle Gomez taking a script and running with it. You can hear that here in every line delivery, ever aside, every retort. What a gifted, dedicated actor that I hope we see more of in audio and on screen.

This episode also leans in. Yes, we have Missy plotting and the Monk suffering, but once it settles into its third act war games, nothing could be better than hearing how they one up each other. And we really hear it. The sound design here is brilliant — especially considering how many unique weapons and beings it has to depict.

A tense and at times terrifying episode shot through with an undeniable sense of dread. Dread because we know some of these characters are doomed. Dread because we know we will not be allowed to understand the Midnight creature.

I appreciated the brief but necessary levity on the TARDIS and into the mission. Because the rest was heavy. Belinda has seen the death that follows the Doctor. Now she has seen the cosmic horror he meets with joy. “You’re dangerous,” she said in The Robot Revolution. What could she be thinking now?

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts once I’ve sat with the episode

The best of the season and yet not very good. It starts strong, with characters and humor a step above anything we've seen this season, but episodes 2 and 3 just feel off.

It goes for a humor it can't quite achieve. The bit with the guard could have landed so much better if it bore any resemblance to a real, informed conversation. Yes, it's funny for the guard to know philosophy, but the joke fails because he actually doesn't. I don't have a degree in philosophy but even I know enough to know the conversation is complete gibberish, which really diminishes the joke because you're left wondering: Does the Doctor literally not know what an existentialist is?

It goes for emotional beats it can't quite achieve. I want to care about the human drama. The first episode was so promising. But then it just gets stupid. It's difficult to explain — maybe it's poor acting, maybe it's poor direction — but every story this season felt off. Like you're constantly thinking: Oh my god, these people are just saying their lines. Obviously actors are always saying their lines in every TV show but you usually can't feel it. You can feel it here.

Why does Mel leave? Why does the Doctor react that way? Why does he invite Ace to travel with him? These things just happen with no emotional reasoning behind them. I started watching Remembrance of the Daleks before coming here to write this and it's already clear the next season will be much, much better. I'm excited to perhaps start enjoying the Seventh Doctor's era.

It's interesting to see McCormack try out a concept she will later nail in Caged (with the 15th Doctor). It's clear that she likes to think up a good alien species with a unique world and outlook. But it just works so much better in her later book. Contrasting the two demonstrates why.

In Caged, just as in Molten Heart, we start with the main character. In both cases, an adventurous young girl somewhat at odds with her small community by dint of her adventurousness. But in Molten Heart, we stay with this character for just one short prologue chapter before the Fam arrives. In Caged, it's a good chunk of the book. We get a real feel for our heroine. We are rooting for her and care about her before the Doctor and their companion(s) arrive. There is no such feeling in Molten Heart.

The emotional beats hit harder in Caged. It gives us the confusion of an alien abduction and the doubts of the abductor and we feel both. Molten Heart gives us only what we can see coming a mile away.

This makes Molten Heart fascinating, because in it we can see the rough draft of some ideas that are better realized in McCormack's later, excellent book. I'm an Una stan and it's cool to see her improve from this book, which I didn't care for, to the other book, which is among my top DW novels.

Separately, this book once again underlines a problem with the Fam. The TARDIS has too many people and they never get interesting development. This book should have sidelined two — and I mean really sidelined; have them left at home on the TARDIS playing a game that we cut back to for ten pages total — and focus on just 13 and Ryan or just 13 and Yaz. I would love a larger TARDIS team that played with this and if it won't happen in the show, maybe it ought to happen in these spinoff novels.

I don't hate any Missy adventure, but this is a weak close to an otherwise excellent boxset. We know from the beginning that neither Missy nor the Monk will fall to the Ogrons. While other audios with similarly predictable outcomes manage to build tension, this one does not.

Perhaps the Ogrons do not work in audio. They are the opposite of the Daleks, who are made scarier in audio because their disembodied voice is scarier than the same voice embodied in a trash can. The Ogrons have a stupid voice, but the visual of a great, hulking monster-mercenary gives them weight. Here we don't have the visuals. We just have line-reads that take forever.