S01E01 - July 3rd 2025
OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!!! The Thirteenth Doctor is finally back with a new adventure!! And with Yaz!! Right, I’m going to try to be as objective as possible, but honestly, since the Thirteenth Doctor may well be my favourite (it’s between 12, 13, and 2), that won’t be easy. We open with Yaz heading to a friend’s hen party. The premise is simple and feels very much like the start of a classic horror film, but it works. It gives us a chance to learn a little more about Yaz, which is really lovely. Then the Doctor turns up with chickens: INCREDIBLE. Ahem, I’m calming down, I promise. (But the chickens are called Ian and Barbara!! Tribute or disrespect?? I don’t know—but I love it!)
The rest is a little muddled and not always especially cohesive, and the concept itself remains very simple. Even so, what makes me love this episode is the return of the actresses, both of whom are on top form.
It is such a joy to have them back; you can feel that they want to be here and are giving it everything. It is also interesting that this audio does not slot neatly into the mould of the Thirteenth Doctor’s televised adventures, but rather into a kind of parallel continuity: as though this were a season we never got to see, in which the Doctor and Yaz had adventures on their own, bringing a fresh wind to this era. That may be what I appreciate most.
For now, this episode does not seem to be setting up a larger arc, but that is precisely the point: it opens the range with a story that could easily have sat in the middle of a season. That is both enjoyable and intriguing. In any case, it feels refreshingly self-contained. The question I keep coming back to—and hope will eventually be answered—is the choice of antagonist, which the title shamelessly spoils. A vampire… at the exact moment a vampire is also turning up in the Fugitive audios… Let’s hope there is a connection! That would be magnificent!
This episode’s pop, LGBTQIA+, horror-film atmosphere is a choice I absolutely love, because it taps into one of the defining qualities of the Thirteenth Doctor era that, in my view, is far too rarely highlighted. She lends herself perfectly to slightly gothic stories that play with the usual codes. That is true here: it does not feel gloomy, rainy, or nocturnal, and yet we still have a vampire, a group of people under attack, and a single-location setting. I really enjoy that kind of playful twist on familiar material. I cannot wait to see what the rest of the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures have in store for us!
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