S01E09 - September 9th 2025
The verdict is unequivocal: give Jodie Whittaker the role of the Doctor back—and quickly. For me, this audio is yet more proof that the Thirteenth Doctor is brilliant and that her performer is genuinely passionate about playing her. I loved listening to this episode from beginning to end. The central idea is wonderful: why does the Doctor so rarely return to the places where she has saved people? The action is handled beautifully, the cast are on top form, and the sound design rises to meet them. It is an emphatic yes from me.
The Doctor and Yaz solve a problem on a distant planet, but as they prepare to leave, Yaz hears a small voice in her head telling her not to trust the Doctor. She asks to go back—something the Doctor rarely does. But Yaz makes a mistake at the controls and takes them back ten years later, only for them to witness a catastrophe: a once peaceful people are now at war, everything is falling apart, and everyone blames the Doctor.
It is a superb premise, sustained from start to finish by a story full of action, twists, and a very cool new antagonist concept in the form of the Whisper.
This audio is a perfect example of how to anchor the characters’ emotional journey in a science-fiction setting whose concepts are both strange and powerful. The Whisper would fit perfectly into the television series, but because the idea works so well in audio, introducing it here feels inspired. The score also gives itself the luxury of an operatic sweep that recalls the best musical moments of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, pushing the story even further into the stylistic territory of the Thirteenth Doctor’s era on television.
Because this episode contains everything I love about this Doctor: a stronger grounding in science fiction than many other incarnations, a genuine attention to everyone’s emotions, and conflicts resolved not through brute force but through dialogue. The weaknesses, such as they are, lie perhaps in the underuse of the new species created for the story—a kind of armadillo-humanoid—and in the slightly simplistic treatment of forgiveness as a value capable of solving everything. That is perhaps a little naïve, but since the Doctor acknowledges her own blind spots at the end, it only bothers me so much. In any case, I was not disappointed by this episode—far from it.
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