DOCTOR WHO (S11E2) “The Ghost Monument”: Lost In Space
In the opening moments of “The Ghost Monument”, we find ourselves drifting through space with the Doctor and her companions, stranded after a teleportation went awry in the cliffhanger ending of the previous episode.
Struggling to breathe, they start to panic before losing consciousness and they are surprised to wake up on board spaceships. Graham (Bradley Walsh) comforts his grandson Ryan (Tosin Cole), who is shocked that they are still alive while the ship’s pilot, Angstrom (Susan Lynch), tells them that their friends, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and Yaz (Mandip Gill), are most likely dead.
Meanwhile, on another spaceship nearby, Yaz awakens to the sound of the Doctor arguing with someone in the next room and goes to investigate. Coming to the realisation that they are on board a spaceship, Yaz watches as the Doctor and Epzo (Shaun Dooley) quarrel over the best way to avoid crashing to their deaths on the planet ahead of them. Facing impending doom, they opt to detach the back of the ship, and brace themselves for a dangerous landing.
“Three suns in the sky”
After a safer descent, Ryan and Graham mourn their lost friends and begin to explore the dusty terrain of the unknown planet, following the Angstrom through the empty desert. Still taking in their new surroundings, Ryan hesitantly asks if this is an alien planet, and Graham, while looking upwards, notes that the “three suns in the sky are a bit of a giveaway”.
Epzo’s ship then comes hurtling out of the sky, and happens to crash down where the others are walking, reuniting the Doctor with all three of her companions. She promises that she’ll get them home, but has no idea how to actually achieve this goal, and tells them that she’s “treating it as an opportunity to surprise [her]self”. Angstrom and Epzo also have a chance to catch up, coming across here as serious rivals, as he viciously tells her, while towering over her, “you’re nothing”.
In a lighter exchange, the Doctor lends Graham some sunglasses, and says she can’t remember who she borrowed them from – either Audrey Hepburn or Pythagoras. Graham eagerly puts them on, as the three suns beat down on them, telling her that Pythagoras never wore sunglasses, to which she replies “you never saw him drunk”.
A tent appears in the middle of the desert, and the group finds out from the holographic man inside, Ilin (Art Malik), that Angstrom and Epzo are competing for a life-changing prize. They are told that Angstrom and Epzo are competitors in a space competition – a race to something called “Ghost Monument”, which the Doctor is shown to be the TARDIS, and only one of them will be the winner and freed from the planet’s dangers.
Killer Robots and Killer Cloths
The group of six set sail on the journey to the monument, napping as they go, and then travel through some dangerous ruins, guarded by Sniperbots. Under attack, Ryan panics and tries to shoot back, much to the Doctor’s disgust. She prefers to fight with her brainpower and manages to knock out the robots with an electromagnetic pulse, deactivating them for a few minutes, in which time they go to explore the underground network, hiding from the dangers of the night.
Yaz waits for Ryan who, with his dyspraxia, struggles going down the ladder, while the Doctor tells Epzo to “take one of [his] heroic naps” while she figures out what has been hidden down there. A snake-like cloth appears and slithers up his body as he rests, attempting to suffocate him, and the Doctor manages to pull it off just in time. They discover that it is the work of the Stenza, the alien who visited Sheffield in Episode 1, and they have to run outside to escape the robot security guards once again.
The Timeless Child
Outside they face more dangers, however, and end up in a gas-filled field, surrounded by the telepathic cloth creatures, the Remnants, who taunt the Doctor about a hidden memory she has of an abandoned, “timeless” child. While the Doctor cannot remember what this means, it hints at a mysterious lost child theme for Series 11’s story arc and a larger quest for the Doctor and her team to explore in the episodes to come.
Just as all hope is lost at the end of the space race, when the hologram tent teleports Angstrom and Epzo away, the TARDIS shows up and saves the Doctor and her human friends. “Come to daddy, I mean, mummy,” the Doctor calls out to her spaceship, acting as a reminder of both the child-related theme and the Doctor’s new gender.
Doctor Who: Conclusion
Having landed on an incredibly dangerous planet, all six characters luckily escape, and continue onwards in their separate journeys through space. Whittaker‘s second episode shows the Doctor up to her usual tricks, fending off alien attacks while rescuing humans, and reunites us all with the TARDIS, ready for more fun-packed adventures travelling back to Earth in the episodes to come.
Who do you think the “Timeless Child” is? Let us know your thoughts below!
The next episode of Doctor Who will air on BBC One at 6.55pm GMT on 21 October 2018.
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