Doctor Who Series 12, Episode 3
“Orphan 55”
Posted by Kim
Well then. Back to business as usual in the Chibnall era, I see.
Look. I realize that after the epic nature of “Spyfall, Parts One and Two” (which, yes, had its own issues, especially in Part Two) that there was going to be a comedown of sorts, that there was no way that Doctor Who could sustain that kind of high-octane momentum throughout the entire series. It’s just not sustainable, and that’s fine. As an X-Files fan, I’m used to this kind of whiplash, where you go from a mythology dense two-parter one week to a standalone episode about evil cockroaches the next, with nary a mention about the events that happened the week before. (No shade against “War of the Coprophages,” which is absolutely one of my favorite standalone X-Files episodes.) That’s FINE. It’s needed, because if every episode was like “Spyfall,” we’d grow numb to it.
But still, even with all that knowledge, I couldn’t help but feel that “Orphan 55” was a letdown. I don’t know if it’s because I was watching it with a critical eye from the start, because I knew it was my week to recap, or if it just wasn’t my bag in general, but I never got on board with this episode. Even with the enjoyable bits (and there were a lot of those!), I wasn’t able to see past the storytelling flaws or the complete lack of subtlety when it came to the message. For me, it slotted right in with the majority of Series 11: fun at the time, but ultimately disposable or forgettable. In short, my feelings about this episode that can entirely be summed up with this evergreen gif from Clueless.

Y’all, this episode is the very definition of a full on Monet. While the concept is a classic Doctor Who one (a base under siege!), where “Orphan 55” fails is its execution. It’s overstuffed with characters and subplots, throwing just about every possible trope at the wall just to see what might stick. Several of the guest performances are so over the top they verge on caricature, which is a fail on the director’s part. And it has a good ole dose of preachy, performative wokeness at the end that’s supposed to inspire us to be better, but instead prompted a big ole groan out of me.
Let’s start with what worked, shall we?
Like I said, the premise is a Doctor Who classic. As we see the TARDIS fam, including a moody Doctor (the only nod to the events of the previous episode), cleaning up from the aftermath of an encounter with some sort of space squid, Graham informs everyone that he’s been collecting coupons for a free, all-inclusive holiday, and he’s finally gotten the last one. (How? Who cares about those details!) He puts them together, building the tesseract a portkey a “transport cube” (y’all it’s a portkey) that instantly zaps them to the Tranquility Spa, which is located on an unknown planet. The fam immediately splinters, going off to explore the spa, which of course sounds too good to be true, and of course, that’s where things get complicated…and also where the episode starts to fail by introducing WAY too many characters.
Look, you guys know I love the TARDIS fam. I love their dynamic and I love how they both bounce off each other and bounce off the Doctor. But the problem Chris Chibnall and writer Ed Hime have with a crowded TARDIS is that when he sends all four of them to different corners of an episode, they then feel the need to introduce a bevy of red shirts that we’re supposed to invest in along with our fam. Yaz encounters elderly couple Vilma and Benni, interrupting his (long time coming apparently) proposal. Graham encounters father and son duo Nevi and Sylas. Ryan, who continues to be the galaxy’s most endearingly bumbling bachelor, meets Bella, who claims to be a hotel critic. And, after saving Ryan from a hopper virus, the Doctor pursues their host Hyph3n who then introduces her to the head of security, Kane. That’s a whopping seven characters, in addition to the four person TARDIS team. No wonder they all felt like caricatures, because in a 45 minute episode, there is literally not enough time for them.
I will say that the initial siege on Tranquility Spa is where the episode is most successful. As a monster, the Dregs are genuinely terrifying and director Lee Haven Jones does a great job building up to the reveal of what they looked like. I loved feeling like the Fam was in real and immediate danger as the Dregs went on a killing spree and all of the guests raced to the security bunker for safety. The scene with Ryan and Bella in the steam room was incredibly tense, harkening back to Alien and the raptors in the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park. Hell, I was still on board with the episode when it was revealed that Tranquility Spa was a sham, that it was in a Truman Show-esque enclosure on an abandoned planet that could not sustain life.
The episode fell apart when Benni was taken by the Dregs, prompting everyone to go on a rescue mission. And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE. The Doctor, Graham, Ryan, Yaz, Kane, Bella, Vilma, Nevi, Sylas, Hyph3n, a driver, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Seriously. It made absolutely NO SENSE for ELEVEN PEOPLE, including a child and two senior citizens (no matter how good of shape Graham is in!!) to go on this mission. In post-episode discussions with friends, they’ve posited that maybe it wasn’t safe back at the spa, maybe they had no choice but all of them staying together, but the thing is, the script never makes that clear. So instead, we get eleven people in a van, armed only with breathe-right strips and one oxygen canister each to face the Dregs and save Benni. (THEY WOULD HAVE HAD MORE OXYGEN IF THEY HAD SENT HALF THE PEOPLE, JUST SAYING.) There’s way too many storylines going on in the van for any single one of them to feel satisfying. To the point where I’ve watched the episode twice now and I still couldn’t really tell you the conflict between Nevi and Sylas and why Nevi gets so mad that his kid is smarter than him. We have the fledgling romance with Ryan and Bella, both of them bonding over their dead parents while Yaz offers commentary, either incredibly smug or jealous of Ryan’s attentions being elsewhere, I honestly can’t tell which. There’s a whole anti-capitalism, eat the rich thing going on with how everyone treats Kane. And then there’s Vilma, who basically just keeps shouting for Benni, even when they’re in peril, Julia Foster’s performance over the top that literally every time I hear the word “BENNI” now, I feel it in my SPINE. (Seriously, I know some people found Vilma and Benni charming, but she was way too melodramtic for me, with everything being AT THIS LEVEL ALL THE TIME and I was just like, Jesus, couldn’t the director have reined her in?)
And don’t even get me started on the BIG REVEAL that Bella is actually Kane’s long lost daughter and she was the one who let loose the hopper virus because she’s pissed that her mom missed all her birthdays and wasn’t there when her father died, so her only motivation is to burn everything down. I literally said “REALLY?” to my television.
When you have so many characters, naturally, there are going to be some casualties. And in these types of episodes/stories, there is usually someone who sacrifices themselves for the greater good. That happens not one, but THREE times in “Orphan 55,” to diminishing returns. First, knowing that she’s slowing everyone else down, Vilma offers herself to the dregs, shouting one last BENNI! (god, I feel it in my spine TYPING it) before she goes. Then Kane sacrifices herself to fight the Dregs so everyone else has more time. And FINALLY, Bella sacrifices herself on the teleport pad, because of course, there are one too many people on it and she’s the whole reason that they’re in this mess in the first place, because she blew it all up to begin with. But don’t worry! Her long lost mum didn’t actually perish, arriving JUST in time to stand side by side with her daughter, allowing everyone else to escape. The end.
The “twist” in this episode is completely predictable, telegraphed even before they revealed that they were wandering around the Siberian Underground. Of course, Orphan 55 is Planet Earth, destroyed and made inhabitable by humans’ disregard for climate change and thirst for nuclear war. The Dregs? They were the humans left behind, the ones who couldn’t get on the ship that got all the rich people out, the ones forced to adapt to their new atmosphere. And now, all of the sudden, we have a very special episode of Doctor Who. Like other companions before them (this REALLY harkened all the way back to Rose in “The End of the World”), the Fam is devastated to learn how Earth ends. And the Doctor doesn’t have any comfort to offer them, other than the fact that this is really only one possible outcome for Humanity. That there’s still time to change before it’s too late. Honestly, I groaned at this. It’s not that I don’t think that there is room for this in Doctor Who because there is! Anyone who thinks this show doesn’t have a political agenda isn’t watching the show correctly. But at the same time, there’s having a message and then there’s beating you over the head with it.
For me, this one trended towards the latter. Jodie Whittaker does her best with the monologue, but at the same time, my first reaction was “Ugh, I KNOW stop preaching at me, show, I get it.” You know what it is? It’s the “OR” at the end of her speech and then the quick cut to the roaring Dreg that really kills me. It’s just so fucking cheesy and heavy handed. Like BEWARE this is what’s going to become of us!!! It’s so unnecessary and even worse, it’s clumsy. Be better show!
Timey-Wimey Observations
- Give it up for Tosin Cole, who displayed some physical comedy chops in this episode that I wasn’t aware he had.
- In which I am Graham O’Brien:

- NO KINK SHAMING AT TRANQUILITY SPA!
- I love the subtle changes Thirteen makes with her outfit. Really digging the striped sweater for this episode and I needs it!
- I know I bitched a lot about the second half of the episode, but another scene that really worked is the Doctor stumbling around with her empty oxygen canister and stumbling on a Dreg, who inadvertently saves her by exhaling oxygen (“like an angry tree!”). I gasped when it grabbed her by the throat.
- Another thread that DID carry over from last week is that the Fam, specifically Yaz, is a little less afraid to confront the Doctor and a lot less trusting of her. The accusation that the Doctor knew it was Earth long before they did is clear, and it’s not something we’ve seen out of Yaz before. The Master sowed the seeds of discontent in the fam, and I truly hope we see something come of it. That’s the kind of content I’m here for.
What did you think of “Orphan 55”? Let us know in the comments.
Honestly, the OR–> monster at the end of her final speech put me on the floor JFC
It’s so dumb