TV Review | Doctor Who: “Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror” by Nina Métivier

With its Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score hitting a derisory 13% and its broadcast attracting just 4.04 million viewers, a low not seen since the dark days of The Trial of a Time Lord back in 1986, the numbers really don’t look good for “Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror” – which is quite ironic, really, as it’s effectively Doctor Who by numbers. Although viewing figures don’t mean anything like what they once did and Rotten Tomatoes is hardly the most reliable gauge of a programme’s reception, The A List’s Nina Métivier’s first script for the series still feels a little underwhelming. Following hot on the heels of the thrilling Spyfall and provocative “Orphan 55”, it has a seemingly inevitable whiff of mediocrity about it that most will struggle to overcome.

Fortunately, “Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror” is at times more than just a join-the-dots Doctor Who story. In framing the narrative in the unusual way that she does, Métivier cleverly flips viewers’ perspectives, allowing us to see the Doctor and her gang from the viewpoint of the eponymous futurist. This plays particularly well as Tesla bucks the well-trodden trend of open-mouthed incomprehension when faced with aliens and technology apparently indistinguishable from magic. What he doesn’t immediately grasp, he theorises about; nothing seems to faze him. Such qualities make him immediately endearing, not just to us watching at home, but evidently to the Doctor too. Jodie Whittaker and Goran Višnjić are suitably electric together – if anything, their characters’ relationship could have been taken a little further, and I dare say would have been were the genders reversed. David Tennant and Matt Smith’s Doctors were often being kissed for far less.

With the focus so firmly on the Doctor, there’s precious little room in this episode for her friends to shine, but even so Bradley Walsh manages to find a little time to place his workplace ethics squarely at odds with Edison’s, while Ryan’s evolution into something of a player continues in the background as he seems to take an interest in Dorothy Skerritt - much to Yas’s exasperation. However, “Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror” is more of a vehicle for its guest stars, two of whom already have a firm grounding in the Whoniverse. Peter Davison’s old Sink or Swim co-star Robert Glenister, who famously appeared alongside Davison in the fifth Doctor’s stunning swansong The Caves of Androzani, returns to the programme in the guise of Thomas Edison – America’s greatest inventor, and Tesla’s greatest adversary. My little girl was delighted to see the programme taking such a forthright look at a man that she’s been learning about at school, especially as he’s seen here through Tesla’s eyes, offering her a fresh and significantly less favourable take on him to challenge her teacher with.

Meanwhile, the story’s alien menace are given a face by The Sarah Jane Adventures’ Anjli Mohindra, who serves up her best Sarah Parish impression as the Skithra’s scorpion queen – something that it’s hard to blame her for, given the similarity of the creature’s design to that of the Racnoss queen famously seen in “The Runaway Bride”. Whilst “Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror” might be a lovely character piece, it is sadly let down by its alien antagonists. Racnoss rip-offs and cloaked, lightning-hurling figures are at best unimaginative; at worst so derivative that they border on plagiarism.

Like Tesla himself, “Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror” is no doubt destined for relative obscurity, remembered more for its poor performance than its objective merits. Such a fate is regrettable as while it’s certainly no world-beater, it’s nonetheless an enjoyable and educational episode that ticks all the requisite boxes – and a few more besides.

Doctor Who airs on Sunday evenings on BBC 1 and is available to stream for the foreseeable future on BBC iPlayer. A season pass comprising all ten episodes of the season in 1080p HD and bonus material is also available from iTunes for £20.99, with episodes typically becoming available the day after their transmission on BBC 1. A Blu-ray steelbook is also available to pre-order from Amazon for £49.99.