"You look Time Lord."

I was a bit disappointed, especially given how good the same writer's Zygon Invasion/Inversion was last year. Though this was co-written with Moffat...

The way the military leaders are completely convinced by what seems to be just a 30-second vision they get by touching something seemed really cheap and unbelievable to me. The whole thing could have been fake, no matter how real it seemed. We got a throwaway line of 'it was real, I felt it' to try to convince us, and that was it. Very lazy writing, but then I'm not sure how aliens in that position *could* convince political and military leaders, short of the disaster already being underway (and even then... global warming...), which wasn't how the writers wanted the plot to go. Which makes it lazy plotting.

And yeah, the magic shades can't read text thing was cheap too. They were doing a decent job of showing the Doctor managing to work with his impairment up until that point.

Erica was great. Nice that he offered her a job on the Tardis, but shame that wasn't followed through.

I thought the episode was a very mixed bag. Parts of it were good, e.g. choosing a military confrontation to materialise in the middle of was obvious as misdirection to the audience, because we've seen the other situation developing, but the characters not spotting it straight away doesn't make them idiots. Pity the same can't be said of some other people.

The incompetence of the hungover guy in particular was groan-worthy, but also the automatic venting to outside (considering what they study, a shockingly bad decision by somebody who presumably wasn't hung over at the time); and even blind, the Doctor should be able to deal with a combination lock. Use your sense of touch! Or an app on your smart-glasses! Email Bill a photo! The fact that he didn't seems like an egregious case of This Is The Plot Speaking.

As for next week, I guess I'd say I'm looking forward to it ... with trepidation.

it escapes being a "nay" simply by dint of avoiding being massively racist (like the zygon two parter last year) or ableist (re: the doctor's blindness, and pleasantly surprised with erica's character which was really awesome). the pacing was a mess (in similar ways to the zygon episodes) and i know a lot of people are complaining about the various plot holes and jumps of logic but i can hand wave those when a story is entertaining. this was... mostly a bit dull. not terrible, just... meh.

I liked Erica, but found ghe rest of the story dull except for the general WTFery of theach 'consent' thing. Looking forward to next week's on the grounds it's Whithouse, not Moffat, and he usually manages to do something interesting with his stories.

Realised I'm especially bored of Moffat's stories all starting with the Doctor being summoned or specially targeted. I hadn't realised how much I prefer the Doctor et Al stumbling into someone else's story until we had a run of non-Moffat stories that all did that.

I'm still in the "It's new Doctor Who and I love it because it is" phase, but even still, I think I'll enjoy this one on the rewatch later. Erica is a lovely and competent character, and I'm hoping she sticks around for next week's denouement.

I think it's difficult for me to judge the strength or weakness of this episode overall until I see the resolution. We've had the opening, we've had the middle. If the final act pays off, this episode will be stronger. If it doesn't, then it's not going to be remembered as fondly.

Bill's reaction at the end seems in keeping with what I'd expect of a companion lately - sacrifice whatever it takes to save the Doctor, then trust that he'll fix the problem. I can imagine Rose or Amy doing the same in the end.