Flesh and Electricity: A Julie River Review of “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”

Episode Rating: 8/13

One thing I love about the Chibnall era is the focus on historical episodes. There’s this term fans use, “pure historicals,” which describes an episode where the only science fiction element is the TARDIS and otherwise the episode is just about the Doctor and their companions getting swept up in historical events. Now there haven’t really been any pure historicals since all the way back in the 1^st Doctor era (although some argue that there’s one in the 5^thDoctor era) but the 13^th Doctor era has come close a few times, particularly with “Rosa” and especially with “Demons of the Punjab” where the aliens in the episode turned out to be benign and basically inconsequential to the plot. There’s also a focus on historical accuracy that hasn’t been seen perhaps ever in the history of the show. “Rosa” is probably the most historically accurate episode of Doctor Who ever made. “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror” is not as close to a pure historical as “Rosa” or “Demons of the Punjab,” but there’s a huge emphasis on the real life history of Tesla and educating people about him, harkening back to the show’s original intention of being an educational show for children when the show started in 1963.

That being said, I thought there were a few flaws in the episode, the biggest one being that the strictly non-violent 13^thDoctor seems all too eager to blast the Skithra queen with electricity and kill her. Why is blasting her ship with a bolt of electricity any better than shooting her with a gun, Doctor. Also the show has finally reached the point where it’s ripping off itself, because the Skithra were an absolute carbon copy of the Racnoss from “Runaway Bride.” If you’re going to put the Racnoss in an episode, just call them the Racnoss. Or was the idea that they’re such thieves that the Skithra stole their appearance from the Racnoss? If so, that should have been made clearer in the dialogue. And one more nitpicky complaint: the British actor who faked an American accent to play Edison did a pretty good job, except he kept using the British pronunciation of the word “patent” with the long a sound instead of the American pronunciation with the short a.

But complaints aside, it was still a pretty strong episode, especially compared to last week’s disaster, “Orphan 55.” Goran Višnjić, a Croatian-born actor living in America, does an excellent job portraying Tesla, a Serbian-born man living in America. The episode went out of its way to educate people on the forgotten history of Tesla (although I think that he’s making a resurgence in public consciousness anyway. And it’s always fun to see the Doctor get excited about meeting a celebrity. Jodie Whittaker again does a good job or depicting a Doctor who is still recovering from the events of “Skyfall,” as the Doctor seems closer back to her old self but not all the way there yet.

I’m excited for this coming week’s episode, partially for the return of the Judoon, but more so because the BBC has been teasing a bigger reveal than the return of The Master in this week’s episode. I’m really hoping they’re not full of it, but we’ll see. Catch you next time!