After the first 10/10 of my 13-era rewatch, It Takes You Away comes the ever disappointing finale The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. It's actually better than I remembered, but it's still not very good at all.

I'll open with the positives - I really like Tim Shaw. I liked him in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, and I like him here. I think he's a well designed, well performed, genuinely scary villain, and I would be open to him returning at some point in a future series. I think his plan is really cool, and I like the fact that it's made out to be The Doctor's fault that he's here doing this. He's the highlight of the episode. I also think the episode has some genuinely tense moments, specifically when The Doctor is running in slow-mo with Tim Shaw's words narrating the scene, it's a really well done shot.

The episode has a lot of great ideas, the problem is how half-heartedly they are executed. The worst example for me, is Graham. The idea that Graham would have some conflict with The Doctor because of Tim Shaw is brilliant and it's so gutting that they go nowhere with it. There is never a tense of character drama, or tension between him and The Doctor. They never play up too it at all, Graham just gets a little bit angry and then we go nowhere and then he doesn't shoot him. It's the same with him and Ryan, there should be some tension there between them when they're talking about Grace, but there just isn't any. It's really annoying and disappointing cause it is an opportunity for some genuinely fantastic character drama that never occurs.

Similarly, the plot leaves a lot to be desired. The Ux are a really cool idea for a species, having the five planets stolen is a really cool idea, having the Earth be his target is really cool, but none of this is developed at all. The stakes never feel too high, because the episode shrugs over so much stuff. The Doctor talks about planetary fucking genocide in one line and then never refers too it again or seems particularly annoyed about it. Earth never feels under threat because the execution is so bad, despite it being in the direct line of fire. And Paltraki is such a boring side-character. The whole episode's half-heartedness ends up just making it pretty boring because there is no stakes and nothing happening.

The directing doesn't help either. Jamie Childs has been the shining director of S11 up to this point, but this one is just...not good. Arwel Wyn Jones does a great job making the sets look all industrial, but they're directed so dully that it just makes everything look drab. Again, Tim Shaw's shrine is the highlight, the only thing in the episode filmed interestingly for me. There's also some pretty hilariously bad shots, like the zoom on Graham when he says the cringe line "yippee kay-yay robots".

Akinola's score is great, it's mysterious and industrial, and the choir is really haunting and beautiful but, again, there's so little of interest going on that he never has a moment that he can punctuate with a massive bit of score, which is a shame, as that was always a highlight of prior series finales: the composer getting to slam it up to 11.

Overall, the episode isn't totally awful, and the Tim Shaw stuff as I said I think is genuinely good. But it's just generally quite boring and, ultimately, a bit of a missed opportunity - there's so many good ideas that are just really badly executed. It's a weak 4/10. I will rank the episodes in Series 11 in the next post I do, for when I watch Resolution. But I can confidently say that this episode will almost certainly be stone dead last.