Previously on Doctor Who: The Mummy on the Orient Express.

What I like about this series of Doctor Who is that it doesn’t make everything alright. Things are allowed to not be ok, people are allowed to not be ok. “It’s ok,” could so often have been the tagline to the denouement of the week, but not this time. Not with this Doctor. What I love even more is that this time, they truly used the Doctor-lite episode to give Clara/Jenna exemplary material to work with, and she did, even more excellently than in Kill the Moon, and that was challenging already.

Previously on Doctor Who: Kill the Moon.

This episode affords us one of the luxuries of time travel: the recreation of period dress, set, and costume design — in the future, in space, making it feel endearingly fallen out of time. Donna went ‘flapper or slapper’ in Agatha Christie’s own time, now Clara is stepping onto the Orient Express. A marvel in its own right, of course, but also indelibly connected to, again, Christie. And we’re dealing with murder here, too — except that the perpetrator hails from a different world entirely.

Previously on Doctor Who: Time Heist.

Really, Doctor Who, really?

There’s a fine line between the Doctor acting as gatekeeper to Clara’s love life and just being concerned for her wellfare and Clara herself wanting the Doctor to like her boyfriend simply because people like it when their friends and their significant others get along. This episode is dangerously skirting that line and, frankly, introducing an Eleventh Doctor Doppelgänger and letting the Doctor believe that he is the SO, then leading to instant approval… is not the way to go. At best, it’s a really, really flat joke.

Previously on Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood.

Of creatures under the bed, fear in the dark, and the Doctor’s constant companion.

Previously on Doctor Who: Into the Dalek.

Robot of Sherwood is a romp, a sassfest, and in the line-up of recent new-Who episodes, perhaps a bit of an odd duck reaching back to the Doctor meeting funny folk from history and fiction in the olden days. The only thing we’re missing, perhaps, is the lizard. Wasn’t there supposed to be a lizard? (→ Blink)

In summary: I’ve just seen the Doctor flip Robin Hood the bird, I don’t care what else happens this weekend.

Previously on Doctor Who: Deep Breath.

And down the rabbit hole we go — or, rather, down the eyestalk. This is a game of Alice in Wonderland that even the Doctor hasn’t played before.

Spoilers ahead.