Review: Doctor Who – Demons of the Punjab

Doctor Who touches on an even more raw, unsealed point of history than it did with Rosa, this time setting the story in the midst of the 1947 partition of India. The story is decent enough and at times moving. It’s less reverential about the its subject than Rosa but also treats the topic with a studied vagueness. Keen to avoid apportioning blame for a political event that saw a huge death toll, ethnic cleansing and massive displacement of peoples.

With its focus on Yaz’s grandmother and her intent to marry her Hindu neighbour, the story largely avoids discussing the major villains of the actual partition: the British (or if we want to be very specific, the machinations of Winston Churchill). Particularly awkward given the Doctor’s Anglophile habits (and previous hob-nobbling with aforementioned ex-Prime Minister). Instead the story’s conflict is between two Hindu brothers with clashing perspectives on the division of India into two nations.

As with all the stories so far, the plot is not deeply complex but there is a decent sense of mystery regarding the demonic aliens haunting the events, although in some ways this mystery is inconsequential. As with Rosa, we are back to a non-intervention view of time travel that is applied inconsistently. Tragic events are forced to play out and we are told the TARDIS crew can’t intervene but this makes the Doctor’s continued presence feel cruel or worse, indulging in tragedy.

Yaz get’s a Yaz-centred episode but also is forced into a role that has to be passive for fear of changing her own history. As a character she still hasn’t had an opportunity to precipitate events – even Ryan (who otherwise does very little this week) makes at least one thing occur.

There’s merit though in a story that is essentially tragic. There’s emotional depth and a surrounding message of the importance of remembering and acknowledging painful history. The politics is thin, perhaps thinner than thin but what the episode does is reject the previous cozy approach to history that Doctor Who has played (rarely straying from events & perspectives of events that would have graced a school textbook from 1964). Watching this episode, you would be none the wiser about Britain’s Empire in India and the immeasurable suffering it caused nor the horror and complexities of Partition but you would know that at the level of ordinary people and families historical events have personal consequences.