“Oxygen” is episode five of season ten of the new Doctor Who.
This episode opens with the Doctor saying a famous line from Star Trek – ‘Space. The final frontier.’ There are two suits in space and the Doctor says that space is always trying to kill us. Which is why it’s the final frontier. The two people in the spacesuits are trying to enter the space station. They are rather low on oxygen. Or oxygen credits, as their suits say. Which doesn’t seem to be quite the same thing. The two are a man and a woman who would appear to be in a relationship and then a spacesuit lands behind the woman. The helmet of the suit is off but there is still someone in it. They are quite dead, but that isn’t stopping them from moving and attacking her. Then the man is attacked by two space zombies – what else could you call them? – and one of them is the woman.
The Doctor meanwhile is giving a lecture on how space will kill you. He gets quite graphic in his description. Apparently the lecture was supposed to be on crop rotation however. Nardole is concerned that the Doctor wants to take another trip. He is, and he asks Bill to pick a destination. So she asks for reviews of the various places. Then the Doctor finds a distress signal. Nardole arrives back at the TARDIS, saying he has strict instructions to keep the Doctor on Earth. From the Doctor. He has also removed an important part of the TARDIS. He thinks; the Doctor wasn’t telling him the truth when he told Nardole this. Nardole is not impressed.
They arrive on the space station from earlier (presumably). The station is out of oxygen so the Doctor expands the air shell around the TARDIS. Which causes a warning panel to say ‘Unlicensed Oxygen Detected.’ It seems likely that the oxygen credits warning from earlier was not to do with oxygen itself. They go for a walk and discover a dead person standing up in a space suit which lacks his helmet. Although the suit itself is doing the standing. And the suit’s oxygen tank is full and, even though the helmet is missing from the suit, it still has a force field keeping the air in. Most of the people on the station are apparently dead. Bill and Nardole want to return to the TARDIS but the Doctor wants to look for the survivors. It’s starting to seem likely that what killed the people was lack of money for oxygen, not lack of oxygen itself. The suits themselves are almost fully automated.
The station does not permit excess oxygen in it – although it is available to buy, but just for the suits – and the Doctor has just filled it with excess oxygen. Excess oxygen is expelled. As a result, they end up separated from the TARDIS and therefore from its air shell in a station where they have to buy oxygen to survive. Even worse, the station is filled with spacesuit zombies. The three are going to need to use the suits to survive, suits that may want to kill them. Hi-tech zombie apocalypse in space! The question is, who killed everyone and why?
More humour from Nardole – especially when he recognises the spacesuit’s voice as that of someone he dated – and from Bill, when she meets a blue alien for the first time.
Quite a spooky and atmospheric episode and, whilst not a cliff-hanger ending regarding the main plot, there is a new thread introduced at the end which will lead into the next episode, “Extremis”.