Doctor Who, episode 6 review – Demons of the Punjab: Electrifying and enlightening

That it achieves so much without ever losing its family-friendly gloss is a credit to debut 'Doctor Who' playwright Vinay Patel – but even more so to the interstellar frothiness Whittaker continues to bring

The overlap between Doctor Who and the BBC’s public service remit has historically constituted the galaxy’s smallest Venn diagram. But under new showrunner Chris Chibnall and with agreeably zesty Jodie Whittaker in as the Doctor, the Time Lord’s latest adventures have set phasers to “educate and inform”.

This has occasionally tipped into a slightly stifling self-consciousness – such as on the admirable-but-not-quite-thrilling Rosa Parks episode, ”Rosa”. But, on his Doctor debut, playwright Vinay Patel comes much closer to a balance between electrifying and enlightening with “Demons of the Punjab”.

Despite sounding more like a Black Sabbath b-side than post-teatime science fiction, the instalment is simultaneously an engaging time travel caper, a showcase for the BBC creature effects department and a moving meditation on the devastating impact of the 1947 partition of India. That it achieves all this without ever losing its family-friendly gloss is a credit to Patel – but even more so to the interstellar frothiness Whittaker continues to bring.

The Doctor and crew have pinged back in time to India just as the boundary between it and the new state of Pakistan is about to be savagely drawn. They are here to pay a call to Yaz’s grandmother and unravel the secret of the mysterious watch Nana Umbreen bestowed on her favourite granddaughter as an heirloom.

A multitude of shocks await. Firstly, the young Umbreen (Amita Suman) isn’t engaged to Yaz’s grandfather – a fellow Muslim – but to a Hindu neighbour, Prem (Shane Zaza, sounding, as with all of the week’s new characters, as if he’s just walked off the set of Hollyoaks). They are adorably in love, but if they tie the knot there are grounds for worrying that, as per Marty McFly in Back to the Future, Yaz (Mandip Gill) could theoretically cease to exist.

Just as discombobulating, a duo of spiky-faced demons are hanging about in the woods and appear to have bumped off the local holy man – mere hours before he is to officiate at the nuptials between Umbreem and Prem. It is also revealed that, beneath his charming exterior, Prem is a war veteran, whose frequent flashbacks feature the aforementioned demons causing mischief on the Western Front.

With so many plot threads, “Demons of the Punjab” could easily have tripped up. Instead, it movingly conveys the tragedy of Indian partition without taking sides or venturing beyond the realm of age-appropriate escapism.

There is one clear villain amid the morass – Prem’s hardline brother Manish (Hamza Jeetooa). He is unable to countenance his family joining Muslims through matrimony and wants Umbreen vanquished to Pakistan. It was he who shot the holy man and openly welcomes the marauding outsiders who descend upon the village where Hindu and Muslim have lived side by side of generations. As the countryside erupts into conflict, Prem sacrifices himself so that Umbreen can flee to the safety of Lahore – though she will always have the memory of their time together and the watch he gave to her as a keepsake and which she will in turn pass to Yaz.

But hang on – what about the evil aliens with the icky mandibles and Cthulhu-esque rows of eyes along their faces? It turns out that they aren’t quite so wicked after all. The real bugbear, it is revealed, is violent nationalism, with these interstellar assassins merely serving as witnesses to those whose deaths would otherwise pass unacknowledged (they embarked on their new career when their home planet was destroyed).

Having pinged around the hotspots of the Second World War, they’ve now arrived on the new India-Pakistan border to honour Prem (one slight puzzle is why they didn’t just explain as much upfront to the Doctor rather than lurking scarily beyond the treeline).

In the abstract it all sounds like important but slightly worthy television. But Whittaker is such a force of nature and the chemistry between the Doctor and her team of Yaz, Graham (Bradley Walsh) and Ryan (Tosin Cole) so cheerfully unforced that “Demons of the Punjab” has its cake and sends it rocketing across time and space.

Patel has scripted both a compelling commemoration of a terrible event and also a whizz-bang piece of intergalactic derring-do. As a bonus, he has given us the most visually striking Doctor Who aliens of the new season to date. Who needs Daleks when you’ve got squidgy-faced monstrosities with a conscience?