Villa Diodati on the shore of lake Geneva, June 1816. The year without summer, the year when the storms kept forming, and in the middle of such storm lord Byron and some friends started reading ghost stories. It sounds interesting, right? Especially that the history recorded that in that night Mary Shelley created one of the most familiar characters in the world: Frankenstein.
What can be more interesting that visiting some brilliant minds in the middle of their creative process just to discover the ghosts in their stories came to life and the house they are residing it’s no longer an usual one. The negative vibes are strong enough to make the Doctor alert but not enough the prepare her for what’s coming next. The captain Jack Harkness’ warning (don’t offer the lonely Cyberman what he wants) did not help much.
The things are getting more complicated as time passes so I am not going the tell the story here and now. Watch the episode. The Doctor wants to know how Mary Shelley got the inspiration about the famous monster that made her well known but, eventually, she offered Mary all the necessary ingredients to create Frankenstein.
There is mystery and horror, and that’s good, and time travels because some Artificial Intelligence tries to survive in the past after losing a war. There is also some science, the one that built the Cybermen, and the favorite Time Lord. I enjoyed the episode because it succeeds in combining pretty good the the mentioned elements.
Directed by Emma Sullivan, written by Maxine Alderton.
Cast: Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O’Brien), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Lili Miller, Jacob Collins-Levy, Nadia Parkes (Claire Clairmont), Maxim Baldry (Dr. John Polidori), Patrick O’Kane (Ashad), Lewis Rainer (Percy Bysshe Shelley), Stefan Bednarczyk (Fletcher), Sarah Perles (Elise),
The next episode, Ascension of the Cybermen, airs 23 February 2020: in the far future, the Doctor and her friends face a brutal battle across the farthest reaches of space to protect the last of the human race against the deadly Cybermen.