Doctor Who – Praxeus Review

The Twelve Season of Doctor Who has a second environmentally-themed episode with “Praxeus.”

Around the world people start to disappear, including a British astronaut and a Brazilian vlogger. The Doctor and her companions are on hand and already at the locations and start to investigate what happened.

The Chibnall era has been criticised for being overly political. Some episodes were overt with their political message with “Arachnids in the UK” and “Orphan 55” being the worst examples. There were episodes that threw in political messages for the sake of it.  “Praxeus” has one simple improvement: the political message was incorporated into the episode’s plot.

“Praxeus’” target was plastic pollution, and in the episode, pollution has led to an alien virus coming to Earth. The environmental theme was as subtle as a brick but at least its message across and but at least it didn’t require a lecture from The Doctor to ramp home the point. It’s not out of place for Doctor Who to tackle contemporary issues and “Praxeus” does it well enough. It sets up the plastic pollution storyline early by showing two travel vloggers visiting a beauty spot in Peru but found it covered in plastic and using the Indian Ocean Plastic Island as a part of the plot. However, the writers and director of the episode did inadvertently reference the infamous film Birdemic because like that film “Praxeus” was an environmentally theme story with birds as the main threat.

An issue with the Chibnall era was the increased number of companions. But this episode takes advantage by having The Doctor and her companions in three locations at once. The Doctor was in Madagascar, Ryan was in Peru, and Yazz and Graham were in Hong Kong. They were able to investigate what’s going on from three different angles. It was like “Spyfall Part One” where the Doctor sent Yaz and Ryan to San Francisco whilst she went to Australia. The opening of “Praxeus” was a bit like “Spyfall Part One” because both episodes started with people from around the world who were disappearing.

The core concept and message were solid one of Chibnall’s big issues is the execution. His problem with this episode were the new characters that had to be introduced for a one-off episode. “Praxeus” had a separated married couple who had to solve their issues, the vloggers who were also a couple, and two scientists who are one Madagascar doing some research. Thapelo Maropefela had a thankless role because he had no characterisation at all and was nothing more than a redshirt. The relationship issues between the married couple were meant to try and bring some human drama to proceedings, but all it did was distract from the main mystery and felt like the episode was padding itself. The ending was really dumb because it had an average man having to pilot an alien spaceship.

I did like the twist in the episode when it was revealed that aliens brought the virus to Earth so they can use the planet as a laboratory. It should have been explored further.

“Praxeus” was well-meaning with its message and was a massive improvement over the previous two environmentally themed episodes. It was nowhere near as preachy. But it still suffers from some of the usual issues that have blighted the Chibnall-era.