When I wrote about this story last year when it first aired, I only had one non-spoilery sentence. This time around I should elaborate just a bit more. So let's do that.

Oxygen

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story starts of as a kind of Dead Space homage with zombies on a space station, then it turns into a commentary on unfettered capitalism. So that's a bit of a swing right there.

Basically, after having gotten a taste of adventure with Bill recently, the Doctor decides that it's time to go offworld and damn the commitment he made to guard the mystery vault. Nardole is not pleased with this turn of events, and tries to stop it. Instead, he gets sucked into an adventure with the Doctor and Bill as they answer a distress call on a deep space mining station.

There are some really clever ideas here. The suits that the workers wear are semi-robotic, able to function independently with menial tasks but requiring a human operator to do anything complicated. The whole operation is run by a cost-conscious corporation who have decided that it is a waste of money to fill a whole space station with air, when they can just require the workers to wear suits everywhere. Even better, they figure out that they can charge the workers for the oxygen they breathe and make even more profit. So, yay capitalism.

Unfortunately, when all the suits get a burst message telling them to "deactivate their organic components", all but four of the crew are murdered and their corpses are left wandering around in these semi-sentient suits. Which is the situation that the Doctor & company materializes into.

In the end the Doctor figures out that it was not a malfunction or sabotage, but actually a decision by the company to eliminate the entire crew when the operation becomes unprofitable. In the end the Doctor also figures out how to make the remaining survivors more valuable alive than dead. Along the way Bill very nearly dies, and in the process of saving her the Doctor is exposed to the void of space for an extended period of time. This results in his becoming blind. Oops.

This whole episode is really well paced, with some clever ideas and execution. The commentary on unfettered capitalism is pretty dead-on, as is the commentary on racism. I really like this one a lot, certainly more than the last two. It doesn't rise to the heights of the previous season, but what can you do?

Eight more episodes, and six more days, to go. Tick tock, tick tock, I am ready to be done with this ridiculous project.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Twelfth
Companion(s): Bill Potts, Nardole
Episode(s): Oxygen
Steps Walked: 7,655 today, 3,573,164 total
Distance Walked: 4.07 miles today, 1,868.68 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,747 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,029 total
Weight: 246.88 lbs (five day moving average), net change -60.42 lbs