Doctor Who Recap: What’s Schwup, Doc?

Nurse, he’s out again: Ncuti Gatwa is back for Doctor Who’s second season on Disney+ after doing everything from facing off against baby boogers to dog-walking the god of death last year. This time, he’s joined by nurse and reluctant new companion Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu (whom we last saw fighting a holy war in “Boom” on a battlefield with AI ambulances). This episode succeeds at making Belinda a compelling character — I’m definitely interested in seeing more of her and her prickly dynamic with Fifteen, and that’s a great feeling to leave a premiere with. But as far as the actual plot and tone of the episode go, the execution starts to feel a bit muddled toward the end. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Gender is established as a motif of the episode starting in the first scene, when we meet Alan, who takes issue with his girlfriend wishing that she wasn’t identified based on her marital status. I don’t really understand what Miss Belinda Chandra sees in this Miss-ogynist — pretty much every sentence out of his mouth is problematic — but he’s bought her a star for her birthday, which she assures him is “the nicest thing anyone has ever done” for her.

Seventeen years later, Belinda is working as a nurse at a hospital, which means she has plenty of interactions with doctors; she laughs it off when she hears that one is looking for her. The Doctor accidentally cuts the power in the entire building while trying to find her, but he’s unsuccessful. Aside from learning that her housemates don’t like her very much, we don’t get any more backstory on Belinda before robots wake her up by landing in her yard. They’re from the star that Alan got her, and that certificate is all the confirmation they need that she’s their rightful queen. After they kill an unlucky neighbor’s cat, Belinda allows them to abduct her. The enigmatic-as-ever Mrs. Flood observes before telling us, “You ain’t seen me.” That might be true of the Doctor, who has just arrived and seems quite busy screaming at the sky. In the rocket, a distraught Belinda explains to the robots that Alan bought the star, not her. Shortly afterward, she experiences a looping glitch that also affects the Doctor, who is pursuing in the TARDIS.

After landing on Missbelindachandra One, which is part of a planetary system has seemingly sprung up in her name, Belinda learns that robot overlords have taken over … and that their AI Generator is demanding to marry her. But even though the robots are advanced enough to build Missbelindachandrabombs and rule over Missbelindachandrakind, they somehow can’t hear every ninth word being spoken. Call it an AI-chilles heel? This means the Doctor, who has beaten Belinda to the planet by six months and risen to the ranks of Historian, can give her a history lesson while coordinating a mini-revolt. A rebel named Sasha 55 says she trusts the Doctor with her life, and he promises that he will take her to the stars after this is all over. So, as is basically law in the Who-niverse, she is immediately killed.

In the rebel’s Undercity hideout, the Doctor pauses as he remembers Belinda’s “Boom” lookalike. “There’s always a doctor standing back while the nurses do all the hard work,” Belinda snipes as she sets about helping the injured. Given the gendered stereotypes of those two professions, it seems that Alan might not be the only man who could’ve treated her better.

The Doctor explains that he was following Belinda because someone implied to him that she was important. Due to timey-wimey reasons, he’s not sure he can share more. What he can say, however, is that they both experienced that “schwup” while traveling because the border between this world and Earth keeps “jumping about in time.” That explains how he arrived before her — and how the AI has the exact same star certificate as Belinda, even though the one she’s currently got has been in her possession all her life. The robots must have gotten it in the future and then schwupped so far back that the document became a foundational myth of the planet. It’s a loop that allows the same object to exist twice.

Another rebel named Manny is resentful that so many lives were sacrificed for Belinda, and she argues that this isn’t her fault. But as the robots continue attacking above (and Manny continues seething down below), she changes her mind. When the Doctor is planning to break into memory banks to search for answers about why robots and people suddenly stopped peacefully coexisting, Belinda decides to use a polishing robot to lead the robots to her. “My name is Miss Belinda Chandra, and it’s about time I owned it,” she says. She’s hopeful that once she’s gone through with the welding/wedding ceremony, she’ll be able to lead the machine toward peace.

Before she goes, Belinda tells the robots not to remember her as “Miss,” which she never liked anyway. This triggers a familiar response from the AI Generator, which opens up to reveal Al…an. That’s right — it turns out that when Belinda said Alan’s name on the rocket, the robots popped over to grab him, but then schwupped back 10 years in the process, at which point he strapped himself in and started the robot revolution.

In the next five minutes, so much information is thrown at us. First, we flash back to see that as a video-game lover, Alan was excited to get power and make up “rules.” He’s not hesitant to commit violence, and his aggression doesn’t seem to discriminate by gender; the first person he orders to their death appears to be a man. We also learn that Belinda broke up with Alan after an incredibly condescending and sexist marriage proposal. In the present, she suggests that he is applying coercive control, a type of domestic abuse, to the entire planet. The Doctor then reveals that Alan can’t actually live with himself right now because his every ninth word reveals that he’s begging for help and is in pain. But Alan’s next chain of ninth words — “Belinda. Mine. Forever.” — indicate that he still thinks of women as something to possess. “Planet of the incels,” Belinda mutters. It’s not that I expect Russell T Davies to offer a comprehensive exploration of toxic masculinity in 45 minutes. But when you stick to more surface-level gesturing at sexism and the manosphere, it’s harder to fully capture the gravity of the concept of a “planet of the incels.” The episode moves on by having the Doctor offer to help Alan by separating the bio-links, then tell Belinda that Alan’s anger will never stop if she instead goes forward with the marriage.

Before we have too much time to sit and digest some of the big ideas that all these flashbacks and monologues brought up, it’s time to resolve the threat. The Doctor drops Belinda’s star certificate on the ground, and the polish robot, for some reason unbeholden to the control that Alan has over the other machines, brings it to Belinda. When she touches her certificate to the one that Alan has, it triggers a rippling, timey-wimey explosion that leads to a trippy sequence where Belinda and Alan keep aging and de-aging. The Doctor is also there, having jumped in to pull Belinda out. But as a Time Lord, he’s able to absorb part of the impact. Before the time fracture closes, it shoots him through her entire life; at one point, he’s cradling a baby Belinda in his arms.

The Doctor and Belinda emerge unscathed, but Alan has reverted to a sperm and egg. In a moment of levity, he’s swept away by the polish robot. “Good-bye Alan,” the Doctor says, laughing as we officially return to lighter territory. (When Belinda marvels that this place is “nuts,” he replies, “Yas queen!” and does a high kick.) Once reunited with his impounded TARDIS, the Doctor points out that future robots still need to get ahold of the star certificate somehow and literally starts dancing with anticipation at the prospect of another mystery to solve. The robots are planning to do reparations, Sasha 55 has a citadel named in her honor, and everyone (even Manny!) sends Belinda off as the queen of Earth.

Belinda gawks at the inside of the TARDIS for a few seconds before remembering that she has a shift to get back to. The Doctor reveals that the TARDIS is a time machine and shares that he once met her descendant in the 51st century. He scans her and points out the uncanny similarity, wondering if he’s meant to be connected with her. “Is that what you said to Sasha?” Belinda asks, and his smile falters. She points out that the Doctor just tested her DNA without asking for consent — if you’ll recall, she previously asked for permission just to listen to the “padam padam” of his hearts. “You’re dangerous,” she declares, and the Doctor apologizes. He can tell that she doesn’t trust him or want to travel with him, and he says he’ll take her home. Unfortunately, that might not be up to him. For some reason, the TARDIS is bouncing off of May 24, somehow “repelled” from the day they left while they’re halfway back to Earth. The Doctor doesn’t know why and says he’ll get her home the “long way round.”

My first instinct would’ve been to ask if we could go back to May 23 and just hide in the TARDIS for 24 hours, but I’m guessing that whatever problem this is requires a more complex solution because the Doctor and Belinda are in Miami, Florida in 1952 in the episode preview. After the TARDIS vanishes, we see the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, a calendar, and that damn star certificate floating through space with other debris. Well, there’s our new big mystery of the season sorted, then. Who’s got theories?

Cut for Time (Lord)

• I did laugh when the Doctor started to explain that things are “timey-wimey” and Belinda replied, “Am I six?” Tell Steven Moffat how you really feel, RTD.

• We don’t know yet who told the Doctor to go looking for Belinda. He said he couldn’t reveal that for timeline reasons. Do we think that he’s referring to a new character or a future version of himself? I’m going to need to sit down and draw a diagram if we add any more temporal loops.

• The “Padam Padam” reference reminded me that Kylie Minogue was in an episode of Doctor Who before. (“Voyage of the Damned,” more like “Voyage of the Padam Padamned,” am I right?) Last we saw her character, Astrid Peth, the Doctor watched her dissipate into atoms so she could roam the universe. I would love to see her again, and I hope her travels have been less chaotic than his.

• RTD has said in an interview that Mrs. Flood will appear in all eight episodes this season. I’m excited to see her Miami ‘fit.

• Speaking of Mrs. Flood, she seemed to be on pretty neighborly terms with Belinda. Does that mean that Ruby Sunday is also Belinda’s neighbor? What are the chances of two companions being from the same block?