'The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos' (Story Code 11.10) by Chris Chibnall

“If you had not interfered, I would have become leader. First of the Stenza. And yet, I should thank you… You have made me a god.” – Tim Shaw

On a distant planet, two pilgrims, Andinio and Delph, use their faith and mental powers to build a structure out of the rocks around them; but their efforts are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a strange figure, who materialises out of thin air…

3,407 years later: the TARDIS picks up nine distress calls, all emanating from the same point on the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos. Wearing neural balancers to protect themselves from the violent psychotropic waves in the planet’s atmosphere, the Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz step out the TARDIS and into the hold of a long-range spacecraft. They soon find themselves held at gunpoint, this time by a man suffering from amnesia, with no memory of what happened to him and his crew, or even his name. After calming him down, the Doctor provides the man with a spare neural balancer, while the others access the ship’s systems and discover that their new friend is the vessel’s commander. Thanks to the neural balancer, the commander recalls that his name is Paltraki; he then accepts an incoming message from an old woman, and ordered to return something he allegedly stole from ‘The Creator’ – and when they see the Creator, the Doctor and her friends are shocked to recognise their old enemy, ‘Tim Shaw’ of the Stenza. The alien warrior, Tzim-Sha, threatens to kill Paltraki’s crew unless he returns the stolen property - and to make his point, the Stenza callously murders one of them. Paltraki shows the Doctor and friends what he recovered: a large crystal with something held inside, a spinning, spherical object held in check by a stasis lock. Ryan’s discovery of a portable device displaying a mission briefing spurs the Doctor to embark on a rescue mission for Paltraki’s kidnapped crew. Carrying the crystal, the Doctor leads her party across the barren, rocky landscape of Ranskoor Av Kolos. Graham takes the Doctor to one side to inform her of his intention to kill Tim Shaw as revenge for the death of his wife, Grace; the Doctor is appalled, and warns him against it. Making their way across a battlefield strewn with the debris of countless spaceships, the gang come across a giant dagger-shaped edifice hanging in the sky ahead. The Doctor hands out equipment taken from Paltraki’s ship - comms devices, grenades, a code breaker and a bomb - then leads everyone into a circle of large stones in the middle of a small, muddy lake. Using her trusty sonic, the Doctor makes the Edifice teleport everyone inside, where they split up on their respective missions. Searching for the imprisoned crew, Graham and Ryan are detected by sniperbots; hemmed in on either side, the duo duck just as the robots open fire, destroying themselves in their own crossfire. The Doctor is intercepted by the old woman, who brandishes a very large gun; when she introduces herself as Andinio of the Ux the Doctor recalls how her race is a duo-species with exceptionally long lifespans, capable of faith-driven dimensional engineering. When the Creator sees the Doctor through Andinio’s necklace and orders that she be brought to him, Andinio is amazed that her god knows her prisoner… Elsewhere, Paltraki tells Yaz how his memory is returning in a flood: he was part of the last fleet sent by the Congress of the Nine Planets, in response to certain atrocities. After Paltraki deals with two sniperbots, he and Yaz find a room containing five more of the mineral samples, each containing a spherical object juddering inside. Ryan and Graham reach a darkened room filled with stasis pods, each with a person imprisoned inside - many more than the two crew members they were expecting to find. Ignoring her prisoner’s questions on the whereabouts of her fellow Ux, Andinio takes the Doctor to meet the Creator: Tzim-Sha of the Stenza, his severely-injured body connected to a huge, makeshift life-support system. Dismissing his disciple, the Stenza warrior explains that after his fight with the Doctor thousands of years ago, his damaged transport device banished him through time and space to Ranskoor Av Kolos; appearing before the Ux he was instantly revered as a god, and has put them to work for centuries just so he can get his revenge on the Doctor. Graham and Ryan work on freeing the prisoners, while arguing about Graham’s plan to kill the Stenza warrior. Yaz and Paltraki hide from Andinio, watching as the woman walks to a section of wall where her fellow Ux, Delph, is held; Paltraki uses her faith to mentally join with Delph, and together they activate the Edifice’s power systems. As the Uxs’ energy flows into him, Tzim-Sha tells the Doctor that his entire shrine is a weapon – and outside, a massive, red portal opens above the Edifice. Vowing to stop the Stenza, the Doctor races off to join Yaz and Paltraki. The commander remembers that the crystals contain entire worlds as trophies, each removed from its spatial orbit by the Stenza in an act of planetary genocide. Realising that Tzim-Sha is combining his technology with the Uxs’ power to create a rift in space-time that will pull through another planet, the Doctor uses her communicator to warn the Stenza that this will disrupt the unstable balance of the other trophies, destroying everything. Believing his enemy to be bluffing, the warrior gloats that his latest target is Earth. Across space and time, a rift appears above the Earth and a beam of red energy blasts out, quickly spreading across the planet… With sniperbots cutting through the door, Graham and Ryan work frantically with the code-breaker to free all the prisoners; seeing their actions on screen, Tzim-Sha frees himself from his life-support and sets off for his trophy room… As the Doctor frantically works on a way of stopping the attack on Earth, Paltraki save Graham and Ryan from a squad of sniperbots. Graham orders Paltraki to get the prisoners outside and aboard his spacecraft, while he and Ryan wake the rest of the hostages. With the Edifice’s beam now fully enveloping the Earth, the Doctor tries to think of a way of stopping it without killing the Ux; she and Yaz both have the same idea: by using their neural balancers they can block the aliens’ psychic energies - but it will mean putting their own minds at risk from the atmosphere... Sending Ryan after Paltraki with the last of the prisoners, Graham sets a bomb to deal with another wave of encroaching sniperbots... The Doctor and Yaz use their neural blockers on the Ux, closing the rift and cutting off the energy beam threatening the Earth. The Doctor explains to Andinio and Delph how their false god is in fact an exile from a warrior race, who has been using them all these years. The planetary containers start to crack, as the mass of each trophy within returns to normal; the Ux advise they can restore them, but it will take too long… With sniperbots breaking through the door, Graham takes great pleasure in blowing them all up; taking one of the shattered robots’ weapons, Graham finds Tzim-Sha and confronts him for murdering Grace... Outside the Edifice, Ryan sees off Paltraki and the prisoners and then runs back to the teleport circle to get his grandad… Now suffering from the psychotropic effects of the atmosphere, the Doctor uses her sonic to summon the TARDIS; she and Yaz retrieve their neural balancers and then set to work looping Andinio and Delph into the ship’s telepathic circuits… Seeing himself as the better man to Tzim-Sha, Graham lowers his gun, just as Ryan appears; as the Stenza raises his weapon Graham shoots the alien warrior in the foot. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor joins the Ux-TARDIS link to the Stenza technology, enabling Andinio and Delph to restore the captive planets to their rightful spatial orbits. Graham and Ryan seal Tzim-Sha inside one of his own trophy stasis chambers, condemning him to a life of imprisonment in the name of Grace; then they rejoin the Doctor and Yaz, just as the Ux complete their work. After Andinio and Delph have sealed Tzim-Sha inside the Edifice for ever, Paltraki prepares to complete his mission by returning the abducted people home; he also takes the two Ux with him, so they can find a new home. Bidding goodbye, the Doctor and her “fam” set off in the TARDIS for new adventures...


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brian), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Phyllis Logan (Andinio), Mark Addy (Greston Paltraki), Percelle Ascott (Delph), Samuel Oatley (Tzim-Sha ['Tim Shaw']), Jan Lee (Umsang)

Directed by Jamie Childs
Produced by Alex Mercer
Executive Producers Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
9th December 2018 @ 6.25 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz