'Demons of the Punjab' (Story Code 11.06) by Vinay Patel

“August, 1947. Partition. The borders have just been announced… It’s not just the land that gets divided. Rioting in the cities. Tens of millions of people about to be displaced. More than a million about to die.” – The Doctor

Yaz celebrates her grandmother’s birthday with her family. Her ‘Nani’ hands out gifts for each of them, precious items from her life that include a broken watch, which she gives to Yaz. But when questioned about her past, Nani Umbreen remains evasively tight-lipped. Intrigued by her grandmother’s hidden history, Yaz asks the Doctor to use the TARDIS to take her into the past; the Doctor reluctantly agrees, on the conditions that it is only for an hour, and that they do not interfere with history. By linking Nani’s watch to the TARDIS telepathic circuits, the Doctor takes Yaz, Graham and Ryan to Pakistan in 1947. On leaving the ship the Doctor is assailed by a psychic blast, experiencing flashes of strange creatures. When a man named Prem passes by in his ox-drawn cart, Yaz asks him about Umbreen; amazingly the man knows of her, and gives the travellers a lift. As they leave, the party meet a holy man, who turns down the offer of a lift in favour of walking to his destination. As the cart sets off, a mysterious humanoid form watches from amongst the trees... Prem takes the travellers a farm, where they meet a young Umbreen. Yaz is exited to meet her grandmother, and explains that she is a distant relative. Umbreen is excited too, because in the morning she is to marry Prem; but this leaves Yaz confused – Prem is not the man she knows as her grandfather. After Prem’s younger brother Manish arrives the Doctor conveys her best wishes for the wedding and then leads her friends away; but Yaz refuses to leave in the TARDIS until she finds out the truth behind her Nani’s secret Hindu first husband. The Doctor and her friends rejoin Prem, Manish and Umbreen as they listen to the radio with Umbreen’s mother; the broadcast informs the travellers that they have arrived on 17th August 1947: the time of the Partition of India, when the country was divided into the two independent nations of India and Pakistan. Manish embraces the idea of separating Muslims from Hindus, and puts up a rope border outside, upsetting his brother and bride-to-be. The Doctor experiences another psychic vision of the creatures, then sees that they are watching events from nearby. When the demons vanish, the Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver to track them into the woods, where she and her friends find the two creatures standing over the dead body of the holy man. The demons vanish before Prem can shoot them, leaving behind a strange, purple dust on the corpse. While Yaz and Graham return to the farm to get help with laying the holy man to rest, the Doctor, Ryan and Prem set off on the trail of the demons; they come across a transmat doorway buried in the ground, which instantly transports them inside the control room of an alien spaceship lying beneath. Accessing the ship’s systems, the Doctor discovers that they are inside a Thijarian Hive, a vessel belonging to the deadliest assassins in the known universe; further investigation shows an image of the aliens’ target: the holy man. When questioned about his lack of surprise at seeing the demons, Prem confesses that he saw them before: in Singapore during the Second World War, standing over the body of his late elder brother; when he approached, the demons vanished. A metal cylinder containing purple dust rises from a dais, but when the Doctor takes it an alarm summons the two Thijarians. Sonicing the teleport, the Doctor sends herself, Ryan and Prem outside, where the two men trip a mini-transmat lock hidden on a tree, transporting them further into the woods. Running for safety, the Doctor collects more of the transmat devices as she goes. Yaz and Graham inform Umbreen of the death of the holy man; but Umbreen is undaunted, and vows not to let anything stop her marriage to Prem. Ryan and Prem arrive with the Doctor hot on their heels; she orders everyone into the barn, then sets the stolen transmat locks around and inside the building. The two Thijarians teleport into the barn, only to be banished when the Doctor activates the transmat locks. The Doctor tries examining the purple dust with her sonic, but the device overloads with information; the Time Lady is forced to old-school it, using items and chemicals obtained by her friends from their surroundings. Leaving her tests to run, the Doctor and Yaz join Umbreen in her pre-marriage celebrations; brushing off her mother’s worries about a Muslin-Hindu wedding during a time of separatism, Umbreen persuades the Doctor to officiate at her wedding. Meanwhile, Graham and Ryan play cards with Prem for his ‘stag do’; they are interrupted by Manish, who is vehemently opposed to his brother’s forthcoming mixed-religion wedding. The Doctor and her friends regroup in the makeshift lab, and learn that the dust is comprised of a multitude of elements and DNA. Just then the teleport lock breaks, enabling the two Thijarians to teleport in and abduct the Doctor; taking her back to their ship, the aliens explain that they have renounced their assassin heritage to become ‘witnesses’, honouring those whose deaths go unseen. This change of heart occurred when the aliens’ home planet of Thijar was destroyed: too late to grieve and honour their people, the Thijarians now travel across all of time and space to honour unacknowledged life as it passes, carrying with them the remains of their planet and people: the purple dust. As well as honouring the millions who will die in the wake of the Partition, the Thijarians have also come to honour Prem at his imminent death; they then show the Doctor who really murdered the holy man... Teleported back to the barn, the Doctor tells her friends that they have to let Prem die so that history will run its course. Yaz insists she stay to make sure Umbreen is safe, and is backed up by Graham and Ryan. As the radio brings reports of ordinary people rioting in mobs, plans for the wedding continue; Umbreen decides to hold the ceremony over Manish’s border line, to make her the first woman to wed in Pakistan. With the Doctor officiating Prem and Umbreen are married, sealing their union with the Hindu tradition of tying their hands together, using rope from the discarded border. At the post-ceremony celebrations, Umbreen voices her pride at being Manish’s sister-in-law; but Manish is furious at their union, and storms off. Under Hindu tradition Prem gives Umbreen his watch as a gift – but she drops it, smashing the face. The Doctor goes after Manish, who has taken up his brother’s service rifle; she accuses him of killing the holy man in an attempt to stop the wedding, but Manish is undaunted, having called in a band of armed vigilantes to help deal him with the situation. The Doctor warns everyone to get to safety, but Umbreen and her mother refuse to leave their house; they take shelter in the barn, where Yaz sees a map on the wall with Sheffield marked out; Umbreen explains how she picked it at random as an exotic place to visit. The vigilantes arrive on horseback, and Manish goes out to greet them. Seeing the approaching armed gang, Prem urges Umbreen and her mother to flee while he buys time by trying to reason with them. Yaz tells her Nani to run across the border and head north, encouraging her to go to Sheffield. Prem tries reasoning with Manish, but his brother is resolute in his separatist beliefs. The Thijarians arrive to watch events play out, and as the Doctor leads Yaz, Ryan and Graham away, a fateful shot rings out… The Thijarians return to their ship, adding the image of Prem to their collection of the dead. In the TARDIS, the Doctor consoles Yaz, who reassures herself with the knowledge that Umbreen and her mother got out alive… In the present, Yaz tells her grandmother how she recently went to a wedding; she now sees her Nani in a new light, and takes comfort that the old woman is happy with the life she has lead…


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brian), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Leena Dhingra (Nani Umbreen), Amita Suman (Umbreen), Shane Zaza (Prem), Hamza Jeetooa (Manish), Shaheen Khan (Hasna), Shobna Gulati (Najia), Ravin J Ganatra (Hakim), Bhavnisha Parmar (Sonya), Emma Fielding (Voice of Kisar), Nathalie Curzner (Performance of Kisar), Isobel Middleton (Voice of Almak), Barbara Fadden (Performance of Almak)

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):
11th November 2018 @ 7.00 pm


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

This episode ends with an Indian version of the ‘Doctor Who’ theme