'The Woman Who Fell to Earth' (Story Code 11.01) by Chris Chibnall

“I’m the Doctor, sorting out fair play throughout the universe.” - The Thirteenth Doctor

Nineteen-year old Ryan Sinclair practices riding his bicycle in the hills of the Peak District, with encouragement from his nan, Grace, and his step-grandfather Graham O'Brian. But when the boy’s dyspraxia causes him to continually fall off, he throws his bike off a cliff in frustration. While Grace and Graham leave to get their train home to Sheffield, Ryan retrieves his bike from the woods, only to find it stuck in the branches of a tree. Ryan also discovers a strange, glowing symbol hanging in mid-air, and after he touches it, a large, blue pod appears out of nowhere. When Ryan reports the object to the police, his call is assigned to a friend from primary school, trainee P.C. Yasmin 'Yaz' Khan. Yaz thinks the pod is a prank, until she touches it and feels how cold it is... Meanwhile, Grace and Graham’s journey is brought to an abrupt halt when a mysterious object falls out of the sky and kills the train driver. As the passengers flee the train, Graham, Grace and a man named Karl discover their carriage’s doors are locked. Menaced by a strange, tentacled creature crackling with electricity, Grace tries phoning Ryan for help, but is quickly cut off. The creature closes in on them – just as a woman crashes through the carriage roof. Leaping to her feet the woman tries zapping the creature with an electrical cable, but it recovers and menaces Karl. Yaz and Ryan arrive on the scene just as the creature stings everyone’s necks with its tendrils, then blasts away into the sky. Yaz questions the mysterious woman, but only learns that she is unable to remember her name, used to be a Scotsman, and has lost her ‘TARDIS’. After explaining that the creature was an alien, the woman talks Graham, Grace, Ryan and Yaz into helping her find it, while Karl elects to go home. Learning of Ryan’s strange discovery in the woods, the woman gets Yaz to drive them there in her police car; but when they arrive, all they find is Ryan’s tree-bound bike… Meanwhile, the pod has been loaded into a while van by two men, Rahul and Andy, and taken to a car mechanic’s garage in Sheffield. Dismissing his friend, Rahul sets up cameras around the pod and then settles down to watch the object… In a state of exhaustion, the woman passes out, so Grace and Ryan take her home, leaving Graham and Yaz to see if anything else odd has been going on in the city that night. With the woman fast asleep on the sofa, Grace and Ryan are surprised to discover she has two pulses, as her body glows with unearthly, golden energy… Atop a high building overlooking the city, the tentacle creature scans its surroundings. At the garage, the pod cracks open to reveal an armour-clad warrior within; ignoring Rahul’s questions about his missing sister, the soldier promptly kills him… Waking from her slumber, the woman notices that she and her friends have glowing marks on their collarbones; identifying them as DNA bombs, she reformats Ryan’s phone and uses it to track the alien creature that implanted them. Elsewhere, the two aliens signal to each other… The woman and her friends arrive outside the garage, just as the soldier disappears into the night. Exploring the garage they discover the body of Rahul, killed by ice burns and missing a tooth, and the pod, which the woman identifies as a transport chamber. Ryan admits its arrival may have been his fault, having touched the glowing symbol in the woods. With Ryan’s phone now blocked from tracking the aliens, the woman uses the pod’s technology and the contents of Rahul’s garage to build a new ‘sonic screwdriver’ (or sonic Swiss-Army Knife). Ryan and Yaz find a video file on Rahul’s PC, which reveals how he has been searching for aliens ever since his sister was abducted six years ago. Using her new sonic, the woman determines that the pod originated over five-thousand galaxies away; deducing that the two alien species are using Earth as a battleground, she vows to stop their fight and send them home. Following a tip-off from Graham’s mate Kevin the bus driver, the team track the tentacle creature to its rooftop perch, where they overload it with an electrical surge. Identifying the stunned monster as a gathering coil, a mass of bio-mechanical creatures lashed together into a data-mining cluster, the woman accesses its system and sees a hologram of Karl. At that moment the soldier appears; after removing his mask to reveal how his blue skin is studded with the teeth of his victims, the warrior declares himself to be Tzim-Sha of the Stenza. Nicknaming the alien as ‘Tim Shaw’, the woman listens as he explains that he has been sent on a trophy hunt, a ritual challenge to prove his worth as his race’s leader – and the object of his quest is Karl. After condemning ‘Tim Shaw’ as a cheat, having used the gathering coil to obtain intel to help him locate Karl, the woman warns him to stop his search - but the soldier ignores her, absorbing the data from his tentacle-creature before teleporting away. Elsewhere, Karl has started his shift as a night-time operator of a high-rise crane; he is unaware that Tzim-Sha has arrived, killed a security guard and is now searching for him… Using Ryan’s phone, the friends track Karl to the Skyhawk Building site, where they see the alien warrior climbing up to Karl’s cab, while the coil-creature guards the base of the crane. As Grace and Graham evacuate the worksite, the woman instructs Yaz and Ryan to align an adjacent crane with Karl’s. Climbing up her crane’s mast, the woman calls out instructions to Karl, urging him to make his way along his own crane’s jib. Standing at the end of her crane’s arm, the woman urges Karl to jump, but just as he finally gets up enough courage to leap across he is grabbed by Tzim-Sha. The woman jumps across after them, only just managing to grab the edge of the crane jib before pulling herself to safety. Down on the ground, Grace persuades Graham to return to the site to help the others; she grabs a length of cable and runs to the crane, while her husband works on connecting it to the power generator. Finally remembering her name, the Doctor confronts ‘Tim Shaw’ and threatens to destroy the recall device she stole from his transport pod unless he releases Karl. Resolute in keeping his trophy, the soldier activates the DNA bombs – only convulse in agony. The Doctor reveals that she removed the bombs and installed them into the data-creature, which were then transferred to Tzim-Sha when he absorbed its data. The Doctor throws the warrior his recall device, just as Karl seizes his chance to kick the alien off the crane; as he falls, Tzim-Sha activates his teleport. Below them, Grace has climbed the crane mast so she can connect the live cable to the writhing collector coil-creature; the resulting blast kills the tentacled monster, but sends Grace plummeting to her death… Later, Ryan records a vlog in memory of his nan, and once more attempts to ride his bike, unaware he is watched by the Doctor. Although Ryan’s dad doesn’t attend his nan’s funeral, Yaz and the Doctor do, and they listen as Graham gives a heartfelt eulogy to his late wife. After the ceremony, Graham reveals how he met Grace: she was his chemo nurse during his treatment for cancer, from which he is now in remission. Yaz, Ryan and Graham take the Doctor to a charity shop to buy new clothes. Now in a more befitting outfit, the Doctor asks her new friends for help in finding her TARDIS. Using the tech in Rahul’s garage, the Doctor builds a device to help her track her missing ship, connecting it to the Stenza pod for a means of instant transport. Bidding farewell to her friends, the Doctor vanishes – but so do Yaz, Ryan and Graham. To their dismay, they all materialise in the airless vacuum of deep space…


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brian), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (P.C. Yasmin 'Yaz' Khan), Sharon D Clarke (Grace), Samuel Oatley (Tzim-Sha ['Tim Shaw']), Jonny Dixon (Karl Wright), Amit Shah (Rahul), Asha Kingsley (Sonia), Janine Mellor (Janey), Asif Khan (Ramesh Sunder), James Thackeray (Andy), Philip Abiodun (Dean), Stephen MacKenna (Dennis), Everal A Walsh (Gabriel)

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

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
7th October 2018 @ 6.45 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, and introducing Graham O'Brian, Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin Khan

*This hour-long special marks the first time the series has been shown in a regular Sunday-night slot; the only previous Sunday transmission was 'The End of Time' Part 2

*This was the first 'Doctor Who' story to be recorded in a 2:1 aspect ratio, using Cooke Anamorphic/i lenses to give a new 'cinematic' look

*The episode does not feature a title sequence, but does have new-look end credits, and new theme music by incoming composer Segun Akinola

*Instead of the usual 'new season clips trailer', a showcase of the various guest stars was shown at the end of the episode