I know I'm a week behind, but I continue to trudge on through season 12. Today, I look at "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror". That's a mouth full. Why not just name it "Night of Terror"? Who knows. This is the yearly historical episode of the season. Every season has to have one nowadays and this historical time has a lot of potential. We have Thomas Edison in one corner and Nikola Tesla in the other corner. So many possibilities. And......this was a snooze fest. We have a predictable plot where there is a power source that the Doctor is trying to track down, when she stumbles upon Mr. Tesla. The usual bad aliens show up and want something and threaten to destroy the Earth if they don't get it. Then the Doctor teams up with some locals to stop them and there you have it. A cookie cutter Dr Who episode.
I did enjoy the portrayal of Nikola Tesla played by Goran Visnjic. He gave a great performance and definitely was the star of the episode. Now compare his character to that of Thomas Edison played by Robert Glenister and you can see the lazy writing roaring its ugly head again. It's lazy to make Edison the bad guy and Tesla the hero, when it actuality it's a little more complicated than that. But the writers see Edison being portrayed poorly in modern times and instead of creating something unique, they just followed the same modern role that Edison has played.
Now onto the baddie. We meet Queen Skithra, who looks nothing like her off spring. Doesn't she remind you of someone? Maybe Empress of Racnos in the "Runaway Bride"? Too similar for my tastes. Now, Queen Skithra and her off spring scour the galaxy using things they find. How evil??? This whole season feels like a collection of stolen parts from other Dr Who episodes, so it's fitting that Skithra does the same thing.Well, I'm going to make this short, "Nikola Telsa's Night of Terror" (even though it mostly takes place during the day) gets a 1.75 Tardises out of 5. Maybe I should grading on potential from now on. Is there any hope? Oh, someone is coming Back next episode. Maybe he will save this season.