290 –"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" | |||
---|---|---|---|
Doctor Who episode | |||
Cast | |||
Others
| |||
Production | |||
Directed by | Nida Manzoor | ||
Written by | Nina Metivier | ||
Script editor | Fiona McAllister | ||
Produced by | Nikki Wilson | ||
Executive producer(s) |
| ||
Music by | Segun Akinola | ||
Series | Series 12 | ||
Running time | 50 minutes | ||
First broadcast | 19 January 2020 | ||
Chronology | |||
| |||
"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" is the fourth episode of the twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who , first broadcast on BBC One on 19 January 2020. It was written by Nina Metivier, and directed by Nida Manzoor.
In 1903, the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) helps Nikola Tesla (Goran Višnjić) escape from being kidnapped by the Skithra aliens, along with the assistance of her companions Graham O'Brien (Bradley Walsh), Ryan Sinclair (Tosin Cole), and Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill).
The episode was watched by 5.20 million viewers, and received generally positive reviews from critics.
At Niagara Falls in 1903, Nikola Tesla is unsuccessful in getting investors for his wireless power transmission system as it is seen as dangerous and crazy. After working late fixing his generator, he comes across a floating orb. Feeling endangered, he makes a run with his assistant, Dorothy Skerritt, as a cloaked figure shoots at them. The Doctor arrives in time to help them escape aboard a train headed to New York City, ditching their pursuer by detaching the carriage.
In New York, the group finds protesters waiting outside Tesla's lab, having been goaded into fearing Tesla and his inventions by his competitor Thomas Edison. The Doctor identifies the orb as an Orb of Thassa designed to share knowledge, but repurposed for an unknown cause. After spotting a spy for Edison, the Doctor, Graham and Ryan visit Edison's workshop, suspecting him to be behind the attack on Tesla. The cloaked figure arrives at Edison's lab and fatally electrocutes everyone in the workshop before pursuing Edison. The group escapes and traps one of the creatures in a chemical ring of fire, but it escapes by teleportation. The Doctor tries to warn Tesla and Yaz back at his lab, but the two are captured and transported to an invisible alien ship above the city. The Queen of the Skithra demands they fix her ship. When Tesla refuses, the Queen threatens to kill Yaz, but the Doctor transports herself onto the ship just in time. She learns that the Skithra ship is just a collection of stolen parts from various species and the Skithra just use others to do their work for them. The Skithra also chose Tesla as their "engineer" because he was able to discover their signal while he had been working on his wireless power system.
The Doctor transports herself, Tesla, and Yaz back to Tesla's Wardenclyffe lab. The Doctor warns the Queen to leave, but the Queen refuses, threatening to destroy Earth if Tesla is not handed over. While Tesla and the Doctor hook up the TARDIS to help power Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower, Graham, Ryan, Yaz, Dorothy and Edison ward off the invading scorpion-like Skithra. The Tower activates, and electrical bolts shoot through the Skithra ship, forcing it to leave Earth. Yaz is disappointed that despite Tesla's heroics, his reputation in the future remained unchanged, but the Doctor reminds her that Tesla's vision for a wireless world will still come to pass.
"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" was written by Nina Metivier, who had worked as a script editor on the previous series. [1] [2]
Robert Glenister and Goran Višnjić were cast, [3] as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla respectively. [4] Glenister previously appeared on Doctor Who as the android Salateen in the 1984 serial The Caves of Androzani . [5] Anjli Mohindra, who had previously portrayed Rani Chandra in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures , played Queen Skithra. [6] [2] Further cast members were announced in Doctor Who Magazine #547 in early January 2020. [2]
Nida Manzoor directed the third block, consisting of the fourth and fifth episodes. [7] [2] The sets for 1903 New York City were located at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, Bulgaria. [8]
The trailer for the episode was released after the broadcast of the previous episode, "Orphan 55". [9]
Aggregate scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer) | 89% [10] |
Rotten Tomatoes (Average Score) | 7/10 [10] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
The A.V. Club | B+ [11] |
Entertainment Weekly | B [12] |
Radio Times | [13] |
The Independent | [14] |
The Telegraph | [15] |
"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" aired on 19 January 2020. [16]
"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" was watched by 4.04 million viewers overnight, making it the sixth most watched programme for the day in the United Kingdom. [17] The episode had an Audience Appreciation Index score of 79. [18] The episode received an official total of 5.20 million viewers across all UK channels. [18]
The episode holds an approval rating of 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and an average of 7/10 based on 18 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "If a tad light on meaning, "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" is still an enjoyable historical romp that benefits greatly from Jodie Whittaker and guest star Goran Visnjic’s crackling chemistry." [10]
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer, futurist, and inventor. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla on Long Island in 1901–1902, located in the village of Shoreham, New York. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony, and even facsimile images across the Atlantic Ocean to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to increase the scale of the facility and implement his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's radio-based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project's primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
Goran Višnjić is a Croatian-American actor who has appeared in American and British films and television productions. He is best known for his roles as Dr. Luka Kovač in ER and Garcia Flynn in Timeless, both NBC television series. For ER, he and the cast were nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is the son-in-law of Croatian film director and former head of Hrvatska radiotelevizija (1991–95), Antun Vrdoljak.
The Caves of Androzani is the sixth serial of the 21st season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts on BBC1 from 8 to 16 March 1984.
Robert Lewis Glenister is an English actor. He is best known for his television roles as Ash "Three Socks" Morgan in the crime drama series Hustle (2004–2012) and Nicholas Blake in the spy drama series Spooks (2006–2010).
Nikola Tesla is portrayed in many forms of popular culture. The Serbian-American engineer has particularly been depicted in science fiction, a genre which is well suited to address his inventions; while often exaggerated, the fictionalized variants build mostly upon his own alleged claims or ideas. A popular, growing fixation among science fiction, comic book, and speculative history storytellers is to portray Tesla as a member of a secret society, along with other luminaries of science. The impacts of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla are a recurring theme in the steampunk genre of alternate technology science-fiction.
Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. He is often portrayed in popular culture as an adversary of Nikola Tesla.
Anjli Mohindra is an English stage, screen and voice-over actress and writer. She is best known for her television roles as Rani Chandra in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures (2008–2011) and would-be suicide bomber Nadia Ali in Bodyguard (2018). Her other television roles include Surgeon Lieutenant Tiffany Docherty in Vigil (2021), Detective Constable Josie Chancellor in Dark Heart (2016–2018) and Archie in The Lazarus Project (2022–2023).
The Secret of Nikola Tesla, is a 1980 Yugoslav biographical film which dramatizes events in the life of the Serbian-American engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla. This somewhat fictionalized portrayal of Tesla's life has him contending with Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan in his attempts to develop alternating current and then "free" wireless power.
Graham O'Brien is a fictional character created by Chris Chibnall and portrayed by Bradley Walsh in the long-running British sci-fi television series Doctor Who. A retired bus driver from Essex who is in remission from cancer, the character is portrayed as an everyman. In the show's eleventh series, starting with the first episode, he served as a companion of the thirteenth incarnation of the alien time traveller known as the Doctor until the 2021 New Year's Special "Revolution of the Daleks".
The twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who premiered on 1 January 2020 and aired until 1 March 2020. It is the second series to be led by Chris Chibnall as head writer and executive producer, alongside executive producer Matt Strevens, the twelfth to air after the programme's revival in 2005, and the thirty-eighth season overall. The twelfth series was broadcast on Sundays, except for the premiere episode, continuing the trend from the eleventh series. Prior to the eleventh series, regular episodes of the revived era were commonly broadcast on Saturdays. The series was followed by the 2021 New Year's Day special, "Revolution of the Daleks".
"Spyfall" is the two-part premiere of the twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 1 and 5 January 2020. It was written by showrunner and executive producer Chris Chibnall. The first episode was directed by Jamie Magnus Stone, and the second by Lee Haven Jones.
"Fugitive of the Judoon" is the fifth episode of the twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 26 January 2020. It was written by Vinay Patel and Chris Chibnall, and directed by Nida Manzoor.
"Praxeus" is the sixth episode of the twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 2 February 2020. It was written by Pete McTighe and Chris Chibnall, and directed by Jamie Magnus Stone.
"Ascension of the Cybermen" is the ninth and penultimate episode of the twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 23 February 2020. It was written by Chris Chibnall, and directed by Jamie Magnus Stone. It is the first of a two-part story; the concluding episode "The Timeless Children", the finale of the twelfth series, aired on 1 March.
"War of the Sontarans", prefixed frequently with either "Chapter Two" or "Flux", is the second episode of the thirteenth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, and of the six-episode serial known collectively as Doctor Who: Flux. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 7 November 2021. It was written by showrunner and executive producer Chris Chibnall, and directed by Jamie Magnus Stone.
"Once, Upon Time", prefixed frequently with either "Chapter Three" or "Flux", is the third episode of the thirteenth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, and of the six-episode serial known collectively as Doctor Who: Flux. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 14 November 2021. It was written by showrunner and executive producer Chris Chibnall, and directed by Azhur Saleem.
"Village of the Angels", prefixed frequently with either "Chapter Four" or "Flux", is the fourth episode of the thirteenth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, and of the six-episode serial known collectively as Doctor Who: Flux. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 21 November 2021. It was written by showrunner and executive producer Chris Chibnall and Maxine Alderton, and directed by Jamie Magnus Stone.
Nina Metivier is a British screenwriter, best known for co-creating the teen thriller The A List.
"Legend of the Sea Devils" is the second and penultimate of three special episodes that followed the thirteenth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. The episode was first broadcast on 17 April 2022 as an Easter Sunday special. It was written by Ella Road and Chris Chibnall and directed by Haolu Wang.