Can You Hear Me is a much better episode compared to the previous episode, Praxeus.
In this episode we have a creepy figure with skull tattoos and detachable fingers confronting the Doctor and her friends. Along with this creepy figure, this episode jumps around a bit, from going into the past, then to present day Sheffield and then into space. Then after all of the space stuff this episode tries to end on an uplifting message. Again, this episode has a message running throughout it which is mental health. In this series almost every episode has had a message to it, which is ok to do but sometimes it doesn’t feel necessary to have a message in each and every episode, it as if they put a message in to either long out the episode or they feel like they have to. As a result, this episode thus deals with a lot with mental health, nightmare, Yaz and two power hunger gods.
We begin this episode in medieval Syria in a home for the mentally unwell where we see a giant CGI werewolf attacking the inhabitants. This CGI werewolf looks awful, really bad CGI. Doctor Who has done a CGI werewolf in the past and it looked really good, in this episode the CGI for this creature is incredibly poor and embarrassing to look at. As the episode continues, the Doctor is tricked into freeing an alien Goddess known as Rakaya (Clare-Hope Ashitey. She is an immortal who loves to feed off other nightmares, this keeps her sane. The tattooed man mentioned before is working with Rakaya and helping her, he is known as Zellin (Ian Gelder).
The Doctor eventually saves the day and her friends including their Syrian friend Tahira (Aruhan Galieva) conquer their fears and use the werewolf to trap the two mortal gods in their prison for eternity. We get a deeper insight into Yaz's past yet we are still left wanting a bit more. We also see all of the companions reflect on their past and their future's - their hopes and worries with travelling with the Doctor and the people they keep leaving behind. For example, Graham (Bradley Walsh) talks to the Doctor about his cancer returning and the Doctor's response was quite unexpected. We expect the Doctor to support and comfort her friends yet instead we see another side as she becomes socially awkward. Not really a reaction or response we expected.
The performances are good in this episode from the entire cast but there is nothing special in this episode, we don't learn anything new. The narrative itself is good and different compared to previous episodes but at the end of this episode we haven’t learnt or discovered anything new to get us excited for the next episode. We get more of an insight into Yaz which gives her a bit more personality but we need more. A positive of this episode is that we get to see the reality of travelling with the Doctor, the worry of when all of it will end and what will they return to or what kind of people will they return as. We are left with the Ryan, Yaz and Graham questioning their future with the Doctor just as every companion has before them.
