Episode 4
Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror
The Doctor and her friends visit Gilded Age New York - where alien scorpions on a quest for ultimate power are headhunting a maverick inventor…
ALAN BARNES
BBC One, 19 January 2020
Writer: Nina Metivier
Director: Nida Manzoor
Guest cast: Goran Višnjic (Nikola Tesla), Robert Glenister (Thomas Edison), Anjli Mohindra (Queen Skithra), Haley McGee (Dorothy Skerritt), Paul Kasey (Harold Green), Robin Guiver (Bill Tallow), Erick Hayden (Mr Sorensson), Russell Bentley (Mr Brady), Brian Caspe (Mr Martin), Shaun Mason (Foreman)
Rating: 5.20m (seven-day, all devices)
Appreciation Index: 79
Mad scientists have featured in Doctor Who from its earliest episodes - beginning with incompetent insecticide developer Smithers (Reginald Barratt) in Planet of Giants (1964). They’ve been Unleashing Forces They Cannot Control ever since, sometimes as outright villains, sometimes as Unwitting Dupes of the Enemy. Think Professor Stahlman (Olaf Pooley) unleashing primeval energies from the Earth’s internal Inferno (1970), or Professor Kettlewell (Edward Burnham), inventor of the mighty K1 Robot (1974-75), or, most notoriously, Davros (Michael Wisher), the Kaled scientist who didn’t have the common sense to abort the Genesis of the Daleks (1975).