Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks certainly is a fun sci-fi adventure, while also featuring emotional moments for its characters. Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks starts with Sarah (Aisling Bea) helping Nick (Adjani Salmon), her only customer in the storage unit facility that she owns. Of course, things take a turn for the worse when Daleks show up and Sarah and Nick are fighting for survival. The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yasmin "Yaz" Khan (Mandip Gill), and Dan Lewis (John Bishop) then show up, and they're not where they're supposed to be. They had been meaning to go to another planet with a beach.
The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan don't have much time to deal with their disappointment, however, as they have to handle the Dalek problem. They try their best to save themselves and Sarah and Nick, but the Dalek quickly catches them and they seemingly have nowhere to go. And then, just as they all get exterminated, the story starts all over again. Yes, that's right, Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks has all of its characters stuck in a time loop with Daleks. Once the Doctor realizes this, she immediately makes a plan on how to deal with the Daleks. Though at the time, she believes it is a singular Dalek.
The Doctor's plan is that in the next time loop, she, Yaz, and Dan will meet Sarah and Nick on the fifth floor and use whatever they find there as weapons against the Dalek. However, Sarah and Nick don't end up fulfilling their part of the bargain on the next loop and the plan might not work with multiple Daleks anyway. Luckily, the Doctor thinks of another plan and everyone goes along with it. They try to confuse the Daleks by doing on the next loop things that the Daleks wouldn't expect. They are then exterminated again, but it's all part of the plan. On the next loop, they get a ton of fireworks together and they're set to explode when Sarah's phone rings and the Daleks are close enough.
Throughout all of this, Sarah and Nick grow closer and Nick admits that he has had a crush on her for years. That he only goes to the storage facility on New Year's Eve because he knows she will be there. Yet Nick is not the only one with romantic feelings. Throughout the episode, Dan confronts Yaz about her feelings for the Doctor. He later tells the Doctor that Yaz likes her, and of course, the Doctor pretends to not understand. Dan, however, isn't taking any of her nonsense. He says that he thinks she understands Yaz's feelings perfectly but just pretends to him and to Yaz herself that she doesn't.
Eventually, the Dalek is defeated and the episode's protagonists escape. But the Doctor seems to believe that her past decisions are catching up with her. Though she brushes off Yaz's concerns at the end of Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks, the Doctor probably can't escape forever. At the end of Doctor Who: Flux, she was told to beware of the forces that are building against her and the one in charge of them. Perhaps the Master? And since Doctor Who fans know that the Thirteenth Doctor will be regenerating soon, that makes Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks quite a bittersweet story.
Overall, Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks does what the show does best: balances a fun sci-fi adventure with a story with an emotional core. Yaz's acceptance of her feelings for the Doctor is paralleled in the episode, with Sarah and Nick, who end up together in the end. Of course, Yaz and the Doctor's fate might not be quite so kind, especially with the Thirteenth Doctor set to regenerate soon. Yet it is still nice to see Yaz's character develop further and to accept herself in a way she might not have been able to in the past. Yaz is changed for the better through her interactions with the Doctor, and that's all that Doctor Who fans can ask from a companion.
Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks not only gives fans a beautiful, emotional story with Yaz and the Doctor but also Dan as well. Dan is crucial in getting Yaz to admit her feelings, and he also gives her advice about how he waited too long to express his feelings for someone he liked, and how he doesn't want Yaz to make the same mistake. He also is not having any of the Doctor's nonsense and is willing to confront her if necessary. Dan's character is a fitting friend for both the Doctor and Yaz, and he also develops well in this episode. Overall, Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks is a near-perfect episode for the show, balancing sci-fi antics with a deeper emotional story. Of course, nothing is perfect.
The side characters of Sarah and Nick are intriguing, though there is the worry that they take away from the main characters a bit too much. Nick can also come across badly as he is storing things from his ex-girlfriends in his storage unit, which can come across as creepy. Yaz's feelings for the Doctor also might be seen as sudden to some fans, though if Doctor Who fans look back at Yaz's interactions with the Doctor over the seasons, they will see the possibility there. And since Yaz herself wasn't admitting her feelings, that could explain why they seem to suddenly exist when she had never explicitly mentioned them before.
Nevertheless, Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks is an enjoyable episode, and not only gives fans a fun adventure with Daleks, but also a deeper story about self-acceptance and being courageous with your feelings, even if it's hard. And what more could fans want from a Doctor Who episode? Many LGBTQ+ fans probably appreciate Yaz's story, and even those who are not LGBTQ+ can probably relate to having a crush on someone who it seems is impossible to get. The self-acceptance message and the one about being courageous with your feelings, even if it's hard, are also great messages to send LGBTQ+ fans, and everyone really. Many people can probably relate to being unable to accept certain aspects of themselves, whatever they might be, and needing a bit of courage to let their feelings out.