What went wrong with Orphan 55?

I guess this is sort of a rant.

I started NuWho recently. Like, October (Ok, not that recent anymore). My friend got me hooked up on it and we watch it together. Great stuff, definitely loving it more than I expected to.

We’ve gone through our fair share of bad episodes because we decided not to skip any of them, of course… Fear Her, Love and Monsters, Sleep no more, Rosa. All episodes I’d probably say didn’t quite stick the landing and had me conflicted, but at least for each one of them I came out with a somewhat positive outlook. I liked the idea behind Fear Her and I actually found myself enjoying the scribble monster concept, Love and Monsters is really fun until the last 10 minutes, Rosa has some great moments even if the whole episode is not great, and Sleep no more was very confusing but I appreciated the attempt at an episode with found footage. Overall I can appreciate the idea behind something even if the execution ends up bad

And we got to Orphan 55 last night. My friend warned me beforehand that it’s bad, but I was curious to see how I’d take it or if I could find anything good in it.

Nope. Just sucked.

What was even the plan here? The characters are not interesting, the plot is awful, and the actors just seem entirely uninterested in the episode. My props to Jodie Whittaker who genuinely tries her best during the few scenes I’d consider decent but even then she’s entirely disconnected from the plot and script I feel. The set looked ugly, the costume for the Dregs looked really bad… What was the plan? And the whole episode just ends on a pollution PSA and I’m just… Where did that come from??

I’m genuinely confused at how this episode is so bad. I know Thirteen’s era gets complaints, which is fair, but this is stupidly low even for it.