Orphan 55 is the third episode of the twelfth series of the revival Doctor Who. It was the third episode but the second story, after the opening "Spyfall" story. It was first broadcast on January 12, 2021.
The story starts with the Doctor and her three companions winning a trip to a luxury resort. After about two minutes of enjoying the beautiful resort, things start going sideways, of course. A computer virus brings down the defense net, which allows some horrific aliens to invade the resort, which turns out to be a dome with virtual reality on a terrible, blighted earth. The Doctor and her companions are in a base under siege story, with a familiar tunnel crawl with the drooling, slavering monsters chasing them. The episode changes the formula a little bit, as the Doctor, Companions, and survivors of the attacked hotel head out in a moon buggy type vehicle to rescue one of the kidnapped tourists. This fails, and the episode comes to a depressing conclusion, with the main cast teleporting away at the very last minute, leaving most of the other characters dead. As well as having a (not terribly) surprising revelation about the identity of this blasted planet. The title also is symbolic, since the idea of parental neglect is reflected throughout the episode, and ties in with the environmental message: when we don't care for Mother Earth, that leaves future generations orphans.
I didn't think much of it. Neither did many critics.
I will explain exactly where this episode went wrong: there were fires burning in one scene. Flickering, dreadful, wasteland fires. Which was all very scenic and good, but this episode has repeatedly explained that we are on a planet with a minimal oxygen content, below what can sustain life. Which means they would be unable to sustain a fire. So while I was watching it, I decided, like a good Doctor Who fan, to decode the clues. Perhaps this was all an illusion or a hallucination, and people just thought they couldn't breathe? Maybe this was going to make a meta point that a perfect vacation for The Doctor would be a monster attack, and so the hotel was psychically creating it to amuse her? Maybe none of the people were people, and were just a larval stage of the slobbering monster, who were just peacefully trying to reclaim their children? I kept on looking for signs or clues that this story was not what it literally appeared to be: a base under siege story with vicious monsters. But in the end, that is what the story turned out to be. The flickering fires were just an error in production, and the story was what it seemed to be. Which isn't always a bad thing, not every story has to explosively subvert expectations, but I did find myself disappointed at the end.