Ryan’s exit almost meant something

There are many things you could call Ryan Sinclair’s departure from the TARDIS, but “unforeshadowed” is not one of them. At the very least, one scene in Series 12’s Can You Hear Me? – the episode which took a crack at giving all three members of the Fam a bit more interiority (albeit about a dozen episodes too late) – reveals that what’s weighing on his mind isn’t the wonder of outer space, but the grim future for his home planet Earth posed by earlier adventure Orphan 55. A trip into Ryan’s nightmares depicts an infernal landscape, er, well, an infernal darkened room, containing an aged-up version of his friend Tibo and a cameo from one of Orphan‘s mutated future humanoids.

Like most interesting things in this era of Doctor Who, the concept of a time traveller existentially terrified by climate apocalypse is raised briefly and then re-lowered, but it’s enough to telegraph that he’ll have a motive to quit the gang soon. The part that really interests me is later on, in Ryan’s final episode itself, when for one glimmering moment a story not only threatens to come together but to cohere this entire era of the programme.