YMMV / Doctor Who S33 E8 "Cold War"

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Professor Grisenko proved an enjoyable character due to his enjoyable personality, his grandfatherly chemistry with Clara, including bravely shooting at Skaldak to protect her, and his passion for pop music. He even gets a Shout-Out in the The Secret Lives of Monsters tie-in book, the only character from this story to get so.
• Magnificent Bastard: Grand Marshall Skaldak is the greatest hero that Mars and its Ice Warriors have ever known. Skaldak was trapped in ice before the episode begins and released during the episode aboard a Soviet submarine. The submarine crew promptly attacks him, leading him to declare war on the planet after losing all hope of his species still existing, with revenge being now all he has. Skaldak secretly gets out of his armour while imprisoned in the boiling room and uses it as a decoy to fool everyone into letting him out. Escaping, he then learns enough information to know how to defeat humanity by using the nukes onboard the submarine to turn the cold war hot. Skaldak is able to effortlessly outmaneuver the other characters while also showing them genuine philosophical respect. Eventually being seconds away from achieving his goal of launching the nukes, Skaldak only loses after being convinced to choose forgiveness and empathy instead and leave in peace.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The episode accidentally portrays mutually assured destruction as good, which might have gone unnoticed had the episode not synced up with the death of Margaret Thatcher.