April 12-13 was a nerd streaming weekend, with the return of sci-fi’s longest-running television franchise, and the sophomore season of a critically acclaimed TV adaptation of an equally critically acclaimed video game.

“Doctor Who,” Disney+:

The premiere of Ncuti Gatwa’s second season as the Fifteenth Doctor is much more effective than his first-season debut at selling the essentials of the “Doctor Who” mythos, to wit:

Out in the stars is an alien Bugs Bunny trickster, who travels through time and space in a blue box that’s impossibly bigger on the inside than on the outside, selflessly helping those whom he meets along the way.

And because the universe is so big, its drama often lands unexpectedly on the doorsteps of ordinary humans here on Earth. So if you get caught up in that strangeness, and you respond to the universe’s pitfalls with a sense of wonder and compassion, you might just find yourself traveling with the Doctor.

Ever since current showrunner Russell T. Davies resurrected the show in 2005, it helps your chances if you’re a pretty young woman with a seemingly cosmically significant secret.

Hospital nurse Belinda Chandra (played by Varada Sethu) falls into the same neo-gothic “mystery woman” archetype as former companions Clara Oswald and last season’s Ruby Sunday, so get ready for another “Bad Wolf” season-long storytelling arc, of which RTD has always been fond.

Gatwa continues to be the most emotionally expressive incarnation of the Doctor yet, routinely exploding with joyful outbursts and not shying away from shedding tears. This has rubbed some viewers the wrong way, but I suspect those same folks will be every bit as displeased with the none-too-subtle social commentary behind this episode’s villain.

As far as I’m concerned, Gatwa’s unrestrained feelings represent a breath of fresh air for the character. At the same time, I appreciate that Davies has deliberately contrasted this version of the Doctor with how Sethu plays Belinda’s entirely rational and cautious desire to return to her safe, mundane life, especially since Belinda calls out how unsafe the Doctor is, regardless of his love-bombing best intentions.

Here’s hoping this season’s mystery has a more satisfying resolution than the enigma of Ruby’s mother last season. If nothing else, the lead-in for Belinda’s mystery feels more well-developed.

“The Last of Us,” Max:

We all knew nothing good would come from Ellie (Bella Ramsey) demanding that Joel (Pedro Pascal) swear to her that he was telling her the truth about the events at the end of last season.

Five years later — yes, the show jumps forward to 2029 — Ellie is quietly simmering with resentment, likely because she senses that Joel has kept something secret from her. Joel seems powerless to fix their emotionally frozen relationship, because the secret he’s keeping is one that can’t be safely confided in anyone, including his therapist, played by Catherine O’Hara.

Even in her critically acclaimed outings, O’Hara has always tended more toward comedic performances. But she is terrifyingly serious as a heart attack here, all the more so because she is done with everyone else’s nonsense, especially Joel’s, who shot her incurably mushroom plague-infected husband offscreen between seasons.

Neither has Joel endeared himself to Kaitlyn Dever, here playing one of the leaders of the surviving members of the “Firefly” soldiers in Salt Lake City, Utah, whom he killed because they intended to kill Ellie, in hopes of obtaining a cure from her immunity.

With Fireflies approaching Joel and Ellie’s home in Jackson, Wyoming, their looming peril is compounded by subtle indicators that the Cordyceps’ mushroom zombie network has found a way to infiltrate the Jackson residents’ heavily fortified community.

The second-season premiere nicely lines up enough dominoes to sustain suspense for the episodes ahead, even before we see Ellie catching romantic feelings for her ostensibly straight best friend Dina (Isabela Merced), which becomes an issue when veteran bad guy actor Robert John Burke appears to play the first out-and-out bigot in the narrative.

Ellie’s instinctive competence and aversion to Joel’s over-protectiveness have both made her dangerous, since we see her taking sloppy, needless risks. And even if Joel’s undisclosed body count doesn’t get his fellow residents of Jackson killed, he has reason enough to come to blows with them himself, with his increasing reluctance to let new refugees in.

Pascal has played enough high-profile fictional fathers by now for female fans to brand him “Daddy.” But even with Joel’s paternal protectiveness already established, it’s impressive to see him practically materialize out of thin air to challenge a single slur spoken in Ellie’s direction.

Like so many of the best tragedies, I suspect it’ll be fascinating to watch how deeply Joel can damn himself by doing the right thing.