The one in which no actual plot was conceived, no sense of drama or threat was felt, nor even any sense of coherent storytelling was attempted. A brutal, medieval mess. Timey-wimey it attempts, slimey-wimey it achieves. The whole episode suffers from a – hmmm…we need to somehow make a third episode but we don’t know how to bridge the gap between the Sontarans in the Crimea and the Angels so… lets just do a load of stuff, shove in some random scenes that will have fans sit upright and non-fans drop their jaws in complete confusion.
Well Jo Martin was great, I’ll say that. But her appearance here did nothing for the plot, rather just reminded us all of the Chibnall clusterfuss that was The Timeless Child, and hinted that maybe, just maybe, we might get some resolution by the end of this mini-series (though I personally doubt it, to be honest).
Nothing is explained.
We get to see Jodie hovering in some limbo with big Gods of Ragnarock Mouri saying some time-lordy nonsense about being pulled back into timelines, and we get to see the various characters all stuck in variations of their own timezones, but then also seeing some flash-forward I THINK – on some planet (called Time, allowing us to create a clever title, where all the fans are tweeting and leaping and fretting about the “dark” doctor in a dark cloak. I don’t know, I kinda gave up.
No wait. Did i see Daleks? (really bad CGI versions in dead looking trees?) Oh aye i think i saw fantastic looking Cybermen as well!! I thought i dreamt those bits up. Oh i can’t wait to see them in their own episode with a proper st…oh wait… they were in a potentially non-existent time line?? what?
And who is Bel and should we care about her? (yes, we should, shes a sassy new character that will clearly be really important later on… so why introduce her in the middle of the whole thing…)
Who’s this bad guy giving us some backstory to Vinder that we probably don’t need in the long term? Its the guy from Line of Duty, yes, excellent, he’s a cheesy, OTT villain but don’t we have enough villains at the moment? I mean, i’m trying to assume that the villains of the piece are blue-face and stoney-face – whatever their names are… but are they in a parallel time line as well? No idea. Maybe if i wrote it down. There, i did. It just looks as if i spilled spaghetti all over my writing pad.
And was that the Doctor’s mother that we saw there? (clickbait! only joking). But no doubt this will be one of the theories that will inevitably choke up the babblesphere for the next three weeks. Or three centuries; you never know when threads like this will be resolved nowadays.
In no way was it gripping TV, it was sub-par doctor who. Far more akin to a messy moffat than a chitty shibnall but still, an unworthy addition to my television roster.
Hopefully that excellent cliffhanger line is a sign for a redemption next week, because we’re past the fluxxing half way point now…
the FANGG of HORROR ROCK 