This is a story which tries to make up for the disappointing
Invasion of Time which was the last story that took place in the TARDIS. That
story suffered partly from the fact that it was hastily put together and so looks
nothing like the control room and as a result it looks like it was filmed in an
abandoned hospital (which of course it was). The pre-title scene is quite good
because it continues to play the TARDIS as a living thing and for some reason
she doesn’t like Clara so in an attempt to get them to bond, the Doctor lets
Clara fly on basic mode. The Doctor fiddles with the TARDIS which is never a
good thing.
The supporting characters are a salvage crew who just happen
to scoop it up and are totally unlikeable although the Doctor does his best to
bring them down a peg or two. Sadly Gregor Van Baalen (Ashley Walters) needs to
be taken down several more pegs. Tricky (Jahvel Hall) is supposed to be a robot
but later on in the episode its revealed that he is human and Gregor told him
he was a robot to provide entertainment which I thought that was a bit of an
odd thing to introduce especially when events are then forgotten about because
of timey-wimey stuff.
The Doctor initiates the self destruction option on the
TARDIS and that gives the drama a new sense of tension because the story has to
feel like its moving at a quick speed. Of course this is a trick that the
Doctor uses to get the Brothers Dim to help him find Clara but it was amusing
when after he stops the countdown things continue to get worse when he
discovers that its about to blow up.
The beauty of this story is that we see inside the TARDIS in
ways that haven’t seen for a very long time. We saw corridors and the old
console room in The Doctors Wife but we haven’t seen much more than that and
the thing about this story is that all the rooms and corridors look like they
are part of the same place (something Invasion of Time didn’t achieve).We get
to see that there is a book about the Time War in a lovely looking library.
Clara discovers the Doctors name which is something that becomes significant
later on. I think when this story aired we knew the final episode of the season
would be called The Name of the Doctor so this was the build up to that
episode. We also get to see the eye of Harmony and it looks very different to
how it did in the 1996 TV Movie. Another room looks like its outside and this isn’t
anything new because in several Big Finish plays there are stories which features
rooms that seem like small counties. This is a room to stop the Doctor and
Clara getting into the next room this doesn’t work and after a bit of jumping
they get into the next room. This feels like a computer game with the character
having to achieve something to advance. There is a great bit where they enter
the heart of the TARDIS and it’s a great room with good effects used to create
an explosion stopped in time.
The weird looking creatures are called Time Zombies and one
is actually Clara. They weren’t the main focus of the story but they were used
enough to make them seem entertaining. There is a lovely bit where we hear
sound clips from other stories such as An Unearthly Child, Colony in Space,
Robots of Death, Rose, Smith and Jones, The Beast Below and The Doctors Wife.
This was a highly enjoyable episode that gave me the type of
story that I wish they did more of and that is a story set entirely inside the
TARDIS. At this moment, this story is the 31st best story of Doctor
Who but the first is a story that has been there for all but one story of this
story and that is Inside the Spaceship which is a story that takes place inside
the TARDIS. The NEXT TIME trailer shows that there is a story which may
slightly ruin the good form that this half of the series that has created.
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