Rarely has a story promised so much and yet delivered so little. I came away from this tale feeling more than a little disappointed.
As with The Doctor's Wife, all we really got were more corridors (fairly nondescript, generic sci-fi ones at that).
At least that earlier episode added to the ship's mythos - allowing us to meet its soul.
This time, nothing really new was revealed. We saw the library, glimpsed the swimming pool, and spent some time with the Eye of Harmony and the engines.
There was also the tree-like architectural configuration system.
The engines - frozen at the moment they blow apart - were visually impressive. The Eye of Harmony less so.
A nice touch were the aural memories - from Ian and Susan to the Ninth Doctor.
I really thought that the monsters would have been much more significant - something which the Doctor had kept hidden away within the ship and who had escaped. They were very creepy and well realised - but turned out to be possible future versions of Clara and the Van Baalens, the result of exposure to the Eye.
The salvagers were pretty unremarkable characters. The idea that Tricky didn't know he wasn't a full android seemed a bit of a Guy Crayford's eye-patch moment.
His brothers must have been extremely bored to have come up with a nasty joke like that.
How fortunate was it that "The History of the Time War" was written in English and that Clara just happened to come upon the Doctor's name so quickly?
Of course, the reset nature of the ending meant that she never discovered it.
As regards moving the Clara mystery forward, the Doctor now seems to think she is just an ordinary young woman - so no further forward at all.
One thing that confused me was how the Doctor ended up outside the TARDIS, and Clara down miles of corridor when they were both in the console room when the Van Baalens seized the ship.
Also, the fireball when Clara opened the door seemed to be there just for the sake of it. She escaped it by simply running round a corner.
The ending is sure to have upset a lot of people. A timey-wimey reset involving pressing a button. Not sure how this affected the salvage ship (Tricky appearing in the photo when he was absent before).
Overall, an exciting enough runaround but not as special as it could have been.
I concur. It feels like the show is being run into the ground, yet again. Does anyone remember JNT?
ReplyDeleteI don't think things have gotten quite that bad, though I do worry that Moffat isn't giving the programme his undivided attention. He has Sherlock to worry about as well, and is now relying on a small pool of writers (one of whom - MG - has so far trashed both the Daleks & the Ice Warriors).
ReplyDeleteIs it down to money that we only get half a season per year these days - or the showrunner's extra-curricular activities?
Every producer / showrunner is merely a custodian of the show. They can certainly make changes if they want - in order to move the programme forward, but at the end of the day they need to leave it in a healthy state for future producers to inherit.