Month: January 2019

Timestamp #176: The Girl in the Fireplace

Michael Falkner13 Comments

Doctor Who: The Girl in the Fireplace
(1 episode, s02e04, 2006)

 

“Godspeed, my lonely angel.”

Under a starry night sky, the occupants of an ornate estate run from clockwork monsters as a woman laments a broken clock and calls to the Doctor through the fireplace. Three millennia later, the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey arrive on a spaceship. Mickey is excited as Rose and the Doctor investigate the abandoned control room. The ship is drifting in space, but the power cells are at full capacity. They are interrupted by the smell of cooking roast and an eighteenth-century fireplace. The fireplace is against the outer hull in this time, but it is linked to a little girl’s room in 1727 France.

When the Doctor flips a switch, the mantle rotates and delivers him into Reinette’s bedroom in France, but weeks have passed since they first spoke. The Doctor points out that the mantle clock is broken, and it scares him. It is the only clock in the room, it is broken, but there is a pervasive ticking sound all around them. The ticking is too big to be a clock, which the Doctor confirms when he looks under the bed and is attacked by a silent clown-like being in period dress. The clockwork monster tells the Doctor that the girl is incomplete, and when the Time Lord points the sonic screwdriver at it, the monster attacks him with a blade. The Doctor reassures Reinette, telling her not to worry because even monsters have nightmares – Brilliant retort when asked what they fear: “Me!” – as he wheels the robot back to the future spacecraft and disables it with a fire extinguisher. After its true form is revealed to the travelers, the robot teleports away.

The Doctor tells his companions not to go in search of the robot while he spins back to Reinette’s room. The companions don’t listen – of course, they don’t – and the Doctor finds that Reinette has grown into a lovely young woman. After a few moments of back and forth, the inquisitive woman gives the Doctor a kiss, which he seems to be quite into, and leaves. The Doctor puts the pieces together as he realizes that he just kissed Madame de Pompadour.

Yes, the famous “actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan, and fantastic gardener!”

Returning to the future, the Doctor finds a white horse – whom he christens Arthur – while his companions find corridors equipped with eyes and a human heart. The Doctor opens another door with the horse, emerging into the yards at the estate as Reinette strolls with her friend and exchanges news of the king’s ill mistress. When he returns, he finds his companions watching the King of France and Reinette through a window. The ship has windows to parts of her life scattered throughout its passageways. As Reinette is attacked by the robot assassin, the Doctor springs into action and saves her with a fire extinguisher.

Reinette orders the robot to answer the Doctor’s questions, revealing that it a maintenance android and that the ship is in need of repair. Since they didn’t have enough spare parts, the robot used the crew’s organs to fix the systems. That Sunday roast? Yeah, it was barbecued crewman. The android requires one last part to get the ship underway, so it has opened multiple time windows to scan Reinette until she is complete. Reinette orders the android away, and the companions are sent in pursuit as it teleports away. They are ambushed moments later by more androids and strapped down for harvesting.

The Doctor telepathically accesses Reinette’s memories, hoping to figure out what the androids are looking for. This also gives her access to his memories – “A door, once opened, may be stepped through in either direction.” – and asks about his real name – “Doctor? Doctor Who?” – before inviting him to dance with her.

Does she mean dancing or dancing? Either way, the Doctor later waltzes into the room where the companions are strapped down, high on life and claiming that he may have just invented the banana daiquiri. Always take a banana to a party, after all. He has determined that Reinette’s brain is what the androids need, dropping the ruse as he frees Mickey and Rose while disabling the robots. When they receive a message that Reinette’s brain is ready, they teleport away to the opening teaser. The Doctor sends Rose to warn the Madame, although she is five years early.

Reinette demands that Rose tell her the story behind the scenes, amazed that her life is bound by the spaceship, like chapters in a book. When Mickey brings word that they found the time window of the attack, Reinette runs through the door to the future and hears her voice from the night of terror. Rose reassures Reinette and she returns to her own time. The Doctor and his companions prepare their assault, but the portal is locked.

The Doctor is unable to break through – the TARDIS cannot go since they are now part of the events in motion and that would mean crossing their timelines – but Reinette buys time by confronting the androids. The Doctor breaks through the window, riding to the rescue on the white horse, which seals him in the past and breaks the link to the ship, much to the frustration of Mickey and Rose. Fortunately, the androids run out of energy since their purpose is now gone, and Reinette is saved. Unfortunately, the Doctor and his companions are now separated by 3000 years.

The Doctor is reconciled to taking the slow path to the future with Reinette, wondering how he’s going to make in the past. She shows him her secret: The fireplace from Versailles through which they first met. Since she moved the fireplace, that doorway was offline when the link was severed. One tweak from the sonic screwdriver later he spins the mantle and returns to the future. He asks Reinette to pack a bag, intent on taking her in the TARDIS, but when he returns to the past, she has just left for Paris. The King delivers a letter and the sad news that Reinette has died, hoping to see the Doctor one last time before illness took her. The trip to Paris is her last, due for interment.

The Doctor returns to the future, the TARDIS, and his companions. Mickey and Rose give him a moment alone while he reads Reinette’s final words. With sadness in his eyes, he disables the last link from Reinette to the ship by extinguishing the fireplace. The TARDIS dematerializes as they move on to the next adventure.

The reason that the androids wanted Reinette’s mind is revealed to the viewer alone: The ship is the SS Madame de Pompadour.

Like the Doctor, it truly drifts alone.

 

This is another example of why Steven Moffat is a great Doctor Who writer. We’ve seen him twice before (The Curse of Fatal Death and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) and each time has been fun. The themes exercised here are a fantastic exploration of the Doctor, especially in light of the tragedy and redemption we’ve seen so far. The Doctor falls in love (a Moffat trope to be sure, excluding the TV movie) and is devastated when his very domain, time and space, defeats his desire.

We also get a bit more education for Rose, removing further the notion that she’s special as the companion, and playing off the revelations from Sarah Jane Smith.

The big quibble I have is the resolution of the Doctor’s grand sacrifice. He’s content to spend the rest of Reinette’s life with her, returning to the TARDIS and his companions the long way around, but his way out is pure coincidence. Sure, it was touching and moving, but it was also a fortunate function of the plot.

 

 

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Rise of the Cybermen and Doctor Who: The Age of Steel

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

 

 

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Timestamp #175: School Reunion

Michael Falkner14 Comments

Doctor Who: School Reunion
(1 episode, s02e03, 2006)

 

The curse of the Time Lord is always having to say goodbye.

While walking the halls of Deffry Vale High School, Headmaster Finch notices a student waiting outside his office. She has a headache, but she can’t go home since she lives in an orphanage. Finch notes that no one will miss her and invites her into his office. The door closes, wings flap, and the girl screams.

The Doctor is posing as a teacher named John Smith. He asks a series of questions, each escalating in difficulty, and each answered by a student named Milo. Rose, on the other hand, is working in the cafeteria serving chips. She’s unhappy about the previous two days where they’ve been under cover based on a tip from Mickey. They note that the chips taste funny, but that the menu has been specially selected by the headmaster. Another teacher, Mr. Wagner, selects a student named Melissa for a top class. Another student, Kenny, is not allowed to eat the chips, and Finch is watching like a vulture from above.

In the kitchen, Rose watches the other kitchen staff bring in a barrel while wearing gloves and face masks. Mickey calls her with news of UFO activity in the area, but notes that he is being blocked by something called Torchwood. The barrel spills and one of the staff members is burned by the contents. The head cook stops Rose from calling an ambulance, even as Rose hears screams and smoke billows out of the side room.

In the mathematics classroom, Mr. Wagner subjects his top students to a Matrix-style computer program with alien symbols. Meanwhile, the Doctor is reunited with Sarah Jane Smith, now working as a reporter who is writing a profile on the headmaster.

I nearly cried at the reunion. I know it gets better.

Strange events are afoot: The students have taken a quantum leap in knowledge since Finch arrived; the day the headmaster arrived, several teachers disappeared under mysterious circumstances; and Kenny notices an alien creature snacking on a student. The Doctor, Rose, and Mickey investigate the school after hours, Sarah Jane finds the TARDIS, and the Doctor finally reconnects with his former companion.

She chastises him for not coming back after leaving her in Aberdeen (not South Croydon), and he reveals that all of the Time Lords are dead. The team comes together when Sarah Jane meets Rose and Mickey, and the two women clash while Mickey ruffles the Doctor’s feathers. They also discover that the teachers are actually bats that roost in the headmaster’s office. When the Doctor tries to take the oil sample back to the TARDIS, Sarah Jane shows him a faster way to analyze the sample.

K9! Mark III, to be exact! In Sarah Jane’s car!

She explains that the tin dog stopped working one day and she couldn’t repair the advanced technology. They don’t notice that they are being trailed by Headmaster Finch as they retire to a nearby café. The Doctor repairs K9, Mickey teases Rose about her jealousy, and Sarah Jane asks the Doctor if she did something wrong since he never came back for her after his visit home. The Doctor tries to brush it off, saying that she was getting on with her life, but Sarah Jane replies that the Doctor was her life. The hardest thing was adjusting back to mundane life after seeing the wonders of the universe.

K9 returns to life and recognizes the Doctor. He analyzes the sample and reports that it is Krillitane oil. The Krillitanes are a composite species who take the best physical parts of other species they conquer, and they’re doing something to the children.

As they leave the café, Rose is struggling with the realization that she’s not the first companion while Sarah Jane relates Mickey to K9, effectively the tin dog of the modern companion set. Rose is troubled that the Doctor has gone through so many companions, but the Doctor retorts that he doesn’t age. The curse of the Time Lords is regenerating and saying goodbye while everyone else ages around them.

The revelation of the Doctor’s identity frightens Mr. Finch, and everyone knows who everyone else is. The team returns to the school the next day. Rose and Sarah Jane investigate the computers, Mickey and K9 act as lookouts in the car, and the Doctor has a word with the headmaster, really a Krillitane named Brother Lassar. The human form is a morphic illusion, and Finch refers to the Doctor as a pompous, dusty senator, afraid of change and chaos and now all but extinct. The Doctor quietly replies that he had much more mercy when he was younger, and he offers a single warning.

Sarah Jane and Rose argue about who has had more experience with the Doctor – references include Pyramids of Mars, The Time Warrior, Robot, The Sontaran Experiment, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Android Invasion, The Five Doctors, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, Planet of Evil, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Terror of the Zygons, The Unquiet Dead, Aliens of London/World War Three, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and Tooth and Claw – and Sarah Jane gets the upper hand with the Loch Ness Monster. They bond over their compared notes about the Doctor – he still strokes parts of the TARDIS! – and the Time Lord is confused by their laughter when he enters the room.

The Krillitanes are rallied to their final phase as Finch seals the school, recalls the students to their hyper-processing class, and offers the rest of the staff as a lunchtime snack. The Doctor finds that the mainframe is fixed with a deadlock seal which the sonic screwdriver cannot breach. Meanwhile, Kenny, the only student not enthralled by the computers, attracts Mickey and K9 for help. While Mickey looks for a way to break down the door, K9 reminds him they are in a car.

Oh, K9. I have missed you.

Rose, Sarah Jane, and the Doctor watch the symbols flash on a large screen. The Doctor works out that the Krillitanes are trying to solve the Skasis Paradigm, the Universal Theory. Whoever solves it can control the building blocks of the universe and all of time and space. The oil is boosting the children’s intelligence, focusing them as a giant processor. Finch arrives with an offer for the Doctor to join them, to change the universe, to save everyone, even restore the Time Lords. In true Sarah Jane fashion, she acts as his the Doctor’s conscience: Pain and loss define them as much as happiness or love; Everything has its time and everything ends, whether a world or a relationship. The Doctor smashes the screen and they all run as Finch rallies the Krillitanes.

Mickey crashes through the front doors with Sarah Jane’s car. K9 springs to the rescue and shoots down one of the bats with his blaster. The Doctor tells K9 to hold them off while they retreat, even though his battery is failing. The Krillitane ignore the “shooty dog thing” – hello, Joss Whedon – and pursue the Doctor. The Time Lord realizes that the oil is the solution, and the Krillitanes have changed their physiology so often that even their own oil is toxic to them now. Mickey goes for the kids while the Doctor stuns the bats with the fire alarm.

The barrels have been deadlock sealed, and K9 notes that he can destroy them with one shot from his blaster. Unfortunately, K9 must remain behind to strike the blow. The Doctor protests, but then bids his old friend farewell – “You good dog.” – and leaves. He takes Sarah Jane’s hand to stop her from going back for the robot dog and drags her to safety.

Finch and the bat brethren enter the kitchen in search of the Doctor. K9 shoots the barrel, and Finch snarls: “You bad dog.” K9 replies with, “Affirmative,” as the school explodes. The students cheer, hailing Kenny as the hero who saved the day as Sarah Jane weeps over K9’s sacrifice.

Later on, Sarah Jane finds the TARDIS in a park. The Doctor suggests that she join them, but Sarah Jane declines. It’s time, she says, that she found a life of her own. Mickey asks if he may join the TARDIS, ready to see the universe. Sarah Jane gives him her blessing, one Smith to another, and the Doctor agrees. Rose isn’t as pleased.

Sarah Jane wants to stay, but some things are worth getting your heart broken for. She tells Rose that if she ever needs to, Sarah Jane is there to talk. She thanks the Doctor for her time with him, and he asks if she ever found someone special. She tells him that there was one man with whom she traveled with for a while, but he was a tough act to follow. She asks him to say goodbye this time and he does – “Goodbye, my Sarah Jane!” – with a tight hug. She walks away as the TARDIS dematerializes, but when she looks back she finds a present: A brand new K9 with the Mark III consciousness installed.

Happily, Sarah orders her new companion home. They have work to do.

 

This was a magnificent episode. We get to reunite with two classic companions, we get connections between the revival series and the classic series that officially link the mythology together, and we get David Tennant getting comfortable in his skin as the Doctor. The first time I saw this episode, I also was very pleased with guest star Anthony Stewart Head, who I had only seen as Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I love him as a bad guy.

I especially loved seeing Elisabeth Sladen once again. Her performance brought tears to my eyes, and I really do miss her as the incomparable and irreplaceable Sarah Jane Smith. I’m looking forward to The Sarah Jane Adventures when they roll up in this project.

 

 

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Girl in the Fireplace

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

 

 

Timestamp #174: Tooth and Claw

Michael Falkner15 Comments

Doctor Who: Tooth and Claw
(1 episode, s02e02, 2006)

 

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. However, what makes you stronger can also kill you.

Upon the Scottish moors, a group of monks walks to the Torchwood Estate. Their leader, Father Angelo, takes the house by force from its owner. They chain everyone, including Lady Isobel MacLeish, in the cellar with a mysterious cage. When she sees what’s inside, Lady Isobel screams.

Oh, does she scream.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS soars through space-time as the Doctor tries to steer the capsule to 1979 Sheffield through some fun mechanical agitation. Instead of The Muppet Movie, they find guns in their faces (and Rose’s terrible Scottish accent) in the year 1879. Identifying as Scottish doctor James McCrimmon, the travelers are introduced to Queen Victoria. She believes that the Doctor is assigned as her protector, and she invites them to accompany her to Balmoral Castle. En route, they arrive at the Torchwood Estate where the Queen plans to spend the night.

Despite Sir Robert’s hints that not everything is well at the house, the Queen insists on spending the night since it was a favorite of her late consort, Prince Albert. Captain Reynolds, chief of the Queen’s guard, stows a small box in the safe as the Queen and the travelers tour the house’s observatory. The Doctor analyzes the telescope designed by Sir Robert’s father, noting the surplus of prisms as the Queen muses about the local tales of a mysterious wolf. Before Sir Robert can relay the tale, Father Angelo suggests that dinner may be in order.

The meal is prepared, the guards are drugged, and Rose finds a housemaid in the closet as she looks for a suitable dress. Rose takes Flora to find the Doctor, but they are both taken by the monks. Meanwhile, the Doctor, Captain Reynolds, and the Queen listen to Sir Robert’s tale at the dinner table: Over the last three centuries, livestock has been slaughtered during every full moon. Once a generation, a boy goes missing and a werewolf is spotted in the wilderness. Coincidentally, the cage in the cellar contains a boy with pitch black eyes. The boy is possessed by an alien force that plans to inhabit Queen Victoria and begin the Empire of the Wolf. He also feels the power of the wolf that burns like the sun within her.

Sir Robert believes that his father had communicated with the beast and nearly learned its secrets, but was stopped by the Brethern. The Monks expose the caged being to moonlight and it transforms into a wolf as Father Angelo begins his assault on the Queen. After six attempts on her life, she’s packing a small handgun, and Father Angelo is soon dead. The Doctor and Sir Robert break into the cellar just in time to watch the wolf escape. The Doctor evacuates the prisoners and locks the door. The wolf breaks free, and despite their best efforts, it kills all of the estate’s working men. The women, however, are inexplicably spared.

The Queen retrieves the box and attempts escape with Sir Robert and the travelers, but they’re soon cornered. They run up several flights of stairs and seek refuge in the library after Captain Reynolds gives his life to slow the wolf down. The wolf refuses to break through the barricade, offering its prey a chance to breathe and look for the item that’s stopping it. Sir Robert apologizes and the Queen demands an explanation.

In the kitchen, Lady Isobel notices that the monks guarding the perimeter are wearing mistletoe. The Doctor notes the same in the library, which he muses is filled with the greatest arsenal in the world: Books. They discover that a spacecraft crashed to Earth in 1540 near the monastery and the creature that grew within decided to establish an empire. The Queen interjects that, if she is to die this night, she must find a safe place for the contents of her box. It is the Koh-i-Noor, a large diamond with a supposed curse, that is intended to be cut to the perfect shape.

The Doctor connects the dots as the wolf breaks through the glass skylight, and our heroes are saved by Lady Isobel and a pot of mistletoe. The Queen and the travelers take refuge in the observatory as Sir Robert faces the wolf. The Doctor installs the diamond in the telescope, which is really a trap for the wolf designed by Prince Albert and Sir Robert’s father. Once aligned, the light chamber focuses the moon’s rays and suspends the wolf in mid-air. The human form emerges and asks the Doctor to increase the intensity so he can be free. The Lupine Wavelength Haemovariform is soon destroyed.

For their efforts, the Queen bestows titles upon the travelers – Sir Doctor of TARDIS and Dame Rose of the Powell Estate – and then banishes them from the Empire because their world is steeped in terror and blasphemy, yet they consider it fun. The Queen is not amused – Rose wins her bet! – and the travelers return to the TARDIS while they muse about the nature of hemophilia in the royal bloodline.

Maybe the Queen is a werewolf after all. Ah-wooooooo!

Back at the estate, Queen Victoria tells Lady Isobel that her husband’s sacrifice and the ingenuity of his father will survive. She has seen that the Empire has enemies beyond imagination and has decreed that an institute will research and fight these threats. It will be known as the Torchwood Institute.

If the Doctor returns, he should beware, because Torchwood will be waiting.

 

A Russell T. Davies story, this was a breakneck experience well-mixed among action, humor, and drama. We get the typical alien-of-the-week threat, but there’s an additional layer with a bystander who calls things based on how I imagine that most people in these adventures see the Doctor and companions. Honestly, it’s very much a reflection of Tegan’s second departure from the TARDIS.

The difference is that Queen Victoria has the power to literally banish the travelers from her realm. For all the good it will do, given that Rose is a native of the modern day and the Doctor isn’t even native to this planet. She also has the power to establish a planetary defense agency, the Torchwood Institute, which has been referenced twice to this point and will likely be a large part of the story going forward.

Overall, this was an enjoyable adventure harkening back to the classic roots of the franchise.

 

 

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: School Reunion

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

 

 

Timestamp #173: New Earth

Michael Falkner5 Comments

Doctor Who: New Earth
(1 episode, s02e01, 2006)

 

The adventure continues with a rather pointless return.

Just after saying goodbye to her mother and Mickey, Rose Tyler joins the Doctor in the TARDIS as they go further than they’ve ever gone before. They end up on New Earth, a planet similar to its long-dead namesake in the year 5,000,000,023, located in Galaxy M87. Their arrival is witnessed by a spider-drone, which (of course) belongs to Lady Cassandra.

There’s no surprise in that reveal at all.

Following a message on the psychic paper – “Ward 26. Please come.” – Rose and the Doctor visit the New New York Hospital. They find nuns that look like cats, an extensive disinfection protocol, and a diversion named Chip that splits companion from Time Lord. The Doctor talks with Sister Jatt, a member of the humanoid feline Sisters of Plentitude, before reuniting with the Face of Boe. It seems that the Face is dying of old age, which is something that the Sisters cannot cure.

Rose explores the basement, pipe in hand as a weapon, and encounters Lady Cassandra. She was reconstructed from another piece of her former body’s skin – see: plot armor – and as she tells her story she traps Rose and transfers her consciousness into the woman’s body. After a phone call from the Doctor, Cassandra stuffs a small vial in her new cleavage and heads upstairs.

The Doctor sits with the Face of Boe and Novice Hame. The attendant relates a story that the Face has lived for thousands, perhaps millions of years and that he will give his dying message to a lonely god, a wanderer without a home. Surely she means the Doctor because the look on his face and the lingering camera tell us so. While he waits for the Face to awaken, the Doctor investigates the medical ward and the mysterious rash of miracle recoveries. He’s also suspicious of Rose’s return with her strange voice, the knowledge she shouldn’t have of the hospital’s inner workings, and some lusty kisses beside. Together they hack their way into the intensive care unit and find patients infected with every possible disease in the universe. These patients exist as human lab rats, a farm from which to harvest cures for the greater good.

The Doctor is incensed. He confronts Novice Hame, but the nun insists that the artificial humans are nothing more than mere flesh. He turns the tables, demanding to know what happened to Rose. Novice Hame says she has no idea, and Cassandra drugs the Doctor with the perfume vial she secreted away. The Doctor awakens in one of the pods, on the verge of being pumped full of the disease cocktail. Cassandra attempts to blackmail Matron Casp, the leader of the hospital’s order, but they refuse with the threat of claws. Cassandra turns to Plan B and releases all of human slaves, which promptly turn on their feline captives with gruesome results. Matron Casp escapes and quarantines the facility as Cassandra, Chip, and the Doctor run for their lives. Well, Cassandra and the Doctor do after the former fleshy trampoline leaves Chip behind.

The Doctor confronts Cassandra and demands that she return Rose. Cassandra obliges by jumping into the Doctor’s body in a humorous fashion. They continue to run as the diseased horde breaks through, and Matron Casp is killed by her own creation as they climb. Upon reaching a locked elevator door, Cassandra bounces from the Doctor to Rose and one of the infected – quickly learning about their life of loneliness – as our heroes escape. Cassandra returns to Rose as they reach Ward 26, and the Doctor hatches a plan with a quick descent down an elevator shaft with a large batch of the intravenous cures strapped to his body. He fills the disinfectant tub in the elevator with the solutions and lures the infected into the empty car. The spray cures the horde, and the Doctor celebrates with a confused and enlightened Cassandra in tow.

As the police arrive, Matron Casp is taken away, and the Doctor finally communicates with the Face of Boe. The Face promises to meet the Doctor for the third (and last) time and also promises to share his secrets at that meeting before teleporting away. Apparently, they ran out of time for that plot thread. The Doctor turns to Cassandra and orders her to leave Rose. Cassandra refuses until Chip (miraculously) returns, upon which time she jumps into her willing slave. Unfortunately, Chip only has a half-life and is dying, but Cassandra accepts this as her just end.

The Doctor offers Cassandra one last gift: He takes her back to the party she was watching on film, allowing her the chance to tell her past self – a fully human self – of her beauty before collapsing. With that, the Doctor and Rose say farewell and return to the TARDIS.

 

On the plus side, both Tennant and Piper are amazing in their performances. It is plainly obvious that they’re having a ton of fun as they explore their new chemistry as series leads. Also on the production side, the cat makeup is fantastic. Storywise, the ending is poignant and continues the Doctor’s character theme of redemption over vengeance.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story doesn’t meet those high points. There’s a clear lack of villain here, and the plot spends too much time on Cassandra’s plans for revenge than on the abuses of the Sisters of Plentitude. That element is resolved too quickly with a chemical shower that comes across as more miracle than anything else. It would have worked if more time was invested in the story, but there was no empathy, and that made the story boring.

 

 

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

 

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Tooth and Claw

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.