Category: Other Universes

Timestamp #301: Ascension of the Cybermen & The Timeless Children

Michael Falkner7 Comments

Timestamp 301 - Ascension Timeless Children

The story that broke so many fans.

Ascension of the Cybermen

In the depths of space, Ashad speaks of the Cybermen. The mechanical menace has finally been defeated after winning a billion battles, and after a reign of terror, the empire has fallen. But that which is dead can live again in the hands of a believer.

The adventure plays out in two stories: One follows our heroes on a refugee planet in the far future, and the other follows a mysterious man named Brendan in Ireland.

Brendan’s Tale—

In mid-twentieth century Ireland, a man named Patrick finds a baby in the middle of the road. He takes the baby home to his wife Meg, and together they report the incident to the Garda police. With no leads, they couple decides to take care of him until the parents are found. After a year, they adopt the boy and name him Brendan.

Brendan grows up, attends school, and learns to farm. He applies to join the Gardaí and is welcomed into the police force by the sergeant who met him as a baby. While on duty one day, Brendan chases a thief named Michael near a cliff. Michael pulls a revolver and forces Brendan toward the cliff. Brendan is shot and falls to his death, but by some miracle, he springs back to life.

Brendan attributes it to luck, but everyone else is confused and afraid. Nevertheless, Brendan is awarded with a commendation. Many years later, Brendan retires from the Gardaí and is faced by his father and his sergeant, both of whom have not aged. They take him to the back office where he is strapped into a chair and has his memory wiped while he screams.

The Refugees’ Tale—

The Doctor, Graham, Ryan, and Yaz follow Shelley‘s coordinates to a planet in the far future. The Doctor parks a half mile out and breaks the news of humanity’s near extinction at the hands of the Cybermen. They find the last remaining human settlement comprised of seven surviving humans. The travelers arrive just in time to help establish a defense against the arriving Cyberman fleet.

With the help of Feekat, Ravio, Ethan, Yedlarmi, Fuskle, and Bescot, Team TARDIS gets to work: Graham sets up a neural inhibitor system that can restore Cyberman emotions; Yaz builds a particle projector to attack the automatons with gold dust; and Ryan establishes a forcefield. Unfortunately, a swarm of Cyberdrone heads arrive and destroy the gadgets. They also kill Fuskle and an older woman.

The drones leave and the Doctor orders the survivors to escape in their ship. She tells her companions to join them since the TARDIS is too far away. She promises to find them after she holds off the invading force. As the humans escape, Ashad confronts the Doctor with two additional drones. The drones pursue the companions to the ship, and Ryan is left behind with Feekat and Ethan as the rickety craft takes off.

The Doctor prepares a grenade as Ethan distracts Ashad. Ashad calls Ethan’s bluff and kills Feekat, then tells Ethan to carry his message of the Cybermen’s power. The Doctor uses her grenade and runs with Ethan and Ryan to the nearby Cyberfighters. The group hotwires Ashad’s ship and rockets into space.

The refugees aboard the gravraft limp toward Ko Sharmus and a phenomenon known as the Boundary, which can teleport people to random locations in the universe. On the Cyberfighter, Ethan also sets course for Ko Sharmus. Ethan talks about his upbringing and lessons about destroying cyber tech. Ashad makes contact and threatens to destroy humanity, even if it costs him his imperfect life. He believes that he was chosen to resurrect the Cybermen, and the death of everything is harbored within him.

The gravraft’s systems fail, leaving the ship on emergency power. A series of collisions prompt Yaz to look outside and find a Cyberman graveyard. A ship sits dormant in the debris and Graham convinces the survivors to use their remaining power to board it. They succeed, but as the ship powers up around them, Ashad and his guards arrive in a Cyberfighter.

The Doctor’s craft arrives at Ko Shamus. The planet has a single temporary settlement, and Ko Shamus is the elderly man who maintains it. He is stunned to see living humans and explains that he helps survivors pass through the Boundary. He fled with a handful of others, but as the word spread, more survivors sought sanctuary.

Graham, Yaz, and the refugees explore the Cyberman war carrier. They reactivate it and decide to use the ship as a mobile settlement to rescue what’s left of humanity. Graham and Ravio explore the rest of the ship and discover millions of dormant, battle-ready drones of a new design. The pair runs from Ashad, returning to the control center as the team continues to Ko Shamus despite the threat. Meanwhile, Ashad begins the ascension with his new army.

The Doctor, Ryan, and Ethan investigate the Boundary. It manifests as a rippling sheet of purple energy. As the carrier approaches the planet, Yaz calls the Doctor and explains the situation. The awakened Cybermen rampage through the ship and the Doctor urges the humans to evacuate. Unfortunately, they are trapped.

Then the two stories come together as the Boundary clears.

Through the portal, the Doctor sees the Citadel of Gallifrey. The Master leaps through the Boundary and tells the Doctor that everything is about to change… forever.

The Timeless Children

The Master forces the Doctor to join him in Gallifrey. If she doesn’t, he will kill the humans. As she crosses the Boundary, the Cyberman carrier arrives at the planet. Once on Gallifrey, the Master gloats about burning Gallifery to the ground and then takes the Doctor on a tour of the ruins.

On the carrier, the humans hide in a storage area after Bescot is killed. Graham develops a plan to use Cyberman suits as disguises. The team sets to work removing the biological remains and disconnecting the neural nets. Meanwhile, Ko Sharmus shows Ryan and Ethan his limited weapons supply.

In the Citadel, the Master is notified that the Cybermen have reached the Boundary. He invites Ashad to join him on Gallifrey and to leave some Cybermen behind to destroy Ko Sharmus, Ethan, and Ryan.

Graham and Yaz take a moment to talk about what happens if they don’t survive. He is quite proud of her and impressed by her resolve. With a tear in her eye, she jokes that he’s not so bad either. As their team puts the plan into motion, Ashad is alerted to their presence. Ashad searches for the humans but cannot find them in their disguises, and he gives up when the ship enters the Boundary.

The Doctor questions why the Master would surrender Gallifrey to the Cybermen. He deflects, directing her to the Matrix instead. He is driven by an unbelievable truth that he discovered in Gallifrey’s history, and he traps the Doctor in a paralysis field so he can share that truth with her. He sends her deep into the Matrix with a promise that it will hurt.

The Master presents a history of Gallifrey. In the time before the Time Lords, the Shobogans were the native population of the planet. An explorer named Tecteun found a gateway on another planet, with an orphaned child at its base. Tecteun and the child explored the cosmos before returning to Gallifrey, where she ran experiments trying to determine where the child came from. One day, the child fell off a cliff, but instead of dying, the child regenerated.

This was the first time regeneration happened on Gallifrey.

On Ko Sharmus’s planet, the humans wage war on the Cybermen. Ryan takes out several with a basketball-shaped bomb, but the drones keep marching. Meanwhile, the carrier literally lands on the Citadel. Ashad meets with the Master and introduces the Death Particle, a device created by the Cyberium to wipe out all organic life. Ashad has purged the new Cybermen of organic components in preparation for his takeover of the universe, but the Master offers an alternative to fully robotic life. He accompanies Ashad while his consciousness remains with the Doctor.

The Doctor’s story continues as Tecteun experiments on the child, forcing the child to regenerate time and again. Finally, Tecteun cracks the mystery and injects herself with the solution. Tecteun regenerates. With this new technology, Time Lord civilization exploded with the Timeless Child at its core, limiting each individual to twelve regenerations.

The Doctor asks what happened to the Timeless Child. The Master tells her that she is that child.

Meanwhile, Ko Sharmus, Ethan, and Ryan continue their guerilla campaign. They take out several drones, but Ethan is eventually captured. He is almost executed, but Graham’s team destroys the execution squad. Ryan is surprised to see his friends.

Ashad and the Master arrive in the Cybermen storage bays. The Master uses his Tissue Compress Eliminator to kill Ashad and release the Cyberium. He absorbs the Cyberium and pockets Ashad to keep the Death Particle nearby.

The Doctor awakens on a vast green landscape. She struggles with the revelations but the Master promises his story is true. He continues the story with Tecteun and the child becoming part of a secret group called the Division. Despite the Time Lord philosophy of non-interference, the group intervenes in time when necessary. The vision flashes in parallel with Brendan’s story, then stops altogether because the files were redacted. It is impossible to tell how much was lost, but what remains was encoded with a perception filter that looks like Brendan’s story.

The Master wonders how many lives the Doctor has lived.

As the Doctor revives from her experience, the physical version of the Master reveals that he kept the corpses of every Time Lord he killed. He has combined the power of regeneration with the durability of the Cybermen.

He has created CyberMasters – festooned in Time Lord regalia and armed with the power of regeneration – and he leads them into a conquest of the universe. Meanwhile, the human survivors cross the Boundary and arrive on Gallifrey.

The Doctor’s mind swims in the Matrix’s redacted void when the Fugitive Doctor appears. The Thirteenth Doctor wonders about her life before their First, but the Fugitive Doctor tells her it doesn’t matter. They’ve never been limited by who they were before, and the Thirteenth Doctor has the power to stop the Master now. But first, she must harness the power of the Timeless Child to overload the Matrix. She unleashes the memories of the Doctor into the Matrix and blows out the paralysis field.

She comes to and finds her companions and the human survivors standing over her. The humans explain their plan to destroy the carrier, and the Doctor devises a plan to use the Death Particle to destroy the CyberMasters. The humans place explosive charges throughout the ship while Team TARDIS tracks down the Master. They find Ashad’s miniaturized form and the Death Particle, and the Doctor telepathically offers one last meeting with the Master in the Citadel.

Unfortunately, the bombs are activated early, so everyone has to run. The ship is destroyed as the Doctor ushers everyone into a TARDIS. She asks Ko Sharmus for a bomb – it only has a hand detonator – and explains her plan to unleash the Death Particle on Gallifrey. She sets the TARDIS for the twenty-first century and sends the humans to Earth.

The Doctor returns to the Matrix Chamber on her suicide mission. There she finds the Master and his CyberMasters. The Master goads her but the Doctor doesn’t fall for it. His revelations have strengthened her. She pulls out the bomb and mini-Ashad, but before she can pull the trigger, Ko Sharmus arrives. He sent the Cyberium into the past, and he takes the detonator as his penance for not hiding it well enough. As the Doctor runs for a TARDIS, the CyberMasters shoot Ko Sharmus and he detonates the Death Particle.

The new Cyber-Empire is dead.

The humans arrive on Earth and their TARDIS disguises itself as a house. The Doctor materializes on the refugee planet near her own TARDIS, and the TARDIS she used to get there disguises itself as a tree. Unfortunately for her, three Judoon materialize inside the TARDIS and arrest the Doctor, finally closing the cold case on the fugitive.

The Doctor is taken to a maximum security prison to serve a life sentence, and her companions have no idea if she survived.

It’s the most controversial story in modern Doctor Who history… and I like it just as much now as I did when it first aired.

I understand the complaints. Fans of most major sci-fi franchises don’t like to see things meddled with. From Star Trek to Doctor Who, the complaints remind me of the oft-memed scene from The Incredibles 2: “I don’t know that way. Why would they change math? Math is math. Math. Is. Math!”

But… here’s the reality check. Doctor Who has never been consistent with continuity, and there are several extensive parody lists on Reddit about how changes in the franchise have “ruined the show forever”. Yet, somehow, the franchise continues on even under periodic threat of cancellation (in various definitions of the word).

Of the complaints I have seen regarding the Timeless Child revelation:

  • “This change disrespects William Hartnell.” How? Show your work. Because his stories still exist (even in telesnap form) and are even being preserved in high-definition format. If anything disrespects the legacy of William Hartnell’s work on Doctor Who, it’s how “An Unearthly Child” won’t be available because of Stef Coburn’s efforts. Otherwise, Hartnell’s legacy as the First Doctor remains intact.
  • “This change removes the mystery from the Doctor.” If so, please explain the history of the pre-Hartnell incarnations. Because all I see is massive story potential for the Doctor’s time with the Division and the implications of whether or not the Time Lords deserve to come back at all. We already knew they were arrogant and self-righteous, but now we get some context behind the regeneration limit. I also look at the events of The Time of the Doctor and how the Time Lords view the Doctor with a different lens, especially after thirteen incarnations risked their lives to save Gallifrey from utter destruction. Those Time Lords either gave the Doctor another set of regenerations or unlocked the Timeless Child’s potential that they had previously tried to stifle, allowing the Doctor to be who they truly are. In the end, the mystery is still there, effectively fulfilling the so-called “Cartmel Masterplan.”
  • “The Morbius Doctors aren’t real.” To the contrary, it was Philip Hinchcliffe’s intention that they were previous incarnations. The dialogue is also pretty clear: “Back! Back to your beginning!” followed by the eight faces. What happens on the television screen is part of the official continuity unless retconned later, and showrunner intentions fall into that same category for me. Showrunners are in charge of the show’s legacy while they hold the reins. Fans don’t have that responsibility. Philip Hinchcliffe has even seemed amused that fans ignored the obvious in  Morbius but readily attached themselves to the regeneration limits a mere four stories later.
  • “The Timeless Child isn’t canon.” We’ve already covered that. Unless retconned later, what happens on the screen during the show is official continuity.

Boiling it down, fans just don’t like the change. While that’s their prerogative, it’s also a personal choice. I don’t agree with that choice, but I respect it. We all need to remember that fan opinion is not continuity.

That said, it’s not all puppy dogs and marshmallows for me. I do have issues with the revelation.

First, is it even true? The revelation is provided by the Master, the man who massacred his entire civilization and is known for lying. Even if he is telling the Doctor the truth, is it based on his own interpolation of redacted events? Even with the Doctor having lives before the First Doctor, could the Timeless Child be someone else? Say, Susan, for example?

Imagine that storytelling potential. Taking Susan away from Gallifrey to protect her and remove some leverage from the Time Lords. Especially considering that Chris Chibnall’s screenplay suggests that the Time Lords who join Tecteun at the dawn of their society could be Rassilon and Omega.

10:27:40 INT. GALLIFREYAN CORRIDOR – DAY

TECTEUN walking down a corridor — at the far end, two Gallifreyan figures (with the collars up) in silhouette. We can assume these might be Rassilon and Omega.

I’d buy that. It would be a stronger story, leave some room for future work, and make the Doctor a bit more vulnerable in the future. It also provides a dramatic reason for the Time Lords to return. Note that the script says “assume” and that these characters were not credited on screen, so we can’t verify that it’s true.

As far as what happened to the Time Lords? I don’t like it. It feels disgusting, which makes it work dramatically. The fact that I physically recoiled from seeing Cybermen that can regenerate tells me that the Master is a villain of the highest order. While Missy had a path to redemption during Series 10, I don’t think this incarnation has a path back. He’s a monster.

I had a similar feeling toward Tecteun and her experimentation on the Timeless Child. She literally killed several incarnations of the child to unlock the secrets of regeneration for her own selfish desires. Yuck.

I also don’t like how the Timeless Child revelation was handled from a writing and production standpoint. The entire sequence with the Doctor in the Matrix was handled in a “tell don’t show” manner. I think it would have been better for the Doctor to experience Brendan’s story in A Christmas Carol format, then have the Master fill in the blanks in a much shorter manner. Having Brendan’s story in Ascension of the Cybermen was more confusing and probably made viewers more defensive from the start. A little rebalancing between the two episodes would have worked wonders.

Otherwise, I liked the balance of action and drama in this pair of episodes. The Doctor doesn’t have all the answers and has to figure things out with us. The companions get a huge chunk of the spotlight, and everyone has to use their wits and smarts to save the day. And Yaz getting some dues was a great thing to see.

In terms of franchise lore, there wasn’t much in terms of callbacks aside from what has already been mentioned. The Timeless Children does have the most extensive use of archive footage in Doctor Who at the time of airing. It’s also the first time clips from William Hartnell’s and Patrick Troughton’s eras were shown in full color.

It also features the first on-screen female-to-male regeneration.

Finally, for something to chew on, this adventure fulfills several elements of the Series Nine Hybrid prophecy: A hybrid creature (the Master and the Cyberium) stood over the ruins of Gallifrey and unraveled the Web of Time (the Master hacked into the Matrix and revealed the Timeless Child secret), and broke a billion billion hearts to heal its own (the slaughter of the Time Lords).

Probably not Chibnall’s intent, but a nice parallel nonetheless.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks

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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 #300: The Haunting of Villa Diodati

Michael Falkner3 Comments

Timestamp 300 - Villa Diodati

Enter Frankenstein’s monster.

The place and time are Lake Geneva, June 1816. As a thunderstorm crashes down upon the Swiss countryside, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the future Mary Shelley, the mother of science fiction), Lord George Gordon Byron, Doctor John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont bemoan the abnormal summer weather and enjoy a horror story. As Lord Byron reaches the climax of his tale, the crowd jumps at a knocking on the door.

When the tense crowd opens the door, they find the Doctor, Graham, Yaz, and Ryan. Everyone screams!

The Doctor flounders with the soaked psychic paper and Graham stumbles with modern vernacular, so Ryan simply asks to come in. They are excited to see the creative minds at work, but instead, dance with them and are treated to gossip about Mary not being married despite taking the Shelley surname and Byron separating from his wife to elope with Mary’s stepsister Claire.

Graham ventures off to find a bathroom, the Doctor tries to convince Mary to write a horror story, and the maid Elise is haunted by flying vases and disembodied hands. Graham ends up walking in circles through the house as mysterious figures appear and disappear around him.

Yaz finds Claire trying to break into Byron’s room to find letters about his feelings for her. Yaz consoles her before spotting one of the mysterious figures. Meanwhile, Byron chats up “Mrs. Doctor” while deflecting questions about Shelley. They also talk about Byron’s daughter Ada and the “unrelentingly evil” vibe surrounding the house. While chatting with Ryan, Mary laments her poor writing talent.

Graham returns to the drawing room as Polidori challenges Ryan to a duel for a perceived offense. The conflict is interrupted by the disembodied hand. It chokes Ryan and is shot into dust by the butler Fletcher. The Doctor tastes the dust and places it around the fifteenth century. Byron shows the collected party his odd collection, including the remains of a fifteenth-century soldier.

The soldier is missing two hands.

Mary explains that when the weather got worse, Shelley started having visions of a figure floating over a lake. Yaz plans to visit Shelley in his chalet while Graham sees the mysterious woman and girl but dismisses them as Polidori snoozes.

Everyone finds themselves circling throughout the house. Mary attempts to find her son, but the house won’t let her. Elise finds baby William and spots lightning on the lake. Meanwhile, Polidori awakens and sleepwalks through a wall. The Doctor discounts a haunting because ghosts don’t exist, and she eventually deduces that a perception filter is at work. As everyone in the house slowly gathers together again, Mary finds a skull and a skeletal hand in William’s cot.

The group traps the animated skull and hand and then shares their findings. The Doctor finally realizes that 1816 was “the year without a summer” due to volcanic activity. She spots the glowing figure on the lake and determines it is a time traveler. The figure materializes in the hallway, and the Doctor immediately recognizes it as a lone cyberman. The Doctor warns everyone to stay put lest they be assimilated as Cybermen, then goes alone to confront it. She doesn’t want to lose anyone else to the mechanical menace.

The Cyberman kills Fletcher and tracks Elise due to William’s cries. The Cyberman seeks a “Guardian” and does not kill the baby. The Doctor finds it and questions the incomplete form, but the Cyberman cannot attack her due to depleted power cells. The Cyberman allows itself to be struck by lightning to recharge. It speaks of a Cyberium that has selected another host.

The rest of the group finds a supposedly vacant room, but it is covered in Shelley’s writing. In the cellar, Claire finds a man who mutters about keeping a Cyberman out. This man, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is the Guardian. The Doctor meets up with this group, finds baby William, and visits with Shelley. The Cyberman teleports to Shelly in search of the Cyberium, but Shelley somehow sends it away.

Through a psychic connection, the Doctor realizes that Shelley found a shimmering silver by the lake. It hid inside his body, cloaking his movements and altering everyone else’s perceptions. His mind is full of images, symbols, and numbers, and no amount of writing will remove them. The Doctor realizes that the Cyberium contains all future knowledge of the Cybermen and was sent back in time to change the future. It will burn Shelley’s mind if he keeps it.

Despite Jack’s warning, the Doctor convinces Shelley to stop fighting the Cyberman’s influence. Unfortunately, if she saves Shelley, the Cyberman will be able to raise an unstoppable army and kill billions. There is no right answer, and the Doctor is furious with the choice forced upon her.

The Cyberman arrives and demands that the Cyberium release Shelley. Mary confronts it and learns that it was a father once, a man named Ashad who was transformed in death (and killed his own children for joining the resistance against him). Using that story as inspiration, the Doctor shows Shelly a vision of his own death and forces the Cyberium from him.

Everyone is teleported back to the drawing room as the Cyberium chooses the Doctor. Ashad calls upon his ship and threatens to destroy the world, so the Doctor releases the Cyberium to Ashad’s control. The lone Cyberman vanishes and the thunderstorm disappears. The Doctor decides to travel into the future with Shelley’s scribblings to fight Ashad before he can destroy everything.

The next day, Claire berates Byron over his poor treatment of her and breaks up with him. Team TARDIS convinces Mary to keep writing and apologizes for giving Shelley a sneak peek of his death. Graham is confused by the ghosts (who weren’t ghosts) and the Doctor offers to send her companions home as she faces the Cybermen.

The companions refuse, and over a reading of Byron’s Darkness, the team sets course for destiny.

In a good suspense story featuring a possible inspiration for Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, we get a prelude for the most divisive story in modern Doctor Who history. The premise was sound with our traveling heroes on a quest to see the origins of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, and it evolved into a fantastic mystery thriller that brought us back to basics with historical and problem-solving elements.

The centerpiece – the lone Cyberman from Jack’s warning – is itself an amalgam of modern Doctor Who history. The body is mostly from Nightmare in Silver with lower legs from Rise of the Cybermen and arms from World Enough and Time. The helmet is a new arrangement but is inspired by a design by assistant Matthew Savage. (A 2016 three-dimensional update was showcased on his Instagram profile last year.)

The drama of this episode, with a chance to permanently defeat a menacing enemy at the cost of the greater good, was tense. This is when Doctor Who‘s social messaging is on target, with subtle pokes that make the audience feel the choice rather than experiencing a bludgeon to the head.

And, as mentioned before, this is the last prologue before the Doctor Who universe changes once again. To call what’s coming divisive is an understatement.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Ascension of the Cybermen and Doctor Who: The Timeless Children

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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 #299: Can You Hear Me?

Michael Falkner2 Comments

Timestamp 299 - Can You Hear Me

A voice in the darkness is not always a good sign.

In Aleppo, Syria, circa 1380, a young woman runs through the city. An older woman named Maryam lets Tahira seek refuge, chiding her for stealing as a misguided attempt to improve her mental health. Tahira fears things that will attack as she sleeps, and (sure enough) a creature grabs Maryam after nightfall. The large, hairy, and claw-handed creature doesn’t surprise Tahira.

In Sheffield, 2020, the Thirteenth Doctor delivers her team home. They agree to reconvene the next day, and as the companions leave, the TARDIS shorts out as a bald man briefly appears and then disappears. As Yaz, Ryan, and Graham catch up with their lives, the Doctor chases the phantom man to Aleppo.

She touches down in Bimaristan, one of the oldest hospitals in the world that focused on mental health. Disappointed that she won’t be sharing this adventure with her companions, the Doctor finds Tahira and the creature. The creature doesn’t register on the sonic screwdriver and runs away.

Back in 2020, the companions have strange encounters: Graham sees a white-haired woman in chains; Ryan’s friend Tibo describes recurring nightmares with a bald man, the same phantom who then kidnaps Tibo; and Yaz encounters the phantom after a dream.

The Doctor calms Tahira as she investigates the hospital. Tahira has been in the hospital for a few weeks, seeking safety as an orphan. The companions each call the Doctor and she takes Tahira to retrieve them. Along the way, she analyzes a hair she found in Aleppo and the TARDIS tells her that the hairs do not exist. She uses the telepathic circuits to take them to the woman Graham saw.

The TARDIS lands on a space station in the distant future, but the location is not what Graham saw. The station is in a geostationary orbit in an area that is no longer populated, and as the Doctor explores, the image Graham saw appears on a monitor. Two planets are colliding, stopped by a small geo orb with the woman inside.

Yaz finds an area covered in fingers sending signals to the woman in the geo orb. A quantum fluctuation lock keeps the woman trapped by changing combinations trillions of times a second. As the Doctor analyzes the technology, Tahira wanders off. She finds the bald man, several trapped people (including Tibo), and the creatures (which the man calls Chagaskas, conceived from the prisoner’s worst fears). When the companions arrive, the bald man uses his fingers to trap them inside dreams. Yaz dreams of Sonya on a deserted stretch of road, Ryan sees an elderly Tibo and the Dregs from Orphan 55, and Graham finds himself going through chemotherapy with his doctor, Grace, who asks why he didn’t save her.

The Doctor continues to work as the bald man approaches her. He calls himself Zellin, which the Doctor recognizes as a mythical name from another universe. As an eternal, Zellin has been playing games to amuse himself, even name-checking fellow Eternal The Toymaker in the process. An alarm sounds, indicating that the woman in the prison has been freed, but this is all part of the game. The woman is another eternal named Rakaya and has been playing the same game as Zellin. The game involves the two planets, their populations, and a gamble of which will be destroyed first in the ensuing carnage. The populations trapped Rakaya as they each faced their own demise.

The Doctor is trapped as the Eternals begin a siege against Earth. The Doctor dreams of the Master’s Timeless Child story, waking when she somehow summons her sonic screwdriver and frees herself, her companions, and the prisoners. The Doctor realizes that the Chagaskas are elements of Tahiri’s dreams and works on a plan to defeat the Eternals.

The Doctor’s team returns to Aleppo and summons the Eternals to join them. Using Zellin’s floating fingers and Rakaya’s quantum lock, she traps the Eternals in prison to live with nightmares for eternity. She then returns everyone to their proper places and times.

Tibo finally sleeps well and attends a group therapy session after learning about Ryan’s travels. Yaz reflects on a bet she made with a police officer named Anita – Yaz had planned to run away three years earlier, but Sonya called the police out of concern. Anita made a deal that if Yaz’s life improved in three years, Yaz would pay her 50p. Otherwise, if Anita was wrong, she’d pay Yaz £50 – and then meets with Anita to pay her end of the bargain.

Finally, Graham confides in the Doctor about his fear of cancer returning. The Doctor has no idea how to respond, but Graham is happy to have talked to someone about it. Meanwhile, Yaz and Ryan discuss their mutual concerns about their lives with the Doctor. They’re interrupted as the Doctor gets excited about Frankenstein and sets course for a new adventure.

The family grows closer by confronting their fears, and even though the Doctor couldn’t display her concern to the satisfaction of some fans, the team is stronger for it. I found her response genuine: The Doctor is a beacon of compassion and empathy, but remember that her immediate predecessor needed cue cards to navigate human emotions. Many of the Doctor’s previous incarnations were more in touch with their companions, but even the First Doctor faced his granddaughter’s future by locking her out and saying goodbye through the TARDIS.

The Doctor may be an alien, but this echoes how humans handle major diagnoses and death. Reactions aren’t uniform, but they include shock, disbelief, anxiety, sadness, and loss of control, all of which (and more) the Doctor is processing in the wake of the Master’s revelation about Gallifrey.

Another tick in the plus column for this episode is the story twist. The woman’s voice in the darkness is a common trope involving heroes riding to the rescue of a damsel in distress. It’s a form of the Chronic Hero Syndrome trope, where every wrong in the line of sight must be righted, and it’s used to great effect against the heroes in this story. The eternal villains give credit to the Celestial Toymaker and the Guardians (setting up their power for fans of the classic era), and are defeated by their own means like so many of the villains in Doctor Who.

That resolution felt a bit rushed (as most Chibnall era resolutions have) but the coda showcasing the fears and growth of each companion was a good reason to shortchange the heroic huzzah.

Finally, in a meta nod to the story’s title, I loved the Doctor talking to herself at length with no one around. Can you hear me?, indeed.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Haunting of Villa Diodati

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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.

Culture on My Mind – The 2023 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar

Michael FalknerLeave a comment

Culture on My Mind

Culture on My Mind
The 2023 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar
March 15, 2024

2023-sw-lego-advent-calendarIt’s time to talk about the 2023 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar!

My family has been doing these LEGO advent calendars since 2015 and I chronicle the daily builds on Instagram. Each of the annual box sets has been spotlighted on this site. These boxes contain twenty-four unique small builds, many of which are abstract, along with exclusive mini-figures and whimsical winter-themed spins on Star Wars staples.

This box was inspired by The Bad Batch, the prequel films/The Clone Wars, and Return of the Jedi (celebrating its 40th anniversary). It also tied in some holiday cheer with the typical festive spin on fun builds. We got Omega on a sled, a Christmas pit droid, a reindeer Gonk droid, a festive Ewok, and even Emperor Palpatine in an ugly holiday sweater.

Overall, I really enjoyed the builds in this set. Of course, the Star Wars sets hardly ever disappoint, and the creativity is a joy. I adored the Endor sets, including the Ewok village and the shield generator complex.

Even the basic fillers like a B1 battle droid and a weapons rack didn’t distract. It doesn’t beat the 2022 calendar, but it was still fun. In the end, that’s what counts.

Our countdown this year was a little different since we had a lot of competing plans in early December. We got it done by doubling up each day leading to the new year instead of Christmas Eve.

Now, on to the countdown:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Day 22

Day 23

Day 24

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Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #298: Praxeus

Michael Falkner1 Comment

Timestamp 298 - Praxeus

A lot of moving parts in a story where nothing is as it seems.

Picking up immediately after Fugitive of the Judoon, several plot threads are rapidly laid down.

A spacecraft plummets toward Earth. An astronaut named Adam Lang tries to salvage it, but his capsule begins to spin violently. On the planet below, a suspended police officer named Jake Willis tackles a shoplifter, but he’s scolded by his manager for his actions. Finally, in Peru, Gabriela Camara and Jamila Velez are disgusted by a river polluted by plastic waste. Later that night, Jamila is attacked by an unseen force.

Jake retires to a local bar and sees the news about Adam Lang’s crash. Jake is distraught, but his mood changes when he receives a text message from someone claiming to be Adam asking for help in Hong Kong. He tries to break into a warehouse and fails. Lucky for him, Yaz and Graham arrive with a set of skeleton keys. He questions Graham and Yaz, assuming they are from the European Space Agency, but Yaz explains they’re following some strange energy readings. They’re also being watched by a man in a hazmat suit.

Gabriela wakes up and searches for Jamila. When a bird falls from the sky, Ryan arrives and warns her away from it. Gabriela presses Ryan about her friend before introducing herself as a travel vlog influencer. She soon gets a message about an ambulance call-out a mile away.

In Madagascar, a lab worker named Aramu greets his co-worker Suki Cheng. They both rush to help the Doctor as the Time Lord rescues someone from the ocean. The stranded man is a member of the US Navy, a survivor of a recent submarine accident. The sailor is soon consumed by a rock-like substance and disintegrates. The two lab workers are very confused.

Ryan and Gabriela arrive at a deserted San Pedro hospital. Ryan finds another dead bird and Gabriela finds Jamila inside a quarantine area. Jamila is covered in the same stone substance, prompting Ryan to call the Doctor. The TARDIS arrives as Jamila disintegrates, leaving Gabriela upset as the Doctor realizes the severity of the situation.

Yaz and Graham track down the strange energy readings and find a room filled with alien consoles. Adam is strapped to a table, looking sick and still in his spacesuit. Yaz calls the Doctor as two figures in hazmat suits burst in and start shooting. Yaz distracts them with a control panel while Jake and Graham escape with Adam. Jake steals the rifles and shoots the attackers. The Doctor arrives and realizes the attackers and their weapons aren’t from Earth.

All of the players thus far board the TARDIS, but Yaz and Gabriela decide to stay behind and study the control device. The Doctor is hesitant but soon relents, sending the TARDIS on its way and examining Adam. She gets a call from Madagascar and returns to the beach. As the team heads for the lab, Graham learns that Adam and Jake are married but on a break. Meanwhile, the birds begin to swarm over the beach.

In Hong Kong, Yaz determines that the control panel is triangulating signals from two other places, including Madagascar. One of the hazmat aliens survived, and it stumbles into the room and teleports away. Yaz and Gabriela decide to follow, landing somewhere dark but safe amid equipment from the downed submarine

Ryan shows a dead bird to the Doctor and she asks him to dissect it. She asks Graham and Jake to give Adam an IV drip, then works with Suki to analyze Adam’s readings. The astronaut is infected with an alien pathogen and the Doctor has no idea how to stop it. Jake leaves and Graham tries to comfort him. Jake explains that he’s not good with emotions, commitment, or foreign travel, and knowing that his husband is an astronaut, he doesn’t believe that Adam could possibly love him.

Jake returns to Adam’s side as Suki analyzes Adam’s blood. Ryan finds that the bird is full of plastic, and the Doctor presumes that the alien pathogen attacked and metastasized the plastic. The Doctor rules out Auton interference before remembering that humans of the era always ingest microplastics. The pathogen has a buffet, but the Doctor notices that the bird’s natural enzymes are fighting the infection. Suki theorizes that she could make a countervirus.

The Doctor contacts Yaz and exchanges information. When she finds out that an alien signal is coming from Madagascar, she has an epiphany about Suki and learns that the infection is called Praxeus. Suki teleports away as the birds attack the lab. Everyone barely escapes with the samples and boards the TARDIS. Unfortunately, Aramu was previously attacked and unable to join them.

Adam volunteers for a clinical trial of the Doctor’s cure. The Doctor administers the antidote and programs the TARDIS to make more if it succeeds. She then leaves Adam and Jake in the TARDIS while the others search for Yaz and Gabriela. They discover they’re on an alien base under the Indian Ocean, centered under one of the world’s plastic pollution gyres. The birds are the infection vector and the travelers need to find Suki to stop them.

They find one of the aliens and suppose they’re also trying to find a cure. They soon find Suki, the last of her crew from a planet ruined by Praxeus. She traveled there to find a perfect lab and Earth fit the bill. The spacecraft was the source of the strange energy readings and the radiation that brought down Adam’s ship. The Doctor tries to help Suki but Praxeus overcomes the alien woman. Luckily, Jake and a cured Adam arrive with the antidote, and the team works together to distribute the cure with the alien shuttle’s organic engines. Everyone returns to the TARDIS as the shuttle takes off and floods the alien base, but Jake decides to stay behind when the shuttle’s autopilot fails.

The plan succeeds, but everyone thinks Jake has died after the shuttle disintegrates. The Doctor materializes the TARDIS around Jake at the last minute and the husbands kiss in gratitude.

Returning to the beach, Team TARDIS bids farewell to their new friends. They go their own ways, safe with the knowledge that no matter how far apart they are, the seven billion connected lives are safe.

This story has a lot of potential, but it gets bogged down with the varying plot threads, none of which gets enough room to breathe. It’s another example of a Chibnall-era story that would thrive as a two-parter with another editing pass.

The ecological message is definitely heavy-handed, but it doesn’t oppressively stifle the story like Orphan 55. We’ve had a preachy Doctor in the past, but this era’s interpretation lacks a degree of finesse.

Also missing in the finesse department is this story’s twist: I love adventures where there is no clear villain and the feint that portrays Suki as the villain is underwhelming because we learn that she’s a victim of Praxeus within minutes of her big reveal. With a little more subtlety, the twist could have been powerful on the level of other Doctor Who stories where the true villain is a force of nature instead of an army or single entity.

That said, I like the fast-moving mystery plot where the Doctor had to split her team to solve the puzzle. I also like the parallels between Praxeus and COVID-19, which was a full-blown pandemic when this episode aired.

Finally, I perked up when the Doctor mentioned the Autons. Their inclusion here would have made sense – we’ve only seen them in action three times in the franchise: Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, and Rose – but, while creepy mannequins are fun additions to Doctor Who, it was a good move to not have a story about plastic pollution lean on them as villains.

This story settled out at a high 3, and as I’ve mentioned over the years, I tend to round up.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Can You Hear Me?

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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.

Culture on My Mind – The Quest for Sunshine Preservation (Spring 2024 Edition)

Michael FalknerLeave a comment

Culture on My Mind

Culture on My Mind
The Quest for Sunshine Preservation
(Spring 2024 Edition)
March 11, 2024

It’s that time once again.

Daylight saving time is the practice of advancing clocks by one hour in warmer seasons to make darkness fall at a later clock time. It is utilized in several countries worldwide and the concept has caused controversy since the earliest proposals. To this day, it affects the sleep patterns and productivity of those who practice it.

Many countries and territories abolished the practice after years of practice. The European Union conducted a survey in 2018 and determined that 84 percent of respondents did not want to adjust clocks twice a year. The EU was supposed to stop daylight saving time in 2021 but later asked for a more detailed assessment first.

The United States cannot abolish daylight saving time without federal approval. The practice was established in 1918 with the Standard Time Act and modified in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act (which itself has been revised several times). The government has attempted to abolish routine time changes several times, most recently with the Sunshine Protection Act. The legislation has been introduced multiple times and has died before being passed each time.

For some DST humor, check out this 2024 video from Titan Caskets advocating for the end of the practice.

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Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

Culture on My Mind – The 2023 LEGO Avengers Advent Calendar

Michael FalknerLeave a comment

Culture on My Mind

Culture on My Mind
The 2023 LEGO Avengers Advent Calendar
March 8, 2024

2023-avengers-lego-advent-calendarIt’s time to talk about the 2022 LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar!

My family has been doing these LEGO advent calendars since 2015 and I chronicle the daily builds on Instagram. Each of the annual box sets has been spotlighted on this site. These boxes contain twenty-four unique small builds, many of which are abstract, along with exclusive mini-figures and whimsical winter-themed spins on franchise staples. This box is themed after the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically on the Infinity Saga which celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2023.

Goodness… did Iron Man really come out that long ago?

This set continues the trend of building a scene or a world for the minifigures within, but it also dives a bit more into the building of abstract versions of ships and elements from the property like the Star Wars calendars.

This calendar was a rollercoaster ride. One day would be an up, but the next would be a down. For example, we got Doctor Strange one day, but the day before was just his cape. While I get what the design team was trying for, I struggle to see how this would be fun for a seven-year-old kid. All that excitement for a new LEGO build gets dashed by opening an accessory for a minifigure.

The other accessory choices were packed after the minifigs, but they were difficult to connect thematically. Spider-Man’s webs make sense, but a jet pack for Captain America? Or winter accessories for Okoye? It felt like the designers had some ideas they wanted to throw in, but they didn’t know exactly how to sell customers on a jet pack or an ice hockey set.

Loki’s throne and the bunny from Iron Man 3, though? Those worked, though I would have loved a Loki to sit on his throne, especially considering how Season Two of his show ended.

The minifigs were cool, but the box overall would get a C grade for execution. The design team needs more thought and inspiration to meet the levels set by the Star Wars calendars and the previous Marvel sets.

Our countdown this year was a little different since we had a lot of competing plans in early December. We got it done by doubling up each day leading to the new year instead of Christmas Eve.

Now, on to the countdown:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Day 22

Day 23

Day 24

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Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #297: Fugitive of the Judoon

Michael Falkner5 Comments

Timestamp 297 - Fugitive Judoon

She’s the Doctor, but not the one you were expecting.

In Gloucester, 2020, Ruth Clayton awakens on her 44th birthday and makes breakfast. Her husband, Lee, heads out to buy a proper cake while Ruth asks the day to do its worst. She works as a professional tour guide, but business is slow. She later gets a coffee and the barista, Allan, shows her a dossier about her husband. Apparently, there’s something fishy about him.

Meanwhile, a Judoon spacecraft arrives in orbit and starts scanning the surface. At the same time, the TARDIS hurtles through the vortex as the Doctor tries to scan for the Master. The companions are concerned about her periods of deep thought and solitary explorations. Their discussion is interrupted by a Judoon signal that Earth has been isolated Earth due to a fugitive search.

The Judoon teleport enforcement patrols to the surface and begin scanning people. Ruth is scanned and cataloged, but her friend Marcia is vaporized for defying the patrols. The TARDIS arrives and the Doctor warns everyone (including Allan and Lee) to shelter in place. The team rushes out to face the threat, but Graham is teleported away. The Judoon find Allan’s dossier and execute the baker for touching one of the aliens.

The Judoon set their sights on Lee as the Doctor confronts the captain. Posing as an Imperial Regulator, she negotiates a stay to arbitrate a solution. While they work, Graham wakes up on the deck of a strange ship and meets Captain Jack Harkness. He mistakes the companion for the Doctor as he plants a kiss on Graham. The quantum scoop he used mistook Graham for the Doctor, but Jack has a message to relay: The future of the universe is at stake. Jack is also excited that the Doctor is now a woman.

The Doctor talks with Lee and Ruth, finding they’re both completely human. They find a box with an alien signature. Lee asks the Doctor to hand it over and offers everyone else a chance to escape. Yaz and Ryan stage a diversion and invite the Judoon captain inside before they are teleported away. Lee surrenders to the captain after sending a text message and the captain presents him to a new arrival named Commander Gat. The item in the box was a service medal from an intergalactic army, and Commander Gat fulfills her duty by executing Lee.

Jack mistakes Yaz for the Doctor, realizing too late that the Doctor is now traveling with three companions. The Judoon enforcement field is preventing accurate readings. When the ship’s systems begin to fight back against him, Jack tells the companions to warn the Doctor about a lone Cyberman before sending them home.

Ruth receives the text message – “Follow the light. Break the glass. Happy birthday” – and sees brief visions before the Judoon track her down. They identify Ruth as the fugitive and she spectacularly subdues the captain. She rips off the captain’s horn and the platoon teleports away. Ruth doesn’t understand how she was able to do what she did, but the Judoon have left the planet. Unfortunately, the change in tactics doesn’t bode well, especially after Ruth dishonored the captain. The Doctor offers to help her follow the activation message that Lee sent. It leads to a family lighthouse where Ruth claims to have grown up.

The Doctor and Ruth chat about her life as they travel. The lighthouse was left to her but she’s never wanted to return. Ruth has more visions as they pull up, and while Ruth gets a fire started, the Doctor investigates and searches for clues. Her search leads her to Ruth’s parents’ gravesite where a blank headstone marks the site.

Ruth finds a fire alarm marked “Break Glass” and does so, releasing a burst of regeneration energy. She changes clothes and finds a rifle while the Doctor digs up the gravesite and finds a TARDIS. Ruth arrives…

…and introduces herself as the Doctor.

The Fugitive Doctor teleports them into the TARDIS control room, a beautiful retro mix of modern and classic elements. The Thirteenth Doctor introduces herself in a struggle to catch up, and the Fugitive Doctor states that she is a past incarnation of the Thirteenth, but neither remembers the other. The Fugitive Doctor doesn’t recognize a sonic screwdriver but has access to the Chameleon Arch technology that shielded her.

The Judoon and Commander Gat tractor the TARDIS onto their orbiting ship. Gat confronts the Fugitive Doctor and disarms her. The Thirteenth Doctor steps in with a curve ball, introducing herself and causing discord with the Judoon. Gat reveals that she is also from Gallifrey and is shocked to find that their home has been destroyed. Gat doesn’t believe them and tries to kill the Doctors, but the Fugitive Doctor had previously sabotaged the rifle and it backfires. Gat is vaporized and the Judoon are forced to retreat as the ship enters intergalactic space.

The Fugitive Doctor takes the Thirteenth Doctor back to her TARDIS. Thirteen struggles to sort things out since she knows her own history, but the Fugitive Doctor is definitely from her past. She reunites with her companions and learns what Jack had to say.

The Doctor knows that something is coming for her and tells the companions that they have no idea who she is. They tell her that they know her now, the best person they know, and they’ll stand by her side no matter what trouble comes.

The balance of mystery and tension while wrinkling what we know about the Doctor’s history is fun. On the surface, the story is a pretty simple fugitive mystery racing alongside the defense of Earth against the overbearing Judoon. But then we get the twist, and if there’s one thing I love about Doctor Who, it’s how willing it is to rewrite its own continuity.

Doctor Who‘s continuity (and canon, for that matter) has never been consistent. In fact, it’s been pretty wibbly-wobbly depending on the story that writers and producers want to tell.

Note the distinction: Canon (in the non-religious sense) is the principle or behavior used as a guide, where continuity is the flow of all those trivia bits like the Doctor’s age. The Doctor Who canon began as a history show for children in a sci-fi wrapper, but it quickly evolved into something more.

Forty-four years before this story aired, The Brain of Morbius wrapped up with an explicit suggestion that the Doctor had incarnations before the First Doctor. According to then-showrunner Philip Hinchcliffe, the original intention was that the faces shown in that episode were meant to be pre-Hartnell incarnations, but fans of the time chose to ignore it.

Her reaction to the sonic screwdriver answers the question of where the Fugitive Doctor fits into the timeline. The First Doctor didn’t recognize such a device in the time around The Tenth Planet/Twice Upon a Time, but the Second Doctor used one in Fury From the Deep, The Dominators, and The War Games. The Third Doctor first used his own version in The Sea Devils without any hint of it being a strange device. We can also match that with the Third Doctor’s first appearance in Spearhead from Space, where he fell out of the TARDIS in the Second Doctor’s clothes.

Sure, the Time Lords could have orchestrated everything to place the Fugitive Doctor in the “Season 6b” space between Troughton’s and Pertwee’s incarnations, but Occam’s razor suggests otherwise.

It was good to see Jack Harkness again, particularly after how Torchwood concluded. I also love how the Doctor and the companions are starting to bond in the aftermath of Spyfall. The Doctor routinely visits the graveyard that is Gallifrey without her friends, and they’re helping her to heal from something they cannot comprehend.

I wonder if she ever tries to travel to a time before the Citadel and the Time Lords were destroyed.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Praxeus

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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 #296: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

Michael Falkner1 Comment

Timestamp 296 - Tesla Terror

Two great minds collide at the turn of the century!

The place is Niagara Falls. The time is 1903. The man is Nikola Tesla and he is marketing his new method of harnessing electricity through a wireless system. The assembled group is impressed until he names the price tag of $50,000. That ask is one too far, and an investor named Brady publicly flounces after recalling Tesla’s claims about a signal from Mars. The whole affair is interrupted by the discovery of a corpse nearby.

Tesla and his assistant Dorothy Skerrit wonder if the man may have been killed by electric shock. That night, Tesla realizes that some parts have been stolen and discovers a green orb floating nearby. Tesla and Dorothy find the Doctor, then Brady holding a gun. When Brady is killed by a laser blast, the Doctor helps Tesla and Dorothy escape.

They end up on a passing steam train heading to New York City. After introducing the fam in their period costumes, the Doctor helps everyone escape from a cloaked attacker wielding a Silurian blaster. The attacker is one of the investors from the meeting.

The Doctor explains that her team was visiting the area when they found a strange energy reading that led them to Tesla. When Tesla doesn’t cooperate, the Doctor decides to stick to his side. When they arrive in New York City, they run into a protest staged against Tesla and his science of alternating current. Once past the protest line, the Doctor talks to her companions about Tesla’s future achievements. Tesla eventually shows her the orb, a device she identifies as an Orb of Thassor. It belongs to an ancient race who created it to share knowledge, though this model has been modified.

The Doctor and Tesla bond before Dorothy arrives with a letter from Mr. Morgan, an investor who just withdrew his support. When a spy for Thomas Edison snaps a photo from a window, the Doctor decides to visit the rival inventor. Edison decides to give the Doctor and companions a private audience when confronted with the Silurian weapon, but he denies wanting to steal from Tesla and explains their history together, claiming that Tesla is bitter.

Meanwhile, Yaz asks Tesla about his Wardenclyffe project. He muses about his plans to transmit all of humanity’s knowledge wirelessly – the dreams of databases and mobile phones – but he has no investors to realize his dreams. The orb activates just as the red-eyed assassin arrives at Edison’s facility and electrocutes all of the engineers. Edison theorizes that the Doctor’s team is trying to sabotage his work. They are interrupted by the assassin and flee, realizing along the way that it can mimic people. Specifically, dead people. She uses zinc to trap the creature behind a wall of fire, but it disappears after being confronted.

The Doctor tries to warn Yaz, but Dorothy arrives, the hostage of two assassins wearing dead men’s bodies. The creatures teleport Tesla and Yaz to a room filled with scorpion-like aliens. The Doctor arrives moments later with Edison in the TARDIS and takes Dorothy along as they pursue the aliens. The Doctor realizes that the orb has been hacked to receive information about the period. It has been searching for Tesla, and after Dorothy recalls the claims about signals from Mars, the Doctor sets a course for Wardenclyffe.

The leader of the scorpions introduces herself as the Queen of the Skithra. She has been scavenging Tesla’s equipment and wants the inventor to prepare them for battle. When Tesla refuses, the queen decides to kill Yaz. Luckily, the Doctor arrives with a Braxium Bouncer (Mark III) to teleport the humans home. The Doctor realizes that the Skithra ship is made from stolen tech and the queen needs someone to fix it. Once the bouncer recharges, the Doctor teleports herself, Yaz, and Tesla away.

Of course, Tesla is surprised to find Edison in his private lab. He’s even more surprised by the TARDIS. Once inside, the Doctor issues an ultimatum to the Skithra to leave Earth. The queen sends her disguised minions to find Tesla while he ponders her decision to either take him or destroy the Earth. The Doctor asks him to explain his Wardenclyffe project, realizing that could generate an electric bolt and hit the Skithra ship. Edison disagrees, but the Doctor presses her plan into action.

Tesla and the Doctor work on the tower after extending the TARDIS shields around the area. Edison and Yaz clear the streets while Dorothy, Graham, and Ryan fortify the laboratory. The Skithra attack as the tower charges – there’s not enough energy to keep the shields up at the same time – and the queen lands at Wardenclyffe before the tower can fire.

The queen threatens the group as the Doctor confronts her. The Doctor tries to take the bouncer, but the queen takes it instead. The Doctor activates the device with her sonic screwdriver, teleporting the queen back to her ship. Tesla activates the tower and blasts the ship, forcing the Skithra to teleport back before leaving the planet for good.

As everyone recovers, Edison offers Tesla a job, but Tesla turns him down. Yaz wonders if the events they witnessed will change history, but the Doctor laments that Tesla still dies forgotten and penniless. His inventions still change the world, though, and as the team says farewell, Tesla promises to work for the future.

In what seems to be a better version of the previous episode, we get a good monster mystery with a good historical basis to go with it. The setting of 1903, which is never directly stated in the episode, is an approximation based on events: The real Wardenclyffe Tower was completed around 1902 and was primarily funded by investor J.P. Morgan; the real letter from Mr. Morgan was dated July 14, 1903, and was a refusal to fund Tesla’s project after the inventor changed the project’s scope; and that night, the tower apparently came to life with bright flashes of light.

Indeed, we don’t speak enough about Nikola Tesla. I spent a lot of time learning about him in my physics studies, but the rest of the world thinks more about Thomas Edison when considering electricity. The resurgence of popular interest in Tesla over the last few decades has been amazing to watch.

The villains of this piece, the Skithra, could have easily been the Racnoss. True, the Empress and her people that we met in The Runaway Bride were supposed to be the last of their kind, but this is Doctor Who, where everything is made up and the continuity has been fluid since 1963. The queen was a mindbender since I’m used to seeing actress Anjli Mohindra as Rani Chandra on The Sarah Jane Adventures. She and Bradley Walsh crossed paths in the Whoniverse during The Day of the Clown.

Robert Glenister, the actor who played Edison, is also a familiar face. We last saw him as Salateen in The Caves of Androzani.

I loved the mystery behind the Skithra, and even though they come across as more violent versions of Star Trek‘s Pakleds, the menace and creepiness were a lot of fun. The Braxium Bouncer (Mark III) bit was a nice double-cross in an era where the Doctor seems more reactive than proactive.

All told, I really enjoyed this episode and consider it a great step forward for the season.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon

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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 #295: Orphan 55

Michael Falkner7 Comments

Timestamp 295 - Orphan 55

A monster tale armed with a messaging bludgeon.

Wrapping up another adventure we don’t get to see, the Doctor, Ryan, and Yaz are mopping the TARDIS floor after encountering a deep-space squid during mating season. Meanwhile, Graham has been collecting coupons from the Bandohzi Herald to win a free vacation. The coupons assemble into a transport cube and the team is teleported away to Tranquility Spa.

They are greeted by a furry humanoid named Hyph3n who insists they can return to their ship at any time, but should enjoy the perks of their two-week all-inclusive stay. As the team splits up, the teleport station shorts out. Because why not?

Below decks, a pair of staff members named Vorm and Kane react to a virus in the system. The same bug, a hopper virus, infects Ryan. The Doctor can treat him, and as Ryan swings at hallucinations in the form of bats, Yaz finds the pool and an elderly pair named Benni and Vilma.

While Vorm and Kane hunt the virus, the spa enters lockdown and Ryan meets a woman named Bella, a supposed hotel critic. The Doctor finds Hyph3n and enters the deadlock room while posing as a resort inspector. She meets Kane and discovers that the spa is guarded by a defensive ionic membrane. The hopper virus is in every system and Kane is attacked by a ferocious humanoid creature.

Graham finds Nevi and Sylas, the elder of whom is working on systems in the bar. The guests are scrambling for safety throughout the spa, and the Doctor tries to coordinate efforts from the lockdown room. The Doctor repairs the ionic membrane and forces the creatures to retreat.

Outside, Kane describes the creatures as Dregs, locals who have broken through the invisible walls surrounding the “fake-cation” resort. Unfortunately, Benni and his oxygen tank have been taken outside the walls, so a team of volunteers is assembled to rescue him. The resort is located on Orphan 55, and the outside atmosphere is inhospitable. Luckily, the radiation levels have died down.

What?

The team consists of pretty much everyone we’ve met so far, and they take a large armored vehicle into the outside area. The Doctor reasons that the Dregs have evolved to survive in the wasteland, even by adapting to weapons. Kane tries to call off the mission when she realizes that the Dregs have Benni, but Vilma and the Doctor convince her otherwise.

The truck eventually ends up stranded deep in Dreg territory after it hits a trap. The group can only survive for ten minutes on the surface, so Kane sets course for a nearby service tunnel. They are forced to retreat when the Dregs arrive and surround the truck. Benni’s voice sounds through the truck, pleading that someone shoot him. The Dregs attack the truck, everyone runs, and they make it to the tunnel. In the process, Hyph3n and Vorm are captured and Kane is injured.

Kane also reveals that she killed Benni. Vilma is horrified and Bella pulls Kane’s gun. In a twist, it turns out that Bella’s father is dead, she wants to burn the resort to the ground, and Kane is her mother. When a Dreg attacks, Bella and Ryan teleport back to the resort as the team continues their walk home.

Unfortunately, that path takes them right through a Dreg nest.

The Doctor finds evidence that Orphan 55 is Earth, a revelation that stuns Graham and Yaz. As the team’s oxygen supplies dwindle, Vilma sacrifices herself so that the others can run. The Doctor finds a dormant Dreg and discovers that they exhale oxygen. She also telepathically links with it and sees images of how they arrived on Earth. When it turns on the Doctor, Kane sacrifices herself to save the Time Lord.

Bella tells Ryan that she introduced the hopper virus into the resort. She also placed bombs throughout the place to destroy it. Ryan learns the truth about Orphan 55 when the group returns to the spa, linking the demise of their home to climate change and food chain collapse.

The survivors – the Doctor, Graham, Ryan, Yaz, Nevi, Sylas, and Bella – gather in the lockdown room. Sylas grows frustrated with Nevi and leaves, so the Doctor and Bella go after him while Nevi and Graham focus on the teleport, and Yaz and Ryan fight off the Dregs. The Doctor and Bella save Sylas and encounter the alpha Dreg. The Doctor traps the alpha and reasons with it, securing their escape.

As everyone reunites by the teleport (where Sylas has saved the day), Kane returns and joins forces with Bella to fight the Dregs. The teleport engages and sends everyone else home, including the travelers back to the TARDIS.

The companions are upset that their home is destroyed, but the Doctor reminds them that Orphan 55 is only one possible future, but humanity has the power to decide.

This is such a mixed bag. On one hand, the monster story was good, and if it had stuck with the simple monsters invading a resort, the episode would have been good. But, there’s the twist that one of the guests is trying to burn the place down because she has mommy issues. And if the plot wasn’t convoluted enough, we get a great message about climate change presented as a bonk-bonk-sledgehammer-to-the-head.

There’s subtlety and then there’s Orphan 55.

The production was also shoddy, probably due to the same budgeting issues that have plagued the Whittaker era. The monsters outside the dome were inconsistent, often disappearing from longer shots when we’re told they’re surrounding the survivors. Also, scientifically, fires shouldn’t burn in such oxygen-poor environments. Holes in a story can be compensated by good production (and vice-versa), but it is obvious when both are found lacking.

Also lacking in this story is the Doctor’s character. By the end credits, Kane and Bella are still on Orphan 55 fighting the monsters. The Doctor has control of a time machine, but does not immediately set a course to save them. What? Even if this is one possible future for Earth, the two women can still be saved with minimal contribution to the already messy timeline.

Writer Ed Hime forgot this fact while musing about climate activism. I sympathize with him and his views, but his story was lacking. Notably, this was his second and final story (to date) for Doctor Who, following after It Takes You Away.

Sadly, all of this combined means that the pace set by Spyfall slams to a halt as this season tries to get off the ground.

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

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

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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.