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

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.

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

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.

Tim comes full circle.

On the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos, a woman named Andinio and a man named Delph practice telekinesis. Andinio is testing Delph’s potential when a crackle of blue energy breaks Delph’s concentration. Nearby, a figure stumbles in an attempt to stand.

3,407 years later, the TARDIS detects nine separate distress signals from Ranskoor Av Kolos, as well as psychotropic waves that can scramble brains and make people paranoid and irrational. With the help of neural balancers, the Doctor and her team touch down inside a ship. They find a scared man with a gun and, despite the Doctor’s calm introduction, the man irrationally repeats himself. The Doctor offers him a neural balancer, after which the man calms down and discusses his missing memories. He does remember his last name, though: Paltraki. The Doctor determines that the ship is parked instead of crashed.

Team TARDIS finds out that Paltraki is the ship’s commander. Their research is interrupted by an incoming transmission bearing a summons from the Creator. The same message also reveals that Tzim-Sha is holding Paltraki’s crew hostage. The Stenza kills one of the crew, a woman named Umsang, and cuts the signal. He wants an item that Paltraki stole, a crystal structure containing a rapidly vibrating object. The Doctor can’t scan the crystal object but resolves to stop Tzim-Sha from causing any more senseless violence. She outfits her team with throat microphones and they all set out.

Along the way, Graham tells the Doctor that he plans to kill Tzim-Sha in retaliation for Grace’s death. The Doctor tells him that he won’t be able to travel with her any longer if he does. Graham remains resolved to seek revenge.

The group arrives at a large hovering object Paltraki calls the temple. The Doctor provides the group with gear from Paltraki’s ship, including grenades for breaking inanimate objects. She attaches a grenade with a dead man’s switch to the crystal and finds a way inside the temple. After that, she sends Graham and Ryan to find the hostages, and Yaz and Paltraki to find more crystals. She sets out to find Tzim-Sha.

Graham tries to rationalize his desire to kill Tzim-Sha to Ryan, but their debate is cut short by a sniper-bot ambush. They duck in time to watch the snipers cut each other down, then run off. Elsewhere, the Doctor finds Andinio. The woman holds her at gunpoint and demands the crystal, but the Doctor is amazed to find out that Andinio is an Ux. She also wonders why an Ux is working for Tzim-Sha. Full of doubt, Andinio decides to take the Doctor before the Stenza.

Tzim-Sha is unimpressed by the Doctor’s new look, revealing that they last met 3,407 years ago. He tells Andinio to get ready before revealing his face to the Doctor. The DNA bombs corrupted his teleport device and banished him to this planet. Unable to leave, he was kept alive by the Ux, who treated him as a god. It gave him time to plan revenge against the Doctor and the worlds that opposed the Stenza.

Yaz and Paltraki get to know each other before they find sniper-bots and a room containing the crystals. As the last fleet, Paltraki’s crew was tasked by the Congress of the Nine Planets in response to a set of atrocities. Yaz calls the Doctor with news of their discovery just before Andinio arrives before a captive Delph, channeling his powers to make the temple into a weapon.

By the way, the crystals contain literal planets. The weapon captures the planets, and Tzim-Sha has set his sights on Earth.

The Doctor runs to the crystal chamber and learns this news. Angry, she demands that Tzim-Sha stop his genocidal quest, convinced that the technology is unstable and could kill everyone. Paltraki heads for the ship while the Doctor and Yaz try to stop the Stenza’s plan.

Ryan and Graham find a room full of people in stasis. While they develop a plan to save them all, Ryan persuades Graham with his love and Grace’s life lessons. The sniper-bots attack while they work, and Tzim-Sha is alerted to their rescue operation so he stomps on down there. Paltraki destroys the snipers and leads the hostages to safety while Graham covers them.

Balancing the 7 billion lives on Earth against their own, the Doctor and Yaz use their neural balancers on the Ux to disrupt the Stenza’s signals. Earth is saved from oblivion and Andinio’s faith in Tzim-Sha is shattered. The crystals begin to fracture, and as the Doctor declares that the Ux are the true creators, she summons the TARDIS using Stenza technology.

Tzim-Sha arrives at his trophy room. Graham draws down on him with a sniper-bot rifle but chooses to be the better man. As Ryan returns and draws the Stenza’s attention, Graham shoots the warrior in the foot. The two humans load the still-alive Tzim-Sha into one of his own trophy cases, telling him to remember the name Grace while he contemplates eternity in stasis.

The Doctor ties the power of the TARDIS into the Stenza devices, using the telepathic circuits to channel the Ux’s powers and restore the planets to their proper places. It’s a painful process but it restores balance to the universe.

With all said and done, the Doctor commends Graham for his strength in mercy. Meanwhile, Delph decides that the Ux must be part of the greater universal civilization. They lock the temple so that no one can reach the Stenza outcast, and the Doctor bids farewell with a message: Travel hopefully.

It’s well known that showrunner Chris Chibnall was disappointed in this story, particularly since it was filmed as a first draft. From a 2022 interview in Doctor Who Magazine:

Particularly in that first series, I spent a lot of time helping other writers. We had some problems towards the end and I had to go back and do some big rewrites, which meant that the version of episode 10 [The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos] that we filmed was a first draft. But I just didn’t have time to do a second draft. It didn’t feel enough like a season finale, and that was entirely down to time.

This is surprising because this script felt like it had a lot more character body than most of the other stories so far in the season. For example, the Doctor’s astonished excitement at meeting the Ux was for more engaging than meeting the Solitract. I was also sold on the dialogue between Ryan and Graham far more than their other interactions this season. Related, the fact that this duo decided to imprison Tzim-Sha instead of killing him says a lot about their journey.

The other big up-rating for this story is the plot to steal planets. Sure, it’s a rehash of The Pirate Planet and The Stolen Earth, but it’s definitely a Doctor Who and pulpy sci-fi plot. That makes it exciting and fun.

Sadly, that’s where the praise ends for this adventure. It’s a confusing story with interwoven timelines and convenient plot devices. The stasis chambers, for example, contained the crews of all nine ships, but the dialogue doesn’t really explain much to make this revelation worthwhile. The story provided lip service to the other ships but our attention was focused on Paltraki and his crew. It also makes little sense for Tzim-Sha to hold those crews as trophies when he deliberately killed targets in The Woman Who Fell to Earth and took their teeth.

The ending is also pretty lackluster. I mean, Chibnall routinely ties a quick bow on stories without making it feel like a good payoff, but this season finale ends with “travel hopefully” and a wave. Even he was displeased with that effort.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Resolution

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.

Ribbit… or is it tibbir?

The TARDIS lands in a Nordic forest. The companions enjoy the views while the Doctor confirms the time and place by tasting the grass, then everyone jumps when the Doctor spots a sheep. She determines that they are in 2018, leaving 193 years before the great Woolly Rebellion, an event that forced a renegotiation of the entire human-sheep relationship on Earth.

Weird.

The team sets their sights on a distant cabin, and the Doctor wonders why there’s no evidence of smoke from the chimney despite it being the middle of winter. The cabin is boarded up but Ryan catches a bit of movement through the window. The Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver to unlock the three locks on the front door and the team investigates. Ryan finds a girl hiding in the upstairs wardrobe, but she refuses to move when the Doctor asks. Once Graham offers up his emergency sandwich(!), the girl joins the team in the kitchen.

The girl’s name is Hanne and she’s afraid of the thing from which her father was defending the house. She can’t explain what the thing looks like because she’s blind, but she knows that her father disappeared four days ago. She asks the Doctor for help.

Ryan’s not great with kids, but Yaz immediately bonds with Hanne over a t-shirt for the Arctic Monkeys band. Hanne knows that her father didn’t simply leave her because the boat is still tied up nearby. Hanne gets nervous when her watch beeps, signaling the daily hunting time for the beast. As Yaz and Ryan scout around, they find animal traps and hear a loud roar. The team convenes outside but can’t find a beast to accompany the roar, so the Doctor orders everyone to secure the house.

Upstairs, Graham sees a mirror that doesn’t reflect his image. Ryan wonders if they are vampires before the mirror bleeds strange energy and the Doctor arrives. The mirror changes to normal for a moment before shifting again, but the Doctor is able to lock it in phase and take a look inside. The mirror is a portal to another dimension, and the Doctor decides to take another look but wants to leave Ryan behind to look after Hanne. She writes “Assume her dad is dead. Keep her safe. Find out who else can take care of her.” on the wall, telling Hanne that it’s a map of the house for Ryan’s benefit. Then the Doctor, Graham, and Yaz enter the mirror in search of Hanne’s father, Erik.

What lies beyond is a foggy and narrow cave. After leaving a trail of string to find their way home, they follow a light to a strange being named Ribbons. Ribbons offers his lantern in exchange for the sonic screwdriver (which looks pretty), and the Doctor promises payment upon delivery if Ribbons can show them the way to Erik.

As they progress, the team is introduced to killer flesh moths which Ribbons lures away with dead rats. He then cuts the thread while the team is distracted and betrays the team. As flesh moths descend, Ribbons mentions that this place is an anti-zone, a buffer that appears wherever the fabric of spacetime is threatened. The flesh moths extinguish the lantern and Ribbons tries to run after snatching the sonic screwdriver, but Graham stops him. The Doctor warns the team to stand still, but Ribbons tries to grab the sonic and is consumed by the moths. While the moths are busy, the team runs to a nearby portal and escapes, but they’re on the other side of the mirror.

Back in normal space, Hanne calls Ryan’s bluff about the map. Hanne is upset about Ryan’s attitude, but they team up when the roars come closer.  Ryan finds a wire and follows it to a speaker, discovering that the roars are a recording. Ryan runs back to tell Hanne, but she knocks him out and goes through the mirror. When he comes to, Ryan pursues.

In the mirror world, the team finds a beautiful and tidy cabin. They also find Erik, wearing a Slayer t-shirt with a backward logo, and a revelation: The monster is a recording. Erik tried to keep Hanne safe while he was gone because Trine (Hanne’s mother) is in the mirror zone. Or rather, her mirror universe version exists here, but cannot travel through the mirror. The team is also introduced to another traveler.

Grace is here.

Both of the women have memories of their lives before death. Graham tells Grace all about his adventures with the Doctor, but he’s unsure if he can trust Grace until she explains her passion for frogs. Meanwhile, the Doctor tells Yaz about the Solitract, a story that her fifth grandmother shared when the Doctor was a child. It existed at the start of the universe along with all of the other elements, but it couldn’t exist in the universe so it was exiled to another plane so it could exist naturally. The Solitract isn’t malevolent. It’s just lonely. But because of its nature, nothing from this universe cannot enter N-Space.

Graham and Erik have to choose between life here with their loved ones or their real lives in the normal universe.

As this detail is made clear, Ryan and Hanne navigate the anti-zone. Ryan sends Hanne ahead while he distracts the flesh moths. Hanne is overjoyed to find Erik but is not convinced that Trine is her mother. The world around them is falling apart since it is full of incompatible N-Space energy, but the Solitract wants to keep them as a cure for its loneliness. When the travelers reject the Solitract, they are knocked back into the anti-zone, and the Doctor offers herself in exchange for the others. She will stay behind since she’s seen the universe that the Solitract misses. The Solitract rejects Erik to save its universe.

Then the mirror universe goes white.

When it resolves again, the Doctor is faced with a skeleton of the cabin’s attic and a frog sitting on a chair. It speaks to the Doctor in Grace’s voice, taking an avatar that once delighted Grace. The Doctor begins to vibrate as the universe continues to destabilize, and the Doctor makes the case that the Solitract cannot survive if it holds on to what it cannot have. The Doctor tells the Solitract that they will remain friends even in her absence, and the Solitract sends her back into the anti-zone.

Everyone runs back to N-Space as the anti-zone collapses. The Doctor seals the portal behind them as the survivors come to terms with their losses. Erik and Hanne plan to move back to Oslo and start again, and Hanne is proud of her father for coming to terms with Trine’s death. Ryan and Graham talk about how Grace would react to this adventure, and Ryan finally calls him granddad. Together, they join their TARDIS family and set course for a new time and space.

I’m going to avoid a Calgon joke.

This is a beautiful story without a true villain. Instead, the Solitract is lonely, and to make connections, it offers companionship to those who grieve. Erik and Graham both get to heal a bit from their grief, and they extend this to their dependents. Graham specifically makes a deeper connection with Ryan through their shared trauma.

Now, I understand the Solitract taking a frog’s form in honor of Grace, but I think it would have had a better impact if it had taken a form that would tempt the Doctor to stay. Sure, the Doctor is tempted by this Time Lord fairy tale, but the whole point of the Solitract’s game was to bait companions with someone they miss. The perfect avatar would have been Susan, extending some goodwill with the return of Carole Ann Ford.

After all, “one day, I will come back”… yet the Doctor never really has on television, have they?  Instead, we get another fast ending and more questions about things we’ll likely never see again.

The casting was great with Eleanor Wallwork, the first blind actor in Doctor Who to play a blind character. That degree of authenticity was wonderful, as was the general low-budget horror atmosphere of this kinda spooky tale.

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

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

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.

If a Time Lord weighs the same as a duck…

The Doctor wants to take her companions to see the coronation of Elizabeth I, but the TARDIS has stubbornly dragged them to the early 17th century and a village where a party rapidly changes into a somber trial of an accused witch. The Doctor cautions her companions to not interfere in historical events, but she breaks those rules almost immediately as Becka Savage condemns Mother Twiston to a test by the dunking chair. The test itself is flawed: If Twiston survives the test, she’s obviously a witch and will be executed accordingly, but if she drowns, then she’s innocent.

Either way, the accused will not find justice. Twiston doesn’t survive, but because the Doctor interfered, Savage must now treat the corpse as if the woman was a witch. Savage is furious, but the Doctor uses her psychic paper to pose as a Witchfinder General with her special team. Savage’s demeanor changes as she asks the Doctor to join her, and the Doctor places a condition on the meeting: Savage will leave Twiston’s granddaughter Willa alone.

Savage is the owner of the village lands, which she inherited after her husband died, and in her quest to eliminate satanic influences, she shot all of the horses. Yaz meets with Willa as the team listens to Savage’s story. It turns out that she’s trying to uphold the newly published King James Bible – “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” – which the Doctor counters with a twist from the sequel – “Love thy neighbor.” – which actually originated in the Book of Leviticus.

As if on cue, a man in a plague doctor mask opens the door. He is King James I, traveling incognito to hear of Savage’s crusade and offer his assistance. He reads the psychic paper as the Doctor being an assistant to Graham – a woman cannot outrank a man – then sets his sights on Willa.

No one in the village is safe from the crusaders.

Yaz finds Willa saying farewell at her grandmother’s grave. The young woman is nearly attacked by tentacle-like roots and then runs off after Yaz stops them. Yaz finds the rest of the team in Savage’s room. The Doctor scans the mud splatters but finds nothing of interest. The Doctor and Yaz set off to find Willa while Graham and Ryan keep King James occupied.

King James and his entourage inspect a box of witch-hunting artifacts before the king sets them on his quest to burn out the witches. Graham tries to understand Savage’s motivations while Ryan and the king compare traumas. The king believes that his god will protect him as he performs holy works.

Yaz and the Doctor find Willa and enter the Twiston home, finding a room of bottles and herbs to make medicines. Willa doesn’t feel well because of the hatred and mistrust of the village against her, something with which Yaz can empathize. She also reveals that Savage is her cousin, but she’s willing to help figure out what’s going on with the tendrils and the mud. The Doctor finds a sample near the grave that is very active in a sample jar. The women are interrupted by Mother Twiston’s reanimated corpse which is eager to absorb the sample. They are soon surrounded by a large group of reanimated corpses.

A scream summons the king’s group, and after the reanimated kill the king’s assistant Alfonso, the Doctor orders everyone to run. The Doctor wants to return and examine the reanimated, but she soon narrows her focus to Savage. The landlord flips the accusations back on the Doctor, accusing her of witchcraft and inspiring King James to action. Under pressure, Willa turns on the Doctor and the Time Lord is taken into custody.

As the companions follow the mud creatures to Savage’s home, the king interrogates the Doctor. King James holds the sonic screwdriver – the Doctor’s magic wand – so the Doctor resorts to psychological warfare, including the secrets of the king’s mother and how she was scapegoated in his father’s murder. If the king wants to understand the secrets of existence, he must understand the mysteries of the human heart.

Unconvinced, the king summons his guards and orders the Doctor to the dunking chair. As she’s strapped in, the Doctor notes a spark as Savage touches the chair. Savage starts her speech as mud trickles from her eyes, then dunks the Doctor as the companions arrive and plead with the king to end the trial. When the chair is raised, the Doctor has vanished – having studied under Harry Houdini – and swam upstream.

Savage calls for the Doctor’s execution but the mud creatures arrive in pursuit of the landlord. Some time prior, Savage had cut down a tree because it spoiled her view of a hill, but the tree infected her with the mud. She had Mother Twiston executed because the woman was too weak to heal Savage, using the cut parts of the tree as the dunking chair. After this confession, Savage transforms into a creature and reveals that the hill is a prison for war criminals named the Morax, reduced to their basic DNA and stored in the ground. Savage knocks everyone out and leaves to free her people.

The Doctor cuts the dunking chair apart and creates weapons from the wood. The team is joined by Willa as they march on the hill as Savage tries to infect the king with Morax DNA. The Doctor and Willa face off against Savage, eventually restoring the prison and returning the Morax to the mud. King James strikes the final blow and Savage is destroyed.

Disgusted with the king, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS. Willa decides to take up her grandmother’s title as healer – Doctor – and Ryan turns down the king’s offer to stand as his protector. The team boards the TARDIS and departs, leaving the king and Willa astonished by the magic.

After eight on-screen adventures, the Thirteenth Doctor finally faces challenges due to her gender in this third pseudo-historical story. This is a good use of gender swapping in drama and really wasn’t exercised enough during this era of the show. This happens in a story written and directed by women – Joy Wilkinson and Sallie Aprahamian, respectively – which marks the first such combination in the revival era and the second in Doctor Who overall after Enlightenment.

In that drama, the tension of twisting conspiracies is well used, as is the battle between compassion and fear. The latter battle is an exercise of the show’s very ethos and adds a lot of power to this adventure. The atmosphere and the tension make this story work. Also doing phenomenal work here are Alan Cumming (chewing on every piece of scenery he can find) and Siobhan Finneran (whom I know best as Miss O’Brien from Downton Abbey).

All of those elements combined make the magic of one of the best episodes in the series so far.

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

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: It Takes You Away

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.

Prime shipping is killer!

The TARDIS is flying wildly due to the Doctor’s attempts to evade something pursuing them. She finally recognizes it as a teleport pulse and is excited when the pulse materializes in the console room as a Kerb!am Man, a delivery employee with a package for the Doctor. The box contains a fez and a call for help, and the companions urge the Doctor to investigate.

They materialize at Kerb!am’s headquarters on a moon of Kandoka. Ryan inspires the Doctor to have the team go undercover as new hires at the warehouse. They go through indoctrination and orientation with Judy, the Head of People, and learn that the robots around the facility supervise the ten percent organic workforce. They get scanned and tagged with ankle bracelets so they can be tracked, and then sorted into their respective departments. Ryan and Graham are assigned to packaging while Yaz works fulfillment. The Doctor uses her sonic to swap places with Graham, which moves him to maintenance.

The Doctor and Ryan meet Kira Arlo. Ryan is a natural since he used to do this work back on Earth. The Doctor asks Kira about the environment at Kerb!am, learning that the ten percent organic worker standard is a law to prevent full automation.

Yaz asks similar questions of her teammate Dan, who warns her that the robotic managers can hear everything. Dan is a superstar at work, becoming a literal poster child for the company. His daughter works upstairs but he only sees her twice a year. Their discussion is interrupted by a robotic manager who demands that they increase their efficiency. When Yaz gets a fulfillment request for the Triple Nine sector, Dan swaps places with her.

As periodic power drains plague the facility, the packaging team meets Kira’s boss, Jarva Slade, who is pretty abusive toward his subordinates. When the Doctor asks him if anyone needs help, he becomes unnerved and leaves in a rush. Meanwhile, Dan is ambushed by a robot in the Triple Nine sector. Yaz goes to find him and hears his screams, but she only finds his scanner and the necklace from his daughter. She evades the robots and ducks through a door.

Graham meets his teammate Charlie in maintenance. They are startled by an emergency break period, and the TARDIS team meets up in a nice park area for the period. Charlie meets Kira after she spills her lunch, and the Doctor takes the news of Dan’s disappearance to the head office while Graham makes a map of the facility. Judy and Jarva promise to look into it.

The Doctor, Ryan, and Yaz hide in a nearby alcove to wait until the managers leave the office. The Doctor regales her friends with stories of wasps and Agatha Christie. Meanwhile, Graham and Charlie build a relationship as the former works his way into building a map of the building. Charlie introduces Graham to the museum area where a map is kept. The Doctor, Ryan, and Yaz are shocked by a list of missing employees, but they are surprised by Judy (who is also shocked by the list). Charlie and Graham arrive with the map as the building goes into lockdown. They are all ambushed by a robot which is disabled by the Doctor. A scan of the robot’s memory shows that the overall system is acting up.

The employees on the list are shown as alive in the system, meaning that the system may be compromised. The Doctor finds the original delivery robot code in the museum and uses it to reset the computers. Elsewhere, Kira is abducted by two robots, prompting the team to go after her in the Dispatch areas. To do so, Ryan, Yaz, and Charlie dive into the chutes and ride them down into a vast maze of conveyor belts and sorting machines.

Kira is led to a concrete bunker. Upstairs, Judy, Graham, and the Doctor convince the 1.0 robot to scan the system and look for anomalies. They discover that the Kerb!am system is who summoned the Doctor for help. The rest of the team is summoned to Dispatch where Ryan, Yaz, and Charlie are dodging decontamination protocols. When they teleport downstairs, they are ambushed by Slade with a gun. The Doctor disables him with Venusian aikido before he reveals that he’s investigating the disappearances. They discover the liquified remains of the missing workers near an army of delivery robots, each holding a package.

Kira receives a gift, presumably for her stellar performance, as Ryan, Yaz, and Charlie try to break her out. The box contains only bubble wrap, and she is instantly vaporized when she pops one of the bubbles. Ryan and Yaz note that Charlie knew what was going to happen. Meanwhile, the Doctor discovers that the bubble wrap in every package is a collection of bombs.

The pieces come together when Charlie is revealed as the villain. He wanted to frame the Kerb!am artificial intelligence for the murder of millions of customers so the ten percent rule would be lifted. He’s fighting for organics, but the AI asked for help to stop the plan. The Doctor tries to reason with him, pointing out that the systems aren’t the problem. The people who exploit the systems for personal gain are the problem.

Charlie activates his army and destroys the controller. As Charlie escapes into the robotic ranks, the Doctor uses the 1.0 interface to reroute the delivery addresses, forcing the army to materialize in the hangar and detonate their bombs. The Doctor offers Charlie one last chance to survive, but he refuses and the team teleports back to the lobby.

The workers are given two weeks of paid leave as Judy and Jarva decide to transition Kerb!am to a company led by organic personnel. Yaz asks the Doctor if she can return Dan’s necklace to his daughter, and as the Doctor agrees, Ryan and Graham ponder the bubble wrap that accompanied the fez as the adventure started.

This story deals with the constant modernization of workplaces and retail environments, as well as the backlash that working environments that aren’t focused on the worker may face. It remains relevant in many ways today, both in labor actions like strikes and the popularity of self-checkouts in big box retail stores.

But this story also flips the script midstream by leading us to believe that a worker has asked the Doctor for help before revealing that the Kerb!am system is really the petitioner. Does that mean that the Doctor stood up for the corporation over the people? No, and this is the part that really made me think about this adventure, because helping the system led to systemic change for the organic workers. It’s a really neat twist with someone in power on the inside forcing a positive change from within.

I rather liked the idea of the Kerb!am Man being able to deliver directly to the TARDIS, as we previously saw in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and The Doctor’s Wife. I mean, sure, the ship is virtually indestructible and has shields to prevent intrusion but how often has this show ignored the TARDIS’s physical security for the sake of plot? Quite often, really. It’s science fiction/fantasy, not reality. Roll with it.

Finally, I loved the concept of taking something we all do – popping bubble wrap – and making it questionable or nefarious. It’s a very Doctor Who thing to do.

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

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Witchfinders

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.