ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This is a middle of the road sort of story, a nice premise
but it loses its way a bit and is another of the Moffat era stories where the
solution is a time paradox type of thing which feels a little bit unsatisfying
this time around. Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman are still on good form
throughout and the small cast does allow for some more character development as
the Doctor tries to unravel the conundrum of his mysterious girl.
The TARDIS is grabbed by a salvage ship and dragged in. It
is damaged and Clara asks why the Doctor can’t fix it. He says there is not a
‘big friendly button’ that can fix things, just then a ball-like object rolls
past them, Clara tries to pick it up but burns her hand. Then the TARDIS goes
dark.
The Doctor wakes up aboard the salvage ship, although Clara
is nowhere to be seen. The ship is owned by the three Van Baalen brothers,
Gregor, Bram and Tricky (Ashley Waters, Mark Oliver and Jahvel Hall
respectively) and the Doctor persuades them to help rescue Clara from the
damaged TARDIS. Once inside, Bram tries to salvage the TARDIS console and is
killed by a stone-like zombie figure who turns Bram into a similar figure.
The other brothers and the Doctor are trapped by the TARDIS
inside a looped corridor to stop them trying to salvage its systems. The Doctor
manages to find Clara and realises that the zombie like figures who are chasing
them are future versions of themselves. He decides to stop that future from
happening by journeying to the Centre of the TARDIS and fixing the damaged
engines.
Gregor and Tricky are killed and ossified and when it looks
like there is nowhere left to run the Doctor demands that Clara tells him who
she is and how she can have died twice before – but she denies any knowledge of
this. When Clara looks at the burn on her hand it is the words ‘big friendly
button’ in reverse and the Doctor realises he needs to travel back in time,
pick up the ball-like object that Clara burnt her hand on and activate it,
undoing what was about to happen and avoiding the future as stone-zombies and
the TARDIS is no longer taken by the van Baalen brothers salvage ship.
There are some great bits in this story, some nice funny
bits early on and some quite exciting chase sequences later but it doesn’t
really sit together that well. The three brothers are not very convincing and
only Tricky is that likeable, plus the storyline and in particular the cheat
way that it is solved feels weak.
There are more developments in the Doctor’s quest to work
out what Clara is, but that is also a dead end and although their cliff-top
confrontation is well acted it is rather all sound and fury without any actual
substance.
At the end of the day there’s a nice idea hiding in the
centre of this story but it’s obscured by noise and less than careful scripting
which makes this story a bit of a disappointment coming, as it does, amid a lot
of very top quality Who.
NEXT UP: THE CRIMSON HORROR
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2022
