The characters are definitely the stand-out of this episode. It’s interesting as RTD explores the idea of fans-in-the-plot in the recent episode “Lux”, but it was done a lot better here. The Linda portions of the episode are far better than I remember them.
I am not a fan of this episode. It starts off feeling like a clip show, develops into something of a comedy episode with ok jokes, before ending on some dark drama. The direction kind of feels all over the place - found footage, clip show, musical, or traditional episode. And I’m not sure who Elton was actually recording his video for. Is it his own therapy? Breaking the 4th wall? Or is he intending to share it online?
The ultimate message of this episode is that the doctor is dangerous, and being around him is dangerous. The takeaway seems intended to set up the fact that there are consequences and that not everything turns out alright in the end for the doctor. This doesn’t add anything to the series as we’ve already seen this happen plenty of times.
I did enjoy Peter Kay as the monster, he carries this over the top energy that sells him as the kind of man who could just walk in to a place and take charge. All the existing Linda members feel real and grounded, and there’s some good acting. Seeing the whole group grow from the conspiracy minded folk that we saw one instance of in the very first episode of the DW reboot to this community that makes art and music is really nice. The domestic aspect of Jackie’s life sans Rose was nice to see, and if there’s one big takeaway from this episode that means anything, it’s her becoming a bit more three dimensional.
I won’t comment on the conclusion, because the conclusion is stupid. Overall, I think this episode failed for me mostly from the direction and lack of a clear justification for the plot.
Random extra thoughts:
I agree that Pike’s retrospective of his alternate life was a good idea to explore - its the kind of thing that older trek series would quickly shuffle on after that week’s episode (like O’briens stint in virtual jail). Pike has done a lot of thinking about coming to terms with his vision of his own future, so thinking about his alternate future was a necessary next step.
I just wish it had been given a better story in which to bubble about. If it’s a serious character point, let it be told in a serious story. Let us see his job as a captain of a discovery-science-diplomacy ship lead him down that path of self reflection. Adding a comedic glamour filter on top of everything, in my opinion, cheapens the end result. It bugs me that so far we had erica/scotty needing to be drunk to learn to get along, spock needing to be dreaming / nightmaring, and now pike and co. stuck in a Q game in order to grow as people.
I actually had no idea who Deidre Hall was, though from the visual language I got the impression she was meant to be “someone important”. I assumed they had picked a random actress and were making a meta-joke about guest actors on TV shows. I was half expecting her to vanish at the very end.
One of the things I love about Star Trek is when it allows us to see the best of humanity when faced with hard sci fi, working together despite adverse circumstances. TNG exemplified the utopian vision of humanity struggling against the odds but working together to get by. Voyager took aliens-of-the-week to an extreme yet still kept space for good character interactions alongside the sci-fi. Even DS9, which in its conception is closest to a soap opera, managed to mix family dynamics with spacefaring adventure. I will accept these older series had their fair share of stinkers, but all of these series were able to blend pastiches of classic film and stories into their episodes without it being hammy and grating.
Now, this episode. The key line is “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles”. This line is important because it is wrong.
I enjoy Rhys Darby but not in this one. I’m glad they didn’t make this one be all a dream in the end and I like that the final scenes show some real character moments, but Uhura and M’Benga (and possibly also Pike) could have had their conversations in amongst non-gimmicked episodes. Also, the ship has a counsellor? Either they’re new, or haven’t been doing their job very well. How many times has Spock broken up with someone now? Didn’t care for the gimmick this episode. I fast forwarded through parts of it.
I agree about Doctor and Ida chatting. As with episodes like “midnight”, when the doctor gets to talk, within a confined space, trying to figure out a problem, with good writing and direction behind it, it makes for some of the best episodes.
I enjoyed this second episode, not as much as the first. The A plot opens with the captain taking the bolt gun and reacts that it only has one bullet - putting a suicide gun in doctor who is a dark choice, I like it. There’s a lot of scuttling about ducts, maybe too much. But the tension and sacrifice from Jefferson helped humanise his otherwise aggressive character. The “nice view” jokes in the ducts were unnecessary. Ditto the scooby do esque reveal that the beast was still among them.
Throughout the B plot we get a discussions about belief systems, and this is the highlight of the episode for me. I enjoyed these and the doctor living out a death wish by cutting his rope in the pit. The big let down for me was seeing the actual beast at the end - like any good lovecraftian outsider monster, the mind can conjure a scarier monster, and once you present it, it was a bit of a let down. Doctor says the beast can’t speak, as it’s intelligence has moved somewhere else, yet as it is animated it still seems to have intelligence. The grin and laugh particularly doesn’t work for me, Toby was already laughing in it’s stead. Animators and live action not quite meshing well.
By the end I am confused about the scale of the planet’s size, how the tardis got into the pit when the door was sealed, and why “strategy 9” exists and they didn’t use it earlier. The ood plotlines went nowhere, highlighting this was maybe not the best story in which to bring up the whole slave race plotline, though the now-released ood huddling in fear at the end was a nice addition. The resolution is decent, and I enjoyed Rose and Doctor reuniting, the discussions and emotions they had have moved them forward a bit now.
One big thing you need to think about is accessibility. This is something that came up in a conversation with a local representative in the UK - for children in public schools it is a requirements that any technology have good accessibility and not leave anyone behind. And accessibility tools on linux are, suffice to say, not great. Especially when compared with those on other closed systems. My local government ended up going with iPads for kids in schools, and the accessibility tooling on these was a factor in that choice.
I was wondering if this was meant to be the “origin story” of the dermal regenerator.
For a moment I did wonder if pelia was going to be the one who goes out to take the readings, and it would be her going out with a bang.
This one felt like we were halfway towards a proper episode. The plot had a big ethical decision, it had opportunity for growth, a decent if treknobabbly sci fi threat. But this episode really suffered from prequelitis - it never really felt that Chapel was going to do anything other than try to save Mbenga, we know mbenga survives in some capacity anyway, and Chapel’s decision is made within seconds with little room to explore “when should you let a patient go”. Ditto Spock’s grand sacrifice going out into the radiation, and a lack of tension around the pod being ejected. There was a lot going on here, possibly too much. The clear stand outs here are Scotty getting his drive and motivation to own engineering on enterprise, and nurse chapel getting the push to likewise take more agency of her life on enterprise.
I guess this is meant to be borrowing from the 24 style of show - the only 24 I’ve ever seen was when the Simpsons parodied it. Overall I didn’t really like that particular style of direction / editing, but it wasn’t terrible. It kind of bugged me that we only learnt what the threat we were counting down to was half way through the episode. This episode would probably have worked just as well without the counter, it didn’t add anything for me.
Random notes:
Indie games are good, but if privacy is a concern be careful of any game developed in a big engine like unity. My firewall pings a warning every time I launch a unity game because they all send analytics data back to unity. If it’s single player and you block all outgoing connections by default, you’re fine though.
I hadn’t made the connection about Sutekh, that’s neat
Worth noting that the trendline in that plot would be pointing down anyway, before you include season 4. That tends to happen for every long running TV show.
I did cringe laugh a little at the Doctor and Rose nearly planning our their mortgage repayments.
I think this is the first time we see the orange spacesuits, they’ve become a pretty iconic way to distinguish Who from other sci-fi series where everything in space is white and clean.
There was some good acting from the guest actors this episode.
I enjoyed this one. There’s lots of sci fi elements, good plot points to explore, and it’s directed very well. The sound design is pretty good in this one, I like the mournful music when the black hole is on camera contrasted with the jaunty music during shift change before everything starts to go bad. The slow descent into madness as things start breaking apart is well done, even if it does trigger my “why does no one just talk to each other” detector. I enjoyed the use of a language so old even the tardis can’t help translate it - it adds to the base feeling like it really is remote, and the designs of the underground cavern are nice, it reminds me a bit of Petra in Jordan. There’s a really nice line when the doctor and rose are discussing the black hole - They are gateways to other universes. The doctor replies “not that one”, referencing the fact that this black hole isn’t a doorway, but also implying there’s no way Rose can get back to the other universe where Mickey and Pete are. Finally, actually trapping the doctor without a tardis, rather than handwaving away that it can’t be used like in the Madam Pompadour episode, is a much better way to keep things interesting.
There are some very minor bits I think could have been done a better though. I feel the implication is Doctor and Rose have hung around a bit on the base after the tardis was lost, but some more explicit passage of time would have been nicer. Were they there a couple of hours? weeks? The final trapdoor at the end looks pretty small. It’s big, sure, but not to the extent that justifies the reaction they have on seeing it. Rose takes on the compassionate friend of the ood role, but is dismissed by everyone, and the doctor seems not to mind it either, and I am reminded of Harry Potter where Hermione’s campaign for the house elves is similarly dismised and ignored by everyone. Thankfully we get a follow up of that plotline in a later series, but maybe it was biting a bit too much off at once here.
Overall, really enjoyed this one, and the cliffhanger it ends on feels important, because there’s a lot of mystery still left to resolve.
Random nitpick - In the caves, they throw up a “gravity globe”. It’s a flare. They could have just called it a flare.
It can be a bit difficult to get a read on what Vulcans are thinking as a viewer, It can’t be easy to act them out. I did think ethan peck was good in this one
“high jinks” might be intentional, and meant to be the vulcan’s way of being dismissive of the human’s nonsense by deliberately pronouncing it as two words.
I went into this episode blind, but the moment Scotty mentioned the puppet was going to be the transporter payload I knew we were in for a tuvix situation. I did not realise it would be quite on this scale. I don’t hate the premise of the episode. It reminded me a lot of the TNG episode where they all get turned into children, and this is a universe where Tom Paris got turned into a lizard after all. I do absolutely hate the cop-out at the end where it turns out it was all a dream. It means that spock was the only character that had opportunity for development and growth, and no-one else gets to share in that. Either go all in on the zany adventures, or dont, but never waste the audience’s time like this.
But hey, you want puppets, I’ll judge you on the puppets. I think they were generally well designed. While the “body language” was expressive, I don’t think the faces were as good as they could have been - There were only a handful of times where changes in eyes and eyebrows really stood out. I also feel that the writing and voice acting for the puppet character’s dialogue was not great, but that gets hand-waved away at the end where we realise as puppets they’re not quite the same people The endpoint of letting go and embracing the madness was a nice resolution to the absurd situation, however I did not feel like the cartoon physics played through.
The orion plot was OK, used as the necessary antagonists to drive the plot. But other than some moments from Joe Lo Truglio, who was a perfect choice for an empathetic male orion, the invaders could have been any invading alien species and nothing really specific to orions was needed. I’m also confused by the huge orion vessel, unless I’ve misread the scale, there should be hundreds at least but at no point did anyone think to help out the 3 or 4 orions actually invading the enterprise. But maybe none of this matters, because hey, it was all a dream.
With some of the other gimmicky episodes, I’ve instantly wanted to re-watch them once I finished. Here, once was enough, which is not a great indicator for the episode overall.
Bring on the model collapse!
Human infested cities. Cat infested cafés. Cattle infested farms.