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| The Doctor prepares for a perilous journey - to the core of his own timeship! |
1 episode. Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Steve Thompson. Directed by: Mat King. Produced by: Marcus Wilson.
THE PLOT
Concerned about the lack of trust between Clara and the TARDIS, the Doctor decides to let his new companion pilot the ship for a bit. To make it easier for her, he turns off the shields... at the exact moment that the salvage ship run by Gregor Van Baalen (Ashley Walters) detects them. Reading the TARDIS as an object rich in salvage, Gregor activates an illegal magnetic beam - which, with the TARDIS shields off, massively disrupts the interior of the timeship.
The Doctor is thrown clear, waking in the salvage ship. Clara is still trapped inside. As she tries to catch her bearings, the Doctor bluffs Gregor, his brutish brother Bram (Mark Oliver), and android Tricky (Jahvel Hall) into going into the TARDIS to rescue her. But once inside, all Gregor can see is the salvage of a lifetime - While Clara discovers that she is not alone in the ship, as burned zombie-like creatures pursue her through the maze of rooms and corridors!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: "The Doctor lies." Well, he certainly does a lot of lying in this episode. He lies to the salvage crew in order to get them to help search for Clara. He lies to them again when he sets a fake self-destruct to motivate them in that search. He lies to Clara about the nature of the burned creatures stalking the corridors. "Secrets protect us," he insists to Clara, "Secrets make us safe!" But the more dishonest he is, the more Clara reacts to him with fear. He can't quite make himself trust that she is only what she says she is - And whether he remembers the events of this episode or not (which is left vague), I doubt he'll have properly learned that lesson.
Clara: Clearly remembers Emma's warning from the last episode, not to trust the Doctor. After being pursued by the creatures, practically her first words to the Doctor are: "Good guys do not have zombie creatures!" She may like him, and she may enjoy their adventures, but she's not entirely convinced that he's "a good guy."
THOUGHTS
I'm torn in reviewing Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. Regular readers of my reviews know that I'm a sucker for stories that have a certain "unreality" to them, a hint of being surreal or at least a bit removed from reality. This story has a lot of that.
The labyrinth of TARDIS corridors rearrange themselves to impede the characters' progress. Games with time, as the creatures stalking the characters are revealed to be... well, I won't spoil that for anyone who hasn't seen it, but I certainly enjoyed watching that plot point slide into place at just the right moment for the two creatures who were fused together. And the suspended explosion, with the debris floating in mid-air as the Doctor and Clara walk through it... All wonderfully realized, all of it the exact sort of thing I love in this sort of show.
Then there's the moment of pure fan service. As Bram tears open the TARDIS console, we hear overlapping voices from the show's past: Susan, revealing the TARDIS' name; Ian, expressing disbelief at the suggestion of a police box being able to travel through time and space; the Third and Fourth Doctors, discussing dimensional transcendentalism; the Ninth Doctor, gloating over how "the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through those doors, and believe me they've tried." I rewound and rewatched that scene multiple times, just to try to pick out as many of the voice-overs as possible.
But... Well... These are good moments. But that's all this episode has: A series of moments. You could argue the same of The Bells of Saint John, which was structured as a series of set pieces. But in that episode, each set piece was tied to the central story and advanced it. Here, the scenes just seem to exist at random, a collection of "cool stuff" designed to keep you from looking too closely at the plot.
I enjoy "cool stuff" as much as the next viewer - but eventually it comes time to get on with the narrative, and that's when the episode falls apart: There isn't much narrative to speak, and most of what we see in the episode has little to do with the thin story that does exist. Had it been structured around the them of mistrust, they might have had something. After all, the Doctor doesn't trust Clara and refuses to believe that she's just a normal girl. Clara doesn't fully trust the Doctor, and is a little afraid of him (probably with good reason). Clara also doesn't trust the TARDIS, which in turn doesn't trust her.
There are a few scenes that make overtures in this direction, but not nearly enough. For this episode to work, it needs a core. The notion of mistrust among the regulars and their sentient vessel seems like the best potential core for this story. Instead, the Doctor/Clara issues only get a few minutes of screentime, and the Clara/TARDIS issues are barely mentioned at all (in an episode that seems like it should have been designed specifically for them). What we get are just a bunch of moments, very few of which actually feed into the next.
The guest characters are also the most forgettable of the season. Yes, even moreso than the Soviet submarine crew in Cold War. There's nothing really wrong with the actors, who do a reasonable enough job with what they're given. What they're given, however, are thin sketches: the greedy one, the dumb one, the android who's more than he seems. None of them really move beyond those sketches until it's time for the greedy one to reform completely and unconvincingly in the space of about two minutes.
To add insult to injury, it all ends with a reset button, putting this firmly in Star Trek: Voyager territory. The plot never really happens, the characters never really learn anything. It's just... there. Enough of the individual pieces work to make it quite watchable, but it's very far from good.
A pity, because this was one I had been looking forward to.
Overall Rating: 4/10.
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