“Time is playing games with you all."
I have to admit this episode is pretty damn awesome, and has me bloody excited. I have my usual reservations with Chibnall's retconning of the Doctor's past and continuity- has it been thought through? Is it going to benefit the show in the long term rather than buden it with confused and conflicting continuities? There's a reason why the so-called Cartmel Masterplan quite deliberately never amounted to the odd vague hint. However, in the moment, I'm enjoying the ride. A lot.
I've been reading a lot of Michael Moorcock lately, and this feels very much like his work. Concepts like the Passenger, a planet called Time and awar between Time and Space are very Moorcockian, if that's a word. The Flux is decimating space; now the same is happening in time. The narrative is complex, with the Doctor, Yaz, Dan and Vinder jumping between different times and places simultaneously, some real and some relived memories- but memories with details changed. Nothing is stable. I have reservat ions about how the general public will take to this, but this middle aged geek loves it.
We get nice little glimpses into the pasts of both Yaz and Dan, good character moments for the pair of them Dan and Diane are sweet together and she's clearly besotted, and Dan is horrified to discover she's trapped within the Passenger. We also learn Vinder's past- and he's a whistleblower in a corrupt society who was punished for doing the right thing, a difficult concept to grasp in the "in no way corrupt" Britaoin of 2021 (Ooh, bit of politics there...). We also see the mysterious Bel, on a quest (with her unborm Tamagochi child or summat) for love that encompasses hordes of Daleks, Cybermen and others.... only to discover at the end that she and Vinder are a couple on mutual quests for each other.
Oh, and Vinder knows what a TARDIS is, which is interesting...
But we also, of course, learn a lot about scenes from the Doctor's past which she relives alongside people she sees as Yaz, Dan and Vinder. Yet her own reflection shows her as the Jo Martin Doctor, while Dan is really Karvanista, who must be bloody ancient. So who are the other two...?
The Doctor is leading an army for the Division, an agent of law and order against the same two baddies as the present day. But are they baddies? They seem to have an ideology (Time must not be constrained) which is not obviously any more right than that of the Division.But we get very little context... until a mysterious scene with Barbara Flynn as a mysterious woman who explains that the Flux and all this is deliberate, the universe ending is the point, and it's all the Doctor's fault.
Oh, and there are some awesome action sequences with Cybermen and especially Weeping Angels, now right up there as iconic baddies. Yes, I loved this episode, and Chibnall wrote it. But let's hope what he's doing to the mythology of the show doesn't break it, or I may well look back upon this episode less fondly...
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