Doctor Who Review: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Generations of Whovians have wondered what lay in the deepest corners of the box that's "bigger on the inside". In the classic series we've seen companions' rooms and other sections, but never have we had a topsy turvy adventure leading straight to the heart of the TARDIS itself. "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" certainly delivered on its promise, and gave us a few extra bits along the way.

When the TARDIS is caught in the magno-grab of a salvage vessel, things start to go very very wrong. The Doctor and Clara are separated, a tear in time appears on board, and there are burning zombie monsters running amok. The Doctor asks for the help of the Van Baalen brothers in rescuing Clara, offering them the salvage of a lifetime.

Tons of wires and a wooden box! Congratulations!

Let's put the adventure of the episode aside for a moment and talk about what we saw (and heard) inside the  Big Blue Box. Now, for a whole list of references you can check out BBC One's blog, The Fourth Dimension. As Clara ambles around (and in some cases races through) the corridors, we get a glimpse of a few different rooms, like the observatory with a gigantic telescope (which you might remember from the Series 2 episode Tooth and Claw). We get to see a room with a kind of living metal tree with glowing orbs that can grow any type of device or machine that the Doctor requires. And, finally, at long last, we get to see the swimming pool.

In a surprise twist and crossover, Moriarty unveils his plan to destroy Clara.

Clara also comes across the enormous TARDIS library, stacked high with all kinds of books and documents. In it she also finds items from the past such as the Doctor's cot (or crib, for us Americans), the wooden TARDIS made by a young Amelia Pond, and the Seventh Doctor's first umbrella. And, when hiding from the Time Zombie, she stumbles into the Encyclopedia Gallifreya. I thought it was really interesting that the Time Lords kept an oral record of their history in bottles, as that is the oldest form of passing down stories, culture, and history. Among the mumbles and whispers we could hear something about "The Medusa Cascade". But what she comes across before that sent my fan-sense a-tingling.

TL;DR

As Clara flips through the pages of the history of the Time War, she spots something that intrigues her above all else. Although she is interrupted by the Time Zombie, she is able to see something that makes her say "So that's Who."

Yes. Clara Oswald has learned the Doctor's name.

Getting back to the story, Bram Van Baalen is tasked with junking the entire TARDIS console for scrap. When he lifts open a piece of the control panel, we (and maybe he?) hear a multitude of voices from the past. Our friends at the TARDIS Data Core wiki has provided a full list:

• The voice of Susan Foreman says, "I made up the name 'TARDIS' from the initials: Time and Relative Dimension In Space." (TV: An Unearthly Child)
• The Third Doctor saying, "The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental" and his companion, Jo, asking "What does that mean?" (TV: Colony in Space)
• The Eleventh Doctor saying, "You sexy thing!" then Idris (the TARDIS in human form) replying, "See, you do call me that! Is it my name?" followed by the Doctor's exclamation of "You bet it's your name!" (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
• The Fourth Doctor saying, "That's trans-dimensional engineering. A key Time Lord discovery." (TV: The Robots of Death)
• The Ninth Doctor saying, "The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me they've tried." (TV: Rose)
• Martha Jones saying, "It's just a box with that room crammed in!". (TV: Smith and Jones)
• Amy Pond saying, "We're in space!". (TV: The Beast Below)
• Ian Chesterton asking, "It can move anywhere in time and space?" (TV: An Unearthly Child)
• The Fifth Doctor asking, "You've changed the desktop theme, haven't you?" (TV: Time Crash)

Bram was later admitted to the psychiatric ward of the TARDIS

Now, I thought it was a little weird that he could just lift up the console like that. In Boomtown, Blon Slitheen  does so and is turned back into an egg. In The Parting of Ways, when Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS that way, she becomes the Bad Wolf, and that leads to the Ninth Doctor's regeneration. Perhaps, because the ship was shut down, Bram could look into it (and climb down) unscathed. That is, until he met a Time Zombie down there.

"I just wanted to see if you had any Jergen's!"

 Meanwhile, the Doctor, Tricky, and Gregor are trying to navigate the labyrinth the TARDIS has created because Gregor has stolen one of the orbs. It leads them back to the console room, which the Doctor describes as en echo (much like the pocket universe in Hide, last week). Clara, too, is stuck in an echo console room, but she has company. Using Gregor's sensor, the Doctor finds Clara and pulls her into their echo console room before the Time Zombie can touch her. Wibbly-wobbly, indeed.

As the team heads towards the center (or centre, for our British readers) of the TARDIS, they see images of the past and the Doctor reveals that there is a leak in time somewhere on board. As they continue on their way Clara hears a rumbling overhead. Then, in one of the more thrilling parts of the episode, beams start bursting through the walls and they run for their lives. When they find the two salvagers, Tricky is has been impaled through the shoulder by a beam. He tells Gregor to cut the arm off, as he is an android and can get a new one. But it's revealed that Gregor and Bram played a joke on their younger brother, and after an accident gave him cybernetic eyes and a new voice box and told him he was an android. Now that is going to make for one awkward Thanksgiving.

After Tricky is freed, the team needs to cross a very dangerous room. They need to pass by the Eye of Harmony. As I mentioned in my review for Hide (in which they used a subset of the Eye to enhance Emma's powers), the Eye of Harmony was integral to the plot of the 1996 movie and had been mentioned once before in the classic series. Here, we see it in its full awesomeness. A sun turning into a blackhole, trapped in its state of decay so as to power the TARDIS. Time Lord technology at its finest.

Don't worry, it'll only turn you into a Time Zombie.

But the Time Zombies catch up with them and trap them between doorways. The Doctor reveals that what they're running from...is themselves. The future has leaked into the TARDIS as well as the past, and it seems that the Doctor has failed to save Clara again. The remaining Van Baalen brothers try to fight off the monsters, but are turned into their zombie selves once again. Clara and the Doctor run, and find themselves...outside. But no, they are actually still in the TARDIS, very close to the engine room. This reminded me a lot of the wave-powered engine room of the ship in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship...just with less pterodactyls.

Muuuuch better.

It's here that the Doctor finally confronts Clara. Is she a trick? A trap? How is it that he has been met her at different points in time, where she has died, and yet here she is once again right in front of him? But the Doctor, sensing how afraid and confused she is, realizes that although their meetings are strange, she is no one and nothing but Clara. Together, they make a leap of faith and jump into the heart of the TARDIS.

Also aboard the TARDIS? An old Templar knight.

Which, of course, is unlike anything we've ever seen (although it did remind me of the Zero Room in the Fifth Doctor's first episode, Castrovalva). The TARDIS, in what looks to be a room totally out of time and space, has contained the explosion temporarily. The Doctor becomes distraught because he cannot figure out a way to save the old girl, who had always been there for him. But when he holds Clara's hand he notices something, that it had been burned....and that burn had written itself into her flesh: Big Friendly Button.

"Good thing...because I was SOL there for a second..."

In the biggest (and probably most literal) Deus Ex Machina ever, the Doctor reaches through the rift in time and tosses the device used by the Van Baalen brothers over to his past self. Clara picks it up and is burned, and when the Doctor retrieves it he laughs and pushes the button (if only Staples had a product placement deal). Time resets itself, the Van Baalen brothers are reunited, Clara and the Doctor continue on their journey, and the TARDIS races through time and space once more.

Overall I thought this was an absolutely exciting episode. We saw more of the TARDIS than ever before, had a race through tight corridors and expansive rooms, were given some wonderful recalls to the past, and given hints that will lead us directly to the 50th anniversary special. There were a few misses I thought: I would like to have seen another old console room instead of another echo room, and I thought the Van Baalen brothers were a pretty week ensemble. But the Time Zombies were very creepy and unsettling, especially when we learned who they were. And I can forgive the "deus ex" bit, because it was necessary for the Doctor and Clara to be saved, and it also leads us into the 50th. I wonder, though, now that that Doctor knows that Clara isn't some kind of trick, how he will go about finding out exactly why they keep meeting at different points in time.

No reason to put this here, I just thought it looked pretty.

Secrets keep us safe, but they also keep us in suspense!

Until next time (....and space),

- Joe

Your Morning Linc: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS Clip, River and Jack Want a Spinnoff, Steampunk AT-AT, and the Cost of Being Iron Man

Well, despite its valiant efforts, the mockingbird that just would not stop singing outside my window last night has not deterred me from getting a good night's sleep, and waking up ready to share some of the Internet's geeky goodness!

1. Doctor Who: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS Clip

Next week's episode has been long anticipated by Whovians for generations (re-generations?). When Clara goes missing inside the Blue Box, it's up to the Doctor and a questionable salvage team to find her. Word is that we are going to see the heart of the TARDIS itself, many nods to the past, a library containing a book on the Time War....and yes.....the swimming pool.

Here's a clip, which does nothing to make me stop wanting Saturday to come as quickly as possible:

   

2. John Barrowman and Alex Kingston Want a Jack/River Show

What do you get when you cross a time-traveling bi-curious madman with a time-traveling, overtly sexual madwoman? You get a show that I'm pretty sure could only be called "Sexing Through Time". Doctor Who alumni John Barrowman and Alex Kingston, who work together on the CW's Arrow, seem to have really hit it off an want to make a spinoff show starring Captain Jack Harkness and Professor River Song.

Also in the works: Innuendo, the Musical.

As Barrowman, who is still hurting over his 50th snub and is pessimistic about Torchwod's return, explained to TVAddict:

“Then as we talked more, we realized that we’re both born on the same day.  We’re both March 11th babies and we have so much in common.  We like a lot of the same things and our attitude towards stuff is very, very similar.

“It struck a chord with us because that’s why River and Jack are very similar characters, in their attitude and their fun and their aggression, we are the same in real life – which is really ironic.  So we struck it off."

 Frankly, I think they should make a 60's-style sitcom and call it "Hello Sweetie!"

3. Crushing Rebellion With Industrial Revolution: Steampunk AT-AT

Because intercontinental railroads are for wimps, a pretty insane and really cool-looking steampunk AT-AT has popped up on Flickr.

Dubbed Captain Bayley's Mechano-Perambulator, its creator, named Mark, apparently made this as an engagement gift for his fiance. If this is the kind of gift she'd appreciate, I'd say that girl's definitely a keeper. And you know this bad boy can go toe-to-toe with a Mechanical Spider any day.

Let's see Will Smith hook this with a harpoon and tow cable.

Check out many many more photos here.


4. The Cost of Being Iron Man

Think you need to be a billionaire, genius, playboy, philanthropist to wear the suit? Well, you're absolutely right. MoneySupermarket has detailed the real world cost of being Iron Man (big ol' infographic below):

I'll be setting up my Kickstarter campaign soon...

And that's it for now folks. Hope you all continue to have a fantastic morning!

- Joe

Doctor Who Review: Hide

You know when writer Neil Cross steps up to pen a Doctor Who episode, you're going to get something different. Whether it was the instant classic "The Doctor's Wife" or the still hotly debated "Rings of Akhaten", Cross always puts his unique touch on familiar tropes. Hide not only is no exception, but it is a perfect example.

The Doctor and Clara arrive at Caliburn House, a giant mansion beset by a wailing spirit known throughout history as "The Witch of the Well". Set in the 1970's, this episode used every ghost story antic without seeming cliche. Stormy night? Check. Candelabras? Check. Hard science mixed with psychic abilities? Checkaroo. Splitting up in order to catch something that you're clearly outmatched by? Oh, so much Check! Yes, this episode touched on everything from The Ring to Scooby-Doo and mixed it all together to create a really dynamic, suspenseful, and kind of creepy episode.

You can't die after seeing The Ring if you can't see without your glasses!

But, of course, this is Doctor Who we're talking about, so we know we're not in for a mere ghost story (the Ninth Doctor episode "The Unquiet Dead" comes to mind). As the story progresses we find that our ghost is actually a pioneering time traveler stuck between our universe and a pocket universe (perhaps a nod Neil Cross' "The Doctor's Wife"). In an interesting turn of events, the Doctor discovers that every time they see the ghost they are seeing one brief moment in her timeline, stretched out over hundreds of years. Usually, it's the Doctor who seems to pop in and out of people's lives, but this time it was the other way around. When the Doctor goes through the history of the world, taking pictures in order to piece together Hila's flashes through time, it has a startling effect on Clara. To him, she surmises, they must all seem like ghosts, since the Doctor can witness the birth and death of a world in minutes and not even blink. The Doctor assures her she is "the only mystery worth solving". This very much echoes Rose's sentiments in "The End of the World" (again with the parallels!), but I don't think the Doctor was as successful in comforting her this time.

What? It's just the end of everything and everyone you ever knew! Get over it.

I also like how the contentious relationship with Clara and the TARDIS, first hinted at in "The Rings of Akhaten", was further explored. Clara lets the Doctor in on her suspicion that the old girl doesn't like her, and the Doctor likens the TARDIS to a cat that has to get used to someone. And when the Clara runs to rescue the Doctor from the pocket universe, she has to first get past the TARDIS audio/visual matrix, which sarcastically takes the form of Clara ("the person you most esteem"). Eventually the blue box relents, lets Clara in, and the two rescue their man. I have a nagging belief that their story isn't over, and will come to a head next week.

When the Doctor does find himself in the pocket universe, it is just plain creepy. It's misty, disintegrating, and completely void of life....well, except for one thing. The monster that inhabits this world doesn't look or move like anything we've ever seen. It actually reminded me a lot of old claymation monsters with its jerky movements and that definitely was unsettling. Even though we eventually learn that it (credited totally un-cringe-inducingly as "Crooked Man"), like Hila and the Doctor, was stuck there and just trying to reach its one true love back at Caliburn House, seeing it's face made me jump, and most definitely scared the bejeezus out of younger viewers.

Ladies?

But yes, folks, it turned out that this was a love story, after all. No villains to defeat, no apocalypse to stop, just the simple saving of a girl and the reuniting of lost (if incredibly ugly) loves. I think that's something that a lot of people lose in the new Who, that these stories don't always have to be dark and serious. The show, at its core, is about the power of love and good versus all the badness in the universe. In a way, we were actually treated to three different types of episodes in one: A ghost story, a classic timey wimey story, and a love story. Each one flowing effortlessly into the next.

And this episode, Whovians, more than any so far, should have your inner geek tingling. For one, the Doctor uses the space suit he used during his Tenth incarnation in the two-parter "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" and "The Waters of Mars". Also, in order to boost Emma's psychic powers and her connection to the pocket universe, not only does the Doctor fetch a Metebelis crystal from the TARDIS (a reference to the last adventures of the Third Doctor), he does so utilizing a subset of the Eye of Harmony (last seen as the focal point for the 1996 movie starring Eighth Doctor Paul McGann)! There was also an interesting bit where the Doctor directs Clara to hang up her umbrella, only to remember that he's since removed the coat rack he had in his previous TARDIS (and that of earlier incarnations). And, of course, when things start going wrong (as they inevitably do), we heard the familiar ring of the Cloister Bell.

Also that one episode where the Doctor runs a lot...

A unique twist on a familiar story type, tons of references, a nice and different ending, and a deepening of the mystery and character of Clara, "Hide" definitely delivered! And it was great to see the TARDIS fully in action once again! The episode also touched on unrequited love, fulfilled for Emma and Alec, and the monsters, but perhaps not for Clara? Will she be Eleven's Rose, or will she find her feelings rebuffed like Martha? And what about the Doctor's search to find the answer as to exactly who Clara is...and why she is? Emma's empathic powers were no help, and in fact were used to warn Clara not to trust him. No matter how that story plays out, "Hide" will definitely go on the list of top Eleventh Doctor episodes for many fans (yours truly included.)

Women? Amiright? 'eh? 'EH? Ahhh you know.

 What did you all think? And where do you think this is all leading? Sound off in the comments below and I'll see you next week for the eagerly awaited "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"!



Geronimo!

- Joe