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Like a Box of Chocolates

Review of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I think that nearly every fan, upon hearing the title of this episode, felt their heart skip a beat. Indeed, Moffat himself has indicated in interviews that his own fannish disappointment with the results of similar hype surrounding the end of The Invasion of Time (the pursuit “through the labyrinthine corridors” consisting primarily of tromping through the same stretch of an abandoned hospital building) was the inspiration for Doing It Right, so to speak.

Well, at least they tried…

I find myself weirdly ambivalent about this one – so much so that I was hard pressed to make myself sit through a second viewing. Even though there was a lot I liked – pretty much anything that had to do with the TARDIS herself I loved – there were so many parts that didn’t work for me that I’ve had a tough time mustering any enthusiasm for the episode as a whole.

Let’s go with the uncomfortable bits first so we can go out on a high, eh? Starting with the social commentary, I was rather disturbed to realize it took me till that second viewing to realize that we’d finally got some people of color in key roles, but they were depicted as the baddies. That troubles me.

What troubled me more, though, was those characters’ story. I found it horrific – I suppose from a storytelling point of view, that’s good. After all, it was small anomalies that proved out over the course of the episode without being heavily telegraphed. Good stuff, right? Maybe, but it just made my skin crawl, and not in a good way.

The other part that irritated me was the “monsters.” It was an interesting conceit, but two things didn’t make sense to me. First, if the characters’ fates should they stay too long near the Eye of Harmony is that their “cells will liquefy, and [their] skin will start to burn,” why would the damage stop there? Second, why does that fate then turn them into snarling, raving, murderous monsters? It’s pants.

On the up side, the way said monsters formed helped clue the Doctor into a potential to break the cycle – he recognized himself in one of them, given its eternal facepalm, and knew the remaining brothers needed to avoid touching to keep from completing that future. But given that pretty much everything that had to do with that fraternal trio – monsters or otherwise – made me uncomfortable or unhappy, that’s not enough to save this episode in the “monster” category.

Speaking of discomfort, the Doctor gave me some serious cognitive dissonance while luring the brothers into the TARDIS to search for Clara. We, like they, initially assume he’s referring to the TARDIS when he says “the salvage of a lifetime” can be found through those doors. Yet we, unlike them, know how much the ship means to him. It’s inconceivable! And of course, we’re right; it’s all a clever ruse.

So, eventually, does his use of the self-destruct sequence turn out to be. Our faith in the Doctor and his love for the TARDIS is restored, even as we grumble inwardly at the artificial episode-length time constraint set on the search for Clara.

Our intrepid Companion, meanwhile, gets to move the story arc along while conveniently forgetting about everything she (and partly we) has learned. Again, it’s an overly-convenient plot device, and if the jackass of a middle brother Gregor can remember enough to “have a shred of decency” (and more than that leaked through, if the family photo was intact when time “reset”), what will “sassy” Clara be able to pull out of her unremembered memory of an alternate timeline at a completely inconvenient moment?

Easier for her to forget will be the Doctor’s outburst about what she really is. I find it odd that the Doctor honestly thought that she herself was hiding something from him – that she was knowingly “a trick [or] a trap.” (After all, sleepers are a lot more convenient for that kind of thing.) It makes the Doctor sound rather thick.

For the most part, the Doctor does his clever-figure-things-out gig, and both he and Clara get in some good one-liners (the Doctor’s “Smart bunch, Time Lords – no dress sense, dreadful hats – but smart!” and Clara’s “Why have you got zombie creatures? Good guys do not have zombie creatures: Rule 1, Basic Storytelling!” are among my favorites). However, the best of the episode belongs, as it should, to the TARDIS.

Clara wanders through its depths and finds a storage room. There she find’s the Doctor’s cot, Amy’s toy TARDIS, a magnifying glass (perhaps the one he used in The Snowmen when posing as Holmes), and an umbrella. Some people will say it’s the umbrella that he used to lure Victorian Clara into joining him in his escape to the TARDIS in the clouds; I’m going to say it’s the one Seven used early in his incarnation – or, better yet, that they are one and the same.

Later, we see Clara scamper past the Observatory (later identified on the scanner) and the Swimming Pool before ending up in the Library. We also get to see the Architectural Reconstruction System, part of what the Doctor describes as “her basic genetic material.” It’s cool to see more of her inner workings.

The best part of the entire episode, though – hands down – was when bits of TARDIS-related memories started leaking out in the voices of her past occupants. You’ll be able to find a list of where the quotes came from at the official web site, but being the obsessive freak I am, I had to listen and try to capture all of them myself. I’ve failed in a couple of cases, so if you’ve got your own transcripts of quotes I’ve missed, feel free to include them in the comments.

So here, as best as I can tell, are all the pieces we heard whispered:

  • “I made up the name ‘TARDIS’ from the initials: Time And Relative Dimension In Space” – Susan, An Unearthly Child
  • “The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental.” – Third Doctor, Colony in Space
  • “That’s transdimensional engineering, the key Time Lord discovery.” – Fourth Doctor, The Robots of Death
  • “You sexy thing!” “See, you do call me that! Is it my name?” – Eleventh Doctor and TARDIS/Idris, The Doctor’s Wife
  • “The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through those doors – and believe me, they’ve tried!” – Ninth Doctor, Rose
  • “We are in space!” – Amy, The Beast Below
  • “A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard – it can go anywhere in time and space?” – Ian, An Unearthly Child
  • Martha says something I can’t parse, reportedly from Smith and Jones.
  • At the very end, I can hear Eleven say something, but I can’t make it out at all.

When all is said and done, I still don’t know whether or not I like this episode. Parts of it are fabulous, and parts kinda suck. I suppose it’s like chocolates – do you like a nougat-y Centre or not? For me, I guess it depends on my mood. Right now, I’ll take nougat.

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14 Comments

  1. Wholahoop

    Curate’s Egg
    I have never understood why a curate’s egg is only good in part but such are the mysteries of the idiosyncrasies of the English language.

    There are flaws in this episode, the most obvious for me being the reset switch. In its favour it is not the sonic screwdriver. Also, I have no idea why the timeslipped creatures are so angry unless they are hacked off at their very existence?

    However, if ever style over substance deserved to win out, I think this is one time I can accept it.

  2. Tree

    Horrifying subplot
    It’s amazing that so many thought this way about the episode. I think we were all expecting more.

    When I realized that the brothers had actually tricked their younger brother, I turned to my husband (who happened to be watching with me this time), and said, “This is the cruelest thing I have ever seen.” It really astonished me. I don’t agree that having people of color on the show, then they turned out to be baddies – after all, I saw it more as a family story of two very mean and jealous brothers. The third character, a man of color, was not a bad person. He was good, and even because it was only due to the fact that he thought he was an android, he felt the TARDIS’ pain.

    I did love seeing a library in the TARDIS, not the firsrt time, if I remember correctly. I knew Clara would find out the Doctor’s name and then “forget” it. Time will tell if she remembers it. I really did think they would connect the time rift to the one in Series 5 and possibly clear up the exploding TARDIS storyline, but I guess not.

    Another stray thought, I have so many: I guess I had a sense from the beginning – when the Doctor was convincing the brothers to come into the TARDIS with him, I was reminded of Rule #1: The Doctor Lies. πŸ™‚

    I agree, something just didn’t feel right about this episode. It could have been so much more.

    • mrfranklin

      Granted
      It’s true that Tricky was a decent human being (slash android) all along, and their story was less about being baddies with respect to the Doctor than utter dicks to each other. I’ll give you that. The cruelty you noted was perhaps what overloaded my system (I tend towards extreme empathy). I just couldn’t get past it.

      You remind me of something I managed to leave out of my review – drat! I had that same thought with the Crack and the engine having exploded; I really thought for a moment they would give us a clue to that whole Series 5/31 arc. I was a little disappointed that it didn’t pan out.

      Not sure how I got so easily snookered at the beginning, knowing Rule #1 so well – guess I’m less clever than I’d like to think! πŸ˜‰

  3. Tree

    Names
    You know, you are so good at catching the names of the characters. I never do!

    Yes, I was really hoping the Crack would give us some clues to an unresolved story line.

    I just remember thinking at the beginning: “Is there something particular in the TARDIS the Doctor will give them, because he’s ultimately lying – he’ll never give them the TARDIS itself!” Matt Smith is such a good actor and liar, though, as the Doctor.

    I think you’re right about the cruelty, though. I think it says a lot about a small crew in space and what it might do to them. We’ve seen it play out time and again, with “42,” “The Beast Below/The Satan Pit,” and that’s just naming a couple – not that those crews were like this one. What does it say about the Doctor, too? Thank goodness the TARDIS is a spacecraft where he and his companions can land in time and space and interact with others.

    Also horrifying; when the one brother ripped out that living part of the TARDIS and put it in his backpack! One last thing I was as confused about as you were: those monsters and why they were so angry and terrorizing everyone. Did they have a memory? Why would they want to kill their earlier selves? I’m convinced they were just stuck in the script to be a monster of the week,

    • mrfranklin

      I cheat
      HAHA! πŸ™‚ Well, thank you, but I do sort of cheat. First, I stop the recording and take notes – but also, if I’m not sure of one, I go look it up on the episode page on the official BBC Doctor Who site. (There’s goes my air of mysterious competence… ~wink~)

      With so much great stuff about the TARDIS in it (I winced, too, when Gregor took that piece of her), I wanted to come out loving the whole episode. The monster-of-the-week just didn’t work for me, though. :

  4. Tree

    Ahhh
    LOL, that’s funny. They mention the names so rarely you have to do it that way! πŸ™‚

    • mrfranklin

      Accuracy
      You can catch them on a 2nd viewing if you try, but as my medium is print, I want to make sure I’ve spelled things right, even if I think I’ve heard a character’s name correctly. πŸ™‚

  5. unlimitedricepudding

    Sorry…
    I’ve been terribly pre-occupied this week.

    I gave this three viewings. Overall, I really enjoyed the episode. Truly. For the most part, I agree with much of your review. But there’s one thing here that I have to vehemently disagree with you on. And this is where it gets weird. Because I don’t disagree with you on the issue itself. Let me explain.

    I’ve seen/heard two reviews mention this issue (including you) and both of them have been Americans. And it is the issue of three black men cast in a major role in the story, but they are the “villains”. Both reviews are judging this by American standards. You have made the mistake of judging a British show by American standards. Don’t do that. They have a completely different approach to racial issues. I read four other reviews for this episode, all by British bloggers, and none of them mentioned this and none had a problem with it. In fact, I purposely hunted down British reviews to see if this was an issue with them. One of those reviews was by a black blogger. Also, be careful of your term “people of color”. This is a very broad term and doesn’t just cover black people. The character Rita from “The God Complex” was a “person of color”, being Indian. Indians featured heavily in “Dinosaurs On A Spaceship”. If you want to talk about black people say black people. They don’t get offended by this.

    The only things I truly disliked about the episode were the monsters, and the crack. The monsters were unnecessary, in my opinion, but I suppose you had to introduce that factor of her dying repeatedly somehow. But what’s the point if she’s not going to remember it? Or does she?

    And the crack. Horrible deus ex machina. “Things are messed up, let’s have a crack in time!” *sigh*

    Okay, I lied. The brothers could have been left out entirely. The story could actually have been well-rounded with most of it staying intact without them. But then, some awesome lines like, “Don’t ever get into a spaceship with a madman, didn’t anyone ever teach you that?” would never have been uttered….

    Some problems, but I liked the episode much better than Steve Thompson’s last effort….

    • mrfranklin

      Race in Who

      I'm not sure how well I'll address your argument here, because I'm not entirely sure we're talking about the same thing, but I'll try. First – you're absolutely right that I'm judging by American standards, because I can't help it. That's how I've been acculturated. Maybe race is viewed differently in the UK than it is here in the US. However, given the commentary on race in British television in the "Race Against Time" extra on The Mutants, I can't help but wonder if British reviewers just haven't had it brought to their attention often enough… Or maybe I'm "overthinking" it, as an American. ~shrug~

      Second, I very specifically chose to write "people of color" rather than "black people" (which, I'll admit, feels a little weird to me, as I've been trained over the years to talk about "African Americans" instead of "blacks" here, but obviously these actors aren't Americans, so that term doesn't work) because I was trying to talk about more than just black people. Yes, there have been other POC roles before, but they are sadly few and far between. Not only Rita from The God Complex, but also Nasreen from The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood are among them. (Interesting to note that actors/characters of Indian extraction are relatively common in recent series. Hmmm…)

      My point was that here we finally get not one but three POC characters (not peripheral ones, but major guest characters) – and they are made out as total jerks (two of them, anyway). That they chose to make these characters black men gave me pause.

      As for the plot – too much deus ex machina, too much monster-of-the-week, and unnecessary mean characters. ~shrug~ I enjoyed it for the TARDIS bits. πŸ™‚

      • unlimitedricepudding

        Apple Pie vs Scones
        I’m just as American as you are. And like I said initially, I knew exactly where you were coming from. Had this been an American show, I’d have been all over that like white on rice. I also lived in the South for 27 years. If you’re white and you set one foot out of line with a black, you’ll get your butt kicked, depending on where you live. I didn’t come from an affluent family, so I was one who had to be very careful. Thankfully, I was raised right and befriended people of all kinds of backgrounds. My best friend from high school used to say, “Don’t call me African American. I’ve never been to Africa and have no desire to go there. I’m black.” She wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

        Blacks in the UK walked a very different path than they did in the US. There was no Civil Rights movement, no Civil Rights Act. Nobody ever felt the need to tiptoe around them as they do here. Yes, there was discrimination. Still is. Heck, people go to court for racism over there. Look up a footballer named John Terry (twat). But still, it’s all treated very differently.

        The reason there are more Indians, Pakistanis, etc, on UK television is because there are more Indians, Pakistanis, etc, in their society. They are the dominant minority to blacks now.

        To be honest, I think Moffat runs casting a bit differently than Davies did. Davies seemed to run it in a way that said, “I HAVE to have a black person, an Asian person, a Middle Eastern person, etc.” So he says to the casting director, “Get me the best black actress for this role!” Whereas Moffat just says, “Get me the best actress for this role.” Except for roles that specifically call for a certain thing. Rita needed to be Muslim in order for that part to work. While white Muslims exist, it doesn’t make the character believable. Nefertiti needed to look a certain way. So yeah, there is some target casting at times, but, ultimately, I think I like Moffat’s style of casting. I mean, one time, he was casting for a 40-something year old man and ended up casting a 26-year-old. And the result was amazing.

        • mrfranklin

          Love me some scones
          I didn’t mean to imply in any way that you were not American. πŸ™‚ One of the main things I wanted to do when I started the blog was to present my own perspective on Doctor Who based on who I am – a 40-something, cis, white, straight, married American woman who only cottoned onto how wonderful this whole show is some five years ago now. I don’t necessarily want to separate my American perspective from my review, because it naturally colors how I see it. I don’t think that means I’m passing judgement on the show or production team (“don’t ever judge me by your standards,” the Doctor tells us – as have you ~wink~); it’s just my reaction, shaped by my own experiences.

          If Moffat really is just saying, “cast the best guys for these roles,” then great! I did think they acted the parts beautifully. I don’t want to ignore how it made me feel, though. After all, that’s why I’m blogging. πŸ™‚

          • unlimitedricepudding

            Hmm…
            Did my response come off wrong? I did NOT mean for it to seem confrontational. *sigh* I am batting 1.000 this week for being misinterpreted, I think. I’ll shut up now. On to “The Crimson Horror”!

          • mrfranklin

            Nonono!
            No, you didn’t come off as confrontational at all! I just wasn’t sure we were trying to address the same things. I didn’t mean for my reply to come off snarky, either… πŸ™

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