Radio Free Skaro #364 – Smoke on the Horizon
< For decades, fans of Doctor Who have been wondering and dreaming of what amazing thrills and sights exist within The Doctor’s TARDIS. The 50th Anniversary of the programme seems to be an appropriate time to finally peel back the curtain on The Doctor’s magical time-space machine, and Stephen Thompson’s script, free of crippling 20th century BBC budgets, took us for a ride. But what did the Three Who Rule think? After that, Chris and Steven are joined by Erika and Katrina from Verity! in Calgary, talking about the massive event that is Calgary Expo, which attracted 60,000 fans (and many Doctor Who cosplayers) to southern Alberta this weekend. Enjoy! |
| Show Notes:
– Journey To The Centre…of the TARDIS! |
6 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro #364 – Smoke on the Horizon”
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It was indeed considerate of Mat King to sparingly depict the TARDIS violence scenes,that kind of violence with mallets is really only acceptable when the Doctor is involved,i think.The action figure discussion went a bit wrong again,i notice with the promise of naked Ice Warrior exposure, a formerly proud and noble race of Martian Warriors disgraced by Barrowmanesque obscenity.It’ll be anniversary first Doctor underpants now.Shakes head sadly.Sounded like you guys were doing ok at the expo with the Patrick Mc Goohan style Golf cart speeding and giant queues.Please congratulate Erika for faithfully averting the ice hockey near contamination of your podcast.Good work Mrs.Shapansky.
Having seen ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ I am now nervous that they will indeed make a big deal out of the literal freaking name of the Doctor. This isn’t the right way to build suspense. The feeling when the teased name question hopefully gets waved away and it turns out the story is really about something much more interesting should be one of awe that the writers have outdone themselves, not one of relief that they didn’t actually go down the route they’ve been threatening.
The episode itself was kind of a mixed bag. It wasn’t great, as a whole, but there sure were great bits. Second worst of series 7, in my opinion, ahead of, by miles, ‘The Power of Three’ but it’s been a fantastic series that rivals series 7 in quality. I caught whiffs of empty calories. There were lots there for fans to love with references galore to the past and with glimpses of things previously only hinted at. It was popcorn. There were hints to things yet to come with the Doctor confronting Clara about her deaths. Now we’ve seen the insides of the TARDIS, including a giant tome presumably written and signed by the Doctor himself about the time war and have been told again how “impossible” Clara is.
Was that what the story was about? Moments catering to longtime fans punctuated by hints to the finale of the series? The rest seemed like a group of characters meandering through dark corridors heading towards the next kernel of popped corn. It sure was tasty and I gobbled up the whole thing and when it was done I wanted more but not out of excitement for what’s next but because it left me feeling strangely unsatisfied.
The family dynamics of the salvage crew was interesting but was treated relatively superficially. The time zombies never became very threatening and the mystery behind them struck me as neither very mysterious nor fascinating. The TARDIS did genuinely come off as an independent character and the dismantling of it was truly emotional but it didn’t seem like a serious threat until it was almost too late and then it was quickly resolved.
It really reminds me of ‘The Hungry Earth’/’Cold Blood’ with the fan pandering elements of ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ thrown in. It’s a good episode but it never rises to become anything more than the sum of its parts. As such it doesn’t really stand on its own. Popcorn is great but it’s not dinner and so on rewatch I’d probably watch it in direct conjunction with ‘Hide’ or, if Mark Gatiss goes ahead and finally writes Who I can get truly excited about, ‘The Crimson Horror’.
Is this comment (yes, I’m now leaving a comment on my comment) a well thought out and cohesive full meal? Probably not but I think there are some good points in here and I’d recommend reading it but you should probably read another meatier one right before or after just to be sure.
The one thing to take away from the episode: NEVER turn off the shields!
I enjoyed this episode for the most part, although I feel that the whole “big friendly button” idea, was poorly executed.If I am correct, it was the remote for the magna-grab and by sending it back to his past self he avoided being “grabbed”. I liked all the popcorn bits, even the whimsical Gallifreyan library ;).
Correction. Gallifreyan Encyclopedia, not library.
This was clearly more an episode for the fans than anything truly substantial. Saying this, I did love the audio clips from An Unearthly Child where Susan explained the name of the Tardis – an acronym for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It was a really lovely touch to include this despite the weakness of the story itself.