Journey to the Center of the TARDIS
From moment one I liked the ship. I wish it had been a model and not CG though. But it was good CG so it was still cool. It looked a lot like both the Earthforce destroyers from Babylon 5 and the Prometheus-class ships from Stargate. I liked it. And the basic premise reminded me of the salvage episode from Firefly (Our Mrs. Reynolds).
"It's important to me that you two get along!" D'awwwwwwww. I really really like that. (ALSO HIS VEST OMG JUST AS MAGNIFICENT AS THE POSTER LED ME TO BELIEVE BEST COSTUME DECISION EVER SERIOUSLY)
Oh no way is the Doctor going to give them the TARDIS. aaaaand then it turned out he was lying. Oh no way is he actually going to blow up the TARDIS. and then it turned out he was lying again. Okay then. Still super dark!
In retrospect, I'm wondering if the idea to set the (fake) self-destruct came from the TARDIS trying to warn him directly that the engines were exploding, "Edge of Destruction" style. Now, I don't think they did this, but how cool would it have been if someone had been all "hey Matt, just before you give that line, reach up and touch the back of your head. Right at the base of the skull. Yeah." "um....why?" "no reason, but it'll make the continuity watchers go nuts." "ummmmmm....kay."
Another continuity thing. This time of the "wild speculation" sort. In Rings of Akhaten, there's that great line about "universes where the laws of physics were devised by a mad man." Now...everyone on the internet has rendered that as "madman" (trochee) but it's not - it's mad. man. (spondee). Which...is interesting in and of itself. But there are two other times when the Eleventh Doctor has said the word "madman" - this episode and the Eleventh Hour. And both times he's referring to himself. Iiiiinteresting....
You know, I had wondered how the mini-nuke got into the TARDIS in the first place. Well done team.
So THAT'S what Living Metal is for! So... was Nemesis a prototype that went bad? Is that tree Nemesis (in which case you hardly gave her your freedom, did you Doctor?) Or is it a coincidence like the K-1 Robot? But they make a big deal out of Time Lord Technology here, so I like to think that Nemesis was a prototype for the tree thing. But suddenly it makes sense why you would invent something that does that. Wheee! That said, as cool as the tree was, we've got this whole MacGuffin thing going on which never actually went anywhere. It would be cool if they'd somehow used the stolen circuit to do...anything at all. I know it was supposed to be an Avery's Treasure type thing, but even that didn't really come through.
Echo consoles and flickering light switch! YES! Yes yes yes yes yes! That was the very coolest thing! And I think it's a deliberate call-back to the Space Museum. (I knew he was going to grab her hand and yank her out of there too). Also Edge of Destruction.
I wish they'd done more with the architecture of the TARDIS. I was promised Escher, gol-darn it! I especially wish all the corridors hadn't looked the same (although I loved them going around in circles from the corridor perspective. Nicely done!) I know TARDIS corridors always all look the same, but. This one was full of time echoes or whatever. I'd have loved to see someone turn a corner and end up in the corridor style from the Doctor's Wife, and then the Tenth Doctor's corridors, or, even if just for a moment, the white gleaming rondels. (Guys, I miss bright-TARDIS so much. So much). But...yeah - the geometries in "the Doctor's Wife" were actually quite a bit cooler than they were here, so that was a shame.
More with the Eye of Harmony. I've got some major hard-core reconciling to do. *cracks knuckles.* But I think this might actually make reconciling all the Eye of Harmony references easier rather than harder (and provides confirmation for the Omega connection, which had heretofore been mere speculation).
So, um, this episode was supposed to have Fourth Doctor references, yes? *waits patiently.* Well, there's the Eye of Harmony, but that was in last episode too, and there's lots of running down corridors, but...nope. Not feeling it.
Speaking of, holy crap I loved the console voices! And that means we've officially teased Susan twice, which means we can now invoke Rule of Three. Of course, you'd have to know what you were listening to to realize it was a Susan reference, but still. And thinking on it, I know I've seen gifsets of all of those lines. Time to track one down because :D :D :D :D :D.
I kind of feel that the time zombies were unnecessary. There was nothing bad about them, but ... eh? Although they did tie into the Secrets theme. But. That said. The single best thing in the episode (apart from Matt Smith's vest which SERIOUSLY OMG) was Clara's line about good guys not having spaceships full of zombies. HA! I also caught that the number of zombies seemed to correspond to the number of people, but I took that to mean that they were antibodies. Which woulda been kind of cool except for "why has this never happened before." But that was enough to put me kind of in mind of "Death to the Daleks."
So...the History of the Time War, eh? Who wrote that book? Why would they write it in something legible? Why would they leave it just kind of lying around? (Well, no, not lying around - on display) where just anybody could find it? Like, if the Doctor's name is as much of a BFD as we have been lead to believe, why would you write it in a book and then prominently display said book in an intuitive location like a library? This is not how you keep a secret. You keep a secret by not in fact telling anybody ever. I mean right?
Given that this is not how you keep a secret, it seems to follow that someone is trying to get this secret told. It also seems fairly obvious, given his reaction, that that someone is not the Doctor. So that leaves the TARDIS herself. The only way I can make sense of that scene is to conclude that the TARDIS is trying to tell Clara something. Also...you open right to it? Also, she knows immediately what she's looking at... whatever it is, she recognizes it. What she says is "So that's who..." If it were, I dunno, Phillip Supina, she'd have said something like "so that's what it is." But whatever she reads doesn't tell her what his name is - it somehow tells her who he is. It seems to be a name she knows. And she doesn't treat it as a huge reveal - she honestly doesn't understand why it should be important. This is our first solid evidence in a while that Clara might be other than what she appears - and it comes not long before the Doctor is finally convinced that she isn't.
This episode seemed to be all about revealing major secrets and unhappening them. Except...not quite, right? That's what the "shred of decency" line was all about. Some bleedthrough remained. And I think that's what the Doctor asking her if she felt safe was all about. He was trying to figure out if she remembered any of what transpired. "Secrets keep us safe." So...her yes answer means to him that she doesn't remember. But she disagrees. And she seemed to trust him a lot more by the end of the episode than she has up to this point (sort of inexplicably). So maybe to her it means the opposite - that she does remember. Gosh memory is such a theme this season. And is the Doctor now more confident about Clara?
I also really liked the Doctor talking directly to the TARDIS. His little "thank you!" moments were lovely - and his little speech about how she's always taken care of him and he doesn't know how to return the favor (*wibble*).
ALSO DID I MENTION THE DOCTOR'S VEST BECAUSE IT WAS REALLY QUITE GOOD.
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