DW: Episode 7.2.5

Sudden thought while watching the first few seconds: "what if this is Doctor Who meets Red Dwarf? Please no!" Oh well, let's set the control for the heart of the TARDIS!

Wow. Talk about... wow. People mention a lot of episodes hit the reset button at the end, but a literal reset button... (which, note, had centered text on it, even though the text on Clara's hand was left justified). Yeah, reset everything, make the entire episode pointless...

Not that it was giving great value anyway. Why did the Doctor lower the shields? In basic mode, you want more basic protection against the user doing something wrong! But without that there wouldn't be an episode, where the Doctor gets thrown from the TARDIS... somehow. And then the van Brulen brothers have to go in (and fortunately not Red Dwarf at all), and what was the point of them? They bicker, and the big revelation is that they pranked their brother? Am I supposed to care about them?

Then there's the inside of the TARDIS. Lots of corridors, as expected (although not the same as last season, but there has been a console change, so the corridors could change too). Lots of CGI rooms put at the end of corridors where there would otherwise be blue screens. A library with a plot point that the writer wouldn't be allowed to spoil, even if Moffat actually ever told anyone. And a console that spews clips from previous episodes. A couple of different rooms again, but... I dunno if it the production set up, but overall, I just wasn't impressed. It felt too cramped, even in spite of the CGI extensions.

And the monsters... pro-tip: if you blur the picture, it just makes me think you haven't got a good monster design. And how exactly did they come about if the time line was never going to happen (for them to happen, the Doctor needed to keep his hand to his face, which he didn't as soon as he had, so there). And the designs weren't that bad, so was the director afraid of showing them anyway?

So far, the better inside TARDIS stories are ones where they focus on the characters. In this, they are running around, showing off 'ooh, we are inside the TARDIS', that they never get to that part (at least, not more than superficially). I should be more enthused about this episode that I am.
Next week: We're back with hersits and them and... *insert overly worn out sigh here*

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