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Saturday, 27 April 2013

Doctor Who 7.11 "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" Review

The Doctor (Matt Smith) gets Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) used to the TARDIS, hoping she will accept her but a salvage vessel spots the TARDIS and uses their gravitational tractor beam to take hold of it.  A grenade type object lands inside and Clara picks it up before there's an explosion.  The TARDIS is inside the vessel and the three brothers, Bram (Mark Oliver) Tricky (Jahvel Hall) and Gregor (Ashley Walters) notice the Doctor lying outside.  He sneaks up behind them and tells them they need to rescue Clara and will give them the greatest salvage they've ever seen.  The TARDIS is leaking toxic gases and they need to wear breathing masks, prompting the Doctor to ask why androids would need such gear.  Once inside he sets the TARDIS to self-destruct mode giving them an hour to find her, then reduces that to 40 minutes.

Clara finds herself exploring all sorts of corridors and rooms of the TARDIS and has a burn on her hand.  She comes across an alien figure with glowing red eyes which chases her.  Clara manages to reach the TARDIS library and a book telling the History of the Time War and surprise, surprise she learns his real name.  The first of many teasers.  Gregor wants to steal from the console and sends Bram back to strip it clean.  Whilst he comes across the room where there are replicating pods, which can replicate any form of material, well it's the TARDIS architectural reconfiguration system.  The TARDIS reacts against the pods being stolen and removes the door.  The TARDIS sets about turning  herself into a labyrinth of corridors and deathtraps, where they find themselves coming back to the same corridor.  A scene that was reminiscent of The God Complex from season 6 when the camera stayed in one place and they showed them running around the corridors of the hotel.

We also got glimpses of the swimming pool, the fuel core and finally the heart of the TARDIS too.  With the Doctor blaming himself for what Clara is going through, he brought her here to be safe.  He realizes the TARDIS has set up other areas of the console so that they are safe from the creatures and manages to pull her through to where he is.  They reach the heart of the TARDIS where there has been a frozen explosion and as they reach what appears to be the outside the Doctor realizes all they need to do is to jump.  But before that there's hugs aplenty again which she likes and most people won't cos again they're getting too close to stepping into that love fest for the Doctor territory, especially since Clara's mentioned all those snogging lines in the opener with her.

As for the brothers, well when the TARDIS metal tubes begin to fall in and trap Tricky, Gregor has to reveal he's not really an android but it was a game they made up.  Thus they bicker and the Doctor tells him to cut the metal and not his arm.  Also telling them Gregor showed a shred of decency when he couldn't cut his arm.  Alas it was all for nothing as the brothers throw the two Clara's off the edge but weren't meant to touch one another, which they do and thus they too become like the creatures.

The creatures chasing them are revealed to be past and future versions of Clara, she burned and died again.  She asks why again and he reminds her and us of how she saved him from the Daleks and then died, she was a nanny in Victorian London and again she died cos of him.  Clara also tells him she knows his real name but he stops her from saying it, as she repeats what he said about needing to keep some secrets. He asks who she is and she says she's just Clara, she doesn't know who they were.  Don't think the mystery has been solved though, they can't leave it like that, it's still so up in the air.

The Doctor solves the problem by finding the rift in time and throwing the grenade type thingy through it, thus the Doctor gets hold of it now with the message "Big Friendly Button" written on it.  Well he'd never have worked that out if he hadn't gotten hold of Clara's hand, see more hand holding!  That's what was burned onto her hand.  Thus Clara will also forget his name.  The brothers are back in their salvage vessel cos none of this happened with time being reset and Gregor repeats what the Doctor said about having some decency in him.  Those creatures were more menacing when we didn't know they were meant to be Clara, cos they didn't frighten after that.

There are various voices heard throughout as they clamour through the corridors, some of them including Rose when the Doctor (Christopher Ecceleston) was inside of her, about the hoards of Genghis Khan not being able to get through the doors, Tom Baker from The Robots of Death, "that's transdimensional engineering a key Time Lord discovery."  More from the episodes An Unearthly Child, with Ian Chesterton saying, "a thing that looks like a Policebox standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in time and space." Colony in Space, The Robots of Death, Rose, The Beast Below, and Smith and Jones.  Clara also comes across the cot from A Good Man Goes to War and the TARDIS toy that Amy and Mel had in Let's Kill Hitler.  Thought that time rift looked awfully like the crack from season 5 and the Doctor went though it in the exact same way he did in Cold Blood.

The explosion of the TARDIS engine has also created a crack in time and the Eye of Harmony is also seen which was in the movie with Paul McGann. Also noticed the key the Doctor uses has "Smiths" on it, now what was all that about.  Several references to the Doctor's Wife here and the Doctor expressing frustration, "I look at you every single day and I don't understand a thing about you."  What's significant about him saying "there's no way I can save her now."  Any possible future ramifications here, with reference to Clara, also has she really forgotten everything, especially his name.

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