Reigning in Hell. Once, Upon, Time – reviewed…

So. What the flux going on?

We tend to think of Time and Space as going together like a Horse and Carriage. Nothing can exist in Time that doesn’t exist in Space and vice versa. But what if these parents fell out? What if Time and Space divorced? Who gets the children?

In order to maintain interest in Doctor Who over a period of weeks it is necessary to keep varying the stakes. During the Moffat-Smith era, there was a tendency to threaten the very nature of time and space on a continual basis, which became somewhat tiresome. I don’t want The Doctor to have to save this and every other universe all the live long day. Sometimes I just want her to just save Guildford.

So this third episode, which its restless overlapping timelines and its deliberate confusion of what is doing what to whom WHEN, is clearly a high stakes outing. But I think Chibnall intends to alternate between chaos and confusion. Last week’s Sontaran episode was mainly set in one place with things happening in a particular order. Next week’s episode looks as though it will be anchored in the context of a particular run in with the Weeping Angels.

In the meantime, there are some very lovely visuals here. The flux is leaving some very poetic vistas of desolation in its wake.

Jo Martin is back to reprise her earlier Doctor – one who fought with yet resisted the so called “Division”. She seems to have acquired the name of “The Fugitive Doctor”, now that the numbering system is presumably redundant. Does this mean, incidentally, that Doctors 1-12 will all have to receive adjectives and epithets in place of their old number? The Cantankerous Doctor, The Clown Doctor, The Dandy Doctor, The Scarved Doctor, The Cricketing Doctor, The Nasty Doctor, The Mysterious Doctor, The San Francisco Doctor, The War Doctor, The Northern Doctor, The Faux-Cockney Doctor, The Fez Doctor, the Scottish Doctor… etc. etc?

Barbara Flynn was magnificent for the roughly 90 seconds we saw her. She’s apparently called “Awsok” which sounds like the name of a student society devoted to soppy movies. The Doctor is often sneered at by various megabeings for her irrational partiality for planet earth. Awsok sneers at the Doctor for her irrational partiality for the entire universe as we know it – which is apparently a universe whose time is up. Don’t get so sentimental Doctor!

I’m starting to think that the thing that will end up saving Time, Space, and Consecutive Logic will be the love of Bel and Vinder. Love will prove stronger than Time. That has to be the answer, doesn’t it? And not just in the context of Doctor Who?