*Episode premise spoilers, staying very much on the surface of things.*
Hoo boy! It is penultimate episode time, and I am here for it! Dismayed that the season is ending next week, but this episode certainly has me champing at the bit for the finale.
The Doctor and Ruby have questions about two women. One that they keep seeing everywhere, the same face appearing across time and space. And one that they’ve never seen—Ruby’s biological mother. The twin mysteries lead them to UNIT, where they investigate with the help of some old friends.
My thoughts on the episode are still pretty jumbled. It’s a proper penultimate episode of the “oh shit, it’s about to go down!!!” variety, and there’s plenty going on here that will need the finale to make much sense of things. But the big moments are wild, the cliffhanger is tasty, and I can’t wait to see how things all come together next week!
Over at UNIT, we of course have Kate, along with some familiar faces from the 60th anniversary specials and some new characters. We get a great new bit of technology—and the Doctor’s reaction to it, which is even better—terrific visuals, and Fifteen giving out hugs like they’re going out of style, bless!
One downside of engaging in fan discussions is that you gain some of the knowledge of viewers who bring an old-school-Lost level of analysis for clues, pointing out things that I wouldn’t have picked up right away on my own. I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to notice the same woman appearing in different roles in every episode were it not for people posting screenshots and speculating about her identity. But now that the Doctor and Ruby have caught up with those eagle-eyed viewers and recognized the mystery of the woman, it’s fun to watch them investigate. UNIT is already on her tail for different reasons, and the Doctor has very personal questions to ask about who this woman could be.
The mystery of the woman involves a particular time crunch, so it can seem a little odd to be using UNIT tech to try and investigate Ruby’s biological mother at the same time. Maybe the Doctor knew he was approaching the season finale and had a hunch he was about to have his hands full, meaning he’d better take advantage of any speck of downtime? At any rate, this story is very intriguing too. There are a lot of unanswered questions here, and I’m really looking forward to learning more.
I’m a little nervous, because many a new Who finale has failed to live up to its part-one cliffhanger. But I’ve liked this season a lot, and there have been so many ongoing threads and questions throughout. Put together with the strength of this episode, I really hope RTD and co. will stick the landing on this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment