Right …
I’ve started this post at 18:22GMT: a few minutes before tonight’s episode of Dr Who — Once, Upon a Time — is due to start.
Hopefully?
I’ll have the complete review — written and video — up by midnight on 15th November.
Hopefully earlier, but by tomorrow at the latest.
We’ll have to see, won’t we?
14th November, 2021. (Still!)
It has to be said: I’ve just finished watching Once, Upon a Time: and … ?
And I’m thinking that was one convoluted story.
It’s something I think I should tell you about
Right get’s stuck in, shall we?
Then shifts, introducing us to Bel (Thaddea Graham): a young woman lost in time and space after the Flux, dictating a message to an unseen loved one whilst trying to avoid patrolling Daleks.
She’s unworried by the Daleks: as she knows how to fight them.
What’s worrying her?
Is the strange swarms of red and blue particles that seem to devourer those they are following.
But she is determined not to let them stop her.
~≈🪐≈~
Post opening credits?
We find ourselves staring directing at the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker): who’s breaking the fourth wall to tell us that she’s used to assessing her surrounds, rapidly, in depth, and with an eye to who’s in danger and who’s dangerous.
And, importantly?
How she can help her friends avoid death.
The Doctor then tells us that the only way she has of keeping her friends — Yaz, Dan and Vinder (Mandip Gill, John Bishop, Jacob Anderson.) — safe?
Is to throw them from the frying pan of the Temple of Atropos, into the fire of something she calls a time storm.
A time storm that immediate throws the team elsewhere … whilst showing the Doctor the grim form of a Weeping Angel.
A vision that soon vanishes … before whisking the Doctor off into the depths of her own time stream.
Into a patch of her history that shows her her first visit to the Temple.
A place she has no memory of, a place where her current companions join her …
And a place where her reflection is wearing a different face.
~≈🪐≈~
Now …
What did I think of Once, Upon a Time?
First things first?
A word that I’m be throwing around is convoluted.
I felt that Once, Upon a Time told me what happened to the Doctor, and the gang, was just a little convoluted.
The Flux has messed up space, and Time — as a result of Swarm and Azure’s actions in War of the Sontarans — is breaking apart into a time storm.
In order to protect her companions?
The Doctor has to hide Yaz, Dan and Vinder in earlier parts of their history.
Whilst appealing to the Mouri to come back to the Temple of Atropos: they’re the only beings who are seemingly keeping Time under control.
Convoluted is the word, I think. The Doctor is having to explain this to all three characters, whilst showing us Yaz’s dealing with Weeping Angels, Dan’s relationship with Diane (Nadia Albina), and Vinder’s career: and exile.
It forces us to pay attention: some of us will like that, some won’t.
Seeing Vinder’s back story filled in, in the midst of this?
He’s part of the military of a Culture-like society: a member exiled as punishment for disobeying the orders of a senior political figure.
Seeing that filled in … ?
Was an utter pleasure: a word I can also apply to the episode, itself.
No: ‘pleasure’ is the wrong word.
I think the word here, is great.
Or wonderful.
Or possibly superb.
Yes, I know what you’re saying, you’re saying “Paul, you’ve thrown the word ‘convoluted,’ at Once, Upon a Time: that doesn’t sound superb, to me!”
I’m going to quietly disagree, there.
Yes: we can call Once, Upon a Time, convoluted.
But I sat in my front room tonight, paying close attention to an episode of Dr Who that forced me to concentrate.
On an story that was sketching in back-story, telling us more of the characters, adding extra mysteries, shown us — flat out — that the Time Lords aren’t the only ones to regenerate, given us very good CGI Daleks, and frankly?
Given us the most menacing Weeping Angel we’ve seen since the days of the Eleventh Doctor.
Convoluted is one way of describing Once, Upon a Time.
Fantastic is the other one.
Frankly?
I’m going to be watching Village of the Angels, next Sunday.
I hope you’ll be joining me.
Once, Upon a Time.★★★★
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