C+Q - Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (2013)

Ah, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS: the Series 7 episode that disappointed me the most. One of the very first rumours we heard about the 2013 run was that there would be an episode set entirely inside the Doctor's iconic ship, and I was really hyped for it. Then it aired and turned out to be a confusing and badly-acted chase down some corridors for 45 minutes. In order to examine just how much I dislike Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS is, I'm going to have to go more in-depth than usual, which means breaking down the whole episode bit by bit. Here we go!

4 Minutes In...

After the opening titles (Side note: the TARDIS wobbling out of control at the start of the title sequence is a really cool detail) we see the Van Baalen brothers trying to break into the TARDIS. When deadly gas starts leaking out, they decide it'd be best to throw it back into space. Then, despite being trapped under a huge pile of debris mere moments ago, the Doctor wanders up behind them. Firstly, how did the Doctor get from being inside the TARDIS to being trapped under all of the debris? Secondly, how did he manage to get from being unconscious underneath the debris to being up on his feet and talking to the brothers in 8 seconds of screen time? Thirdly, why didn't being crushed under that huge pile of debris with the TARDIS on top kill him? Fourthly, if he was somehow knocked out of the TARDIS and down to the bottom of that pile, how did the same collision knock Clara out of the console room in the opposite direction and down a bunch of corridors? Fifthly, why would the magno-grab damage the TARDIS? Wouldn't the Van Baalen brothers want their salvage in mint condition? Why use a piece of technology that destroys everything it picks up? So many questions! So few answers. And we've only just started. Jesus.

7 Minutes and 7 Seconds In...

Clara has awoken in the TARDIS and the grand tour can now begin. We start off with...a corridor. Fantastic. Get used to these corridors because the BBC only built one of them so by god they're going to get their money's worth. Here we see them lit up in red, but they'll be dressed in many different colours over the course of the episode in an attempt to fool you into thinking they're actually many different corridors. They aren't. Clara finds some scratches in the wall, and we cut back to the Doctor with the Van Baalen brothers for some more terrible acting. Seriously, these three are awful. All of them, especially Gregor, are flat, dull, and clearly disinterested in the story. They never act nervous or scared or angry or intrigued. They never really display any emotion at all. And if the actors who are being paid to do this can't even engage with the material they've been given, how are the audience expected to give a shit? Matt Smith is excellent though, but then again of course he is. The scene in the TARDIS console room where he's telling the brothers that he'll blow up the TARDIS if they don't help him find Clara is brilliant and Smith commands the screen, mainly because he's acting against three cardboard cut-outs of people. One thing I personally would've changed about this scene is the moment the Doctor pushes something on the console to make the doors close. I would've had the Doctor shut the doors by clicking his fingers. It would've been a simple gesture to demonstrate the power the Doctor has over his ship, and to the three strangers it would've seemed like a magic trick, making the Doctor appear more like an all-powerful sorcerer they had no choice but to obey. That's just a nitpick though. Regardless of how he chooses to shut the TARDIS doors, this scene is a highlight of the episode as it shows Matt Smith clearly channelling William Hartnell when he kidnapped Ian and Barbara.

11 Minutes and 17 Seconds In...

Finally, at around the 11-minute point, we see Clara actually going into a room in the TARDIS we've never seen before. It's some sort of store room where we see some old props like Amy's toy police box from The Eleventh Hour and the Doctor's cot from A Good Man Goes to War. At this point the main problem of the episode presents itself. Like with The Rings of Akhaten and so many other Doctor Who adventures, the real star of the episode and the reason why we're watching it is for the unique setting. However, unlike with The Rings of Akhaten, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS makes no attempt whatsoever to show off its star. We spend this entire scene in the store room very closely zoomed in to Clara and throughout the whole sequence I was desperate for a wide shot. Just pull back the camera and give us a big view of the entire room! Actually show us where we are. I'm not watching this episode to see Clara's curious expression, I'm watching an episode called Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS because I want to see the inside of the TARDIS. So show it to me! Don't fuck around with these close shots where there's loads of detail that's out of focus in the foreground. Zoom in on that detail, because that detail is the reason I'm sitting here watching.

The extreme close-ups then create a second problem with the scene: because everything's zoomed in you can't tell how far away the Time Zombie is from Clara, so you don't get a sense of the threat. This could've been solved by just zooming out and firmly establishing the dimensions of the room before you have a creature sneaking around in the darkness, because otherwise I can't tell where it is in relation to our hero. So that whole room, which could've been a good opportunity to not only see more of the TARDIS but also to see a ton of little props and easter eggs from past episodes like the black archive from The Day of the Doctor, turned out to be an absolute waste of time. Back to the corridors. And as if to add insult to injury, Clara runs past an observatory and a swimming pool during her escape from the Time Zombie, and at each one she pauses and makes a little laughing noise as if to say, "Hey, that room looks like it could be a far more interesting setting for an episode." She does however run into the Library, and at last we get a big shot of an entire room. Or at least, ONE big shot of an entire room. The rest of the Library scenes are shot in extreme close-up once again. But hey, it's something.

Okay, so maybe the extreme close-ups were a deliberate choice on the part of the director to convey claustrophobia and confusion. Fair enough, it's certainly effective when the characters are being chased by the Time Zombies and becomes pretty atmospheric when combined with the trippy-looking filter and creepy sound design. However, when the characters are not being chased by the Time Zombies, this zoomed-in style seems very out of place and it actively detracts from my enjoyment of the episode. It restricts how much of the TARDIS I can see, which obviously couldn't have been deliberate because if this episode didn't want me to see any rooms in the TARDIS, why would the script be set entirely inside the TARDIS? This episode is really giving me some mixed messages. Do you want to show me the inside of the TARDIS or don't you?

13 Minutes and 28 Seconds In...

Cutting back to the console room, Bram Van Baalen is now easily tearing the central console apart with his hands, despite that one time Rose, Jackie, and Mickey needed a truck to do it. But okay, maybe it's so easy to pull apart here because the TARDIS is badly damaged. But why when Bram succeeds in pulling the console apart does he not absorb the Time Vortex and become Bad Wolf? Consistency - who needs it?

From this scene, we join Gregor, who's stumbled into the most interesting room in the entire episode. The big tree-like structure with hanging white globes which is apparently responsible for the TARDIS' ability to reconfigure its dimensions looks stunning, and it's exactly the sort of thing I went into this episode wanting to see. It's a really creative concept and design that expands upon existing TARDIS lore in a way that makes it far more interesting instead of killing your imagination stone dead by defining too much. Cutting back to Clara, we see a baffling sequence in which she finds a book called The History of the Time War, opens it to a random place, turns a single page, and then instantly finds out the Doctor's real name (something which she must now remember after the events of The Name of the Doctor). Why would the Doctor randomly keep that book there, where his companions might stumble across it? How did Clara find the correct page in less than 5 seconds? How was she able to look at it and instantly tell that the word she was looking at was the Doctor's real name without reading the entire book or at least the entire chapter to gain some context? Yay, questions!

18 Minutes and 4 Seconds In...

Finally, somebody points out that all the TARDIS corridors (now in blue!) look exactly the same, except here it's actually a plot point. It's around here where the episode actually becomes a little more competent. The idea of the TARDIS trapping them in a space loop Castrovalva-style is actually really cool and original, and makes the ship seem more like a living, breathing creature that can make decisions for itself. As I said before, the setting is the star of the episode and here it's actually the antagonist. The idea of the console room repeating itself over and over again to keep Clara safe is also excellent and a great use of the unique setting. I think the most annoying thing about Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS is that it could've been so good, if only the Van Baalen brothers were played by people who could act, the direction showed off the TARDIS a bit more, and the script was given a few more drafts to address all of the unanswered questions and remove all of the pointless dialogue that goes against the basic storytelling rule of 'show, don't tell'. Oh, and of course if only the timey-wimey plot resolution and weird android brother side-plots were removed but we'll get onto those later. Anyway, this episode does have some good moments and concepts but they're just buried underneath shit. Every now and then you get a glimmer of potential but it's then instantly snuffed out by a moment that seems like it was lifted out of a bad school play, like when Gregor says "It's too late, he's gone!" to Tricky, mere seconds after Bram is killed by one of the Time Zombies. Gregor just doesn't seem to care at all that his brother has been killed. Not even a flicker of emotion on his face. Nothing. You might argue that he's just putting on a brave face for the benefit of Tricky, but why would he be so instantly composed and in a position to hide his feelings about the brutal murder of his sibling? And why would he be so angry at Tricky for having feelings?

26 Minutes and 5 Seconds In...

TARDIS corridors, now available in green! Why is the end of the sonic screwdriver light blue instead of green? I know the sonic can occasionally act as a torch but these corridors are perfectly well-lit and the Doctor quickly puts the screwdriver away so it's not as if he needed it to see where we was going. If they were going to make the end of the screwdriver a different colour just for the hell of it, I'd much rather it be red to indicate the red settings which we only actually saw in Cold War despite Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead making it seem like he was going to use the red settings all the time.

Ah, the Tricky reveal. Yeah, this doesn't work. This doesn't work at all. Why am I supposed to care that Tricky is really a human when the character is nothing? The episode acts like this is a big surprising moment but I don't give a shit. The only thing this reveals is how fucking demented Gregor and Bram are that they'd do something like that to their own brother. Also this revelation happens because Tricky wants Gregor to cut his arm off to free him from the metal beam that he's speared on, but at the end of the scene, they just end up cutting the beam. If cutting the beam was always an option, why didn't Gregor do that instantly and continue to keep the truth away from Tricky? This revelation is a waste of time, plain and simple. Nothing is gained at all from it. It's a cool character concept on paper but it adds nothing to this story because it happens to a character we don't care about and it detracts us from exploring the TARDIS. Worst of all, the characters involved in this revelation are minutes away from dying, so there are no long-term repercussions. Pointless. Fucking pointless.

32 Minutes and 48 Seconds In...

Why would the Doctor stand there reading from the Doctor Who wiki entry on The Eye of Harmony when he specifically told them they couldn't stand there for long or they'd burn?

36 Minutes and 17 Seconds In...

Why would the TARDIS be trying to keep the Doctor and Clara from the engine room now that the Van Baalen brothers have been dealt with? Shouldn't the TARDIS at this stage be helping the Doctor so that the Doctor can fix the TARDIS? Why would the Doctor think to look at Clara's hand to see the message from the big friendly button? Why is there a convenient rift is space and time leading back to the start of the episode? Why didn't any of the characters see that big obvious glowy rift if it was right in the console room the entire time?

The Last Three Minutes

Wait...w-...what the fuck just happened? That didn't make sense. Did that make sense? I just...uh...fuck. I mean I kinda...fuck. Fuck off. Just fuck off.