Previously, Next Time

The Time War #5.3

Released: 18 January 2023

Listened: 2/4/23

It’s a Time War boxed set, so we have to have Daleks in it at some point, and to deliver that, they got writer James Moran, writer of “The Fires of Pompeii” and various Torchwood episodes. This two-part story is a puzzle box of continuity, as the Doctor, Alex, and Cass try to destroy a Dalek temporal weapon, and find themselves tossed backward a year in the middle of a civilization that didn’t exist before they interfered. It’s not quite as twisty as a Moffat or a John Dorney story, but it does have plenty of temporal confusion going on. The story is mostly told as an “interrogation turned flashback device,” and the interrogators are from a pre-spaceflight civilization, so that provides lots of opportunities for exposition. And snark. Oh, so much snark. Cass was already pretty good at it, but in this story, everybody’s on another level. The Doctor’s initial conversation with the interrogator is a masterpiece by itself. Even the natives have a good grounding in sarcasm, for reasons that are actually part of the plot later on. And the mystery of what happened to Bliss is still running, but barely mentioned here. As a Dalek runaround story, it’s pretty good, but the dialog is the real star in this one.