State of Bliss

The Time War #3.1

Released: 13 August 2019

Listened: 1/25/22

The third set, like the second, kicks off with a story that’s unconnected to the rest of the set, and focused on Bliss. Specifically, the Doctor wants to try to fix her “orphan of the Time War” status, which means using the psychic circuits to try to get a grip on her past, which is variable at the moment. So we get several different versions of Bliss’s history, some in which she studies robotics, sometimes quantum mechanics, sometimes from a war-torn world, other times from a peaceful one. And stranger, there’s a number of realities in which she meets a Professor Deepa, who has a “visualizer” that shows Bliss other versions of her own life in different realities. Which admittedly gets confusing, even for Bliss. Rakhee Thakrar seems to excel at the “sputtering, confused” state, but balances it out with genius at other times, so it’s OK. The climax gets a bit twisty, but the focus stays on Bliss almost the entire time, with the Doctor just advising. I think we did need a story that established where Bliss came from, and made her OK with traveling and helping out during the war, as opposed to being despondent about her temporal status. She hasn’t had a lot of stories, but she’s proving herself to be a quite capable companion.