Time Flies

UNIT: Brave New World #1.2

Released: 13 July 2022

Listened: 3/26/23

One of my favorite word-play jokes: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” In this story, you get much more literal time flies, or butterflies, or caterpillars; there’s a lot of bugginess going on. This one’s got a straight mad science plot, with a scientist genetically engineering butterflies to age backwards, a trait they can pass along by biting. Which makes this the right story to introduce UNIT’s latest scientific advisor, Dr. Louise Rix. Presumably Rix looks like her actor Yemisi Oyinloye, and dresses neither like a soldier nor like a scientist, because she finds it hard to get people to take her seriously. In the finest UNIT tradition, she pretty much does what she wants, investigates what she wants, and steamrolls anybody who gets in the way. Which would be fine if she were the Doctor (or knew as much as he does), but she hasn’t proved herself yet, and Bambera clashes with her almost immediately. She disappoints Bambera by not being able to magic up a solution to rewrite genetic code on the fly, which is completely preposterous, unless you’re used to working with the Doctor. She does get the job done, though. It’s also a bit rich of Bambera to be annoyed at Rix’s disrespect for the chain of command, when she herself is pretty insubordinate, but that’s the way it usually goes. The science in the story seems a bit dodgy, but nothing entirely out of the ordinary for Doctor Who. The resolution, in fact, is a bit of a letdown.