Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 496: The Invasion of Time, Episode Two
Dear diary,
I’ve been musing again today about the style of Gallifrey. When we last visited the planet, in The Deadly Assassin, I went on at some length about the way that I personally imagined the planet to look, before concluding that while I liked the design we get on screen, it really was just any old planet, as opposed to being the majestic home world of the Time Lords. Today, I put the question to Emma - what did she make of the fabled Shining World of the Seven Systems?
I think her opinion could be neatly divined from her description of it looking like a child’s bedroom. There’s lots of bright colours about on Gallifrey this time which weren’t there during the presidential assassination. They’ve added plastic chairs in various colours, and they carry their ancient relics around atop inflatable plastic cushions in a bright red hue. Emma seemed to feel the same way that I had - it just wasn’t what she’d expected to see from Gallifrey. Personally, I don’t think I’m all that fond of these new additions to the Citadel, either. They’ve gone for ‘futuristic’ designs in the furniture, but that just means that it’s dated all the more. I won’t say that it makes it look incredibly 1970s (indeed, I’d say in places it looks to be more 1990s than anything), but it certainly doesn’t leave you with the impression that I think they were aiming for!
It’s all the colours which caused me a problem with this story… during The Name of the Doctor. There’s a sequence from this episode (the Doctor walking down a corridor) which was used to represent the Great Intelligence, and later Clara, making their way through the Doctor’s time stream. Because of the big, green, wall in the background, I always think it looks like they’ve forgotten to green-screen the background in behind our digitally-added characters! It’s something that I simply cannot un-see now, and it does somewhat turn my opinion even more against the design!
Elsewhere, the Doctor is still acting incredibly out of character - ordering the removal of Leela from the Citadel, to be thrown out into the wilds. I’m guessing that it’s to protect her from the invasion he’s allowed to happen, but I’m not entirely sure yet. Part of the beauty here is that I can’t tell if the Doctor is faking all of this for some greater reason, or if he’s genuinely been possessed by something. He’s been taken over so often in the last couple of years, that I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. That haunting cliffhanger, where he laughs in that way only Tom Baker can, only adds to my suspicions that he’s perhaps not entirely himself at the moment.
It’s also helped by the fact that it has gone on for so long now. Usually, the Doctor might be out of character for a little bit of an episode, and even then if he’s faking it, there’s usually a wink or a nod to his companion (and the audience). Here’s he’s kept up the charade for a third of the story, and that’s making me very unsettled. There’s a number of little hints and tips towards Borusa that seem to imply that he’s waiting for the room to be properly sealed off before he can talk openly, and that makes me think even more that our mysterious alien invaders might be inside his mind, controlling some of his actions.
