Twice As Many Teeth: iHarmony, The Hottest Dating Site

So after several years of watching Doctor Who, and seeing all of these characters hanging out in the control room (and occasionally some of the neighboring hallways), hearing about the Library and the Swimming Pool but never seeing them, I've always felt that I needed to see what's really going on. And now, without further ado, I give you... THE CENTER!

The Story

The TARDIS gets wrecked.

The Doctor is fine, but Clara's still trapped inside, so he takes the Van Baalen brothers, who were to blame in the first place, on a Journey to find and rescue Clara, who is still stuck inside and hopefully not dead.

Not dead yet.

So Clara, while trying to avoid some zombies that mysteriously appeared and are chasing her, and the Doctor, while trying to prevent the Van Baalens from disemboweling the TARDIS, finally meet up. Clara is saved, and the episode can end early, until...

So now that the TARDIS's engine is in melt-down, they have to go down to the center of the TARDIS to fix it. After some visions of the past and a hectic run through some hallways while being attacked by flying sticks, the Doctor, Clara, and the Van Baalens visit the Eye of Harmony. It's in a very hot room that will melt everyone's brains (and everything else) if they stay there for too long, so they all go into the room, don't actually try to fix anything, and get trapped there by zombies.

"What are we doing here again?"

They find out that the zombies are, in fact, the Doctor, Clara, and the two remaining Van Baalens, from the future - specifically a future where they get trapped in that room and melt. The Van Baalens knock all of the zombies into the star, saving the day, but then they themselves zombify.

But not before having the universe's worst constipation.

The Doctor and Clara finally escape, but end up at the edge of a cliff, where they do the logical thing and jump, only to find themsevles in...

They forgot to fill in the background.

Seeing the actual Heart of the TARDIS guilt-trips the Doctor into finding the source of the time rupture, which happens to be a crack in time in the console room. The Doctor creates a Big Friendly Button, and tosses it through the crack at his one-day-ago self, who presses it. This resets time, and everyone lives happily ever after.

You want to think that he's smiling because his brother was nice to him, but you know he's just checking out his brother's rear.

What I Liked

There was a lot to like in Journey. So let's talk about it.

Timey Wimey

Like the previous episode, Journey wins the prize of telling a story that could only be told on Doctor Who, and in a totally different way this time. The past, present and future mixing together with disastrous results, while a companion wanders the maze of the TARDIS and finds the site of the Doctor's most innocent moments as well as the history of his least.

Where the Doctor pooped for the first time. Scandalous!

Wait a minute... A crack in time, the TARDIS exploding, memories getting altered, the Doctor sacrificing himself to go through the crack in order to save the day...

Did we just watch a recap of Season 5?

Zombies

The zombies were pretty scary at first, but it was interesting to see the element of mystery associated with these zombie things, first with the Doctor apologizing to one, and then referring to it as "she".

Miss Tardis, 2013

The Doctor does a nice job of hinting at what they really are with "our cells will liquefy and our skin will start to burn", as well as the reference to the rift in time somewhere on the ship. If the past is leaking into our experience, is there any reason why the future shouldn't be as well?

So I have to hand it to the writers, nice work with the zombies.

Face

That is all.

Big Friendly Button

The first time I watched Journey, I did not understand the ending. The Doctor carved the words "Big Friendly Button" into some random object, tossed it through the rift, and then... something? I dunno - makes no sense.

But look closer at the button.

It's a magno-grab! The Doctor hitting that Big Friendly Button just cancels out the magno-grab that the the Van Baalens were using! Not only does it make sense, but it's actually pretty clever.

I'm of mixed minds on whether or not they should have given more airtime to this solution. On the one hand, it's kind of a problem when on a first watch-through you don't understand the resolution. On the other, it was kind of fun figuring out what was going on on my second viewing.

What I Didn't Like

It wouldn't be a Season 7 Doctor Who episode if there wasn't something to gripe about.

The Van Baalens

I honestly would have liked Journey much better had these three characters not been included at all. They came across as such a bland combination of morally corrupt and uninteresting that I couldn't have cared less when they started dying.

Let's start with the oldest/tallest:

Bram, the guy pictured below, was acted so poorly that every time he spoke was a jolt of reality.

"I'm just here to remind you that this is a TV show and I'm not paid that much to act."

And then at the end, just listen to him say "Hey robot, go get me some food. I'm starving". Based on his delivery of that line, I'm pretty sure he's the robot.

Okay, so I think the director realized that he was a terrible actor and wrote him out as soon as possible. The other two came across just as weird and scripted, but that was probably more due to clumsy writing than bad acting.

This was Jahvel Hall's reaction to how boring his character was.

"I just wanted a brother beside me!"??? How is that a sensible reaction to finding out that you're not a robot? If anything, that would be a sensible reaction to finding out that you are a robot, or that your brothers are robots (although based on their acting, they might have been).

Photos

This was the Van Baalen family photo before the events of Journey.

And here is the Van Baalen family photo... well... also before the events of Journey but in the time-reset time stream.

He still thinks he's an android though...

So either time was not actually reset and we're now looking at a brand new time stream, or the writers wanted to toss in a corny statement of "look at the new happy family and all of their newfound hope for the future" without thinking of the timey-wimey implications. Guess which one I think happened?

Legs

How did the Doctor land outside of the TARDIS?

Screw it!

Oh, Tricky. I am so sorry you had to have that thing pointed into your face.

The Bars

"That bar spilled my drink! Outrage!"

I get it. The writers wanted to throw in a frantic chase scene, which is kind of obligatory in an episode about a damaged space ship. But the idea that they could run through the TARDIS with those bars getting flung practically at them, and have every single one miss, was so contrived that it was funny.

And then, right at the beginning of the scene where Gregor reveals that Tricky is actually human, the bars stop flying. Not only that, but all four characters just completely forget that there was ever any danger to begin with.

Speaking of which...

"But cutting your arm off would have been so much easier!"

It took the Doctor showing up to come up with this solution? Tricky wanted to cut off his own arm, and Gregor was just standing around looking befuddled. Really?

Overa... Wait, What?

The Doctor's name, a secret preserved by the ages, a mystery that must never be solved. Silence will fall when the question is answered, and that question is

And fortunately for those who really don't like noise, the answer is contained in this very volume!

The History of the Time War... Sounds like one of those boring books that no one would ever read.

Wait a minute, what? The writers built up so much mystery around the Doctor's name that they can't afford to have it sitting around for anyone with a library card and a recent breakup to find. Someone is going to need to explain how a name that's contained in a publicly accessible, and probably fairly famous, book can still be considered a secret.

I wonder, though, what that scene was supposed to accomplish. They could have had Clara learn that the Doctor had destroyed all of the Time Lords, and then freaked out over the fact that he's guilty of genocide.

But instead, we learn that Clara has a way of learning the Doctor's name. What are we supposed to conclude from that? That the other people who are searching for it are stupid? That they can't be bothered to go to the Raxacoricofallapatorius Public Library to do a bit of Time research?

Pictured: Time Research

Whatever is going on here, I hope the writers address it before the season finale... which probably won't have anything to do with the name of the Doctor, but still.

Overall

Journey to the Center of the TARDIS was a fun story. It brought with it a refreshing timey-wimey air and is the second episode in a row to have an intersting mystery with a satisfying answer. The resolution was pretty clever, and the pacing of Journey kept me at the edge of my seat until the very end.

What held Journey back for me was the Van Baalens. Their story was so boring, and their acting so bad, that they basically ruined every scene that they were in.

Still, the episode was exciting, fun, and I enjoyed watching it the many times I had to in order to write this review. It certainly wasn't a horror, and it definitely did not have me seeing crimson.