O'BSERVATIONS - "THE BATTLE OF RANSKOOR AV KOLOS"

EPISODE REVIEW #10
“The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos”

While there were points of interest in the season finale to foster Toobworld theories, overall it was a “meh”.

There was one major item of note for me, but I’ll save that for later.

But first….

1]  The Doctor was half responsible for the invention of the wellington boot (or at least half responsible for its popularity.)

Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, is known in History as taking full credit for the boot, even having his name connected to it.

The Duke of Wellington has had several incarnations in the greater TV Universe:

• Jeremy Young – “The Scarlet And The Black”
• John Welsh – “Edward The Seventh”
• Bernard Archard – “Number 10”
• Ronan Vibert – “Mr. Norrell And Mr. Strange”
• David Troughton & Hugh Fraser – “Sharpe”
• Stephen Fry – ‘Blackadder III’
• John Le Mesurier – ‘Dad’s Army’
• Peter Bowles – ‘Victoria’
• Peter Davison – ‘The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything’

Fry’s portrayal is in Doofus Toobworld; Vibert’s Wellington is off in some other dimension where such magic could take place.  Peter Davison as the Duke can be found in Skitlandia and Le Mesurier’s portrayal was a dream figure.  As for the others, all of them could be in Earth Prime-Time; the differences in their appearances could be attributed to them being seen by us through some other character’s perception of the Duke.  So if you wanted to write a fanfic about the Doctor (any incarnation) meeting Arthur Wellesley, any one of those other Dukes would serve well as your inspiration.

2] There was a callback to the episode “The Ghost Monument” with the appearance of the Sniperbots from the planet “Desolation”.  Which makes sense since they were created under duress by the planet’s overlords, the Stenza.

3] I found this question online: Who else makes up the Congress of the Nine Planets?

Good question.  Unless it’s just a name tossed out by Chibnall just as RTD used to do when he was the showrunner, there’s always a chance that a future episode might return to the subject with further details.  Otherwise I’d love to suggest the names of other planets from other TV series who could be members of this alliance.  Just a few suggestions:

• VULCAN (‘Star Trek’ – but also ‘Doctor Who’)
• QUADRIS (‘The Powers Of Matthew Star’)
• MINBAR (‘Babylon 5’)

Planets which I know definitely would never show up again would make good candidates for the five planets whose populations were killed off once “Tim Shaw” shrank them down for his energy weapon.  (I wonder if the Stenza stole the technology from Brainiac?*)

And now, the point from this season finale which piqued my interest.

·        The Ux - any connection to Kevin Uxbridge?

Kevin Uxbridge was a Douwd who had destroyed the entire species of the Husnock all across the universe in a single flash, wiped them from existence and memory.

From Memory Alpha:
The Douwd were an extragalactic species made of pure energy, self-described as "immortal beings of disguises and false surroundings". They had the ability to create and destroy on an epic scale; they also maintained the ability to attack through psychic means. However, they could not bring people back to life, only make illusory recreations of them. The Douwd appeared to be nearly omnipotent godlike beings, but not omniscient.

Only one individual from the Douwd race was revealed to the Federation, a being who referred to itself as Kevin Uxbridge, while in Human form. He lived a full Human life, met a woman named Rishon, fell in love, married her fifty-three years, and became a widower. (TNG: "The Survivors")

Since the Douwd had the capability to create on an epic scale, perhaps a Douwd – maybe even Uxbridge himself – created the Ux species of faith-driven dimensional engineers.  Maybe that’s what the last name of Uxbridge meant in the Douwd language – “creator of the Ux”.

Maybe…..

So there’s my look at the latest season of ‘Doctor Who’.  If you write fanfic, I hope you found some of the ideas I espoused in these posts to be useful.

BCnU!

* Brainiac never actually appeared in Earth Prime-Time when ‘The Adventures of Superman’ was on the air, but he was mentioned whenever Kandor was refernced in other shows. (And had he shown up, I think Michael Ansara would have been the perfect actor to play the role.)

O’Bservation:

Here’s a quote about tonight’s New Year’s Day special:
“The New Year’s Day special has been named “Resolution” in advance listings. But the current hot speculation is that three words have been omitted from that teaser title “... of the Daleks”.

And as we’ve seen, those online rumors are true!  But I’ll be saving a review of it for next year.  I don’t want to rush anything out for it.