"IT TAKES YOU AWAY"
I’m probably in the minority on this episode, but I liked it. A lot! It’s been described as being a sci-fi version of “scandi-noir”, a style of mystery that seems to have really caught on over in the UK. (At best we get remakes of such shows. But I’ve seen a few via Netflix and once upon a time, MHz.)
My favorite about this was that it came up with a heady concept for the alien “menace” which is standard fare in novels, but rare in televised sci-fi. And that would be the introduction of a parallel universe which was sentient. And all it was looking for was a friend.
(It also reminded me of the cosmic heights reached in the Marvel comic books of the late 1970s into the 80s, especially “Adam Warlock”.)
My only complaint about the idea of Solitract was its name. To me that sounds more like some home exercise equipment. A lot of commenters I’ve read online were fixated on the frog, which was the form Solitract took at the end. They thought it looked fake. They also thought that Solitract should have taken the form of somebody from the Doctor’s past.
Let me just share first what Radio Times writer Huw Fullerton had to say about the Frog….
According to the Doctor, the Solitract (we checked the spelling) is a “consciousness” or “energy” that existed at the beginning of time that was incompatible with the scientific rules and matter of our own universe and was holding it back from fruition.
Legend says the Solitract was shunted into a different plane, where it was trapped alone for eternity – until the time of this episode, when it decided to create another dimension, pull over some people to hang out with and just hope reality didn't collapse (spoiler alert: it almost did).
To quote Mandip Gill’s Yaz, it’s basically “a separate exiled universe that is also a consciousness” – though it’s sometimes also a talking frog with the voice of Sharon D Clarke. (O’Bservation – Ms. Clarke played Graham’s wife and Ryan’s grandmother.)
A lot of people on Facebook complained that the Frog didn’t look realistic; that if Solitract could recreate Grace O’Brien and Trine perfectly (too perfectly – everybody else who crossed over into this mirror universe had everything reversed including shirt designs and dominant hands while Grace & Trine looked as they should have back on Earth.)
What they especially didn’t fathom is why should the Frog look so cheesy when the series has been able to do wondrous things with more complicated special effects in the past. Personally, I just think they wanted a cameo appearance by an actor who played somebody from the Doctor’s past, like Karen Gillan as Amy.
I liked the look of the Frog, that it should be its own version rather than an exact copy of a real frog. But let me showcase another critique on the decision from Jef Rouner, who said it better than I could have:
The frog form is what I see a lot of fans complaining about. Most of them wonder why the show didn’t take the opportunity to return someone significant from The Doctor’s past instead of a random amphibian. Surely fans would have loved to see Jack or Bill or even a random Gallifreyan in robes more than this.
That opinion is shared by Doctor Who novel writer Jonathan Blum. He told me:
The frog's rationale for choosing that form — "Because it delights me" — is one of the most Doctor Whoish things we've seen all year. And an attitude like that sells why The Doctor would be friends with such a creature!
Think about it for a second. The Doctor has been all across space and time. She’s seen everything, been everywhere. That includes friends and loved ones up and down their respective time streams. It’s old news to The Doctor, but a talking frog? That probably hasn’t come up before. Giant frogs sometimes, but a talking one who just wants to have a chat about how awesome everything that has ever been is? Nope, it is exactly the sort of thing The Doctor would want to see. It’s new and different.
- Jef Rouner (quoting Jonathan Blum)
And the fact that it assumed a puppetish form which was almost cartoonishly animatronic? To me that would have made Solitract even more intriguing to the Doctor.
Here’s my Wish-craft regarding Solitract. We know that they can’t actually meet ever again or it would destroy both Universes. But surely there must be some way the Doctor could establish a psychic rapport with Solitract which can cross between both universes without causing any damage to either plane of existence. There should be some sci-fi writer for the show who could come up with the right technobabble.
I really do hope we can at least “hear” from Solitract in the future. It would be a sweet gig for Sharon D. Clarke as a voiceover.
Look for Solitract to make it into the 2018 Toobit Awards.
Other O’Bservations:
Just because Hanne was Norwegian, that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be a fan of a rock band from some other country. So it could have been any other band on her T-shirt than the Arctic Monkeys except for one thing – there’s been a lot of focus on Sheffield, which is where the Doctor landed when she fell back to Earth. That’s where Team Tardis formed; that’s where they faced the giant spider threat; that’s where Yaz’s grandmother felt destined to go when she escaped the Partition.
And to complete that connection, the Arctic Monkeys were formed in High Green, a suburb of Sheffield in 2002.
Unfortunately, there was a Zonk with regards to the Arctic Monkeys:
Basic error from the Solitract – if Hanne’s mum bought her the Arctic Monkeys T-shirt at their first gig in Oslo, how come it was of the cover to their 2013 album AM? Arctic Monkeys played Oslo on 6 May 2011 as part of the Suck It and See tour.
The Doctor had seven grandmothers. Granny No. Five was her favorite who would often tell her grandchild (at that time a boy) that Granny No. Two was a Zygon agent. It was probably a lie designed to turn the boy against the grandmother whom Number Five didn’t like.
It’s an odd dynamic for the family. If we assume that the Gallifreyans got around to begetting in a way similar to Terrans*, than the Doctor should only have had two sets of grandparents. The Gallifreyans were humanoid and not swans, so they probably didn’t mate for life. Therefore, if divorce is a possibility on Gallifrey then the Doctor’s parents and even his grandparents may have divorced and remarried, thereby giving him even more relatives, albeit “step-grandparents”.
And the designation of “grandmother” might have been an honorific. Before my parents bought their house, we lived in an apartment and I called the landlords Auntie Nee and Uncle Roy. That may have been the case here; it might be Granny Number Two was considered close enough to the future Time Lord to be considered like a grandmother and that’s what made Granny Number Five jealous.
But there could also be a sci-fi twist in there as well. Once upon a time the Time Lords used their Tardises to travel not only through Time and Space, but into parallel dimensions. This is why Susan turned the Gallifreyan word “Tardis” into the English-based acronym “TARDIS” = “Time And Relative Dimensions In Space”.
So it could be that at least one of those grandmothers was the dimensional counterpart to one of the original grandparents. Perhaps they had to bring her back over to the main TV Universe, home to Earth Prime-Time, because her life was in danger at the time on her own Gallifrey. And there could be the reason Granny Five didn’t like Granny Two. Because of the numeric designations, Granny Five was the doppelganger to Granny Two and so she jealousy believed that Granny Two was preferred by the others. That would be why she spread such a rumor. (Hrmmm.... Maybe she was from the Evil Mirror Dimension as seen in 'Star Trek'.)
Perhaps two of them were the same grandmother, but from different points in her personal timeline. This could lead to a great fanfic depicting the reason why the Doctor is so adamant about not crossing his own timestream. Something bad must have happened because those two versions of the same woman were occupying the same point in Time.
If you ever come across any fanfic about the seven grandmothers, let me know. I’d like to read it!
Well, next week is the season finale!
Geronimo!
* Not for me the novel "Lungbarrow" with the birthing looms. You can keep that concept in BookWorld.
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