Some of it's about a companion strong enough to work brilliantly with the Doctor but still not his equal partner. Some of it's about the Doctor figuring out what’s going on through a mixture of derring-do and deduction and putting things right without shooting anybody. Some of it's about the fact that it's not on Earth, of course (and even New Earth is better than Earth). While we’ve obviously enjoyed many of the new series episodes, this felt like real Doctor Who to us in a way that only the Impossible Planet duo has since the new series started. But despite all of the above, we liked it. If you found all of this intensely maddening, you probably hate Gridlock. Were they running under time or something? Or the whole minute and a half of mystifying Old Rugged Crossing that has absolutely zero to do with anything else. Or the guy from Judge Dredd (we’re clearly having quite the Judge Dredd moment this series). Like the couple dressed like the American Gothic painting. Then there’s the stuff that’s not so much dumb as utterly bizarre. And as for closing off the lower city: what on New Earth were they doing with a system like that all ready to clang into place?Īnd what about the anvil-on-the-head parable about traffic and pollution? Yes, yes, all very Seventh Doctor, but doesn’t the fact that the cat nun has a Blakes 7-alike emission-free teleport bracelet make the entire thing pointless? Which kills everyone upstairs in seven minutes. And speaking of the Macra, don’t they eat gas? So why are they trying to grab the cars? Wouldn’t they be a bit gristly for a gas eater? And now that the gas has run out, where are they going to start looking for lunch, since the Doctor’s run away and left them where they were? And the (yawn) moods as drugs? Since when is honesty a mood? Or sleep, either? Oh, and the oh-so-clever recycling system that turns “waste” into food? There’s no food value in it. If the elderly lesbians were amongst the first on the motorway, then why would they think it’s reasonable for it to have taken them more than two decades to get where they’re going? Wouldn’t they have arrived straight away? And if you can reach speeds of up to thirty miles an hour in the fast lane, why would the pregnant couple think it’s going to take them six years to get to their exit? Also, if the fast lane’s that fast, why wouldn’t everybody get together in threes? Why would that be too expensive when the trip is so short? If it’s so expensive, how come the cat couple pick up the Doctor straight away? And why do they need to save fuel anyway when the cars make it themselves? Yes, it’s that Russell T Davies special: the plot utterly dependent on the wilful stupidity of everybody in it plus the viewers. Seems it’s not just the Macra who are devolving. So, shovelling that pile of dung aside, the most indigestible idea we’re asked to swallow is that people could go round and round a motorway system, chattting with each other, for decades without anyone ever working out between them that none of the exits are open. Let’s take as read the idiocy of going five billion and change years into the future to find near-future tech and present-day clothes: we’re used to that by now. Insightful, huh? But we think it can be scientifically determined: your enjoyment of this episode will be in precise inverse ratio to how annoyed you are by the dumbness quotient.Īnd alack, dumbness there is aplenty. “Well, it looks like the same old Earth to me.”
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