Doctor Who: Once, Upon Time Review - 5 Ups & 6 Downs
8. DOWN - Over-Explaining (Whilst Also Not Really Explaining)
Another week, another opportunity for The Doctor to narrate her every action. Is this an intentional character trait for Thirteen? Because it’s starting to feel like it…
The scenes of The Doctor and The Mouri in the middle of the CGI disaster that is the ‘time storm’ are a jumbled, incohesive mess. The Doctor tells the audience what they’ve just seen in case they missed it, then claims credit for hiding her companions within their own memories to keep them safe. The thing is, she doesn’t seem to have actually planned this, because she was confused and scared by her friends disappearing into the time storm just five minutes earlier, exclaiming that ‘time was pulling them back’ and she had to ‘rescue them’ - which is it, Doc? And more to the point, how does The Doctor have the power to control this, anyway?
The Doctor then pops up in Yaz, Dan and Vinder’s stories to explain what’s happening to each of them. This is reasonable enough, as the plot relies on them understanding what’s going on, but does this mean the audience needs to see a copy of the same scene three times? It wastes valuable time that could be spent giving these stories some much needed breathing room.