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| "Hey, have I got something in my teeth?" |
The TARDIS lands in Cardiff, much to Martha's surprise. The Doctor references the time-space rift running under the city and the bit of trouble he had with a Slitheen here previously. Outside, there's one of the companions he had during that little adventure. Captain Jack Harkness runs for the TARDIS, calling for the Doctor. The Doctor sees him on the scanner and attempts to leave, but doesn't manage this before Jack grabs onto the TARDIS from the outside.
The TARDIS protests, sending the Doctor, Martha, and now Jack into the future to the year 100 trillion. The Doctor calls it the end of the universe and, as the TARDIS careens through the Time Vortex toward it, Jack screams out for the Doctor...
Oh, and a bunch of humans with face piercings, tattoos, and pointed teeth mug about. So there's that.
When the title sequence (which, for some reason, doesn't have Jack holding onto the TARDIS for the duration) ends, the Doctor tells Martha that they've reached the end of the universe, a period in history where even the Time Lords never went. The Doctor says that they should leave...and then gets a face-splitting grin before he and Martha walk out into a quarry at night.
...err, an alien planet. Yeah, alien planet.
They find the body of Captain Jack, Martha running into the TARDIS to grab a medical kit. Jack, however, is fine. Better than fine, actually. He's immortal now. He explains a bit about this while, elsewhere, a Professor Yana has tracked the landing of the TARDIS. He will not become important until later. Back with the TARDIS crew, they discuss the events of episodes past, namely the Battle of Canary Wharf and the fact that Rose, Mickey, and Jackie got away from the battle so Scot-free that it wasn't even funny.
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| Paul and Chani look over Arrakis following the Battle of Arrakeen (10193 AG - unaltered) |
Don't worry, though. I won't have a massive explosion on this like I did back during the Human Nature review. However, I do think it's funny the moment that Martha and Jack get onto the Doctor for paying more attention to Rose being blonde, he chastises them for "blogging" while they're at the end of the known universe and knowledge itself. It's almost as if Russell was preempting critics like me and telling us to be more focused on the adventure than on the fact that he's created incredibly terrible characters.
Well, Russell, you've managed to shoot yourself in the foot here. If you don't want us to complain about the shoehorning in of Saint Rose of Tyler, then you have a very simple solution: STOP BRINGING UP YOUR INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE CHARACTER EVERY FIVE MINUTES!
To be fair, Series 3 does have fewer references to Rose that I remembered before upon review, but those that do exist are incredibly irritating and out of place for reasons I already went into back in Human Nature. Russell trying to pull this here, not so subtly telling us that our criticisms don't matter and are stupid, is pretty offensively bad on its own, however. Once again, putting his words in the Doctor's mouth rather than actually writing the Doctor.
As said before, though, the Doctor, Jack, and Martha head out across the planet, notice that all the stars around them have gone out, find a matte painting of an abandoned city, and eventually run into a man running from the tattooed pierced-face alien humans we saw in the cold open. These are the Futurekind, and the TARDIS crew plus one head for the last human outpost. Getting to the gate and, after showing that they don't have pointed teeth, they are let in.
And here's where I get really confused about the Futurekind. Namely...what in the hell are they? The episode implies that they are what humanity fears it's going to become if they don't get to Utopia, and we see one of the people in the Silo later turning into one and causing havoc, but we have nothing apart from that.
Is it a viral thing? Is it like the Reavers in Firefly and they all went insane after some sort of government experiment? You could do an entire episode literally just on the concept of the Futurekind and it's just never expanded upon.
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| Derek Jacobi gives a fantastic performance as both Yana and the Master. Spoiler alert. |
In the Silo, the group meets a young boy named Cree who is simply there for pure emotional manipulation of the audience, and the Doctor gets to rip off the speech he made way back in The Ark in Space during the Tom Baker era. A "humanity is awesome" speech, which exists to both rip off that speech and hand wave how people in the year 100 trillion look exactly the same as people in 2007 just with tattered clothing.
Nice try, Russell. Didn't work for the Macra in Gridlock and it doesn't work here with humans wearing post-apocalypse chic that looks suspiciously like 21st century clothing. The Classic Show's "futuristic" outfits might have looked ridiculous, but they were at the very least never boring.
The Doctor opens up the silo proper, revealing a massive rocket. The pieces start to come together when Yana runs up and, after mistaking Jack for the Doctor, drags the Doctor along to see the work he's been doing.
Oh, and something something woman who's becoming a Futurekind. Somehow.
As Yana puts the Doctor through technobabble, Martha and Jack talk (and in Jack's case, flirt) with Yana's insectoid assistant Chantho. We do get some genuine good lines here, particularly with the Doctor's "hermits united" bit that always gets a chuckle out of me. Also, Martha realizes Jack has the Doctor's hand from the sword fight on Christmas and has an understandable freak out about it.
I mean, she's only seen vampires, a Dalek had a man's body shoved up its rear end, animated scarecrows, and a living sun. It's not like this isn't a little bit ridiculous in comparison.
But Yana lays down the truth of things - the humans here are trying to get to Utopia, a mythical land where they will surely escape the heat death of the universe. A signal was sent out, and they're following it, but need to get the rocket working. Yana says as much that the planet that they're on isn't say, Earth in the distant future (since we know what happened to it in the year five billion), they're refugees here...so how did they get here if they have no ships? And Yana mentions refugee ships later on...so where are they? Did they use them as scrap metal for the Silo? That seems really stupid if they did...
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| Even in the year 100 trillion, ya boi Jack Harkness has game |
Yana has a bit of a headache and the post-production team decide to be jerks and put a sort of...sound of drums...over it. I'm sure that won't amount to anything.
The Doctor's player levels up his character to give him just enough points in Plot Convenience and manages to roll a Nat 20, reactivating the rocket's boost reverse system despite him saying less than five minutes earlier that he had no idea what the hell any of this technology did. Because, even in the future, nobody's going to show up the Doctor.
The humans begin boarding the rocket, and Martha gets a scene with Cree. Cree tells Martha that, in Utopia, "the skies were made of diamonds". Remember this. It's going to hurt later.
The Doctor and Yana get to work on science, and Yana declares his intentions to stay behind while the others get to Utopia. However, the crew managed to find the TARDIS on the last water collection...and, upon seeing it, Yana gets those post-production drums again. Really, guys. You should stop tormenting him, it's not nice.
The Doctor hooks the TARDIS into the systems to give them "a bit of a cheat". Yana tells the Doctor about the "constant noise" inside his head, the sound of drums...getting closer. The Doctor seems somewhat worried by it, but Yana manages to distract him with work.
I'm sure it's not that important.
Also, Yana and Chantho ship teasing to parallel the Doctor and Martha ship teasing. And, like a Doctor and Martha ship, it is likewise never gonna happen.
Part of the system needs repairing by a man in a hazmat suit - a room filled with radiation that will kill anyone who enters it without protection. Even with the suit, if they don't hold the radiation back, it will kill anyone who enters the room. If you're predicting this is gonna go belly up, then you're right. The Futurekind woman in the base starts pulling at random wires in a random fuse box, which mucks up the entire thing and kills the man in question.
Also, Futurekind woman gets shot down because...y'know...psychopathic cannibal attacking people.
Oh, and Jack dies again to jump start the vents, but to no avail. All seems lost...and then the Doctor points out the solution to their dilemma is Jack...who resurrects once again. The Doctor and Jack head down, Jack stripping down to just a shirt and suspenders for fanservice before entering the chamber.
And here, the Doctor and Jack have a talk about what happened in The Parting of the Ways, the main bullet point being that Rose brought back Jack forever. He cannot die, presumably not even if you take his head (and therefore his power). The Doctor ran from him because he saw Jack as "wrong" due to his Time Lord upbringing, which Jack jokingly calls him prejudiced for.
While this is happening, Yana overhears bits of their conversation and certain key words echo in his mind..."TARDIS"..."Daleks"..."Time War"..."regeneration"...
At one point, the Doctor asks Jack if he actually wants to die, but Jack is no longer sure after seeing and being inspired by the people at the Silo.
Back in Yana's lab, he begins to cry. He mentions there was time travel back in the old days, though he never believed it. He never could keep time, always late, always lost...and he pulls out a fob watch that Martha finds pants browningly familiar from a recent misadventure. Yana mentions he's had it all his life, but can't remember too many details about it and thinks it's open...at least until Martha asks him how he knows it's broken if he's never opened it.
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| "Oh, hang on. There's a message - 'Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine'. ...a crummy ad? Son of a bitch!" |
Martha goes to get the Doctor without taking the watch, and we get more drums that I'm sure are not very very blatant foreshadowing of bad juju about to go down.
The Doctor expresses disbelief that it could be from a Chameleon Arch, but asks Martha if Yana can see it now.
Yana hears the voices of Masters past, for he is indeed the Master in human form. The voices are various clips of the Master from various stories including Anthony Ainley's characteristic wry chuckle, as well as new audio including a Roger Delgado sound alike telling him to open the watch. As much as I've jokingly poked fun at the post-production team in this episode, kudos for putting that in for maximum effect.
Of course, I've ruined the big twist of the episode...but meh, it wasn't that well hidden.
The rocket takes off as Martha realizes what the Face of Boe's final words meant. "You Are Not Alone" or "YANA" as an acronym. Jack's proximity to this conversation makes a future conversation a little weird, but there's 101 trillion years between this conversation and that one, so I'll let it go.
Yana opens the watch and goes Master mode again. He begins to destroy the work they've done, opening the doors to allow the Futurekind in. Chantho freaks out about this, eventually pulling a gun on the Master to stop him. Derek Jacobi has a fantastic bit of menace here as he delivers the line spelling out who he is to the audience - "I. Am. The Master!" - before electrocuting Chantho with a bit of cable.
The Master takes the severed hand of the Doctor and gets to the TARDIS, though not before being shot by Chantho in her death throes. The Doctor and the Master share a glance and the Master manages to get in and lock the TARDIS before the Doctor can stop him. The Master laments the death of his incarnation but declares that if the Doctor can be young and strong, then so can he. He regenerates into...John Simms.
What's the opposite of a glow up?
To go ahead and give John Simms his due credit, he is far better in both of his later appearances on the show. For this trilogy, though...not as much. Stacking him up next to Derek Jacobi is a bit like trading a perfect cut of steak for a jar filled with melted chocolate...and the chocolate has ants in it...and the person you traded your steak to for it beats you over the head with a golf club...before they throw up on you.
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| They're staring at the howling abyss Chibnall's left behind with Series 12. |
Regardless, Jack and Martha try to barricade the door to keep the Futurekind out while the Doctor tries to appeal to the Master. The Master gives him the classy equivalent of "Go screw yourself" and takes off for parts unknown, though not before the Doctor does some jiggery-pokery to the TARDIS that seems to do absolutely nothing in keeping the Master from escaping. The doors are failing, Jack and Martha scream for the Doctor to help, and the Doctor stares dumbfounded at the spot where the TARDIS once was...his fate and the fates of his companions seemingly sealed...
Utopia is a pretty good episode on its own. It's hard to judge it as it is the first part of what is essentially a three-part episode (there are no gaps between The Sound of Drums and the situation doesn't really disconnect it at all from Last of the Time Lords, hence why I count it as a three-parter instead of a single episode and a two-parter following it), but I'll give it my best shot here. Utopia is a very good post-apocalyptic (or, rather, Apocalypse Concurrent) story that showcases humanity surviving well beyond its expiration date and indeed the expiration date of the universe.
The cast is good. Derek Jacobi is great as Yana and the Master, being able to flip that switch between the two with frightening ease (and making me sad we didn't get more of his Master, but at least we have audio dramas). It's great to see Jack back.
Unfortunately, the episode has some bad bits, mainly a bunch of potential that doesn't get developed on and much to the episode's determent. The plot hole about humanity got to the planet without ships is not even brought up and what the Futurekind is is a mystery that the episode doesn't bother to answer. I realized why that is, of course - Russell didn't find that important. It was all a back drop to the story that he wanted to tell, and fodder for elements of the upcoming episodes, and that's really a great shame. A lot could have been done with this.
Maybe something better than what we actually got out of it.
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| "Derek Jacobi is no longer here, you are stuck with me!" |
As far as what's given to us, though, Utopia isn't bad. Watch it if you're a fan of the Master and weep over the fact that we didn't get more Derek Jacobi on the show.
Next time, the Doctor, Martha, and Jack escape back to 2007. Election Day has come and gone, and the United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister. Saxon is your man, they say, and it seems that he is. But the drums...the never-ending drums...they beat on. Next time, The Sound of Drums...
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