Audio Review: Doctor Who: To the Death

[wshaffer]

To the Death by Nicholas Briggs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As I was listening to this, I kept thinking, "Wow, how are they going to hit the reset button on all of this? And how much respect for them am I going to lose when they do?" And then, they didn't hit the reset button.

They gave us enough of a miraculous rescue at the end to ensure that we can continue to have more 8th Doctor adventures, but beyond that, they didn't chicken out of a single grim consequence.



I have to respect them for that, even if, in general, I don't really like my Doctor Who to be quite this grim. In a lot of ways, for me, Doctor Who is a show about finding the alternative to the bad choices the universe hands you. The bad guys say, "Submit or die!" and the Doctor finds the way to not submit and not die, and to have tea and biscuits while doing so.



However, it is important for the show to remind us that this third alternative isn't always free or easy. If the Doctor can just get away with anything, the show stops being about hope and courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds and starts being about a smug alien with bad dress sense who can fix all your problems. So it's probably important that we get an episode like this every now and again. Just to remind us what the stakes are.



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