10.26: The Infinite Quest
In which Doctor Who tries something new.
Broadcast: April-June 2007.
Watched: September 2021.
“Snakes like bendy buses, sabre tooth gorillas”. I miss bendy buses.
Anyway. Watched it here, fairly randomly – I meant to do it in the mid season break, but forgot. First televised Doctor Who cartoon; first sign of Big Finish encroachment, with a script by Alan Barnes. I assume that nobody thought it worked from the fact it didn’t become a regular thing.
Structurally the story is quite odd – because it was shown in 13 parts [as an element of the kids’ show Totally Doctor Who], the first is a sort of prologue story in itself; it’s like a comic, or maybe The Keys of Marinus.
But to be fair it does make a bit of effort. There’s a whole load of stuff you couldn’t do in a live action one (the moving oil rigs, giant metal birds, lizards and insects and a frozen planet etc). It has a decent guest cast (Anthony Head, Toby Longworth, Liza Tarbuck doing her best Captain Wrack). There’s even an attempt at moral ambiguity – none of the various scenarios really have heroes or villains, just people being crappy to each other.
Despite all this though it’s just quite boring. Some of the animation is very bad (Pilot Kelvin doesn’t move his head). And the “heart’s desire bit”, with Martha meeting a fake Doctor, is really creepy, though it does amusingly prefigure the meta-crisis Doctor bit.
There are plenty of live-action Who stories with less to recommend them, but still. Oh well, maybe some kids liked it. [Actually, reading this now, a year on, I’m wondering if I was unfair: this was made to be watched in 12 three-and-a-half minute chunks, not as one episode. Maybe it works better that way?]
Other things:
Is Caw a Pirate Planet reference?
Someone clearly liked the "skeleton crew" bit as they look just like the monsters in Library.
While we're doing references, there are jokes about the Doctor's unpaid library fines (shades of Ricky Smith), and getting 2 billion years in prison (obviously).