MR 55: The Twilight Kingdom

I'll be honest I checked out of this one about five minutes in. So I'll try to remember what I can.

I feel like this is just pretty procedural. There's a mystery. They spend two hours solving it. The end. It's not a particularly interesting mystery either. Nor does the episode have anything to say really. It's just kind of here being bland.

So there's a military group hunting down a rebel from their world who is hiding out here. He defected when the military didn't tell him about his family dying in a diseased city until after his current mission whatever it was.

They find the rebel group in a cave underground. There's initially an intriguing thing here where the soldier kills his commanding officer at the command of the rebel leader. But this isn't ever really touched on or mentioned again. It's just kind of there for shock factor. One of the other characters in the rebel camp says that this isn't even a normal thing.

There's some tension with the Doctor and Charley as she wants to stay and help the rebels and he doesn't. Which is strange for him. Mr "I've organized more rebellions than you've had hot dinners." But C'rizz and Charley become more and more obsessed with staying.

And then the Doctor wanders around for a meandering hour until he finally figures out that they're in a giant living organism, not a cave. And the organism psychically manipulates people into staying and then eats them, its evolutionary survival mechanism.

The Doctor spends awhile talking to the disembodied head of the real rebel leader who has been down here all this time. He's been attached to the creature and projecting versions of himself to the rebels. He's dying, the organism wants the Doctor to take his place, and then he's saved at the last minute by someone else doing it instead. Classic. The organism can't handle all the emotions and grief of loss that the rebel and the guy who takes his place feels.

We learn that it's not indigenous to the planet. Of course. None of the people on the planet are, which makes sense. It's some sort of scientific experiment maybe? Rassilon plucking these creatures out of time and space and putting them in his divergent universe because he's incredibly racist? That's why there's zones and immigration and customs to direct the flow of traffic. Whatever the thing talking to them at the end is.

The creature also found the tardis apparently. I like how the Doctor feels disoriented in this universe, though. It's completely different with different creatures and no concept of time despite having time. If there is time still working I dont know why the Doctor is disoriented by that part.

The story itself is just pretty blah. Nothing bad about it really. But nothing particularly great about it either. It doesn't have much to say. Despite literally walking around inside a body, it's not as big into the body horror as say Kromon or the Projects. Just a disembodied head and beating organs.

Inoffensive at best. It could have benefited greatly from cutting an hour and turning it into a regular hour long episode. The middle two parts are where it slows down the most.