Doctor Who – Doctor of War: Destiny

#2.02. Time Killers ~ 7/10

◆ An Introduction

It’s time to continue my spring cleaning activity by finally completing this box set. It really shouldn’t be surprising that it’s taken this long, given the scathing score the first episode got, but I remember the rest of this set being pretty competent. Time to reunite with the Warrior, who seems to have ran into trouble with temporal taxes!

◆ Publisher’s Summary

Arriving on Marinus in search of a temporal weapon, the Warrior and the Master are confronted by a place where time literally is money. As the Master finds himself in changed circumstances, the Warrior finds himself with a deadly decision to make.

◆ The Warrior

Despite Colin Baker being my favourite actor to have played the Doctor, he really doesn’t sound enthusiastic about this script.

The Warrior isn’t concerned with local, civil nonsense.

◆ The Master (The Warrior’s Universe)

After being one of the only positive aspects of ‘Who Am I?’, Geoffrey Beevers delivers a decent, if unmemorable, performance in ‘Time Killers’. Shame the Master received virtually no character development then.

◆ Story Recap

The Warrior and the Master are searching for a weapon that has been causing temporal disturbances when they arrive on the planet Marinus – now known by the name of Millenius.

Time is a precious commodity on this world, and Bank Manager Horol taxes anyone who dare decide to slow down; anyone who decides to stop and smell the metaphorical flowers. But the tax isn’t money… it’s temporal. Stop for even a nano second, and the bank will take whole years off of your predicted life-span, classing it as “interest”.

◆ Priority: Productivity

‘Time Killers’ feels like a social commentary on how we spend our time; how our hectic social and work lives mean we’re always rushing around and being made to value productivity over anything else. In that regard, I’m reminded a lot of a rather brilliant script with the Eighth Doctor called ‘Time Works’.

I completely get the ideas that Hopley is playing with in this episode, because I do think everyone of us is always in a rush. I often say to my mam about how I wish there were more hours in the day, but nothing in our current world really stands still. Everything and everyone is on the move; working, talking, playing, laughing and crying.

I remember when I was in college, my first year was a living nightmare, and I used to bunk off at every opportunity. There was an abandoned residential estate nearby that people had turned into an unofficial dog-walking path, and I just used to go there and sit – just breathe and take in the now, as it were. I know some people may think I’m going off on a tangent here, but it’s a relevant tangent (that and I love the kind of scripts that make me think and explore my own experiences).

◆ Sound Design

This alternative version of Marinus is positively chaotic, with everything and everyone constantly in motion. Jack Townley’s sound design is really well done here.

Horol’s high pitched voice can be heard as she taxes the citizens of Millenius, adding interest onto their predicted life-spans and ageing them rapidly. The Warrior’s TARDIS nearly shakes itself apart as it attempts to land everywhere, in all times, with alarms blaring inside. Emergency service sirens echo in the city, following a road traffic accident. Desert winds sweep through the Bankrupt camp outside the city.

◆ Music

Howard Carter is handling the score for ‘Time Killers’, and I haven’t actually got any notes on it. There is a perfectly good reason for that though: the sound effects are so damn loud that it just drowns out everything else!

◆ Conclusion

“Let the bankruptcy commence!”

The Warrior and the Master find themselves on a planet where you have to keep moving, lest you be temporally taxed by the bank… who can take whole years off your life-span.

Lizzie Hopley presents some incredibly interesting ideas in ‘Time Killers’, but the story itself feels muddled and confused. The fact of the matter is that this script would have been so much better off had it not been part of this God awful spin-off range. Can you imagine if a story like this was written for the Sixth Doctor and Peri instead?