MR 077: Other Lives

A comedy of errors (and fetishes) as the Doctor and friends get up to some hilarious hijinks! Well, more like get caught up pretending to be other people.

They go to the grand Crystal Palace exhibition, a huge international exhibition of technology in London in the mid 1800s. The three get separated through a series of hijinks. They told C'Rizz to stay in the TARDIS, but he didn't. Charley meets the Duke of Wellington. And The Doctor gets caught up in an assassination plot against the French ambassador. An assassin tries to shoot the French ambassador and his wife outside the TARDIS, the Doctor pulls them in then goes back out himself, and then the French ambassador and his wife accidentally take off in the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor there without his ship.

The story doesn't really go into detail about where they went. I think they were supposed to have just time traveled directly to the ending, but that's not as fun. Where's the French ambassador and his wife spin off series where they go to a pink planet or something?

C'Rizz naively follows a man named Mr. Crackles who... proceeds to kidnap him, turn him into a slave, put him in chains, forces him to strip naked, and then puts him in a thong. So, you know, super fetishy. He runs a freak show and C'Rizz will be the star attraction. No, not that kind of freak show! The kind where you put people who look weird in cages and point and laugh at them. What did you think I meant?

Meanwhile Charley wanders around on her own and gets mistaken for a prostitute. Yet again, another fetishy thing. The man who thinks she's a prostitute is named Rufus Dimplesqueeze. No I'm not making that up. She ends up sleeping on a doorstep at night and then goes to the Duke of Wellington's house after they shared a nice moment in the Crystal Palace exhibition the previous day.

Might as well do another fetishy thing with the Doctor, although this one isn't so much. The Doctor gets mistaken for another man named Edward who has been traveling for a year. His wife tries to get the Doctor to believe he is Edward right up until the point where she realizes that he couldn't be Edward. Her husband needs spectacles to read the newspaper whereas the Doctor does not.

All three of these characters just exist in these plot cul-de-sacs for awhile. There's not really much of a point to the story here, just allowing the characters to exist and see how they react to living these other lives, hence the name. It's nice. Charley hangs out with the high and mighty, the Doctor has a nice time in a high class house, and C'Rizz gets to see the worst of Victorian London. Seems like he got the short end of the stick here to be honest.

Their plots finally coincide when Charley notices C'Rizz on the freakshow advertisement posters and she has the Duke go rescue him. They then need to impersonate the French ambassador and his wife because everyone is going to think they've disappeared. Which will spark a French revolution in the UK maybe? Kind of a bad look for Charley to be fighting against democracy and upholding the monarchy, but sure. It's not really the main point. The main point is that we get more hijinks as Charley and C'Rizz try to impersonate the French couple, but don't do a very good job of it.

The Doctor then has to impersonate Edward to please his doppleganger's uncle who is none other than Rufus Dimplesqueeze???!!!?!?!?! Yes, we get a nice little "I'm actually him, trust me, lol" scene where they convince Dimplesqueeze that the Doctor is Edward because his wife will lose the house if Dimplesqueeze is not convinced. Yes, I just like typing the name Dimplesqueeze.

The Doctor then sees that the French ambassador and his wife are back in the newspaper, but it's actually Charley and C'Rizz impersonating them at the Crystal Palace. He thinks this means the TARDIS has come back, so he heads off. Only to find that coincidentally the TARDIS has just arrived here at this exact time, fast traveling to the finale with the French ambassador and his wife none the wiser. The end.

The interesting thing here is when C'Rizz is freed, he goes back and cripples and blinds his slave master. He could have killed him and the voices in his head told him to do it, but he didn't. I guess being unable to walk and blind in the Victorian era is punishment enough. Fate worse than death probably.

And that's about it. It's pretty much just fluff, but enjoyable fluff. Except for C'Rizz who has a horrible time. I just don't have that much to say about it. Very cute story.

well, this was just all round lovely!

A perfectly average story. It was interesting seeing/hearing a story in this time period. Don't know how much impact this will have on future stories, other than C'rizz story.