MR 076: Singularity

I definitely did check out of this one pretty damn quick, but there are bits of it that are interesting. It's a shame about Turlough getting continuously shafted by the main range, though. His stories haven't been great so far.

They land in Russia where they come across a mysterious religious cult, the Somnus Foundation, colloquially called the Sleepers. The Sleepers were originally a research institute that studied sleep disorders, but now they're a full on cult, pulling people in by promising them that humanity will become the "Singularity," embracing their godhood and becoming as one.

It takes a painful amount of time to get there, but we do eventually arrive at what's happening. The Somnus are a species from the far future, specifically the end of the universe, who have figured out a way to displace the minds of people in this time and send their minds back to their bodies in the far future. They're going to try to force all of their minds into humanity and create one giant hive mind. Not quite sure why they want to create a hive mind, but sure.

The big twist here is that they are actually humanity at the end of the universe doing this to survive. Yes, that's right, this is the same idea as the series 3 finale, but way more overly complicated and less interesting. Humanity displacing its own ancestors for survival at the very end.

There is an angle here that the series 3 finale didn't really go for that I find interesting. Humanity has been saved by the Doctor time and time again. Over and over, humanity was propped up by the Doctor's time travel. Humans wouldn't exist without the Doctor constantly interfering in their history. So the humans at the end of the universe know all the Doctors, every incarnation, because he's constantly in human history everywhere. Indeed, they even have a line about how they don't really fear this one because the Fifth Doctor is his more passive persona. They know that he might not like what they're doing and absolutely do blame him for letting humanity die at the end of the universe. By preventing them from displacing their ancestor's minds, the Doctor is the cause of humanity's ultimate destruction, despite also being the cause of humanity's existence at all in the first place.

The series 3 finale doesn't really talk about this angle, but is otherwise a lot more interesting. It's not as complicated, there isn't as much technobabble, and it's easier to just zoom in on the characters at play. Singularity also doesn't use the Master. I also have no idea how the future humans were defeated either, I think my eyes might have glazed over during that part. There's even a whole part where the future humans have to use the TARDIS for some reason and I don't actually know why or how or anything because technobabble. As opposed to the series 3 finale where it's very straightforward why the Master is using the TARDIS.

Ultimately there are parts of this thing that were decent, but it could have benefited from a few more rewrites to make it more interesting and less dull. This is often a problem with the two hour format. Sometimes you can use it to your benefit to expand out the world and make it more interesting, but other times it just feels like padding for the sake of reaching the time limit.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Loups-Garoux

This is a weird one, I don't have any strong opinions about it, which makes it hard to write a review. The Russian setting is a fun one and it was utilised quite well. The accents are authentic, but the voices could be a bit grating at times (specifically Lena Korolev). There's some really cool concepts here, most notably the last remnants of humanity sending their minds back into the past to escape the heat death of the universe.

I don't think it was intentional that this planet ends up being the one featured in A Christmas Carol but that's an interesting tidbit regardless. Peter Davison and Mark Strickson are a great combo, they always put their all into every story and it shows. This story isn't anything above average for them, but it shows how high their average is.

I do feel a bit bad for Mark Strickson given how little content he appears in, it took him 5 years after this to feature in another story. All in all, it's not a remarkable story. It doesn't expand anything in particular and doesn't develop this companon dynamic. But would I say I wasted my time with it? No.

Next Story: The Memory Bank