Sunday, November 01, 2020

Something About Time, I Think

The Tenth Doctor encounters a weapon that freezes time, or, more accurately, prevents change, in the 2016 audio play "Time Reaver". Science Fiction is at its best when it comments on how strange technology or potential natural phenomena impact real lives. Writer Jenny T. Colgan is good at writing the impact on real lives part but the mechanics of the "Time Reaver" weapon remain pretty vague throughout. It makes the premise feel a bit sappy. Still, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are always a delight.

The Doctor brings them to a world he expects to be inhabited by buccaneers but instead finds a sort of coffee shop. He's angry about the Time Reavers so he goes to the local cops who don't seem motivated to do anything about it, though they acknowledge the severity of the crime. The inventor never intended the Time Reaver to be a weapon but his daughter steals it to misuse it. The Doctor talks of the ways such devices have been misused, oddly mentioning a woman who prevented her son from leaving home for school through the use of a Time Reaver. It seems like there would be easier ways. It's never exactly clear what it would mean, though. Does the son know he can't leave? Is it the same day repeated like Groundhog Day?

Donna has several funny lines. I liked an argument she has with the Doctor in which she wants to visit a planet of "boys".

"Time Reaver" is available on Big Finish.com.

Twitter Sonnet #1410

Electric shocks return the air to lungs.
A waiting wing connects the shoulder arm.
The playful beast displays a dozen tongues.
Congealing dust foretold a lasting harm.
A pictured bat was waiting under stairs.
The bridge was written many times a day.
A spindle wight was selling tattered wares.
The wretched gate's not keeping ghosts at bay.
Recycling morgues deliver dead to work.
The shuffling shadow cracked the pointless brick.
But ev'ry lunch includes a haunted perk.
Eternal wax preserved the deadly wick.
Another time was same across the night.
There's something old about the newest fight.

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