The latest and final (for now!) Ninth Doctor boxset has arrived and unusually all three stories are connected by a recurring companion-like character, in this case River Song herself, ticking the Ninth Doctor off of her audio Doctor checklist (which is now pretty much complete!) The first two stories are good, showing a very different kind of relationship between the two, so let’s take a look.
“Swipe Right” starts with both The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and River Song (Alex Kingston) arriving on the planet Crell after independently finding out that people have been vanishing. The Doctor meets with a Bethany (Francesca Mills) at a restaurant to gain more information but she leaves, making the owners of the establishment warn The Doctor about being single. This is shortly followed by River entering the same restaurant and meeting Barclay (David Holt), who was actually Bethany’s assigned date. River has fun teasing him but soon leaves, which has Barclay in a mad panic as he is soon approached by a bunch of killer robots only for River to return for her diary she left behind and save him. At home Bethany is informed she has swiped right too many times and now she too is assaulted by killer robots and is saved by an appearing Doctor. He gets it confirmed that on Crell if you’re not married or at least in a partnership after a certain amount of goes on a Matchmaker app you’re flat out killed.
They certainly picked the right pictures of The Doctor and River Song for this cover!
River calls for the Doctor’s help and is surprised to see his Ninth self, who unlike his other selves is having none of River’s teasing and in fact flat out refuses the idea of her being his future wife when it appears on a screen. River, having been rejected by the man she loves (sort of) feels rough but together the quartet aim to get to the bottom of the Matchmaker…
“The Face of the Apocalypse” on the other hand has The Doctor look into a problem with the Intergalactic Bank only to find it accepts only one face as a customer: River Song, and soon finds her in the computer room smashing it up, showing that this issue is as much news to her as it is him. The two find out the culprit is an A.I. system that is slowly taking over systems all over space and time and replacing everything with River’s face, as well as seemingly taking people out of time itself as soon The Doctor and River find Spore (Paul Reynolds), a man whose loving relationship with his wife Keetree (Nadia Albina) was so legendary it led to a whole galaxy becoming peaceful. Now with an important historical figure on board the two must work out how to stop the A.I. before it changes history forever.
Both stories do a good job of exploring love within the crazy confines of Doctor Who and Christopher Eccleston and Alex Kingston play off of each other perfectly, making for a really fun double bill.
The Continuity:
It looks like a multi-River story! … Man, that would be something… not sure it would be a good something, but it would be something…
Beyond River Song herself, which at this point has more appearances than some Doctors it feels like so I’m certainly not listing all her appearances, there isn’t much. I mean I could list episodes / stories with rogue A.I. elements but I have a feeling that would probably be just as long as River’s appearance history, really…
Overall Thoughts:
Hmmm… no idea what pose that’s supposed to be for the Ninth Doctor…?
“Swipe Right” and “The Face of the Apocalypse” are very similar in simultaneously looking at a rare awkward pairing of Doctor and River as well as the subject of love and relationships in general using some fun sci-fi concepts to do it. It works really well, and without spoiling too much, it all culminates in a proper classic to end the boxset.
In “Swipe Right” The Doctor, River, Bethany and Barclay arrive at Matchmaker HQ and while River blasts away at the killer robots (convincing The Doctor that she isn’t his future wife even more) the other trio arrive to find the office devoid of life and an A.I. in charge, literally dubbed “The Matchmaker”. As all evil A.I.s tend to do it took its programming to its furthest logical end and decided that if being in a relationship made people happy it would make them better and more motivated workers, and therefore to increase efficiency anyone not paired up needed to be culled. The Doctor tries several things to confuse and shutdown the A.I. and in the end, much to River’s distress, he uses himself as an example of someone who is better off alone and clearly wouldn’t be in a relationship, an idea that confuses the Matchmaker enough to shut it down. The Doctor and River part ways, and Bethany and Barclay… don’t actually get together, which is fair enough (and quite refreshing really…)
As you may have guessed by now, the evil A.I. in “The Face of the Apocalypse” is the Matchmaker, or at least a part of its code that saw the crushing disappointment in River’s eyes when The Doctor did his speech to shut it down and wanted to make her happy, but it starts to even use the TARDIS to spread her image throughout time and ruin things. To make matters worse The Doctor is stuck in the middle of an argument between apparent amazing couple Spore and Teetree, eventually having to play couple counselling with River and later panicking when Spore’s legendary chronicle (that he calls “The Chronnie” which made me laugh for some reason) begins to fade away. The Doctor and River eventually manage to outsmart the A.I. though, with a few false endings along the way, and the reveal that Spore’s Chronnie images were always with Teetree’s face on everything reconciles them, so history goes back on course. The Doctor, now a little more willing to put up with River, is told by his future wife that if he does her one quick favour she’ll leave him alone for the rest of his current life…
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