The latest Ninth Doctor and Rose release, “Cloud Eight”, takes a look at the technological innovations and the slippery road they can lead us down, which is fine though sadly towards the end it felt a little… direct, like a lot of the Fifteenth Doctor TV stories it felt like I was being lectured about something I already agreed with, but unlike those ones the story used to tell the listener for the majority of its runtime was at least well constructed and well written, so let’s take a look!
The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper) first land in a lush rainforest, though The Doctor says they’re still stuck at the Powell Estate only it’s the same bit of land just in the 47th Century, a time known as the “second Dark Age” because no art, writings or anything ever dated back to the period. He detects human life above them and so they jump in the TARDIS away from the scary creature that’s roaming the forest and up to the floating facility where people seemingly live in perfect happiness, a forced curfew is the only law and nobody has any jobs to do. The Doctor and Rose meet Oz (Lawrence Boothman), Marty (Charlie Condou) and their daughter Elsa (Felicity Cant) and while The Doctor roams around when he shouldn’t and sees a girl called Chihiro (Louise Faulkner) get taken away when she begins to spout interesting facts, Rose sleeps over with Elsa and finds she has nightmares. The two reconvene and also notice how everything people do and watch is from the 20th/21st century, so are all their names for that matter, and everything they do and watch is the same each day to go along with the forced sleep period which is extremely regulated. Before they know it though The Doctor and Rose become accustomed to the routine, neither of them noticing as they take part in it day after day for six weeks, with only Oz being dragged away as the only different event to happen, and even that they all soon forget…
It really is a good set up, one of those “putting the audience in the shoes of the lead characters” thing where you’re trying to guess what exactly is going on along with them. As I said the ending lets it down slightly, but it’s still a good one overall, and nice to be away from 00’s Powell Estate… for now…
The Continuity:
Good cover, as always with this range. Really is the polar opposite of the Thirteenth Doctor range’s covers!
There are more than a few “look where future technology leads humanity!” stories across Doctor Who to say the least, hell there are many “humanity in stasis / storage above a ruined Earth” stories as well. I will mention that despite only having one series the Ninth Doctor TV story “The Long Game” and its sort-of follow up “Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways” deals with humanity that should be in its new golden age but is coincidentally still addicted to TV shows that were airing in the UK in 2004/05. Funny that they choice a story so close to one of the few TV storylines we already have with Eccleston and Piper!
Overall Thoughts:
“Cloud Eight” was a fun 45 minute-ish story with a solid premise and well paced to get you invested. The ending was a bit abrupt and unsubtle in its messaging, which is a shame as the story had relayed the message perfectly well without needing to directly spell it out for the audience, but I won’t let that ruin and otherwise fun story.
The Doctor and Rose manage to break free from the control via the TARDIS and find out that while people are sleeping a large amount of information in being fed into their brains via Wi-Fi but Elsa is an exception which is why she is able to have nightmares. This is a bad thing though as soon everyone in the colony begins to target her as “incorrect data” essentially, leading to The Doctor, Rose and Elsa to go on the run. During a bout of hiding The Doctor reveals that the colonies spread out across the Earth are raining terraforming liquids to the Earth’s surface to reform the planet after it was ruined but in order to run such large machines humanity has been used as a battery for the machines, the forced sleep and data downloading all being part of that, but not having proper sleep to reset your brain leads to the breakdowns we saw with Chihiro and Oz. This leads to The Doctor having a right old go at Wi-Fi, smart phones and how people are becoming over reliant on them (or people 20 years on from Rose’s time, I guess) That was the bit that was a bit too preachy for me, the story itself told that message perfectly well without The Doctor having to spell it out for the audience.
As they were in a holo-suite The Doctor uses Elsa’s nightmares of the monster in the forest down below to recreate it digitally and break her pursuers free from the Network, and then shortly after plays about with the code of the devices so people will start to have dreams, and nightmares, and slowly wake up to the reality they find themselves in…
Hogan Reviews 