The Time War: Uncharted line comes to an e- … Oh, well… The Time War: Uncharted line concludes a few things but somehow continues on with “Branches”, seeing the return of Susan to the storyline, albeit briefly. After a 4 for the Cass boxset and Set 1 Uncharted 2 got just a 2 from me last time, so how does this fair? Well…
The set opens with “The Only Girl in the World”, which sees The Doctor (Paul McGann) and his Great Grandson from an alternate timeline Alex (Sonny McGann) materialise on a large slave spaceship that not only houses Thals and Robomen and yet no Daleks but also houses a version of Cass, the very person they’re searching this Uncharted universe for, though “Cassie” is not like the Cass they know (though she’s still voiced by Emma Campbell-Jones!) as she is a space pirate who believes the man at the head of the ship is the one who killed her crew. The person at the head of the ship is Mr. Karl (Nicholas Briggs), who turns out to be a sort of human equivalent of the Daleks, hence Briggs voicing the character, but once again overly familiar voice takes me out of the story even though it makes thematic sense, and also didn’t we just do Briggs playing a human villain who is actually a Dalek in the Second Doctor adventures? How has such a specific thing happened twice so close to each other? Well, anyway, The Doctor, Alex and Cassie have to deal with time dilation and time loops to get to the end of the story (which I’ll touch on in the Spoilers) but The Doctor realises that Cassie’s favourite sword has a map on it that will allow them to, well, chart the Uncharted universe. I’ll also mention this story has The Doctor narrating what happened in an attempted amusing fashion due to its time skipping that was actually sort of annoying, if I’m honest…
This leads to “False Dawn”, though only by virtue of coming next as the episode is pretty standalone. There are lightyears worth of hallucinogenic plants spreading across the Uncharted universe and The Doctor ends up ensnared, leading to dreams within dreams, gag Daleks saying un-Daleky things, and so on. The only thing good about it is that it ends because Alex understands The Doctor more and frees him from the plants by using the TARDIS, so by the end the two are a bit closer to reconciling. Otherwise, it’s a “nothing burger” to borrow a phrase from… somewhere. Episode 3 is “The Council of Susan”, which might make you rub your hands and say “oh here we go!” but no, not quite. Instead its set on a religious station that worships Susan after she’d visited them, with lots of new characters all called Susan in honour of their idol. Once again there are some good ideas here, and I liked Alex being annoyed he isn’t mentioned in any of the “texts” and The Doctor confronting the idea he may have been too protective of Susan, but by the end an A.I. version of Susan (played by Carole Ann-Ford, obviously!) was the closest thing you’ll get to Susan, and beyond that you won’t get much else from the story. It wasn’t bad, just not all that interesting and once again felt like the series was spinning its wheels instead of moving forward.
A good cover, though Cassie essentially wearing The Doctor’s outfit is a little weird…
Finally we get Episode 4 “All Over”, where The Doctor, Alex and Cassie arrive in an icy wasteland at the edge of the Uncharted universe and meet their old friend, um, Friend, this time played by Daphnie Ashbrook and yes, The Doctor finally pegs on to her switching between his past companion’s faces, though not a lot comes from it. In fact “not a lot comes from it” is a good way to sum the story up, really. By the end some plotlines have been tied up, which I’ll get to in the spoilers, and we meet the cook of Rassilon called Fervil (Robert Finch) where we hear that Rassilon himself led an expedition to the Uncharted universe to stop the spread of deadly flora, and yes we get the actual Susan appear, where she laments having to see her son but not her son, which was at least an interesting scene, but overall the set ends with some teases of plots to come, which given the synopsis of this box mentioned it “all coming to an end” was a bit of a surprise… not particularly a pleasant one either given the quality, or lack thereof, of the last two sets…
The Continuity:
Beyond the other Uncharted sets there isn’t a lot to unpack. As mentioned Nicholas Briggs playing a human character with his regular voice that turns out to be a Dalek was done just a very short while ago in the Second Doctor boxset “The Potential Daleks”. Susan mentions her actual son Alex having died, which happened in the Eighth Doctor two-parter “Lucie Miller / To The Death”, but that’s it really. There is a lot of continuity though, just as I said, it’s all connected to the other Uncharted sets!
Overall Thoughts:
Doctor Who: The Time War – Uncharted 3: Branches is better than set 2, just, but still not reaching the heights of other sets before it. The opener and the last two episodes have good ideas and good moments in them but they also have a lot of dull and “nothing” moments, while Episode 2 has nothing BUT dull and nothing moments. Could be worse, but could be so much better.
Not much on the first three stories. “The Only Girl in the World” reveals Mr. Karl had started a time loop that even he’d forgotten about and he was eventually defeated by Cassie. “False Dawn” I’ve already said all that needs to be said, and “The Council of Susan” ends with the Susan A.I. going rogue leading to a classic Doctor shutting down and sonic screwdriver-ing some things to save the day.
Episode 4 however has a few more interesting things. Friend reveals her mission was to put The Doctor back into the right time track, so to speak, as he’d found himself off in an alternate timeline, including the stories of the First Forest that he believe he’d been told as a child Susan reveals don’t exist in the Matrix back on Gallifrey (before leaving the story almost as quickly as she arrived) Cassie and her sword of destiny was created to give Friend the information and tools necessary to shunt the Doctor back on track and nothing more and so she was soon killed off, and finally yes, they do indeed meet original Cass and leave with her, but with revelations like a “Broken King” being around that’s most likely Rassilon we’re not done here yet, but honestly I just want it to end, this experiment just hasn’t worked and oddly I’d rather The Doctor and co be back in “our” universe having more trad and tired Time War stories again…