Doctor Who: Version Control Part 6, Episode 4: Red Who?

The Editor doesn't fight the Doctor. He doesn't make a speech. He's busy, the Doctor is in the way, and so he flicks him out of the universe, the way you'd flick a crumb off a table.

That's the first thing worth noticing. In Episode 2 he was a kid hiding from his own footage. Now he can delete a Time Lord without breaking off what he was doing.

Elsewhere, on the small rouge one, Holly has news. He has decimalised time, and he is thrilled about it. He needs the whole crew to know, immediately. Nobody is listening. Lister is busy, Rimmer is busier, Kryten is cleaning something. Only the Cat has nothing on, so the Cat gets the announcement, and he is not remotely ready for it.

Then the Doctor lands in the middle of it. He's among Lister, Rimmer, the Cat, Kryten and Holly, he recognises "Ace" but is soon disappointed. After three episodes of horror, history and "Hollydays", this is the one place in the series where the room is allowed to smile.

Mia isn't with him. She's alone in the past, near the Editor's home town, with no Doctor and no TARDIS, and she has to investigate by herself. While the ship plays for laughs, she's standing in the place where all of this started. What she finds is proof that the Editor never stopped.

So this is two episodes in one. The ship is a breather, and it stays outside the main arc. Mia's half is the part that matters, because it keeps the Editor in the story for the middle of the series.

The two halves meet at the end, when the Red Dwarf crew help the Doctor get home.

Tomorrow: Episode 5, Ripple Effect 

Russell Brand's Biggest Crime

Was that the cunt dared to call himself a comedian!

Doctor Who: Version Control Part 5, Episode 3: Pyramids

Episode 3 is the holiday, and it is short-lived.

The Doctor and Mia think the Editor is dealt with. As a result, Mia asks to see the Pyramids being built. It is one of history's great unsolved mysteries, and the Doctor is happy to take her. It is the first proper holiday of the series. The mood is light, and the leisure is earned.

They land. The Pyramids are spheres.

The Doctor, Mia and the audience all see it at the same moment. No character notices it first, and the camera doesn't cheat. All three share the same beat of confusion.

Then comes the silence. Mia's instinct is to ask what happened. The Doctor's instinct is to run the numbers quietly and arrive somewhere he doesn't want to be. Between her question and his answer, we understand that his earlier certainty might have been wrong.

The tell is a small one. Mia says "those aren't the pyramids", and the Doctor can't correct her. He's equally stunned. That missing correction is the moment.

Mia gets there first. It's him, it has to be, because they thought they'd stopped him and clearly they didn't. The Doctor doesn't agree, and he doesn't argue either. He knows how many beings in the universe could do this, and most of them wouldn't leave a note. Mia hears the difference between "it isn't him" and "I don't know", and it frightens her more than a yes would have.

Why spheres? There is no message in it and no weapon. It is the history version of someone changing your desktop wallpaper while you were out. If it is the Editor, he has been somewhere with infinite possibility, and the Pyramids are almost an afterthought, something he thought might be funny or impressive. If it isn't, that is worse.

Either way, they relaxed and maybe they shouldn't have. Mia came to solve a mystery and got a bigger one, not the one she came for. Her holiday is over before it started. Can The Doctor fix this one?

Tomorrow: Episode 4, and a very different ship.

Also on Mental Ramblings: Doctor Who: Version Control Part 4, Episode 2: A Simpler Time