While the first episode of
this adventure risked standing on the spot while on the central characters run
up multiple platforms, episode two sometimes runs the risk of being almost too
like a computer game shoot-em-up: there's lots of thrilling running around and
shooting lasers, but comparatively minimal story. That said, there is a cute
argument to be made about our relationship with violence to be made by the
denouement of the episode which we'll chat about in a moment, but in the
meantime, it's an episode of boys will be boys with plastic guns.
Because Clyde is required
to be funny and derisive at least forty percent of the time, he also has to be
curiously slow on the uptake when it comes to making a journey by transmat,
assuming it to be a well-budgeted special effect (and he's supposed to be
smart). Speaking of special effect budgets, this week's monster saves on his by
the time honoured method of wearing a Very Long Coat while chasing Maria and
Sarah around corridors, the latter of whom gets a line to calm the kids and
infuriate the older continity freaks when she refers to her 'UNIT training'.
Sarah deduces pretty
quickly that Kudlak is recruiting soldiers, at the same time that Clyde and
Luke discover the bunch of kids who will soon be fighting in an unseen war, who
our two friends soon recruit themselves to rise up against whoever it is that's
got their fingers on the controls. Star Trek, Planet Of The Apes and even
Terminator 2 get referenced within minutes of one another (and Sarah gets
called a 'cool old bird'), but it soon becomes apparent that war cannot be
fought if the combatants are not willing. 'Fight your own wars. It's got
nothing to do with us', snaps Clyde, while the response, hinting at the
episode's end, suggest that without war, the cosmos has no need of soldiers.
Ultimately, it is revealed
that - much like a real computer game - there is no war, but no shortage of
desire to fight one, whatever the cost, something that humans themselves have
been guilty of, even at the cost of their own lives. 'I think if more people
saw the Earth like this,' says Sarah, observing her home planet from above,
'They might appreciate it more.' It's this odd sense of nobility that closes
the episode, as we say goodbye to a monster bred for war and finds itself
purposeless when stripped of a need to fight - which is not a million light
years away from the very first creature Sarah Jane Smith met way back in her
debut story of Doctor Who. Time makes a monster of us all.
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