What’s your idea of Hell?
Actually, no – what’s your
idea of Purgatory? An endless waiting zone where nothing is done that has any
real effect, where you eat and are never satisfied, move and never get
anywhere, where your life is always the same, where nothing ever changes, where
you’re perpetually in a holding pattern of the same handful of motions…
Imagine that, but with
added Heathrow Airport. Some of course would argue that that is Heathrow
Airport. Jo Jones in this story by Sharon Bidwell, simply wants to leave
Heathrow Airport on a flight to Mexico City, and then, through the normal
operation of physics and jet propulsion…actually get there.
Escape from Heathrow
wouldn’t seem like too much to ask, but Jo is trapped on the flight that never
ends, looping back to all the joy of the departure lounge, customs, boarding,
take-off and then – nothing, a sequence repeating time after time after time,
making her increasingly exhausted by all the worst bits of international air
travel, and rewarded with none of the fun bits, none of the arrival, adventure,
‘people to meet you and crush you in hugs’ bits that really make the journey
worthwhile.
The interesting thing
about The Infinite Today is the way Sharon Bidwell deals with the
central conceit of the story – the recursive sequence of actions, and what they
mean. We’re led, with Jo, to think that there’s probably alien skulduggery
afoot, because after all, who else could be making her loop perpetually through
half a flight to Mexico City, only to return her to Heathrow with the
same group of passengers, the same flight crew, the same plane, while only she
remains conscious that they’ve done this all before. Imagine being the only
sober person, getting increasingly sober and cranky, in a plane full of happy
drunk people. Welcome to Hell. Or Purgatory. Or, because this is Doctor Who,
welcome to somewhere else entirely.
There’s a certain Groundhog
Day delight in hearing Katy Manning recite Jo’s journey time after time,
with the differences in start-points, the differences in actions, the ways in
which Jo seeks to break free of the loop or even ride it out all the way to the
end, but there’s also a degree of terror in the idea too, which is brought
firmly to the fore the more Jo tries to exercise control over her own destiny –
or even her own destination. It begins to feel more and more like a trap, a
conscious effort to stop Jo ever reaching her journey’s end. Who’s behind it
all? Why would they want to stop her getting to Mexico? What nefarious alien
plot do they want her not to foil?
And what exactly does the
Doctor have to do with it all? Not her usual, silly, beak-nosed, ruffle-shirted
Doctor, but the other one, the one with the unending chin and the Easter Island
forehead? The Bow-Tie Man. Come to that, how is it possible that he didn’t
start out on her flight, but when everything else remains exactly the same, he
can make his way into the loop, to talk to her, to calm her fear of non-flying
and eternal non-arrival? What’s going on with her straightforward flight, and
has the Bow-Tie Man finally gone too far?
The pleasure of Sharon
Bidwell’s story is that it forces you round the loop along with Jo, while adding
to the information that both Jo and you have in a series of breadcrumb-bites.
That means you feel most intimately like you’re on the journey with Jo,
rather than having a story about a journey read to you by Jo. That in
turn makes for a more immersive feel than many a Short Trip, and there’s of
course no better companion with whom to travel than Katy Manning, who here
delivers Jo Jones with all the breadth of human emotion that that older version
of the character has – irritation, exhaustion, confusion certainly, but always,
at the base of it all, and probably after a good rummage through the impossible
handbag of her soul, an utter conviction, a faith in both the nature of what
the Doctor tells her, and her own ability to do what he needs her to do – even
if that latter faith is only really rooted in the fact that he needs her
to do things. She’s in it for the (ahem) long haul, is Jo Jones, and for all
her youthful klutziness, she’s determined never to be found wanting if the
Doctor needs her.
Here, he’s interfering,
absolutely, and he needs her to stay on the loop until he tells her otherwise.
There absolutely is alien skulduggery at work in this story – but it’s
worth remembering that the Doctor, too, is an alien, who probably got top marks
in skulduggery at school. Ask the Axons who he trapped, seemingly forever, in a
handful of the very same heartbeats that time. The point is, nothing’s quite
what it seems to be, and there are wheels within the wheels of Jo’s
never-ending journey from Heathrow to Heathrow. By the end of it, you might
well have moist eyes. You’ll certainly have a new and slightly morbid
perspective on the burden of a time traveller, the knowledge they choose to
have or not have, and what the having of it means in term of the web of time
and observed fixed points in time. You’ll already have this fresh in your mind
if you’ve seen Nikola Tesla’s Night Of Terror or The Haunting of
Villa Diodati – the impact of one known, important life on the time stream,
be it Tesla, or Shelley, or Josephine Jones – and The Infinite Today
will give you a fresh-feeling take on those questions, from a slightly more
sentimental Eleventh Doctor perspective.
A slightly more
sentimental Eleventh Doctor perspective? Priceless on any day. A journey round
and round in something-entirely-other-than circles with Jo Jones? Irresistible,
always.
Please make sure your tray
tables are stowed and your seatbacks are in the upright position. It’s time to
take a journey – perhaps the journey of a lifetime – with Jo Jones one more
time. Maybe you’ll never get to Mexico, but by the end of this story, you’ll
recognise that the journey was the important thing all along.
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