Paul Cornell has already written a lovely short story for the Doctor Who Lockdown that the BBC has been producing over the past several weeks. But that short story turned out to be a set up for something even more moving…
In that first short story, “The Shadow Passes”, we saw the Thirteenth Doctor in her own lockdown with the fam, thinking about her past—particularly thinking about a certain family that she punished in her Tenth iteration:
“I sometimes think that’s why I change personality instead of just making my body younger. I need to switch myself off and on again so I can handle all the memories, so a lot of it feels like it happened to someone else. I get a different perspective on what I’ve done. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. There’s this girl in a mirror. Where I put her. That doesn’t suit who I am now. When we get out of here…”
Paul Cornell is back with two more short stories, these recorded as short radio plays. The first one, “Shadow of a Doubt”, involves Big Finish audio play companion Bernice Summerfield (typically found with the Seventh Doctor), who encounters a little girl in a mirror:
The second story, “The Shadow in the Mirror”, can be found above, and shows the Thirteenth Doctor making good on her desire to fix things between herself and one member of the Family of Blood. Lauren Wilson is back to voice little Lucy Cartwright, still trapped in mirrors and refusing to apologize for what she’s done.
Cornell laces in some beautiful details for these stories as well. There’s a suggestion that a red-headed Doctor exists somewhere in the time streams, which is a clever nod to the Doctor’s long-standing desire to be ginger. This Doctor apparently believes he’s the last one, but of course, we can take that with a grain of salt. Believing that you might be the last Doctor doesn’t count for much in Whovian canon—just ask the Eleventh Doctor.
Given that MGM had a problem with the Bond stuff, would this maybe be why we later got the Vic Fontaine program? It let the producer’s play with Bashir’s 1960’s fetish, without treading too much on Bond territory?
A 9???????
After this episode was over, I turned to husband and said, “That is the WORST thing I have ever seen!” Like, this might actually be worse than Q-pid and that episode where everybody devolves because of the T-cells in their DNA (I am completely blanking on the title). The only thing that gets it to maybe a 2 or 3 is, a)the cast clearly having fun chewing the scenery and b)Garak getting to snark about what a spy’s life truly is. And I feel like we’ve already gotten quite a few episodes where the cast get to have fun playing different characters, so, honestly, I’m over that gimmick now.
But…ugh…not a fan of Holosuite episodes, usually not a fan of ‘alternate setting’ episodes (and I’m not that into the whole Bond thing to start with), and this was basically Bashir at his very Bashir-iest.
I mean, at least Qpid had John de Lancie…by the way, hope you had fun hanging with him!
Generally speaking I hate “the holodeck safeties are off” episodes, but I make a huge exception for this one. Like with “Little Green Men” a fondness for ridiculous 60s spy fiction really helps and this episode may hit even more marks than LGM did with its genre. (And krad missed one obvious homage which is right there in the title. Namely Our Man Flint which was half parody itself.) It’s a fun hour and it’s easy to just sit back and enjoy. OTOH, it might have been better coming after a bit of a serious stretch, rather than the third in a run of lighter episodes.
Of course, Garak’s running commentary and comparison with real spycraft does provide a bit of serious tone. He’s not in the least bit wrong about any of it, either. I wonder what he’d think of George Smiley.
I bet they could have gotten away with doing more of this. As noted, this was an entire genre, and just because Bond had more staying power doesn’t give MGM the rights to the whole thing. But they were probably still a bit gunshy from the Holmes debacle.
Lisamarie: I adore this episode. *shrug* And the one you can’t remember the title of is “Genesis.” :)
And I didn’t really get to hang with deLancie — I honestly barely saw him.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
DemetriosX: I did too mention Our Man Flint, right there in the first Trivial matters paragraph….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
No problem, I am probably not the target audience for this episode ;) After all, I’m sitting here at a software company wearing duct taped glasses, snow pants, a sweatshirt and with my hair in a messy ponytail. Clearly, people here only love me for my mind ;)
You can spot Ira Behr’s footprints and love of old-school Hollywood all over this first half of the fourth season.
Much like Little Green Men and Sword of Kahless, this is the kind of episode that would never have been made back under Michael Piller’s leadership. This is much more suited to Ira’s sensibility.
This is also the episode that actually improves with repeated viewings, especially after having seen a lot of Bond or other flamboyant action/spy films.
When I first saw the title for this episode, back in 1995, I actually thought they were going to kill Bashir off for good. “Our Man Bashir” really sounded like a post-mortem eulogy.
Yo, KRAD: you mean Gert Fröbe, not Gert Forbe!
I love this episode (I guess I am the target audience) – it is just so silly – it’s really a breath of fresh air before all that is to come in the next couple of seasons.
Oh and tell your fiance to warm up the oven :)
Yes, well worth it just to see Worf in a tux! And damn the 24th century aversion to smoking. Our favorite Klingon needed a stogie in every episode, especially in combat.
By the way, ever notice how smoky some of the Klingon ships are, like the Bird of Prey in The Search for Spock? Come on, you know those guys stopped by planet New Cuba on the edge of the Neutral Zone before heading to Genesis. Or New Amsterdam…