Doctor Who #943: Mind Snap

"I am a dog. Woof woof." "He's really going to hate himself when he remembers this."
TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Jun.7 2010.

IN THIS ONE... The dreaded clip show.

REVIEW: We can all agree clip shows are pretty heinous television artifacts, especially when less than a full season has gone by. Well, this one's worse than most. K9's hooked up to the space-time manipulator (STM), which scrambles his archives and forces us to watch extended clips from about half the episodes already aired, including the previous one. The transitions between present and past aren't particularly clear - cutting from Gryffen in the lab to Gryffen in the lab tends to muddle matters - and if they'd used K9's HUD to comment on the remembered action, they might have saved the episode from being a complete waste of time. I can understand reminding viewers of the pilot, and showing the Korven before it returns in the final episodes, but K9 sometimes remembers moments he wasn't present for, including Jorjie and June's shared dream in The Dream-Eaters. How this thing credits two writers, including K9 creator Bob Baker, is beyond me.

By connecting K9 to the STM, the show promises revelations about K9's link to the future, but instead of answers, we get more questions that will never be answered. Who is sending these mind-scrambling directives down the pipeline? In the end, the few minutes of new "story" amount to K9 acting more like a dog than usual, which may amuse for a couple of seconds, but that's it. Tedious.

REWATCHABILITY: Null - You have to be an impossibly ravenous fan of this show to give Mind Snap your full or even partial attention. Entirely skippable.

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