"This is how it felt for you... meeting us!"
IN THIS ONE... The diplomatic team meets Homo Aqua on their turf.
REVIEW: While I don't resent any episode to date, one could still criticize The War as being padded out to five episodes. Like a lot of modern television (unfortunately), the show is often playing for time until it gets to the actual important plot elements in the last few minutes. There's an imaginable 3-episode cut of this. Another way to look at this episode is that it's playing on the theme of "pressure", building it over time. Literally, the diplomatic team is going down 5 miles into an oceanic trench (in a bathyscaphe, shades of The Sea Devils), and we have long scenes with them where they reflect on their lives, or panic, or give each other support. Elsewhere, the British PM and Kate are separately feeling the pressure of the situation with opposite results. So while the plot feels extended, seeing UNIT training for the mission, or evil cabinet meetings, or Barclay saying goodbye to his family (he's so affecting), all seems quite necessary.
I did start to think the civilian diplomats sent on the mission had too many panic attacks, but I suppose it was all in service of surprising us with the Trojan Horse gift ("Severance", whatever that'll turn out to be). I guess Ted was faking it the whole time. The warmongers who earlier were threatening to cut UNIT out, the Big Oil conspiracy from episode 2, have sparked a war that actually seemed avoidable up to that point. Nothing we haven't seen before. Every Eocene story seems to end the same way, so as not to disrupt the world order, and at times, it's been UNIT doing the bad thing. This episode has the most Children of Earth ending yet, with both the mission being doomed, and the assassination attempt on Kate resulting in the tragic death of Colonel Ibrahim (from a wound that seems physically impossible the way it was filmed). I was musing, earlier in the episode, that there sure were a lot of people on this team - the ones who go down, the ones who stay on the ship (including what I heard as a new Captain Yates, but it's Gaetz), and the ones at UNIT HQ - most essentially just functional roles, i.e., cannon fodder. Who would die first? Wasn't expecting Kate's boyfriend. But as laser sights dance on Kate's forehead at the end there, things look very bleak. And here I was just agreeing with her that his insistence on talking about their relationship was misplaced at this time. I guess he was an easy kill - it's more shocking than offing a rando.
I'm not too critical of any of that - you got me good, show - but I'm less hopeful about them finally introducing the love affair between Barclay and Salt. This species is empathic to a point, so she knows when we're lying and that Barclay isn't. Fair enough. They trust each other enough to be openly curious about each other's biology. Sure. Barclay almost goes in for a kiss before he's interrupted by General Pierce... ehhhh. Maybe they'll go into more detail about his special "sensitivity" suggested here - at the risk of introducing a rather magical element - but the scene with his family was so poignant, it feels like a betrayal of them (ex or not).
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Some may become impatient with the series at this point, but the pressure-building mostly works and what a pair of cliffhangers!
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