Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest
(13 episodes, Animated Special, 2007)
The Key to Time… er, the Infinite.
A being named Baltazar and his robotic parrot Caw are all set to destroy the planet Earth when the Doctor and Martha materialize the TARDIS on the ship’s bridge. Baltazar plans to engulf the planet in plasma fire to turn everything into diamonds, but the Doctor tries to distract him with a spoon. Baltazar destroys the spoon, unleashing a fungus within that eats the ship around them. The travelers hop in the TARDIS, after letting Caw free, and set course for Copacabana Beach.
Unfortunately, Caw saves Baltazar. Otherwise, we’d have no story, right?
Some time and distance later, Caw catches the TARDIS in flight and drops them on his home of Pheros. Caw brings news that, several years ago, he sold out Baltazar and sent him to jail. Baltazar has been set free and is now looking for a force from the Dark Times – a time when the Racnoss, the Nestene, and the Great Vampires ran rampant – called the Infinite.
Caw produces a data chip that will lead the Doctor to the Infinite by acquiring a series of them in order. He also gives Martha a brooch in honor of her compassion. The Doctor and Martha leave for the planet Boukon, revealing Baltazar as the TARDIS dematerializes. Caw placed a tracker on the TARDIS and Baltazar is ready to track them to the Infinite.
While on Boukon, Martha and the Doctor run into some oil pirates. Captain Kaliko dispatches a spider-like oil rig in Empire Strikes Back fashion and siphon the oil to fuel the poor since the market prices are too high. The captain and her (literal) skeleton crew deem the travelers to be Oil Corp spies and nearly throw them overboard, but they are saved by First Mate Swabb by offering to put them in the downed rig and setting it ablaze.
When made to walk the plank, the Doctor disables the ship with his sonic screwdriver. Swabb mutinies, himself a spy for Oil Corp, and sets the oil rigs on the retreating pirate ship. The ship crashes and Swabb threatens to transfer his consciousness into Martha’s body. Martha distracts him long enough for the captain and the Doctor to knock him overboard, and then the Doctor asks the captain for her earring (which is the next Infinite chip).
The captain jettisons herself overboard and lands near the TARDIS. The Doctor and Martha catch up and find her earring but not much else. Captain Kaliko has been murdered, and the travelers have no choice but to travel on.
I’m sure that will be relevant later.
The next stop is the planet Myarr. They land near an abandoned city and are swarmed by insects, but the Mantasphid bugs are driven away by the toad-like Ulysees Meregrass. There is a war being waged around them, and a sonic attack blasts a nearby tower made of dung. The Doctor and Martha find themselves before the queen of the Mantasphids. The queen rebuffs the Doctor’s attempts to negotiate, claiming that Meregrass has already won the position of adviser.
A robot crashes in, but Martha determines that the pilot of the robot is panicked. The Doctor uncovers the human pilot within and learns that the Mantasphids destroyed Pilot Kelvin’s home and family. The queen turns on Meregrass, denying his payment for arms smuggling, and another wave of attack ships swarms in to burn the bugs out.
The queen asks Meregrass for his advice, but Meregrass refuses. The Doctor works with Kelvin to surrender for the Mantasphid queen because all of them still have a right to live. After negotiating the surrender, the Doctor asks the queen to provide light for human farms to combat the oil shortage. They later find Meregrass’s slaughtered body, but can only take the Infinity chip and move on.
I’m sure that murder will also be relevant later.
They travel to Volag-Noc, a cold planet with a prison below the surface. The Doctor is imprisoned – he has 3,005 convictions and 6,000 in consideration, ranging from minor traffic violations to evading library fines and 18 counts of planetary demolition, resulting in a two billion year sentence – and finds an android cellmate in pain. Martha meets with the prison governor where she spots the Infinity chip next to the sonic screwdriver in his safe.
The Doctor removes his cellmate’s inhibitor chip and they blast out and make their way to the governor’s office. Turns out that the real governor is in the android body and the fake governor is a prior convict named Constantine Ethelred Gurney who has a score to settle. Meregrass sold him the means to swap faces with Governor Lok. Once back in place, Lok orders that all of the prisoners should be killed in order most effectively rehabilitate them. Gurney shoots Lok and loots the safe while the Doctor stops the kill order. The travelers pursue Gurney to the surface where Martha watches Baltazar and Caw swoop in for the final data chip.
Gurney fatally shoots Caw, who then admits his role in this affair to Martha. After the bird dies, Baltazar takes the travelers to the TARDIS and confesses to killing the previous chip holders. He reveals that his tracker was in the brooch that Caw gave to Martha, setting the tiny bird named Squawk free. He forces the Doctor to find the Infinite’s location and set the TARDIS on course before shooting the Time Lord and depositing him in the snow outside.
Baltazar takes Martha in the TARDIS as it closes in on the Infinite. Once they land, Baltazar forces Martha to search the hold where she finds the Doctor. At least, she thinks it’s the Doctor, but the real Time Lord arrives on Squawk and crash lands. Baltazar tries to turn Squawk and fails, and as Martha figures out that the false Doctor is her heart’s desire, the real Doctor comes to her rescue. The heart’s desire tries to sway the Doctor but it fails.
The ship once contained one of the Great Old Ones, but it has long since died. The echo of its power tempts those it encounters with their heart’s desire, but the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to shake the ship apart. The Doctor and Martha take off in the TARDIS while Squawk swoops Baltazar away to Volag-Noc.
The Doctor asks Martha for a destination and away they go.
This story is obviously set and televised during Series Three, so I’m covering it with the rest of the series.
The similarities to The Key to Time series are obvious, but that series was better overall. The characterizations were good and the animation on par with what we’ve seen previously – Real Time, Death Comes to Time, Scream of the Shalka, and Shada – but the story was rushed. Instead of being cohesive and driving, the elements of the plot became confusing in their rapid-fire approach.
This story would have been better served in a 90-minute or two-hour format.
On the plus side, this story does add an element introduced in the Virgin novels to the televised universe. The Great Old Ones, one of which died on the Infinite ship, were introduced in the 1990s with White Darkness, All-Consuming Fire, and Millennial Rites. Previous televised elements like The Great Intelligence, the Nestene Consciousness, the Gomagog, Fenric, the Celestial Toymaker, and the Black and White Guardians were retroactively added to their ranks in various forms, effectively canonizing the concept of the Great Old Ones in the television side of the house.
Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”
UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Utopia & Doctor Who: The Sound of Drums & Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords
The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.
