K9: Liberation

K9: "Calculating odds of human defeating Jixen… four billion, three-hundred million, two-thousand-and-three to one."

At first I thought I'd missed a week.

This second episode opens with everyone already settled into whatever the show's set-up is supposed to be, which threw me somewhat. For example, Darius tells Starkey "Relax, doofus, our enemies tend to storm in, not use the bell." A moment later the space-time portal gets referred to by Jorjie as the more familiar 'time-machine'. Reassuringly, the script does then go on to explicitly be set straight after episode one, but for a few moments there I was worried that either the DVD had these episodes in the wrong order, or that the order was intentionally vague. (neither of these is ever a good sign)

The plot here is a disaster, full of people we don't yet care about doing stupid things. K9 goes to check out an alien prison. Before he's even got there, Starkey and Darius assume that he's been captured and decide to risk their lives saving him. Just a reminder - that's a prison they're breaking into there. Starkey has K9's dog whistle from last week's episode, which until they get captured it never occurs to either of them to use.

The other alien prisoners - being all human actors in costumes - resemble a Halloween fancy dress party. Here's hoping that someone on YouTube has recut this episode to YMCA.


And why oh why doesn't Starkey just pick up the exhausted K9 and carry him out?

The show's divorce from the main Doctor Who canon means that none of these aliens appears (to me) to be from that series. The prison itself - based in London - also elicits a gut-expectation of a line about it being a part of UNIT, or even Torchwood. Well, obviously that line never comes.

No real problems yet though. The series appears to have several developing storylines, which I suspect will up their game considerably as everyone figures out what they're doing.

Episode three review here.