You may be asking
yourself why a type of footwear is the title for a Doctor Who story. Well that’s because this is a story comes in
a black and white disc that can be played in any real order and still
understand the story as Morris works it out so the story doesn’t have to feel
forced with the odd gimmick. He even
uses the gimmick as a way so to prove that everything isn’t black and white and
is put into the shades of grey in a social commentary that is still relevant today
as the message is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. The order I’m listing this plot is the way I
listened to it, but it can still be listened to in any order as I have done it
both ways and you don’t lose a thing from the story. The Doctor and Mel land on the planet Puxatornee
where they have to get some crystals to defeat some Quarks on the Space Yacht
Pinto. The planet is derelict where they
are criminals and are captured and forced to go back in time to stop the
destruction as everything happened due to the President’s secretary being
killed by an agent of the Slithergee race which started a war. The twist is when they get back to the future
the timeline has changed so much that the Slithergee have peacefully taken over
by basically using feminist tactics acting like as they as the minority must be
the oppressed one. The Doctor and Mel
leave as the Doctor and Mel arrive and the plot is basically repeated over
again in what is a time loop.
This is a great plot as
even though halfway through you can guess what happens, you are still
interested as you don’t know how they are going to get to the future that is
set up in the first half which is great.
It allows Jonathan Morris to take his commentary about basically the
idea of oppression and how it relates to the majority and minority and how
power of being previously oppressed can lead to more unjust actions. It’s a great commentary that can be applied
to today’s culture in some great ways that more people should be taking notice
of. Morris does this by doing what was
done in Inferno and creating parallel
universes not where people are evil, but just made different situations. The main characters are Stuart, played by
Francis Magee, and Reed, played by Audrey Schoelhammer, who in both universes
want things to be better and will do anything to get it, but one universe has
them be security men and the other has them be citizens which really shows how
different people can be. Bonnie Langford
is also good as Mel here as she has to be the one to ask the questions for the
audience which she does very well and she provides insight to just how much she
knows about what the dangers of time travel actually are considering how much
her life was messed with by the Time Lords.
Sylvester McCoy is in prototype Season 25 mode as he stays mainly quiet in
the arguments as he knows the grass always seems greener on the other side, but
rarely is.
The atmosphere is great
here as both versions of the planet are destroyed in some way and almost every
character is killed in some horrible way.
Morris is great at doing dark and he can do comedy, but not always at
the same time as here some of the comedy almost lessens the drama of the story. There are also problems with the style of
this release as after the first half you know how this is going to end and what
is going to happen to the Doctor and company as this is just there to fill in
the gaps. Also the professor in this
story is just annoying to me for some reason and I just don’t really like him.
To summarize, Flip-Flop is a great second outing for
Jonathan Morris as writer, but it isn’t perfect as the pacing really makes it
slightly difficult to get through. Most
of the story however is great as the Doctor and Mel get stuck in a time loop
yet get out quite easily and they just work really well here. 80/100
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