Split Second [AUDIO/2021.11.3]

★★★☆☆

  I certainly didn't expect anyone to take The Keys of Marinus as a template and bring it to an hour-long audio drama format, but here we are.

  In direct contrast to the entertaining but ultimately uneventful Flight to Calandra, Split Second decides to take a much more eventful stance with the concept of fractured time. Kiera's meddling with time has brought total chaos, and she and the Doctor must chuck grenades at these time fractures throughout history and beyond to save the universe. I was quite taken aback at first that this was what they were going for; after all, this is quite a short format, and I'd have expected such a story idea to be at its most entertaining when given sufficient time to flesh out. The first two time fixes were presented in such a nonchalant and undramatic way that I felt none of the supposed danger, the tension.

  The adventure does get a bit better after that. Some of the seven locations of the time fractures are more imaginative than others, but I did like the Dundee station of the future (and, of course, the little gag with the Twelfth Doctor acknowledging how he sounds similar to those Scots on the loudspeakers). There's one particular scene when the Doctor asks something of Kiera, and it's one of those moments where you sit up and refuse to take your eyes (or in this case, ears) off the intrepid and sensitive Time Lord. That's Jacob Dudman's best moment as Peter Capaldi's Doctor.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  In all honesty, Split Second is the very definition of a filler episode: not much of an interesting narrative, a middle portion between two more significant installments... the list goes on. I found myself enjoying it enough, however; the sheer balls of trying to cram a space-trotting epic in an hour-long runtime is pure madness... and madness, however successful it turns out to be, is always appreciated.