One Sentence Review

A fairly mundane episode, with only the Doctor Death reveal and plot progression saving it from total mediocrity

Episode Synopsis

Find it here

Thoughts and Analysis

After last weeks superb episode, I was doubtful that this weeks would be as good and I was right, since for the most part I was not at all engaged with this episode as the main plot has been done before in both Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars, where the protagonist meet someone they were close to in the past and do there best to either change them or make sure they become the people they know in the future. On the plus side however we do finally get to meet “Doctor Death” face to face and have hints that he is involved in Operation Rose.

Taking the meeting of Alex’s inlaws and future husband, I feel that if this had been done last year I probably would have looked more favourably upon it as it answered a few questions about what happened between her and Peter and why Molly was going off with Evan, and I did chuckle at Molly the cat. In the current series though, this plot felt out of place and I have suspicions that this episode was included to counter the darkness of the previous episode and what may be to come.

One thing that I did not understand though is what exactly happened between Peter and Gaynor since  Gaynor states she chased after Peter when he saw her with his (Peter) Mums necklace on, and he struck her with a brick as he was afraid of what Gaynor might do to him when Gaynor chased after him BUT the timing of the attack was when Gaynor was trying to fool Gene into thinking she was bringing in George Staines and we see her walking calmly past Gene and Alex. Given that Gaynor/George was under suspicion by the police and allegedly on a sting at the time it does not make sense that she would wear incriminating evidence at the time.

The only thing that is consistent is that when you see her walking past Gene and Alex she has a necklace on but when they find her she does not. Given that Gaynor is George a more plausible plot would have been she blackmailed or paid Peter to hit her over the head, to try to make it look like George had attacked her, but he hit her too hard leading to her hospitalization and unmasking. On the whole Gaynor=George thing, I had worked it out as a possible plot twist from her intial police interview, especially with the George not being the man he was comment, and figured she had something to do with it, when she was introduced, as she was otherwise superfluous to the plot.

As for the Alex and Peter relationship, I suspect that it was this experience that made Peter run off when Molly was 6 months old, as he suddenly realised that the weird police woman who tormented him when he was 14 was his wife. This made Peter come to his senses to get away from the mad woman as quickly as he could.

For the Gene/Alex fans there were quite a few moments to make them happy, from Gene’s look when Alex implies she has a date with “Boris”, to Gene offering to comfort and upset Alex when the attack on her apparently pleasant in laws gets to her, to the look at the end when she talks to “Boris” again. There was also further demonstration of the Dual nature of Gene, with the part of him which by modern standards would be expelled from the police for brutality given his treatment of Metal Mickey, to his softer side when he does not arrest George for the crime but rather Gaynor so as not to cause Elsie distress.

There is also some fallout on Rays part from the events of last week, with him apparently being disillusioned with the police force who are no longer seen as heroes, and I laughed at Gene’s comments at Ray’s lack of enthusiasm over “interrogating” Metal Mickey as he only hits him once. I did have one slight problem with Ray going to apply to join the army as the maximum recruitment age at that point was 26 (33 now), and Ray looks alot older than 26, though its possible the rules are different for serving police officers. While this episode makes it seem less likely that he will betray Gene, he still remains the most likely candidate.

Moving on to the most important part of the episode the Dr Death aka “Boris Johnson” aka Martin Summers reveal. Before I start, it is worth mentioning that the BBC website has a “diary” written by Martin Summers up and this gives some hints of where things might go. Some of the comments in it could be considered spoilers as they hint of things yet to be clearly indicated in the episodes, so dont visit if you dont want hints of what may be to come.

To start with, I think that given what Martin tells Alex he is not a figment of her imagination, this is not because of what he does know, but rather what he does not know. What Martin does not know, is anything about Sam Tyler being in the same world that he and Alex are in and he simply refers to himself and Alex being trapped there. If he was simply a figment I would think he would bring Sam up in conversation. In addition while he could be lying about only knowing about Alex, if he had any suspicions or knowledge about Sam I think he would have mentioned it, given that she works for Gene Hunt and there are newspaper articles about Sam on the wall.

It is also clear that Martin is deeply involved in Operation Rose, and unless he is trying to further victimise Alex by entrapping her, it seems like it is not an anti-corruption scheme, but rather an action driven by corrupt cops. We also find out that Martin is an ex-cop and a disgraced one at that. Given that Alex and Sams roles in the past paralleled their roles in the present, it seems likely that when Martin went back he found himself as a disgraced ex cop in the past as well. As Shaz cant find any information on Martin, it seems that he is either not an ex-cop at Fenchurch East OR Martin Summers is not his real name. This is of course assuming that Shaz is trustworthy.

While only a small part of the episode, I found these reveals to be the highlight of it for me, and I eagerly anticipate seeing where Operation Rose goes and what it is. There were 2 curious comments from Martin Summers though, the first was that he referred to the present/future as “the other world” not the present/future. This suggests that in Martin’s opinion at least, he and Alex are not trapped in their/or past but rather a parallel world/past. The second curious comment was that he suggest to Alex that Operation Rose might change her mind about becoming corrupt, this suggests that Operation Rose may be something that is quite long running or ongoing, and their will be a chance to jump aboard after it has started.

Overall though, despite the welcome Martin Summers reveal, a fairly disappointing episode that would have in my opinion fit in better in the first season. While it is possible that this disappointment was simply due to last weeks episode being so good, I hope that next weeks episode is a marked improvement even though this episode was still more than watchable.

Episode Rating

6/10