Timejacked!: The Weight of History

"Blood is the prime of my betrayal."

Writer: Lou Morgan

Format: Audio

Released: November 2021

Series: Twelfth Doctor Chronicles 2.03

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis

The Doctor's been timejacked!

Rookie Time Agent Keira Sanstrom needs the Doctor's help, and she's prepared to go to extreme measures to get it. Unwillingly whisked away from St Luke's University, the Doctor quickly discovers that being forced off Earth is only the start of his problems...

The Founder built their planet and their people from nothing. Their lives, and their very world, are dependent on the whims of the Founder. All praise the Founder.

Verdict

The Weight of History was a great conclusion to Timejacked! I've really enjoyed this second series of Twelfth Doctor Chronicles and I really like the approach to make it a linked arc across the series, something that hasn't happened before across any of the Chronicles series with the new series Doctors. It works well and opens up the continuity well and just expands upon the era in a good way. It's also a good way to potentially add more companions like Kiera here, although unless she returns I wouldn't consider her a companion. She did timejack the Doctor after all! Following on from the cliffhanger of Split Second with another Kiera inside the TARDIS, I loved how the Doctor wanted them both outside of the TARDIS to fix things and get base. The new Kiera claiming to be from the future and coming to put right a mistake on Calandra was intriguing and I liked how where they'd materialised saw the city being all wrong, with all roads leading to a black cube at the centre of town. The fracture should have stabilised, but yet it remained which was fun. The Doctor and the Kieras encountering the guard was a lot of fun as I adored the Doctor's response to being threatened by a gun. He wasn't frightened! The Founder was a terrific character and I liked how she was expecting the Doctor. Her turning out to be Havilland wasn't a great surprise to me as I suspected straight away last time out that there was more to her character, but the Doctor's reaction made it a lot of fun. Attis was a terrific character and I loved how he thought he was being tested as a cleaner of the palace. The palace being built around the vortex fracture was marvellous and I thought the concept of the Rearrangement was excellent. It provided some good action scenes and was marvellous with the idea of bringing the past and future to displace the present through harnessing the fracture. Havilland being the person Kiera saw in the split wasn't surprising but I liked how that was her method of time travel and explained her lack of vortex manipulator. Her being the most wanted Time Agent was fantastic and she used her position to create quite the world on Calandra! And she was still doing it which made the inhabitants think she was immortal because technically she had always been there. The moment the Kieras touched in the TARDIS was fun because we knew that they weren't the same person, but the 'future' version was actually a copy which took things back to Flight to Calandra brilliantly and brought the series full circle in a nice way. Finding out that Havilland lost her vortex manipulator playing cards in Bath was amusing, and she wouldn't have much to laugh about once the Kieras were instructed by the Doctor to hotwire time. Quite the task! The Doctor gaining control of the fracture and repairing and ensuring everything was reset was slightly too easy for my liking, but it was nice that everyone worked together to bring it about. Havilland having the option of staying on the wrong side of the split and feeling both the history of Earth and Calandra collapse on her was daunting, so she had to go through back to nineteenth century Bath to seal the fracture. Vetch's brief cameo return to prove that everything was back in order was nice and I liked the emotion of the copy Kiera vanishing once the fracture was closed. The Doctor returning Kiera back to the Time Agency was nice and I get the feeling we may not have seen the last of her. But if we have then she's had a great run alongside the Twelfth Doctor! Overall, a great conclusion to what's been a fun little series. 

Rating: 8/10