The Integral

There's a bit of tension in the air in the TARDIS; Jamie is feeling as if new companion Zoe is getting ahead of herself with her cold logic and superiority complex, telling him what to think and how to think it. Zoe is equally exasperated with Jamie's stubbornness and inability to think logically. The Doctor is only too happy to get everyone out of the ship and into an adventure - this time in a psychiatric hospital for patients with video game induced PTSD. The patients are helped by the Integral, a species capable of dampening negative emotions, as well as a computerized system to do the same, but there's a breakdown somewhere in the works, and the asylum is at risk of being destroyed by the patients.

For starters I have this one a bit out of place; it should actually be earlier in the sequence, somewhere after the events of Invasion (or in the case of the Expanded Universe, The Isos Network) when Zoe is still relatively new to the TARDIS crew and she and Jamie are still getting used to each other. Although she has been welcomed into the ship, it's only natural that her affinity for scientific discussions with the Doctor might make Jamie feel like he was on the outside, especially after everything he and the Doctor had been through before Zoe arrived. Zoe naturally doesn't understand what all the fuss is about as it's only logical that she and the Doctor would have a good rapport; the emotional side of a relationship wouldn't even occur to her.

With both Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury on hand to perform in this one the perspective shifts between them both to accentuate the differences in their opinions; were it simply from Jamie's point of view Zoe would come off as a bit of a shrew, while Zoe would just paint Jamie as an ignorant savage or a child struggling to understand the grownups.

And how about the Integral as benevolent monsters?  They are the perfect business partners for this venture in healing, even if the establishment has been mandated onto the corporation to make up for the damage caused by its own video games. Yes, people got addicted to playing immersive violent video games and the result was an inability to separate real life from the game, and outbursts of violent behaviour were the result. In the presence of the Integral, the violent urges are dampened and the hostility suppressed. The Integral are not stupid though, and their time is money; they're not doing this for free, and the corporation thinks they can do without them if they build a machine to do the same work. And it's pretty easy to see what is going to happen next.

This one was the second last adventure in the Second Doctor Boxed Set of Companion Chronicles (Volume 1) and has now become the second last adventure for our TARDIS crew on this blog adventure. One more to go, and then we're back to the televised episodes to see their final fate.

NEXT EPISODE: THE EDGE