After I reviewed The Rings of Akhaten I happened to be thinking about a separate review of Battlefield and it occurred to me that in some ways Akhaten  is the episode Battlefield could have been but wasn’t.

Given how touchy some people have been where Akhaten is concerned, and the many problems with Battlefield I almost didn’t write this post – maybe I didn’t and this is a time-wimey anomaly!

What’s my theory?

There is a scene in Rings which has the Eleventh Doctor facing off to three mysterious figures in which he is brandishing his sonic screwdriver. The sonic is emitting a green glow (there is plenty of scope here for why is the sonic screwdriver not actually sonic but I park that for now) to be met with an answering glow. I suddenly realised that the sonic was just a surrogate magic wand and hey presto it’s just like Harry Potter or maybe… Merlin! By chance I had just re-watched Battlefield and of course in that story the Seventh Doctor is identified as Merlin!

The similarity continues – Battlefield has as its final monster a rubber suited (though ok compared to other effects) magical creature known as the Destroyer of Worlds. At the time I thought impressive title but not that impressive on-screen. Cue 2013 and Rings and we have a Destroyer of Worlds the size of a small planet!

Case proven – Rings is just Battlefield re-made!

Lets be sensible here!

There may be an argument that says this theory is flawed – Ace isn’t Clara (as far as we know) and we are missing a Morgaine and Mordred; I also don’t have equivalents of either Lethbridge-Stewart or Bambera. Even so it is interesting that the drift that the show was taking in the 1980s has almost materialised and with a sufficiently advanced technology we do find it indistinguishable from magic!

Time for me to lie down and rest my fevered imagination!

Thoughts? let me know!