Have A Nice Ninth

THE NINTH DOCTOR: CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON

A RETROSPECTIVE

With the exception of The Eight Doctor (in terms of televised episodes, which are the ones I go by), The Ninth Doctor has the shortest tenure of any Doctor on Doctor Who.  Allow me to state how I got to this conclusion.

If you go by number of stories, The Ninth Doctor has a total of ten.  The Sixth Doctor has a total of eleven stories IF you (like me) count The Trial of A Time Lord as four separate stories (The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoid, and The Ultimate Foe).   IF you count The Trial of a Time Lord as ONE story, then you bring the Sixth's count to eight.  HOWEVER, if you go by number of episodes the Ninth Doctor has a total of thirteen (thanks to three two-episode stories).  Even by that standard, the Sixth Doctor still beats him because The Trial of a Time Lord has fourteen episodes ALONE (and that's if you count Trial of A Time Lord as ONE story.  If you went by the FOUR story cataloging...)  Tricky thing this accounting business. 

In any case, I count ten stories from Christopher Eccleston era:

Rose
The End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2 (Aliens of London/World War Three)
Dalek
The Long Game
Father's Day
The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances)
Boom Town
Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2 (Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways)

Now that we have come to a parting of the ways with our friend from the North, it's time to pause and look over his tenure. 

On the whole, I think Eccleston was 'fantastic' as the Doctor.  He could be funny, he could be deadly serious, he could be difficult, he even, at least once, could show genuine fear.  There were a variety of reasons why Eccleston decided to leave, and I wonder if Bad Wolf Part 2 would have been different if he did not have to regenerate.  Eccleston is in retrospect, the moodiest, dare I say, the angriest of Doctors, and it's not without blame: he saw all Gallifrey destroyed (something I have always felt was a mistake from the get-go).  Still, given he was there for just one season, I think he will rank on the higher end of the Doctor scale (even though I think all the Doctors have been good).

Now, it's on to our selections for the Best of Doctor Who: Series/Season One (Revived Edition).

BEST FEMALE GUEST STAR

Zoe Wanamaker (The End of the World)
Yasmin Bannerman (The End of the World)
Christine Adams (The Long Game)
Florence Hoath (The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2)
Jo Joyner (Bad Wolf Part 2)

Tough call since all were wonderful, but as I look at things, I give the edge to Wanamaker only because unlike the others, she had to use only her voice to create her character.  The fact that she could only be heard and still create a magnificent character (a bitchy trampoline, if memory serves correct), only adds to the strength of her performance. 

BEST MALE GUEST STAR

Simon Callow (The Unquiet Dead)
Corey Johnson (Dalek)
John Barrowman (The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2)
Simon Pegg (The Long Game)
Shaun Dingwall (Father's Day)

Now, is it fair to put a Companion here while not in the female category?  Well, I think it's because Captain Jack, as beloved as he is in certain circles (though not in this one), I felt worked best as just a guest star on The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2.  Note how he was redundant in Boom Town to where we almost forgot he was there.  He was the requisite action hero in Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2, and would it have killed Davies to have left him for dead?

I understand writers have an affinity for their characters, but for some reason Steven Moffat has done his best to build up the characters he's created (Captain Jack Sparrow...I mean, Harkness, and later on DOCTOR River Song) to being these Doctor Who Icons without whom the show simply could not go on.  In both their cases, I've never been particularly overwhelmed with either Harkness or Song (however, I digress...Spoilers, Sweetie).  This is why I consider him a Guest Star (although I begrudgingly have to recognize he IS a Companion).  However, I can't get into the Captain Jack mythos both Doctor Who and Torchwood build up.   

As for why Dingwall over Callow (a close vote)?  Well, I think Dingwall brought a great tenderness and tragedy to Pete, someone we end up liking but know must die.  Though both Callow and Dingwall were beautiful performances, I was more moved by the latter emotionally.

BEST VILLAIN

The Lady Cassandra (The End of the World)
Dalek (Dalek)
Henry Van Statten (Dalek)
Adam Mitchell (The Long Game)
The Dalek Emperor (Bad Wolf Part 2)

There's something sleazy in how Van Statten disposes of everyone, and worse, how he even does what was once inconceivable: make us feel sympathy for a Dalek.  If only that Dalek hadn't yearned for the 'human touch', if you will, we might have had another winner altogether.

Again, another curiosity: a Companion as a villain?  Well, first, he had no problem leaving Rose behind in Dalek, and then his greed for knowledge (which would grant him wealth and power in his own time) caused so many problems for everyone on Satellite Five.  In so many ways, Adam Mitchell was a major problem, so he is in a strong sense, a villain.

BEST INDIVIDUAL MOMENT

The Doctor realizes just who is calling for help (Dalek)
The Doctor and Rose face off over the Dalek's fate (Dalek)
Rose saying goodbye to her father Pete (Father's Day)
The Doctor pledging to rescue Rose (Bad Wolf Part 1)

I had to think between three emotional moments in Doctor Who: Season/Series One, and it's so interesting that for a science-fiction show, we have many tender moments.  This moment, when Rose gets to say goodbye to the father she's never known (at least until now), knowing that her face will be the last thing Pete will see, is extremely heartbreaking.  With all the power of time travel, Rose still cannot alter the future to where she and her father will be together.  They had this brief moment, and if one extends things, all children eventually have to let their parents go.  It was a beautiful moment. 

MOST FRIGHTENING MOMENT

Jackie Tyler besieged by the Slitheen (Aliens of London Part 1)
The Doctor confronts his ultimate nemesis (Dalek)
The Dalek Rising (Dalek)
The Doctor, Jack, and Rose besieged by empty patients (The Empty Child Part 1)
Lynda getting blow away...literally (Bad Wolf Part 2)

A good Doctor Who frightening moment should make you curl up in your sofa, wondering what will happen next, fearing for your heroes.  The cliffhanger in The Empty Child Part 1 did exactly that.  When Lynda gets killed off, it is an especially effective moment of terror, made especially more so due to the silence (not to be confused with The Silence, another Moffat-ramming-pseudo-icons-down-our-throats business).  I think, however, having all these people, particular the titular child him, menacing an action hero (Captain Jack), the intellectual hero (The Doctor), and our fighting beauty (Rose Tyler), with seemingly no way out, made that moment far more frightening.

BEST ART DIRECTION
The End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
The Long Game
The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2

The cold of the Editor's room, the chaos of the floor the TARDIS landed in, all contributed to making The Long Game a set that could not benefit from being a period piece (which both The Unquiet Dead and The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 were).  Instead, we had to imagine a place that could exist, and one that was both familiar and alien. 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

The End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
Father's Day
The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2

Here, there can be no contest.  As much as I like the 80s (though my memories of them are vague), it is almost for certain that period pieces win out, and from the shrouds of the undead to Rose's gowns and Dickens' frocks, The Unquiet Dead gains an edge. 

BEST DIRECTING

Keith Boak (Rose)
Euros Lyn (The Unquiet Dead)
Joe Ahearne (Dalek)
Joe Ahearne (Father's Day)
Joe Ahearne (The Empty Child Part 1)

I can't help that Ahearne earned three nominations: he is the director of three of the best Doctor Who: Season/Series One stories.  When considering directing, it isn't just the story, but the performances.  All the performances in Father's Day, from Camille Couduri's Jackie Tyler and Shaun Dingwall's Pete Tyler right on down to Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston, were all so beautiful: going from comedy to tragedy so effortlessly. 

BEST SCREENPLAY

Russell T Davies (Rose)
Mark Gatiss (The Unquiet Dead)
Robert Shearman (Dalek)
Paul Cornell (Father's Day)
Steven Moffat (The Empty Child Part 1)

It takes a great deal of talent and ability to introduce a historic figure without making it a gimmick.  Gatiss' screenplay for The Unquiet Dead kept a balance between being a fright-fest and being a great man, a true genius, contemplating his past.  I could talk about either The Doctor or Charles Dickens, and maybe I am talking about both.  Here, Dickens is an integral part, and the clever moments ("What the Shakespeare?") mixed in with the fantastical (the specters haunting Dickens' reading), and even the sad moments (Gwyneth's end) made The Unquiet Dead a brilliant story. 

BEST STORY

Rose
The End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
Father's Day
Dalek

It was really a matter of going over which earned a Perfect Ten.  Only two stories did.  One blew me away, one moved me almost to tears.  So close, so close.  However, after some thought, I still can't help being impressed by The Unquiet Dead's wit mixed with sadness. 

Yes, as with all things Doctor Who, we've had some simply ghastly moments.  I would be remiss to skip over them.  Therefore, with that in mind...

WORST INDIVIDUAL MOMENT

Rose telling the Doctor he's so "gay" (Aliens of London Part 1)
The Slitheen make a BIG NOISE (Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2)
The revelation of the Editor (The Long Game)
"Don't forget the welfare state" (The Empty Child Part 2)
Captain Jack reveals all (Bad Wolf Part 1)

I had narrowed down to two, and both involve Russell T Davies.  First, for an openly gay man like Davies allowing one of his characters to use the word 'gay' as a slur is to my mind simply inexcusable and highly distasteful.  However, at least a defense can be made that this would be true to the character: Rose is a working-class girl with no great education, so one could argue she doesn't see it as offensive.

What I DON'T like, and have never liked, is to have the person's political views enter into the show so nakedly.  When trying to inject politics into science-fiction, it should be subtle and clever (District 9, the original The Day the Earth Stood Still).  Davies doesn't have that subtlety: Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2 were nothing but his thinly-veiled hatred for George W. Bush and Tony Blair involving us in the Iraq Intervention.  Even that I could overlook, but having the Doctor take a direct  position (the joys of perpetual Labour governments providing womb to tomb services) is something I don't understand, believe, or accept. 

WORST MONSTER

The Slitheen (Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2)
The Mighty Jagrofess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfroe (The Long Game)
Adam Mitchell (The Long Game)
The Reapers (Father's Day)
Margaret Blaine (Boom Town)
Beyond useless, The Mighty...has the silliest name of any monster, and he has such a long name just to show off how long his name can be.  One can't take such a monster seriously, and frankly, since he doesn't look like he is the brains behind this operation, I can't believe the menace is real.  Yes, in the long term, The Mighty...was just a front for another villain, but then it makes me think The Long Game really just wasted my time. 

WORST STORY

Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2
The Long Game
The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2
Boom Town
Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2

The unfortunate thing about having only ten stories to deal with is that if you nominate five for your best, by default the remaining five will be the lumped with the worst.  Granted, I wasn't a fan of any of these, but out of all our nominees The Long Game is the most inconsequential.  Minus the fact that it got rid of one our worst Companions (though that is for another time), The Long Game had points of logic that werent' answered (how does Suki go from dim girl to super-rebel at a turn of a dime?) and a monster who was neither terrifying or interesting. 

Now, eventually, once the goal of seeing every Doctor Who story made is complete, we will be in a better position to judge where the Ninth Doctor stories fit into the Great Ranking.  I'm still debating whether to have a separate Ranking for the Revived Series.  Certainly there are great things in Eccleston's tenure, and some things I didn't care for. 

Well, there it is for now.  We close out our Christopher Eccleston aka The Ninth Doctor Retrospective.  We now move on to the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, knowing that some of his stories will be brilliant, some I have no desire to revisit, and some that are a complete mystery. 

That, however, is another story. 

THE NINTH DOCTOR STORIES

Next Story: The Christmas Invasion

A Wolf In Daleks' Clothing

STORY 170 : BAD WOLF PARTS 1 & 2

(BAD WOLF/THE PARTING OF THE WAYS)

In the new Doctor Who, the phrase "Bad Wolf" has been the dominant theme, the mystery of why this phrase appears through all of the Doctor's adventures with Rose teasing us throughout the series/season.  Now, in the appropriately-named Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2 (Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways), we at last get the source of our mystery.  Truth be told, it all been a build-up to something a little disappointing.

We find that The Long Game is the present-day version of what Mission to the Unknown was to The Daleks' Master Plan: a prequel to the larger story (in this case that of Bad Wolf 1 & 2).   After a recap of The Long Game, we're thrown into a cavalcade of confusion: the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Rose (Billie Piper), and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) have all been separated and land on various television shows, respectively Big Brother, The Weakest Link, and What Not To Wear.  Each react to their situation in their typical manner: the Doctor is irritated and annoyed, Rose thinks the whole thing is funny, and Jack is just delighted to show off his "amazing" body.  Of course, not everything is as it seems.  Each show has a twist: eviction means extermination, being voted 'the weakest link' means extermination, and altering your looks means literally altering the way you look.

The Doctor realizes that the Game Station he's in is really the former Satellite Five from The Long Game.  He escapes the Big Brother house, along with housemate Lynda (Jo Jayner), and while Jack manages to escape himself, they arrive too late for Rose, who in her attempt to escape the Anne-Droid, gets vaporized.  But lo!--this is not the end of Rose (side note: could it ever truly be?).  Rather than get exterminated, she finds herself surrounded, and soon the Doctor, Jack, Lynda, and the Programmers aboard (Jo Stone-Fewings and Nisha Nayer) discover who is holding them and the population of Earth hostage...THE DALEKS!

This group, ruled by the Dalek Emperor, managed to fall through space at the end of the Great Time War, and His Majesty has been harvesting humans to create his new Dalek Army, ready to invade and destroy Earth.  The Doctor, however, will have none of that: he tells them he's going to rescue Rose and destroy the Daleks, all without a plan, or weapons of any kind.

The Doctor and Jack land on the Dalek mother ship and rescue Rose, and the Doctor has come up with a way to destroy the Daleks once and for all via a Delta wave, destroying every mind in its path (though that could include the humans too).  However, the Doctor is far too loving to truly threaten the Daleks, until Rose inspires an idea for him...or so we think.  Keeping his pledge to protect Rose, he sends her off to safety, much to her agony, and she returns to London to be greeted by her erstwhile boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke) and her mom Jackie (Camille Coduri).  As the Doctor and Jack continue to fight off the Dalek Army, Rose is frustrated about remaining at home, until she hits on the idea of looking into the TARDIS.  Once she manages to do that, she absorbs the energy from the TARDIS, allowing her to go back to the Dalek mother ship.  It should be too late: both Lynda and Jack have been killed by the Daleks, and the Doctor is just out of time.

Once there, she has god-like powers: with a wave of her hands she evaporates the Army and brings Jack back to life, but the intensity of the TARDIS energy is destroying her mind.  With a kiss, the Doctor absorbs the energy for himself, and once back on the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Rose he is changing.  To her horror, the Doctor regenerates into a whole new man (David Tennant).

Right from the get-go Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2 has a major problem.  Part 1 is dependent on the audience knowing certain things, primarily the three shows being spoofed: Big Brother, The Weakest Link, and What Not to Wear.  If you (like me) haven't seen one or any of those shows, you really have no idea what is going on.  Until Bad Wolf, I hadn't even HEARD of What Not to Wear, so while I understood the gist of the show (and could even guess that the two hosts voiced their robotic doppelgangers), anyone else who wasn't a viewer would feel a bit lost. 

Another issue I had was a bad habit of current Doctor Who that should be called the Rory Syndrome: killing off a character just to find that he/she really isn't dead.  Here, we witness what we think are the deaths of both Rose and Jack, only to find that they aren't really dead or conversely, have been granted immortality.  You can't really build sadness for a character's end if said character doesn't really end.  If I remember correctly, for a moment we thought Rose was dead in Dalek, and while it worked that time I think it didn't go over that well in Bad Wolf Part 1.  What I wondered was if Rose, in her god-like state, can bring life, did she bring back only Jack or everyone else on board?  It would have been possible to have restored all the humans slaughtered by the Daleks (except Lynda, whose death was both tragic and extremely well-done cinematically). 

Finally on the minus side, I kept wondering about how it was possible for the Daleks to survive the Time War but there being absolutely no chance whatsoever of the Time Lords themselves being exterminated.  If Russell T Davies allowed the Daleks to survive, what precludes a small group of Time Lord exiles to have escaped?  Even Aeneas survived the fall of Troy. 

Now, placing our eyes on the positive, some of the acting in Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2 is among the best of the first series.  Once you get over a lot of the comedy from the warped versions of the various shows, I found Jayner's Lynda to be a sweet, almost naive girl.  If Rose hadn't lived (which would have given the story more depth), Lynda would have made a wonderful Companion.  As stated earlier, her death at the plungers of the Daleks was extremely chilling and brought a real moment of terror and sadness, given she was a very nice person.  Eccleston was, to quote him, fantastic, both when playing grumpy at the Big Brother House and when as a hologram he appears to Rose as part of Emergency Programme One and when at the end of Part 1 he declares his intentions to the Daleks. 

Piper has earned her place as one of the best Doctor Who Companions with Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2.  In this two-part story watch her transform from the girl who isn't taking The Weakest Link seriously to the terrified girl held captive by the Daleks to the determined woman moving TARDIS and Earth to rescue the Doctor.  Piper has an evolution to her character, and I believe put to rest once and for all the idea that she is just a 'pop star' who was given the gig to get ratings.  Rather, she projects an entire catalogue of emotions: fear, love, courage, all within a very young character.

It truly is hard to determine if Barrowman was playing a character or just being himself as the egotistic Jack.  I know a whole mythos has been built around our Captain Jack, but for my part I've never warmed up to our intergalactic nymphomaniac, so I would make him the weakest link (pun definitely intended).

Joe Ahearne creates some beautiful moments along with getting good performances out of his actors.  When Rose is believed dead, he surrounds the Doctor in black, enhancing the poignancy of the moment.  Visually, when Rose is obliterating all enemies is also a beautiful moment.  The best moment in Bad Wolf is in Part 2 when Lynda is killed (I keep going back to that, but in the silence of the moment, seeing the Daleks outside the Satellite with their lights blinking out what we already know they are saying makes it more chilling). 

I do question whether it was important for Rose to reveal the truth about her and her father to Jackie, figuring that maybe this could have remained between her and Pete, but there it is.  I also never figured out why that particular phrase, "bad wolf", was so important.  If Rose just got it from when she destroyed the Dalek Emperor and spread it across time and space, then it didn't originate from her mind, did it.  Right?  Am I missing something?

Well, now we've reached the end of the 9th Doctor's tenure, and we will have a retrospective on him: the best and the worst (yes, there were bad things in Series/Season 1).  However, that's for another time.

Bad Wolf Parts 1 & 2 has some wonderful performances and in a perverse way give me hope that the Time Lords are actually still around: what's good for the Daleks... I had some problems with Part 1, less so with Part 2, which is a switch: normally the first episode is brilliant while the second one falls apart.  It gets point knocked off for suffering from the Rory Syndrome, but on the whole, we can say they cried us a good wolf.

6/10

A 9th Doctor Retrospective

Next Story: The Christmas Invasion

The Doctor's Egg-Celent Adventure

STORY 169: BOOM TOWN

Boom Town makes it clear from the get-go that it is going to be a sequel to a previous story.  The episode begins with the word "Previously" on the screen while scenes from Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2 (Aliens of London/World War III) play before we start our new adventure.  Side note: off the top of my head I can't think of a story from Doctor Who that is a sequel to another Doctor Who story save for The Peladon Tales, where The Monster of Peladon follows the events from The Curse of Peladon.  How one feels about Boom Town, I imagine, depends on how you feel about the Slitheen.  If you liked them, then Boom Town is a great treat.  If you didn't, it's an exercise is stupidity.  I confess to not being crazy about the oddly cuddly aliens, but I don't hate them.  Russell T Davies, who wrote both Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2 and Boom Town, I suspect has a soft spot for the Slitheen and expected them to join the ranks of super-villains The Daleks, the Cybermen, or the Master (my Unholy Trinity of Doctor Who villains).  Boom Town,  in the end, showed that they probably will never reach this lofty peak.

It is six months post Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2.  Already knowing who the villain is, we start straight from when the female Slitheen kills the nuclear expert who has warned her about the dangers of a new nuclear power plant.  Now going by the name of Margaret Blaine (Annette Badland), she now is the Lord Mayor of Cardiff.  Mayor Blaine has an ambitious agenda: to build a nuclear reactor right in the middle of the Welsh capital (even if it means tearing down Cardiff Castle--which I figure will be quite easy).  This will be called the Blaidd Drwg plant (one guess as to what Blaidd Drwg means in Welsh). 

Unbeknownst to her, the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), along with his Companion Rose (Billie Piper) and CAPTAIN Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) have also landed in Cardiff.  The rift in time that was sealed in The Unquiet Dead now provides power for the TARDIS.  It also gives a chance for Rose to catch up with her long-suffering boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke), who has rushed to Cardiff to give Rose her passport and I figure to see her.

All is going well with both groups (Blaine is putting those opposed to Blaidd Drwg out of the way and the travellers are enjoying their holiday), but they come across a couple of hiccups.  For Slitheen, she can't bring herself to kill investigative reporter Cathy Salt (Mali Harries), especially after learning she is three-months pregnant.  For the Doctor, finding the new Lord Mayor of Cardiff's photo in the paper.  He goes to see her, and of course, she makes a run for it.  However, with his three assistants (even the ever-blundering Mickey) Blaine is captured.  The Doctor will take her back to Raxi.... even if it means taking her to her own execution.  She does, however, make a final request: to have dinner w/the Doctor.

This works out great for Rose & Mickey, who take the refueling to go on their first date in Who-know-how-long.  On their various dates, things go awry: Margaret (whose real name is Blon Something-Or-Other) just can't kill the Doctor (no matter how often she tries), while Mickey (who asked Rose to have dinner and then go to a hotel...rather daring stuff for a kid's show), realizes he will never win against all that the Doctor can offer her, and his anger erupts.  That, however, is small compared to the eruption right above the TARDIS, with the rift opening.

Margaret takes this as her chance to escape via a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator (a pan-dimensional surfboard)* which will have the unfortunate effect of destroying the Earth.  While the world (or in this case, Cardiff) was cracking all around them, Rose rushes to the TARDIS, leaving a frustrated and angry Mickey behind.  Bad choice: Margaret takes Rose hostage, but just as she's about to hang ten the TARDIS console opens, and she sees the light (literally).  Overwhelmed by it, she is overcome, and turns to thank the Doctor.  Her body suit falls, the console is closed, and she has reverted to an egg.  The Doctor decides to return Blon to Raxi... where she will have a chance to start again.  Rose goes in search of Mickey, and she does spy him, but opts to let him go.

I think where Boom Town goes wrong is first off by telling us from the start who is the villain, especially since director Joe Aherne begins the story proper by moving the camera to an open door while letting us see only one character and having us hear the voice of the other.  You can't build suspense of who the other person is speaking to if you already know who they are speaking to.  Second, Davies' script is openly exaggerated: how does he expect us to truly believe anyone would get away with tearing down Cardiff Castle with nary a word of protest?  I don't know much of Welsh history (OK, I know NOTHING of Welsh history) but I know the Welsh people are passionate about their history and culture and language.  Therefore, the idea that one of the leading symbols of their culture could be torn down so quickly is beyond laughable.  For a story to be believable it has to be grounded in some sort of reality.  Cardiff Castle will always stand so long as there is a Wales.

It was more believable when Blaine complained how London never notices or cares what goes on in Wales.   Realizing how she now sounds like a Welshman (or Welshwoman), she says rather stunned, "I've gone native".  THAT was funny because it was true, or at least based on reality.  It surprises me to think Davies wouldn't realize that having more realistic moments make for a better episode.

Come to think about it, that bit was actually one of the better moments in Boom Town.  The other comedy bits fell flat (really Russ, "Doctor...who?"); worse was whenever Mickey was required to be the 'comic relief'.  There's something almost sad that this kid has to be the butt of the joke.  Here, he's a total moron (I winced when he had a trash can on his foot as he chased Blaine).  How much better it would have or could have been if he'd been allowed to capture Blaine. 

It also surprises me that neither Aherne or Davies realized how slow and rather uninteresting the story is.  A long time is spent at the restaurant with Blaine and the Doctor (and seeing how long they were there and they never got around to eating anything, all I could think of was how bad the service must have been).  Another bad part of Boom Town is the fact that you have seven major characters within 45 minutes of screen time.  This has the effect of leaving Captain Jack pretty much left to his own devices (is it wrong to think of the Pet Shop Boys song while thinking of Captain Jack).  In the montage of the various 'dates' we just get a quick glimpse of Captain Jack working on the TARDIS.  Granted, it had to be done, but I would have thought Captain Jack would have taken a bit of a break to hit the clubs.  Just a thought.

I also am surprised that it is THIS particular episode that the "Bad Wolf" running theme is finally address.  We've seen or heard "Bad Wolf" in almost every episode (I don't think it came up in Rose, but in some way shape or form in almost every other episode post-Rose).    Moreover, while it has popped up throughout this series/season I can't recall when it was so prominent or memorable enough to draw the Doctor's attention.  All that might have worked save for the fact that the Doctor is the one that makes us see "Bad Wolf", then cheerfully dismisses it as nothing.  It just doesn't ring true and for my part I'm not a big fan of obvious foreshadowing.

With few exceptions, there is always something good in any Doctor Who story.  Here, the performances of Badland and Eccleston together are wonderful: full of regret and anger and recriminations, they play off each other so brilliantly.  The same goes for Piper and Clarke, who play the difficulties of a relationship coming apart.  Clarke in particular has great moments in the dramatic scenes when he reproaches Rose for basically kissing and leaving him to run off with another man.  He plays the hurt of someone who runs whenever the woman he loves calls but who ultimately will never be a match for our intergalactic hero. 

I digress to point out that when Badland was the Slitheen, her voice communicated a warmth when dealing with Salt.  The Slitheen are a curious creature: they are evil but with their big eyes they almost look cuddly.  You can't really fear them because they have an odd cuteness to them. 

Once we get the threat of the opening rift, it's almost done to remind us that there is some sort of danger in this episode.  Most of Boom Town is spent on dealing with relationships that the fact the world could get torn apart is almost incidental.  There's nothing wrong with dealing with characters, but there is when you have them face a threat near the end only to be resolved so quickly that the TARDIS does it for them.  Finally, an intergalactic surfboard...really?

I digress to wonder why we had to stop to explain the history of the TARDIS as a police box.  I know fans of the revived series might wonder about the police box (given they aren't around anymore) but it does seem to have been written as exposition rather than straight-up dialogue.  I think they could have had this conversation over breakfast with Mickey again being the curious one--I'd rather hear that then of Captain Jack's frolics in the nude (that Intergalactic Nymphomaniac). 

Ultimately, as much as Davies appears to push the Slitheen into being these great Doctor Who monsters, it just didn't take.  Boom Town is the last story (as of today) to feature the Slitheen (not counting cameos in The End of Time Part 2 and The Big Bang Part 1: The Pandorica Opens).   Granted, they are actually a family called Slitheen (technically, they are Raxicoricofallapatorians, but it's just too damn hard to say that repeatedly), so calling the Slitheen themselves monsters may be technically wrong.   Yes, you have them make a return in The Sarah Jane Adventures, but I'm speaking in reference to Doctor Who itself.  The story isn't terrible, but it doesn't have a great sense of menace or threat.  Really, the villain could have been anyone.  In the end, Boom Town is really a bust.

4/10

Next Story: BAD WOLF PARTS 1 & 2 (Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways)

* This entire phrase courtesy of the Doctor Who Wiki Page.

Harkness Rising

STORY 168: THE EMPTY CHILD PARTS 1 & 2 (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) 

One of the big things with The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) is the introduction of a character that, somehow, beyond what I think either writer Stephen Moffat or producer Russell T Davies might have imagined, would have a whole mythos built around him.  Said character would spawn his own spin-off, or rather, spin-offs (plural).  So far, I count three series built around our guest star: Torchwood, Torchwood: Children of Earth, and now Torchwood: Miracle Day.

Then again, if I may be allowed to digress, perhaps it isn't a surprise that Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) became a star apart from Doctor Who.  After all, few producers have been as enamored of creating spin-offs and building whole mythologies around guest characters/Companions on Doctor Who than Moffat and Davies.  Davies, for example, toyed with having Companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) get her own series, or at least series of specials (Rose Tyler: Earth Defence).  For his part, Moffat built up future character River Song (Alex Kingston) into a virtual Doctor Who icon...and even managed to make her connection to future Doctors (David Tennant and Matt Smith) into something bordering on Biblical.  He's even thrown in a  a connection to a future COMPANION for good measure.  However, that is for another time.

One gets the feeling if those two had been around in November 1963, we would have seen such shows as Ian & Barbara: The Investigators (where our former schoolteachers become detectives of the paranormal) or maybe later on such endeavours as A Day With Dodo (a program on CBBC--Children's British Broadcasting Corporation--where our dimwitted host learns all sorts of things, chief among them to speak proper English) or Brigadier: The Lost Years (detailing Lethbridge-Stewart's war experiences).  We also could have had Adric's Mad Math Mania and/or Ace's Wild.  And those are the Companions, not the guest stars. Personally, I find it amazing that River Song HASN'T had her own spin-off at this point.

Truth be told, to my memory, the only guest characters in classic Doctor Who who were even considered for their own spin-offs were theater impresario Henry Gordon Jago (Christopher Benjamin) & Professor Litefoot (Trevor Baxter) from The Talons of Weng-Chiang.   Jago & Litefoot have gone on to a successful series of audio stories but have yet to appear on another Doctor Who episode as a team (which is a puzzle to me given how good they and The Talons of Weng-Chiang were).   HOWEVER, we have to take certain things into consideration. 

First, The Talons of Weng-Chiang is six parts long, or three complete episodes if translated to revived series timing.  Therefore, if it were done today, it would have made them virtual Companions.  Second, The Talons of Weng-Chiang is one of the best Doctor Who stories of the Fourth Doctor's era if not the entire series.  A classic story has several elements that elevate it, and in the case of Talons of Weng-Chiang, one of them was the team of Jago & Litefoot.  Third, the sheer length of Talons of Weng-Chiang allowed the audience to build affection and interest in Jago & Litefoot.  In the revived series, the fact that most non-Companions pop in and out so quickly doesn't allow for that...unless the characters pop in again on a more continuous basis.  Fourth and finally, Benjamin and Baxter worked so well together that it seemed almost natural that they continue their association post-Talons of Weng-Chiang. 

However, I am getting too far ahead of myself for the purposes of The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2, so now let's get back to the episode in hand. 

The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his Companion Rose are chasing a large object that eventually crashes in London.  It takes a little while for them to realize it has crashed during the Blitz, which explains why people take little note of something dropping from the sky.  The Doctor and Rose are split up when she attempts to rescue a boy wearing a gas mask who is on the roof.  While trying to reach him, she grabs hold of a rope...tied to a barrage balloon.  Now she's hovering over London while the Luftwaffe and the RAF are fighting it out around her.  Her distinct bottom attracts the eyes of Captain Jack, whom we discover is also from the future.  She soon falls (figuratively and literally) for our dashing Captain, who has mistaken her and the Doctor as Time Agents.  A deal is tentatively struck: in exchange for money Captain Jack will lead them to this crashed object, which he says is a Chula warship.

Meanwhile, a young girl named Nancy (Florence Hoath) has been leading a group of children who've run away from their evacuated safety in the country and returned to London.  Taking advantage of the same air raid that caused Rose to inadvertently take flight, she raids a home for their food, bringing in her charges...only to find the Doctor too has popped up at the dinner table.  However, there is one more guest trying to get in: the little boy with the gas mask who keeps asking, "Are you my mummy?"  Nancy gets all the children out and tells the Doctor not to let him in and especially never to let the child touch him, otherwise he will become like the child--empty.  She knows who the child is, or was: her little brother, Jamie, killed around the same time 'a bomb that wasn't a bomb' crashed.  To get information, Nancy tells him to see the doctor at hospital.

Dr. Constantine (Richard Wilson) tells the Doctor that everyone in the hospital has the same injuries, right down to a scar on the back of the right hand.  After gaining his information, the Doctor watches in shock as Dr. Constantine slowly turns like the empty child, right down to asking, "Are you my mummy?"  Now Captain Jack and Rose have tracked the Doctor down and are stunned to find themselves surrounded by the non-dead, non-living empty humans.

Eventually, we learn that Captain Jack is a shameless con man (as well as being basically an omnisexual...or is it pansexual), and that the Chula ship Jack thought was empty was in reality an ambulance ship, carrying millions of nanogenes: tiny machines that can heal any living thing.  Unfortunately, they had never met a human before, so when they 'healed' someone they changed it into the first person they encountered...in this case, a dead child wearing a gas mask.  Now there was an entire army of Empty People, and their leader now had tremendous power in his search for his mummy.  Jack appears to have abandoned them, but in truth we see he has taken the bomb about to be dropped on the ambulance spaceship to prevent it from being destroyed and spreading the plague throughout the entire world. 

We then make a shocking discovery about Nancy's true identity, but that secret turns out to heal Jamie and everyone affected by the formerly-Empty Child.  The Doctor gleefully (and maniacally) declares: "Everybody lives, Rose.  Just this once: Everybody Lives".  Now the Doctor and Rose depart, with him telling them to win the war, save the world, and not forget the welfare state.  Jack, however, appears to be doomed: he has no way of escaping from the bomb.  He is resigned to his fate, until the TARDIS comes to take him away, and at last, the Doctor dances.

It should be pointed out, though, that 'dancing' is really a euphimism for 'sex', but mercifully we are not treated to a scene of Eccleston getting it on with either Piper or Barrowman.

There are certainly within The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 some brilliant moments courtesy of Mofatt's screenplay and James Hawes' direction.  The cliffhanger in Part 1 is one of the best moments in the revived Doctor Who (certainly one of the most terrifying) because there appears to be no way out.  The actual resolution in Part 2 is both clever and more importantly, plausible.   There is also strong patriotic overtones in The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2, such as when the Doctor makes a mini-speech about how the British, this tiny island, said 'no' to the Nazi onslaught.  "A mouse in front of a lion", he states. 

We see a good performance from Piper when she comforts Nancy about the ultimate fate of the War.  Nancy doesn't believe that there will be a future for either her or Britain.  Nancy is told by Rose that she, Rose, was born in London in about fifty years in the future, but Nancy is only perplexed--not by the fact that she's from the future, but in that Rose isn't German.  Rose tells her that in the end, Britain will win.  It is a beautiful scene between them, showing Rose's almost motherly instinct--a remarkable fact given Piper's character is only nineteen and is not a mother or close to being one.  It's a genuine credit to Piper that Rose is both so likable and tender and tough all at once. 

Although he was on screen only briefly, Wilson's Dr. Constantine showed himself as caring about his patients and wise about their predicament.  Hoath's Nancy was also a strong performance of a child herself whose secret makes for a good (though not great) twist.  She is tough but loving to her unofficial brood, courageous when facing down the owner of the house from where she's stealing food but terrified when placed close to anotehr victim of Jamie's. 

For all intents and purposes, this is John Barrowman's show.  The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 almost appears to be a calling card to Captian Jack Harkness (or as I lovingly call him, The Intergalatic Nymphomaniac).  Barrowman keeps a fine balance between being a smooth operator and a sleazy con man.  Throughout The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 we can never get a strong fix as to his true motivations: every time he disappears we think he's a terrible person only to find he does have something like a heart (remember, he was going to swindle the Doctor and Rose without any hint of remorse).  He is the third American/American-sounding Companion in Doctor Who (after Peri Brown and Dr. Grace Holloway), but it does lead to a question: are there Americans in the 51st Century?  As an American, that's good to know.  Yet I digress: Barrowman was good, but I would argue not great.  A couple of times in The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 (specifically Part 2) he appeared a bit flat.  When he says he was not responsible for what happened to the patients, I didn't believe him.  Not that I thought Jack really wanted to do harm, but because Barrowman's delivery was oddly dull and flat. 

Some of the scenes were filmed with an intensity that would make it a fine feature.  Almost every appearance of the empty child is creepy (although at times the angles and speed of the film did make it a little too much to bear, but a minor flaw). 

Here is where I'm going to take some issues with The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2.  First, while the truth about Nancy's identity is a good twist, why would Jamie suspect she wasn't his sister but his mother?  It does provide the answer to his question, "Are you my mummy?" but given that I figure for all his life he either had a mother-figure or Nancy-as-sister why would he ask now if she was in fact, his mother?  That's perhaps one of my biggest beefs with The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2: why now, what would have prompted him to see someone (or someone else) as his mother whom he'd I figure never suspect to be his mother? 

True: I wasn't thrilled with all the 'dancing' talk being a substitute for 'sex'--I really don't care about the Doctor's romps...or Captain Jack's for that matter.  Yes, Barrowman is handsome in a taller Tom Cruise-clone way, but the idea that nearly every being was powerless to resist his advances is a bit hard to believe.  All this sex talk, specifically in regards to homosexuality, got a bit silly--what purpose was there to suggest that it was Mr. Lloyd rather than Mrs. Lloyd who was 'messing around' with the butcher (and thus, giving the Lloyds more meat than rations would allow)?  Same goes for suggesting that Captain Jack and a British army captain were also "more than friends". Maybe it was for shock value, maybe it was to show us that there were gays before Stonewall, maybe it was to hammer a subtle point about gay equality.  Point is, I don't know and frankly don't care about people's sex lives and don't see how any of it is relevant to the plot.

I also wasn't so thrilled when the Doctor advised the British to "don't forget the welfare state".  Again and again, I am distressed whenever political views are injected into Doctor Who.  I really can't recall such stories as The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Sea Devils, The Talons of Weng-Chiang or The Caves of Androzani being so blatantly political.  Yes, some great stories (Doctor Who and the Silurians for example) could have social undertones, but there's the operative word--undertones (emphasis mine).  A great science-fiction story which is also an allegory works when you can see the story in two levels.  When it is nakedly before us (as with Aliens of London Parts 1 & 2) it doesn't work because it takes me out of the fantasy element of the story and just serves to remind me of the author/producer's viewpoint.  He/she is perfectly free to have whatever views one wishes--just don't throw them at me and expect me to be pleased.  This is a personal thing with me: I hate being lectured when watching a film/story (even when I agree with their views). 

Overall, I found Part 2 (The Doctor Dances) to be a bit slow, like the action grinding down, a bit sluggish in the middle of the story.  I found the same with Part 2 of Aliens of London (World War III), so I think that it is a bit hard to keep the momentum for a two-part story in the revived series.  However, I could be proven wrong, so we shall see. 

There are certain Doctor Who stories that you can watch again and again and still find thrilling (The Aztecs, The Five Doctors, The Curse of Fenric, The Unquiet Dead).  There are some that you watch once and you simply don't want to see again (Timelash, Time-Flight, The Leasure Hive).  And then there are some that the first time you see them, you think they are brilliant, but when you see them again the enthusiasm drops.  The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 falls in this category.  When I saw them premiere, I was wildly enthusiastic about them.  Seeing them again, I wasn't as excited as I'd been the first time: Part 2 especially seemed a bit slow and the twist not as convincing (while it can be argued that it's because I already knew the twist, my counter-argument is that I already knew the twist in The Curse of Fenric but I still end up so surprised because I am so caught up in the story). 

If I gave individual episodes grades, The Empty Child would get a 7 and The Doctor Dances a 4.  Since I count it as one story, my decision is...

6/10

Next Story: Boom Town

Bet it's not the first time he's had something big between his legs!

Daddy Dearest

STORY 167: FATHER'S DAY

Father's Day had some of that 'the 80s were a funny decade' business (those clothes!  that hair!  that terrible Thatcher!), but nostalgia tends to bring a bit of mockery.   What Father's Day has at its core is an extremely gentle and heartbreaking story that puts the Companion as the focus of the story, and which makes her one of us in a way that few Companions ever have been so relateable. 

Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) never got to know her father.  Peter Tyler (Shawn Dingwall) died in a hit-and-run accident when she was a baby.  Her mother Jackie (Camille Corduri) waxes rhapsodic about what a great man Pete was to her daughter.  Jackie tells her that when he died, they never found the driver and that he died alone;  now Rose has asked The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) if she can see him on the day he died, so that he would not die alone.  The Doctor, albeit reluctantly, agrees. 

They go to November 7, 1987, and Rose sees her father run over while getting out of his car on his way to a wedding.  She is too torn to go to Pete, and asks to try again.  The Doctor gives in but warns her of the dangers of having an earlier version of themselves at the same place.  This time, as the car comes towards her father, her impulse takes over and she rushes to pull Pete out of the way. The Doctor is furious at her interference with a point in history, they fight, and he walks out on her.  Pete, thinking the Doctor is her boyfriend, tells her not to worry, and Rose tells him she is also going to the same wedding.  When the Doctor gets to the TARDIS, he discovers to his horror that it is only an empty box.

When Pete and Rose get to the church, Jackie is extremely unhappy.  She thinks Rose is a girl Pete is having an affair with (something he may have done before, though he protests his innocence about when he was found underneath a pile of coats with a hatcheck girl).  In the meantime, strange creatures are taking people out by devouring them.  A child runs toward the church, screaming about monsters, and soon, everyone in the wedding party sees said monsters.  The Doctor, having rushed to the church, tells everyone to get inside to take shelter within the old building.

Soon, the Doctor tells everyone what is going on.  There has been a wound in time (though he doesn't tell them it's because Pete did  not die as he was suppose to).  Now these creatures are taking advantage of the wound by removing every living thing in sight: the younger the more vulnerable.  Rose realizes that by saving her father she has brought these monsters, and soon, Pete realizes the girl who saved him (and at one point called him "Dad" is the infant Rose all grown up).  The Doctor comes up with a plan to save them, and thanks to the fact that the TARDIS itself was thrown out of the time wound, it still exists and can be brought back. 

Jackie is still suspicious of this pretty young thing Pete has been talking to, and refuses to believe his story that it's their own daughter.  In the midsts of their fight, Jackie hands baby Rose over to adult Rose, inadvertedly does the one thing Rose was told not to do: touch the infant version of herself.  When she does so, the creature manages to enter the church and devours the Doctor as well as the TARDIS.  Pete has been observing that a car has been circling the church, disappearing and appearing at intervals.  Pete realizes that with the Doctor gone, the only thing left to do is to make history take its proper course by putting himself in front of the car and allowing himself to die as he was suppose to do.  Rose is torn at having to lose her father again, but Pete tells her that the few hours he had that he didn't before have allowed him to know the daughter he would never see grown.  Pete rushes outside, avoids the creatures and is run over.

The story concludes with Jackie telling the young Rose the story of how her father died...but with a few differences.  Now, the young man who accidently ran over Pete stayed.  It was not his fault since Pete had just darted out in front of him before he had a chance to stop.  More importantly, a young woman had stayed with Pete in his last few moments and then left, with no one knew who she was.

Paul Cornell's script for Father's Day is one where the science-fiction is secondary to the human story within it.  The story is centered around not an external alien threat or even around the Reapers (the name given to the monsters thought I don't think they were ever referred to as that on-air).  Instead, it deals with a far more complex situation: the human desire to change history for the better (at least to the one doing the changing) and the impulse to save a loved one, to have them stay longer.  This wish to have more time with those who are no longer with us is a universal one, and that central point is what makes Father's Day an extremely personal story that touches the emotions.   Having gotten to know Rose, we know that her father's absence left a great hole in her heart.  Now, in a moment of impulse, she does what as an infant she could never have done: saved her father's life and more importantly, gotten to know him.

Of course, Father's Day adds some humor by showing that things between Pete and Jackie were not how The Widow Tyler presented them to her daughter.  If truth be told, I think all of us suspect that the stories our parents told about each other and themselves had a bit of shading.  For those who have children, the stories told might be exagerrated to make the parents look better or smarter.  This isn't always the case, but especially for those who have no memories of parents who are gone, presenting the dead in a more positive light appears to be better: to show the missing parent as good is a very human thing to do.  It may also be that the stories Jackie told the young Rose about Peter may have been how she wanted him to be remembered. It should be noted that, despite having a husband who may have cheated on her and who was failing in all his financial ventures, Jackie never remarried and always stayed true to Pete's memory.  In short, Father's Day is the cry of the heart of the Tyler women: for Jackie, a chance to keep Pete alive and realize that she did truly love him (warts and all), and for Rose, a chance to bond with a man who was always a shadow in her life.

These are the moments that make Father's Day so brilliant.  Piper is given an opportunity to be the center of the story, and moreover, a wonderful chance to actually act.  She communicates the conflicts within this simple girl: love for her absent father, confusion as to how the reality of her parent's situation was different to how it was presented, and finally acceptance that she had to let go of her own desires for the complete unit.  Her joy at finally getting to know her father, and then her heartbreak at having to lose him, is done so beautifully that the scenes between Piper and Dingwall are truly some of the best in Doctor Who.

Dingwall and Coduri are also wonderful as the troubled Tylers, people who have genuine flaws but who at heart love each other and especially their daughter.  Coduri maintains Jackie's combative nature but as in previous episodes never makes her a harpy or shrew.  She's just a woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly, and that includes her husband's philandering.  The credit should go to Joe Ahearne's sharp direction of people.  He brings all the conflicting human emotions and draws wonderful performances from Piper, Dingwall, and Coduri.

Ahearne also manages to keep the story going smoothly.  Never in Father's Day does anything seem to drag or conversely appear rushed, and it's a credit to him as a director that he kept a steady pace throughout the story. 

It's a curious thing that Eccleston for once is the secondary character.  Granted, he's the one looked at to sort the dangerous situation out, but again, the Doctor isn't the one who can ultimately fix this.  He's got hints of the manic Doctor, but he can rage like the best of them.

Another curiosity in Father's Day is, oddly, how uninteresting the danger from the Reapers was.  Truth be told, I wasn't interested in how these creatures were devouring people in some effort to heal this wound in time.  It's a rare Doctor Who where the alien aspects of the story are not the things that keep me riveted.  In this case, it was the intereaction between Rose and Pete that was teh far more interesting thing.  The Reapers as monsters weren't terryfing or interesting, but in this case I think it was because we needed some consequence of what could happen when history is altered, even ever so slightly.  It appears that by saving Pete Tyler, history is getting jumbled (Alexander Graham Bell's first message keeps getting crossed over into the wedding party's cell phones--curious that they had cell phones in the late 80s). 

Also, I didn't quite believe the idea that the TARDIS got thrown out of the time wound and how the Doctor was going to fix things.  In this case, I hold that the emotional story was more important than the scientific one.  Therefore, one won't be too harsh on it. 

Father's Day really is about accepting death, of knowing that we all have to let go of those we can't hold anymore, and of sacrifice.  It's a remarkably human story that would easily fit outside the realms of Doctor Who, which is what makes it so brilliant.  I'll grant that the Reapers aren't interesting, and in an odd way seeing the Doctor himself devoured by the Reapers wasn't as shocking as one thinks it should have been (seeing the TARDIS be empty was more shocking).  Still, on the whole Father's Day is a simply tender and beautiful and sad story, one that is deeper than most stories have been.  This is because it reaches you at the emotional level, not with supernatural threats but with ordinary human flaws and emotions. 

Father's Day allows us to get to know Rose far more than we have: both her heart and how she may think she's doing good when she really isn't.  We get to see what she is willing to do for Pete's sake...

10/10

Next Story: THE EMPTY CHILD (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances)

Editor's Note

STORY 166: THE LONG GAME

It seems a most curious thing to my mind, that Russell T Davies, a man who has made his fame and fortune on television, should turn around and be highly critical of the power and influence television has on the masses. Perhaps, to use a Vulcan expression, only Nixon can go to China. It is good for us to examine what a force the telly has on our lives. Given that, The Long Game could have been a sharp critique of the industry. However, Davies appears to be unable to control himself in introducing certain running motifs in his Doctor Who scripts, one that push this story down.
The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) along with his regular Companion, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and newbie Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley) arrive on Satellite Five in the year 200,000 (why a Conan O'Brien skit comes to mind, I don't know) during the Fourth Great & Bountiful Human Empire. The station broadcasts all the news there is to the galaxies in the great beyond (talk about Sky Television--perhaps a sly jab from the BBC?) and while Rose and Adam marvel at it all, the Doctor senses something is wrong. The heat on Satellite Five, the lack of non-humans, there is something off.

Aboard Satellite Five is Cathica (Christine Adams) and Suki (Anna Maxwell-Martin), journalists aboard the station who mistake the trio for Senior Management. Deciding to show them just how good they are at their jobs, Cathica locks her mind into the master computer while a group of men, women, multisexuals, undecideds, and robots use the chips in their own minds to show how they can link up and get information into Cathica's mind. Observing all this is The Editor (Simon Pegg) who suspects something is amiss...but it isn't the three new people. Instead, he zeroes in on Suki, who gets "Promoted" to Floor 500, much to Cathica's irritation. When Suki goes up to Floor 500, she does not find walls of gold but a frozen level. Coming upon the Editor, she is unmasked as the last of the Freedom Fifteen, which I figure is trying to bring down Satellite Five. Suki attempts to kill the Editor, but the Editor-In-Chief takes care of her.

Adam goes off on his own, allegedly to recover from the shock of seeing the future, but really to get at future information so as to profit for when he gets back to his own time (apparently like in Back to the Future II). He goes and has the chip (along with the outlet to connect into the mainframe) inserted into his own brain so as to get all the information he wishes. Cathica now sees that something is off with The Doctor and Rose, and so does the Editor. The latter two go up to Floor 500 and discover who the Editor-In-Chief is. Unbeknownst to them, Cathica secretly follows them to Floor 500; meanwhile, Adam is starting to get all the information he desires, calling his parents via Rose's supercell phone and leaving a message on their answering machine.

We discover that The Doctor's suspicions are correct: Satellite Five has been controlling the information given to the Fourth Great & Bountiful Human Empire, manipulating the news to keep the humans in check. This is done at the bidding of the...get ready for it...The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe (Max for short), a giant monster who emits so much heat that he has to be kept in a cold environment (hence, the heat in all the lower floors). The Doctor sees Cathica, and subtly gives her clues to help them, while he and Rose see to their horror that Adam, instead of receiving information from Satellite Five, is giving information to the Editor and Editor-in-Chief (aka Max). Cathica locks into the system, bringing the information she has about Satellite Five to the universe. This allows the three travellers to escape and raise the temperature of the Satellite. The Editor attempts to escape, but Suki (who I should point out is technically dead but whose chip is still being used to get information) grabs his leg and forces him to remain underneath the collapsing Max.

The Doctor, furious with Adam's duplicity, takes him to his parent's home, destroys the answering machine, and exiles him from the TARDIS. Unfortunately for Adam, he still has this outlet inside of his head, which can be opened by the mere snapping of fingers. The Doctor and Rose leave him there, just as his mom is coming back from apparently a shopping trip. She is thrilled to see her son back, and comments how long it's been: six months, which flash by like that...

It may be just my imagination since I've no way of reading Davies' mind (I have no outlet to connect my brain to), but I sense a certain series of motifs and themes running in anything he writes for Doctor Who. There is a penchant for strange and excessively long names (the Moxx of Balhoon from The End of the World, the planet Raxacoricofallapatorious from Aliens of London Parts I & II, now the Mighty....). There is the motive for all the mayhem: whenever evil is done, be sure Money (and by extension, the evil of profits) is involved (making money off the deaths or enslavement of beings being the motives in The End of the World, Aliens of London Parts I & II, and now The Long Game, since the Editor represents in his own words, "a consortium of banks"). I think I see yet a third motif within Davies' scripts: namely, his utter hatred and fury about the Iraq Intervention. This one I'll grant is the one I have the least evidence for and is purely speculation, but think a moment. Aliens of London Parts I & II was in subtext about how the government (in this case the more evil than Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, those bloodthirsty tyrants George W. Bush and his poodle Tony Blair) lied to the public in order to enter into an illegal and immoral war against a thoroughly benevolent foreign government that loved its people. While it is only speculation, The Long Game may be Davies' response to how the press also lied to the public, manipulating the news to keep the people docile.

I don't think it's so far out of the realm of possibility to speculate that this is a subtext of The Long Game.

No one will stop you because you've bred a human race which doesn't ask questions...believing every lie

The Doctor shouts at the Editor and Editor-in-Chief. Davies is a smart man, so would it really be a far-out idea that he would include his private views on the press' complicity in the Mass Deception around the Iraq Intervention?

I think it is possible that I'm reading far too much into the story, so I digress. The Long Game, as I've stated, could have been a far richer story, not necessarily about the manipulation of the press on an unsuspecting public, but on how we instinctively trust what we see and what we're told. One only needs to look at the quiz show scandals of the 1950s to see the public can be hoodwinked by this medium called television. The Long Game could have tackled how the search for truth and knowledge can have a high cost and what power those who control the information have, whether it's the BBC or MSNBC or FOX News or the New York Times. However, this theme was done in by other outside factors.

For example, it is hard to take any monster seriously when you give him such a silly, almost unpronounceable name (apparently, guest star Pegg had such a hard time with the name that Max's roar had to cover up part of the line so as to not show how hard it was to actually say). Second, director Brian Grant used the trick of seeing things from the monsters point of view until near the end (which perhaps may have been unavoidable), but once we see the actual brains behind the operation, it is such a disappointment. The Editor-in-Chief is really just a giant slug. When he meets his fiery end, all that crossed my mind was, "I'm melting, MELTING!"

Second, we have the character of Suki to consider. She was fine until we discover she's really not this sweet and bumbling girl, but a fierce revolutionary. It isn't so much this twist that causes problems in The Long Game, it's the fact that if you take it at face value she certainly isn't a smart revolutionary. If this had been a story from the classic era, over two or three episodes we could have been given a hint of her true identity, but because it's only a forty-odd minute show, she just is...and in an ironic twist on a story about accepting everything we're given, we HAVE to accept that she is a revolutionary, who apparently never thought that once on Floor 500 she would have to face the actual source of the evil she was fighting against.

As a sublet to Suki's problem, it strikes me as a convenient deus ex machina that once we're told she is dead (but the chip inside her is still working), she suddenly comes alive in a roundabout way to stop the Editor from fleeing. How does a corpse (which is what she basically is) know to grab hold of her adversary's leg? It is just a little TOO convenient.

Langley and Adams give good performances, mainly because The Long Game is really about them, not about the Doctor, or Rose, or even the Editor or Editor-in-Chief. Adams' frustration as Cathica is relate-able, for most people feel the irritation of being passed over for promotion they have worked long for. In an odd way, so is Adam's fall into the temptation of profiting from future knowledge. He does falter slightly when he tries to have comedic moments prior to the operation, I think because there appears an attempt to make these moments lighter. They don't work.

Pegg is unrecognizable as the Editor, with great makeup work by Supervisor Davy Jones. He appears to be relishing a chance to be a bit over-the-top, but since the Editor is really just a stooge for a more powerful force, we can accept that. Eccleston and Tyler, unfortunately, don't seem to be a major part of The Long Game. In fact, it's Cathica, not the Doctor, who saves the day in the end.

As for kicking Adam out of the TARDIS, I don't see this as controversial in any way. Rather, I see this as the only logical thing to do. Adam has proven himself not just untrustworthy, but downright dangerous. If he were to go on another adventure (say, into the past), what is to stop him from trying to change history and profitting from it? His greed (perhaps not for money, but for inside information) shows him to be a weak man, and a weak man is the last thing the Doctor needs. As a side note, there are a couple of good moments in The Long Game: when the Doctor comments to Rose, "You and your boyfriends" (referring to Adam and Mickey), he shows an unexpected light side that adds a touch of true levity to the story.

I can't get over the feeling that The Long Game was really a lost opportunity; what could have been a sharp commentary on the power of the visual medium are human's reliance and unquestioning acceptance on the news we're given gave way to a second-rate monster and a less-than-thrilling story. Granted, it may tie in to another future story, but the title never really fits into the story itself. We don't have an idea as to what the long game actually is. In the end, The Long Game is not a story that will stop the presses.

4/10

Next Story: Father's Day

Two Of A Lost Kind

STORY 165: DALEK

There was a suspicion that The Doctor's most famous enemy would not be appearing in the revived Doctor Who. This situation was further exacerbated when we have the revival explain that the Doctor is the last surviving Time Lord, his people being destroyed along with all the Daleks at the end of the Time War. How could the Daleks come back if all of them had been destroyed along with all Time Lords? As far as we could see, the Daleks were finally themselves exterminated. However, now we find in Dalek that at least ONE Dalek survived...

The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his Companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) receive a distress signal that leads them to the deep bowels of an underground museum in Utah, United States. There, they discover a hidden museum full of alien artifacts. Quickly discovered, they are taken to Mr. Van Statten (Corey Johnson), a billionaire genius who "owns the Internet" and has been collecting space artifacts in order to gain profit from them. He has his own scientific advisor, a British kid named Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley), whose main job is to find the artifacts and figure out their uses. There is one piece in his collection that is Van Statten's pride and joy: a mysterious object he calls the Metaltron. The reason the Metaltron is so important is because unlike the others, it is alive. Van Statten forces the Doctor to have a look at it, and the Doctor realizes that it is the Metaltron that has been sending the distress signal. He also realizes that it is in fact, a Dalek--the Last of the Daleks who somehow survived the Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords.

This Dalek cannot fight back, but Van Statten realizes that the Doctor himself must be alien and takes him prisoner. Meanwhile, Adam and Rose are bonding, and she persuades him to show him the Metaltron. She feels genuine sorrow for it, especially when the Dalek tells her that he "feels pain". She reaches out and touches it, and soon the Dalek transfers her DNA to himself, allowing him to free himself and strike back at those who've been torturing him. With the Dalek now loose and causing death and destruction, the Doctor gets Van Statten to release him and attempt to seal the Dalek off. They do manage that, but while Adam manages to save himself, Rose is left behind to face extermination. The Dalek, however, cannot bring himself to kill her. Her DNA, it appears, not only brought him back to full power, but has altered his own nature to where he takes on emotions unknown to Daleks: such things compassion and mercy. The Doctor is now hell-bent on rescuing Rose and killing off the Last of The Daleks, but in the end Rose makes him see that the Dalek isn't the one putting her in danger...it's The Doctor. Once the crisis is over, Van Statten gets what's coming to him and a reluctant Doctor takes Adam in the TARDIS.

Dalek is brilliant to tackle some of the criticisms the iconic monsters have had thrown at them since 1963-64. The most famous of the criticisms is the fact that its shape makes it difficult to move anywhere that doesn't have a flat surface. I think writer Robert Shearman put in that scene specifically to answer the charge that the best way to escape a Dalek is to run up a flight of stairs. The ensuing revelation of how a Dalek can move makes the moment even more terrifying, and it's a credit to The Mill that now we have the technology, we have the capability to create the world's first fully-flying Dalek (to misquote another program) to realize the full potential of the Daleks. We also get a nod to their distinctive design. Near the middle of Dalek, the monster lifts its plunger-shaped arm. The armed guard working at it scoffs. "What you gonna do? Sucker me to death?" Bad question to taunt the Dalek with.

Beyond the special effects aspects in Dalek, director Joe Ahearne created some especially sharp visual moments. When the Doctor first enters the Metaltron's chamber, we don't see much. Ahearne builds the tension by introducing elements slowly in the scene: that humming, that single blue light hovering, that staccatto voice.

Shearman and Ahearne also tap into the unresolved war between the Doctor and the Dalek. As the last of their kind, they find themselves continuing the war that brought an end to both their civilizations. However, we see an evolution in both the characters: the Dalek (thanks to Rose's DNA) is becoming more conflicted and even with individual longings of its own, while the Doctor is becoming more aggressive, more vengeful. Dalek does a fine job of maintaining the tension between these two aggressors who for most of the episode are actually kept apart. In fact, in Dalek they never actually fight each other.

Both leads are in top form in Dalek. Eccleston conveys both the anger and pain he feels as the last of the Time Lords, raging to where he literally spits out when screaming at the Dalek, and also showing something rare for this Doctor: sheer terror when he realizes he's in a locked chamber with a Dalek. He goes through so many emotions within Dalek, and Eccleston manages to maintain the range without going over-the-top either in the pathos or the fury. The best performance, however, is that of Piper. She has a soft vulnerability as Rose and conveys such tenderness to a big pepper pot that it becomes almost a tragedy. It is Rose that is the true heart of Dalek, because Piper projects the full sadness of destroying life, either physically or in an emotional sense. When she confronts the Doctor at the end, the scene is quite moving.

Langley does a good job coming off as a bit of a twit and a coward in Dalek, which is what the character of Adam was. In a smaller role, Jana Carpenter as soldier DeMaggio has a great scene guarding Rose and Adam. It is curious to see anyone tell a Dalek to surrender, but she in her brief scene creates both a strong and scared woman. Great credit should also go to Nicholas Briggs' voice work as the Dalek in Dalek. His Dalek voice is called to show more emotion due to the cross-pollination, and he manages to do that. When Briggs as the Dalek tells the Doctor, "You would have made a good Dalek", it's quite chilling. My only complaint in terms of performance is with Johnson's Van Statten. I kept wondering if he was suppose to be a bit campy and more comedic than straight. Johnson's grinning and excessive self-confidence didn't play like he was a real person but more a parody of a billionaire.

I also have an issue with the Money Motive. This is the third time (The End of the World and ALIENS OF LONDON being the first two) where financial gain is at the heart of the crisis. Granted, I,'m an unashamed capitalist, so I may be on the opposite side of the issue, but I do hope to have another reason for the villain's motives. Finally, how I detest the stubborn refusal to even suggest that other Time Lords may have survived. I don't know why they keep locking that door. Would it have killed them to say that, yes, perhaps, just as this Dalek survived, maybe some Time Lords did as well.

A curious note. According to Dalek, the Dalek crashed on Earth fifty years ago. The date given for Dalek is 2012, which meant that the Dalek came in 1962, which is one year before The First Doctor met the Daleks in the seven-part story collectively known as The Daleks. If one took a too-nerdy approach to all this, it would mean that Gallifrey was destroyed a year before the First Doctor came to London with his granddaughter Susan. It is far too much to think about trying to make sense of it all, so we'll just let it go.

Dalek is a strong story where the Dalek is shown to be the real terror it always could be rather than an object of ridicule. Eccleston and especially Piper brought moving performances to Dalek, showing that in war, there truly are no real victors. There were some light moments that didn't overwhelm the story, and on the whole, Dalek will not be exterminated from any Best Of Collection.

8/10

Next Story: The Long Game

Fat Chance

STORY 164: ALIENS OF LONDON (Aliens of London/World War III)



This is the first two-parter of the revived Doctor Who, and while I might have stated this before I take this opportunity to say that when we have two-part stories I will adopt one title since it makes it easier for me.



The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his Companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) have gone through time and space, but now they have returned to Rose's time, or at least they think it's her time. The Doctor's calculations were off... by only a year, a year where Rose's mom Jackie (Camile Coduri) searches for her and where Rose's boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke) is suspected of murdering one Rose Tyler. However, whatever private issues Rose faces are drowned out by a spaceship crashing into the River Thames at that moment, right down to clipping the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament.

In this emergency 10 Downing Street we have no news from the Prime Minister and the entrance of MP Joseph Green (David Verrey) and General Asquith (Rupert Vansittart). They are met by Ministry of Defence Junior Secretary Indra Ganesh (Navil Chowdhry), MI5 operative Margaret Blane (Annette Badland) and Transport Liason Oliver Charles (Eric Potts). With the exception of Ganesh and Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North (Penelope Wilton) who was at Number 10 before the crisis began, all the others share a common trait: they all are rather fat. Coincidence? Not in Russell T. Davies' script. As Aliens of London progressed into its second part, I believe NOTHING in his script was coincidental, but I'm getting ahead of myself.


The Doctor is eventually called in to help, as is UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce). However, our three fat friends have a trick up their sleeves...they are not human. They are the Slitheen, a family who have plans for Earth. At first you think the Slitheen are here for conquest, but we get another twist. After a Slitheen nearly kills Jackie, she and Mickey join forces on the outside while The Doctor, Rose, and MP Jones (whose name the Doctor recalls but doesn't know from where) are trapped inside Number 10. The Slitheen wish to unleash a nuclear war on the planet so as to destroy all humanity and create a barren world, one which the Slitheen can sell at a profit. Green, now the Acting Prime Minister, tells the population that the aliens are above them and have "massive weapons of destruction capable of being deployed within 45 seconds", and ask the United Nations to give them the nuclear codes. If the UN gives the authority to have a 'preemptive strike', the Slitheen will destroy the world. The Doctor has a way out of all this, but it means risking Rose's life, a situation Jackie cannot tolerate. Still, there is simply too much at stake. Rose and Jones push the Doctor to take the step to stop the Slitheen, and with the help of "Mickey the Idiot" (the Doctor's nickname for Mickey Smith), he launches a strike of his own.

Is it me, or was Aliens of London a lot of things: a two-hour "Bush/Blair lied us into war" advert, a juvenile comedy, an anti-capitalist episode, but not a good two-parter Doctor Who? It may just be coincidence, but this is the second episode (after The End of the World) where the motive for all this murder was PROFIT. I'm beginning to suspect Davies is a bit to the left. The Slitheen aren't even a species, but a family, no different than say the Rockefellers, the Vandervilts or the Astors. This was a bit confusing in that when we learn what planet they are from, does that mean that instead of Slitheen they should be called "Raxacoricofallapatorians"? (Side note: Eccleston deserves a bonus just for being able to pronounce Raxacoricofallapatorius). The Slitheen, away from their human disguise, were a curious creature: both cuddly and monstrous. They were good monsters, but something was off, and I think I know what it was.

It was the farting. It isn't until Part Two (World War III) where we got an explanation for the farting, but to my mind Davies wanted a funny episode, and that's what he got. I couldn't take it seriously because all that farting was done in Part One for humorous effect, or at least that's how it came out (pun intended). If that wasn't bad enough, the Pig Thing. When in Part One you see the alien is a PIG, you start to wonder if we're suppose to take ANY of it seriously. Yes, we got an explanation as to WHY it looked like a pig, but Davies and director Keith Boak can't possible throw a pig at us and not expect us to laugh. All I could hear in my mind was "PIGS...IN... SPACE..." and wouldn't blame anyone else for doing the same. Going back to the farting, I put in my notes "wonder if the farting is to appeal to the children" who I figure would like that sort of bathroom humor. It wasn't to my liking because it did become a little distracting.

You also have things that I didn't follow. You introduce UNIT, which would be great for longtime fans but whom revived fans will know little to nothing about, then you kill them off before they do anything. I wonder why bother having them there in the first place...unless it's some sort of bait-and-switch. What also makes me think this was more a comedy than a straight science-fiction was "Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North". Every time someone asked who she was, MP Jones would flash her ID and state everything but her serial number (having already given us her name and rank). Adding to my criticisms of Aliens of London, I am surprised that being overweight was a major plot point. You'd think that Davies (who is by no means svelte) would not be so quick to take shots at fat people...right down to the farts.

One thing in the script did surprise me above all else. It was in Episode One where Rose tells the Doctor how silly he was being for being so sensitive about Jackie slapping him (the slap was in itself a fine moment). "You're so gay", she tells him, and while it makes sense for that common saying (in every sense of the word) to be said by someone of Rose's background, I wonder why an openly-gay man like Davies (who also created the original and still-controversial Queer As Folk) would use that specific phrase. Will it lead kids to think it's acceptable to dismiss people by saying "you're so gay"? I found that quite troubling.

I don't deny the extraordinary talent of Davies--he's a brilliant writer who puts his ideas on paper and knows how to show them. Of course, his ideas appear to be about his subconscious desire to assassinate Tony Blair. Part of me kept thinking as that missile headed toward Number 10 that he was thinking as he typed, 'Here you go, Tony, for betraying all of us who voted Labour, for becoming that bastard Bush's poodle, for lying about weapons of mass destruction you both KNEW didn't exist, for illegally invading Iraq, which had peace and beauty and whose people were watched over by a benevolent leader until you lied to the UN and the world to get your hands on their oil. Take this, Ha Ha Ha". Of course, this could all be in my head (the unnamed Prime Minister was already dead when the crisis began), but it's the things about the weapons of destruction line that lead me to this conclusion: Aliens of London expresses the producer/writer's view on the Iraq Intervention. It's even more curious in that when the spaceship clipped the Clock Tower, to this American, echoes of September 11th played in my mind. Perhaps then, this makes Aliens of London the ultimate in 9/11 conspiracies: "they" created a crisis to bring about a war for profit.

As a writer, Davies brings a great deal of himself into his work. I digress to say that the episodes of Queer as Folk that I've seen, I couldn't help but think the three characters were aspects of himself (real or imagined), right down to the Doctor Who-loving Vince Tyler (how curious that Vince & Rose share the same last name. Curious, that). Therefore, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that Davies' political views, specifically in regards with the Iraq Intervention, played a significant part in the overall story of Aliens of London.

In fairness to Davies, I cannot read his mind or know his thoughts; however, I can only express mine. It would be foolish not to think that Aliens of London is Davies' (and by extention, the Left's) response to how we ended up in Iraq, and contrary to what people might think, I think this is a brilliant example of what science-fiction can do: express current-day issues in the guise of a fantastical story. Therein lies Davies' high intelligence (even though as a viewer I've never been fond of stories being written to create a certain viewpoint, whether I agree with it or not). And thus ends my reading of politics into a two-part Doctor Who.

If we focus on the acting, I think Wilton's Jones did a great job balancing comedy with fear. For the most part, she was comedic but in the Cabinet Room, you got that there could be steel beneath her natural insecurity. Coduri showed throughout the story a genuine love for her daughter--in her loss when Rose disappeared, when the Doctor tells her that Rose may die, right down when she waits those 'ten seconds'. In fact, near the end there is quite a sad and touching moment between Coduri and Piper when Rose opts to leave again. Eccleston kept his manic, almost giddy sense of his Doctor, but he still managed to be frightening in his seriousness when called for. His Doctor isn't all goofy grins but a growing sense that the fun he has in exploring comes with a cost.

I'm going to wrap up with this: at two episodes I think the story was too long. Part One: Aliens of London was quick, sharp, funny (minus the pig and the farting). Part Two: World War III just seemed to drag a bit, to the point that I wonder if we couldn't wrapped all this up in one episode. It's as if the second part couldn't hold my interest as the first one did, as if Part Two collapsed from all the energy of Part One.

If I were to score them separately, Aliens of London would get 8/10 while World War III would get a 4/10. However, I have to score them together because they are ONE story, so I might have to balance it out. In the final analysis, this story, ironically, carries little weight.

6/10

Next Story: Dalek