It’s funny, but I rarely have dreams about all the sci-fi stuff that fills my head during the day. No galaxy-spanning epics for me. Instead, I have the bog-standard anxiety playlets about attending high school again (as an adult) and not being able to find my locker.
So I found it odd that I’ve had not one, but two Doctor Who dreams this week. A few nights ago, favored companion of fortysomething Whovians everywhere Sarah Jane Smith was traipsing through my head. Investigating a candy factory. I suspect that latter detail may have been due to my having seen a stage production of Willy Wonka a few weeks back.
Anyway, Sarah lost her footing and fell into a vat of molten chocolate, shades of Augustus Gloop. Of course, it was up to me to pull her out. And, since she was choking, what else could I do but suck the sweet, sticky stuff out of her mouth?
Honestly, I had no idea that would’ve been a thing for me.
It was certainly much better than those hundreds of variations of “I can’t find my classroom.”
However, last night I paid the price. Instead of confectionery companions, I was visited by a flock of Weeping Angels, those clawed and fanged monsters that only move when you’re not looking at them.
They chased me around for a while, and not one of them offered to let me perform mouth-to-mouth.
Then, as I do from time to time, I kicked at one of them…and woke up, having booted one of my cats out of bed. (Sorry, buddy.)
This morning, not knowing my locker combination doesn’t seem so bad.
The current season of Doctor Who has been an object lesson in the perils of expecting too much. As I’ve discussed previously, new showrunner Steven Moffat has been responsible for several of the verybest episodes of the revived Who. While I knew that it was highly improbable that an entire season could equal the heights of “The Girl in the Fireplace,” I certainly believed that some truly extraordinary television was coming. Yet, with only one episode to go (in England, at least*), I can’t help but feel a bit let down.
Now, of course, it would be silly to actually complain about this season. I’ve been a Whovian for several decades, long enough to have suffered through terrible, incomprehensible and (worst of all) boring stories. Nothing this year has approached the horrors of “The Horns of Nimon,” “Warrior’s Gate,” “Timelash” or “Ghost Light.”** It’s still a very good time to be a fan.
It’s just that Moffat’s reputation as writer, producer and uber-Whovian suggested that we wouldn’t see any of the lazy plotting or dubious decision-making that occasionally marked Russell T. Davies’ run. Then came “Victory of the Daleks,” which threw away its killer premise (Winston Churchill employs the Daleks to fight World War II for him) in favor of a non-story that did little more than reboot the Doctor’s deadliest foes.
The controversial redesign of the Daleks themselves seems another example of something that could’ve used one more pass through the production office. I think that they look great from the front, and I like the candy colors which recall the ’60s Dalek feature films. However, the odd “hunchback” of their profile view just seems off. I know that it’s a minor detail, and that I’ll get used to it, yet I can’t help but be boggled that Moffat looked at it and said, “yes, that’s the one.”
Even Steven’s own scripts have struck me as not quite fully-baked. “The Beast Below” lived up to the series’ new focus as a modern-day fairy tale–and it was certainly a lot of fun–yet in hindsight the plot made very little sense. A couple of episodes later, Moffat revived his dreaded Weeping Angels for a two-parter intended to do for them what Aliens did for Alien. While not entirely unsuccessful, he had to do an awful lot of handwaving and flat-out fudging to turn an entire army of unstoppable monsters into a plausibly-defeated menace.
As the season winds down, I find myself more satisfied by the episodes written by hired hands than by those coming from the pen of the Grand Moff. “Amy’s Choice,” “Vincent and the Doctor” and “The Lodger” have been my favorites to date. And again, that seems wrong. This is the first year of new Who that doesn’t seem to have hit an out-of-the-park homer (remember to insert cricket equivalent here).
Which brings me to “The Pandorica Opens,” the opening half of the season finale. (ALL SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD. YOU-HAVE-BEEN-WARNED.)
What’s becoming clear is that Moffat has been playing a much larger game. If some of the earlier episodes have been lacking in logic, it may be because Steven has been focused on the big picture of the seasonal story arc.*** Inexplicable events have been planted throughout, all apparently tied into the over-plot. And I think that’s somewhat a problem; rather than telling fully satisfying tales, he’s been laying down pieces to form the puzzle box of the titular “Pandorica.”
“The Pandorica Opens” is very much in the tradition of Russell Davies’ season-ending spectacles. Once again, there’s an attempt to top everything that’s come before. Previous years have featured mass armies of Daleks, the Master’s total conquest of Earth, the return of Gallifrey and the threat of omniversal armageddon. So, where could they possibly go from there?
How about an unholy alliance of pretty much every alien species the Doctor has ever faced? Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Autons, Sycorax, Judoon, Silurians and Atraxi are joined by whatever happened to be lying around the creature shop**** to construct a fiendishly intricate trap for their archfoe. Oh, and to save the universe.
It’s still unclear what’s really going on. Throughout the season there have been cracks in time, presumed to have been created by the explosion of the Doctor’s TARDIS sometime in the near future. The cracks have erased characters from history (including Amy Pond’s fiance Rory) and generally made a mess of things. And there’s an still-unrevealed menace which may or may not be behind it all. Is it, as some have speculated, a future version of the Doctor, his mind broken by his imprisonment within the Pandorica?
As he put it himself, “There’s one thing you never put in a trap, if you’re clever, if you’re smart, if you value your continuing existence, if you ever want to live to see tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap. Me.”
We’ll know in a few days. And we’ll also know whether Steven Moffat manages to pull his big, timey-wimey ball of stuff into a satisfying story.
*As always, I am using Gallifreyan blogging technology to write this from several weeks in the future, when “The Pandorica Opens” has already aired on BBC America.
**That’s right, I said it. I HATE “Ghost Light.”
***Old-school Who dabbled in season-long story arcs long before the likes of Twin Peaks, but never to the extent that new Who has embraced them.
****Also name-checked were such classic series enemies as the Zygons, Terileptils and Drahvins. Sadly, the budget appears to have fallen short of granting them screen time.
The Krafayis, the wattled, usually-invisible monster from yesterday’s episode of Doctor Who, “Vincent and the Doctor.” (Which I absolutely have not seen yet.*)
The Chickaphant, half-chicken, half-elephant creature from Sid & Marty Krofft’s 1975 kidvid series The Lost Saucer, seen in the episodes “Valley of the Chickaphants” and “Return to the Valley of the Chickaphants.**”
* When I do see this one on BBC America three weeks from now, I will think it’s a rather enjoyable episode. Every once in a while, new Who indulges in a story teaming the Doctor with a famous historical figure, in this case Vincent van Gogh. It’s a fun idea which invites the show’s younger viewers to do a bit of exploring of their own, even if does also find the writers indulging in hero worship. Here, as in the 2007episode “The Shakespeare Code,” there will be an implication that famous historical artists can literally perceive things beyond the senses of mere mortals. Still, the “Starry Night” scene in “Vincent and the Doctor” will be wonderful.
** I am not shitting you. The other half of this abominable pairing was the Elephicken…
Updated: I am gratified to learn that, only a day after I posted this item, my blog is now the third result when one Googles the term “chickaphant.”
The new series of Doctor Who made its BBC America premiere on April 17, a mere two weeks after it aired in the U.K. If you are reading this review before that date, it’s because I discovered the wibbly-wobbly, time-wimey WordPress hack that allows me to post retroactively. Where I sit it’s Monday, April 19.*
BBC America was certainly brave in choosing to delay the debut of the 11th Doctor. They had to know that Doctor Who fans are no longer living in an era where they have to worry about PAL-to-NTSC transfers. It can’t have escaped their notice that there are several methods by which television shows can almost immediately be shared worldwide. Yet they held their ground, and I salute them.
It was tough waiting out those two weeks.
So, anyway, the 11th Doctor.
It’s a tradition to fear the arrival of a new Doctor Who. Oh sure, most of the time you’ll be fine. You’ll get a Peter Davison or David Tennant, and you can afford to exhale. But every once in a while someone tries to slip you a Colin Baker.
I remember the first time that I saw this early promotional photo of Colin Baker as the 6th Doctor in Starlog magazine. I believe that my first thought was WHAT THE FUCK THEY HIRED A CLOWN. (Yes, my thoughts know where to find the Caps Lock key.)
So, even since Ronald McDonald and his Amazing Technicolor Umbrella, I’ve greeted the announcement of each new Doctor Who with suspicion. And with Doctor Number 11 looking uncomfortably like Crispin Glover (stays Crispin even in milk!), I was especially nervous.
I needn’t have worried. Matt Smith hits the ball right out of the park (remember to insert equivalent cricket term here). He owns the Doctor, playing him as a charming madman.
(WARNING: ALL SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARD.)
His early scenes with Caitlin Blackwood, the child actress who plays the young version of new companion Amy Pond, are a delight. Especially fun is the sequence in which she tries in vain to find foods that the newly regenerated Doctor will like, only to have him repeatedly spit them across her kitchen. Little Caitlin is so good, and has such a rapport with Smith, that for a few moments I hoped for an entirely different take on the traditional Doctor/companion relationship. But I suppose dragging a seven-year-old into an endless series of dangers wouldn’t be such a hot idea.
That’s okay, because the all-grown-up Amy is a bit of all right as well. That’s her to the left, wearing the Dr. Elizabeth Shaw Memorial Miniskirt.
Keeping in mind that Doctor Who is now in the hands of writer/producer Stephen Moffat, the man who brought us the saucy comedy Coupling, it’s perhaps not much of a surprise that Amy’s livelihood involves delivering “kiss-o-grams.” (Oh, so that’s what we’re calling it these days!)
Karen Gillan as Amy is a lot of breezy fun. At first glance it looks like she might be part of one of the all-time-great Doctor/companion double acts.
The introductory story, “The Eleventh Hour,” isn’t much more than an excuse to reintroduce the series and provide Amy and the Doctor twenty minutes to save the world. It’s about an escaped alien “multiform” and the belligerent intergalactic police officers that track it to Earth.
Amazingly, the Atraxi–who resemble an eyeball stuck to a snowflake**–manage to beat even the Judoon for sheer bull (rhino)-headedness. At least the Judoon are competent, if overzealous, law officers. The Atraxi method of recapturing an escapee amounts to broadcasting the same unhelpful message over and over again, then threatening to incinerate the planet.
Again, the Atraxi and “Prisoner Zero” are really just a distraction; the real story here is the first (and second, and third) encounter between Amy and the Doctor. And, as he did in previous scripts such as “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Blink,” Steven Moffat enjoys playing with the implications of someone whose relationship with time is, at best, relative.
My present-day self can’t wait to catch up with the future me who is writing this review! Only another twelve days until the premiere!
*If you’re seeing this on April 5, don’t worry. You have eight entire days to prepare for the arrival of the meteor.
**Thankfully they do not wear the kiss-o-gram costume!
And so we say goodbye to David Tennant as Doctor Who…
#58: ”The End of Time”
This song is ending, but the story will never end.
I watched the second half of “The End of Time” with a mixture of sadness and relief: sadness over the impending death of the 10th Doctor, relief that the story ended so well. Russell T. Davies’ season finales tend toward an everything-plus-a-neon-encrusted-kitchen-sink approach. For all the spectacle and joy, there are usually at least a couple of eye-rolling, Earth-towing moments.
Part one threatened to take a hard turn in that direction. John Simm’s incarnation of the Master was already brimming with lunacy, and “The End of Time” added to that a botched resurrection that left him bursting with energy, jumping fifty feet in the air and gobbling down whole chickens. And that was before he used the Immortality Gate to transform nearly every person on Earth into a maniacally laughing duplicate of himself. So it wasn’t without reason that I feared that the conclusion would journey into the gone-too-far territory of “Last of the Time Lords.”
Speaking of Time Lords, part one ended with the biggest reveal since the Dalek army in the concluding moments of “Bad Wolf”: Timothy Dalton as the (saliva-intensive) Lord President of Gallifrey presiding over a massive assembly of the Doctor’s own people. There had been hints of the Time Lords’ return–notably a publicity photo of Dalton wearing their telltale robes–but I honestly didn’t anticipate that all of them would be coming back, or that they’d be bringing their planet with them.
In hindsight, it had to happen. After five years of references to the Last Great Time War and the Doctor’s status as the last remaining Time Lord (more or less), it was fitting that Tennant’s tenure ended with the possibility of overturning that status quo, then demonstrating why that would be a bad, bad thing for everyone.
I admit that I’ve missed the Time Lords, but I can understand why Davies did away with them. If they were truly as powerful as often had been suggested,* then why wouldn’t they step in and sort out universe-threatening problems before they started?
As it turned out, the Lords of Gallifrey were themselves out to destroy the universe and thus to win the Time War. I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised; the Time Lords had always been assholes. They’d birthed more than their share of mad power-mongers, and in their prosecution of the war against the Daleks, they’d shown their willingness to transgress their own legal and moral boundaries in reincarnating the Master** to fight for them.
*Never mind that in most of the Gallifrey-centered episodes of the original series, the Time Lords were seen as doddering bureaucrats incapable of turning back a handful of aliens made of cellophane, much less the amped-up Daleks of the modern era.
**Interestingly, Dalton’s character was apparently Rassilon, the long-deceased founder of Time Lord society. I wonder, did they resurrect Omega, Borusa and other renegade Gallifreyans as well?
The visuals were spectacular, but what really made this story sing were the quiet scenes between the Doctor and the Master, as well as the Doctor and Donna’s grandfather, Wilf. We learned what the Doctor felt about his endless cycle of death and rebirth. And we found that after all of the death the Master had caused, the Doctor still saw in him the friend he lost.
The Master was even allowed a redemptive moment that, surprisingly, didn’t seemed forced. Perhaps that was because it seemed less about saving the Doctor’s life than it did about the Master venting his rage against Rassilon for visiting madness on him in the first place.
With both Master and Time Lords dispatched, the Doctor appeared to have cheated the prophecy of his death. But in the most heartbreaking moment, we heard those four quiet knocks and realized that sweet, old Wilf would be the one to bring his end.
The next fifteen minutes may have been similar to the multiple epilogues of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but like that film trilogy, I felt that the last five years of Doctor Who had earned its long goodbye. It was nice to see everyone one last time, my favorite reunion being the Star Wars cantina riff featuring Captain Jack and a multitude of returning aliens.
At last, it was time to say farewell to the 10th Doctor.
That brings us to:
#59: David Tennant
I don’t want to go.
And I didn’t want you to go.
My first Doctor was Jon Pertwee, and I count Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy among my favorites, yet I think that David Tennant was my favoritest of all. His Doctor was enthusiastic, joyful, quirky, manic, angry, compassionate and loving. In other words, all of the previous Doctors in one gangly package.
Plus, he had an awesome coat.
It didn’t hurt knowing that Tennant himself was an uber-fan. On the other hand, that’s why I thought that he might stay longer than his three-years-and-change. The previous four Doctors (C. Baker, McCoy, McGann and Eccleston) had such short lifespans that I’d hoped David would aspire to the Tom Baker end of the scale.
Ah well, it was not to be. British actors are notoriously fickle about tying themselves to a long-running TV role.
So long, Doctor Ten.
And so long to:
#60: Russell T. Davies
Now, I’ll admit that I’m ready for Davies to move on. I’m hoping that the show will get past his vision of a vengeful, dangerous Doctor. And, as I’ve mentioned, Davies doesn’t always quite know where to draw the line between a good idea and a what-the-fuck one.
But I absolutely must give Davies his due. Without him, Doctor Who might never have come back, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have regained its prominence not just as a mass-market phenomenon, but as a by-the-grace-of-Rassilon international franchise.
He made so many right decisions, from his impeccable, risky casting choices to his decision to respect the past without wallowing in it. Lesser producers can (and have) taken the show in less-fruitful directions.
While his writing is at times prone to excess and deus ex machina, his character scenes are excellent. And he’s been responsible for some of my favorite episodes, including “Tooth and Claw,” “Smith and Jones,” “Gridlock,” “Partners in Crime,” “Midnight” and “Turn Left.”
So, props to Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, and the many, many cast and crew members who made the last five years in time and space one hell of a ride!
With the end of David Tennant’s run as the 10th Doctor Who only a day away (in the U.S.), here’s the penultimate entry in my look back at the last five years.
#50: ”Turn Left”
“What if?” stories are opportunities for writers to have their kronkburgers and eat them too. They offer the chance to knock out one of the central pillars of an ongoing narrative and examine the ramifications without lasting damage.
In “Turn Left,” Donna was tossed into a world in which her absence at a crucial moment had caused the Doctor’s death. The results were not pretty.
In a fun-house mirror version of seasons three and four, the Doctor’s friends attempted to fill his sneakers. Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith and the Torchwood team were all killed or otherwise lost in dealings with the Judoon and the Sontarans. London was obliterated by the crash of the spaceship Titanic, and sixty million chubby Americans were converted into Adipose. England, as usual, was shown to be one disaster away from fascism.
Of course, they all got better. That’s the advantage of the “What if?” story.
#51: Memes
“The End of the World” introduced a group of baddies called The Adherents of the Repeated Meme. While they turned out to be merely a cover for the true villain of the story (see item #53), their name hinted at what would become a regular feature of Russell T. Davies’ vision for Doctor Who. Each of the first four seasons included one or more repeated words or phrases: Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Mr. Saxon and the Medusa Cascade.
During the first season, “Bad Wolf” was subtly (well, most of the time) worked into nearly every episode, providing a mystery for attentive viewers and a means for Davies to tie together the Doctor and Rose’s adventures throughout time and space. It ultimately turned out to be a meaningless phrase spread throughout the universe by Rose–after temporarily gaining omnipotence during “The Parting of the Ways”–as a message/warning to herself.
“Torchwood” was more intrusive and less mysterious, given that we already knew that it was a tease about the upcoming spin-off series. Whereas “Bad Wolf” had an in-story reason for its frequent appearance, constant name-checks of “Torchwood” (even in the far future of “The Impossible Planet”) seemed arbitrary. Thankfully, by the time the Saxon/Master story arc rolled out, Davies had figured out how to organically work his memes into otherwise unrelated episodes.
“Bad Wolf” continues to pop up in the parent series, its spin-offs and its merchandising. (It even intruded on the 2nd Doctor’s era in one of the reconstructed episodes found of the DVD of “The Invasion!”) It returned in a big way during the final moments of “Turn Left,” where it appeared everywhere–including the TARDIS itself–to warn of a crisis that threatened all reality.
#52: Billie Piper
While the character of Rose ultimately wore out her welcome (how can we miss you if you won’t go away?), I feel that I really should say something about the actress who played her, Billie Piper. When the bubble-gum pop singer was first announced as the co-star of the reinvented Doctor Who, I expect that the reaction in British fan circles was much as it would have been here if, say, Britney Spears was added to the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Happily, Piper proved to be a real actress, giving Rose (and the show itself) a grounding in reality. She’s since gone on to several Masterpiece Theatre productions and the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
One thing that I found refreshing about Piper, especially after seven seasons of stick-thin girls on the aforementioned Buffy, was that she was proportioned like a real person. Rose proved that sci-fi/fantasy starlets didn’t need anorexia to be sexy.
#53: Cassandra
The first true villain of modern Who was Lady Cassandra O’Brien.Δ17 (no, not a typo), who claimed to be the last pure human in the year Five Billion. “Pure” in this case was entirely relative, given that hundreds of plastic surgeries had left her as nothing more than a fashionably thin, stretched piece of skin attached to a brain tank.
This “bitchy trampoline,” as Rose dubbed her, set the stage for the quirky adversaries to come.
#54: Doing “Domestic”
One of the biggest changes in new Who was that the Doctor’s companions were no longer people without attachments. When Rose went away with the Doctor, he promised to bring her back in twelve hours; instead, Rose returned twelve months later to find her mother conducting a frantic missing persons search and her boyfriend Mickey accused of her murder.
Rose, Martha and Donna left behind not only their mundane lives, but various family members, some of whom became recurring cast members and even traveled in the TARDIS. They helped bring the fantastic down to earth.
#55: Martha Jones
Martha Jones was arguably the longest-serving of the Doctor’s many companions. She spent two months watching over him while he pretended to be a human (“Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood”), an unknown but lengthy period trapped with him in 1969 (“Blink”), and an entire year circling the Earth on foot telling his story to the people living under the Master’s rule (“Last of the Time Lords”).
However, she never got the respect she deserved, suffering as she did from the severe disadvantage of Not Being Rose.
#56: Davros
While the Master is seen by many as the Doctor’s chief nemesis, for my money that title belongs to Davros, creator of the Daleks. He’s got a richer backstory, a more consistent characterization and a believable motivation. Crippled and impotent, he exceeded his mandate to create a “travel machine” for the mutated remains of his people and instead birthed a race of monsters bent on imposing his will upon the universe.
During his initial appearance in the classic episode “Genesis of the Daleks,” the Doctor asked Davros a hypothetical question: if he’d created a virus that would destroy all other forms of life, would he release it?
Yes… yes. To hold in my hand a capsule that contained such power… to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes – I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!
When Davros returned in “The Stolen Earth” (with a fine, creepy performance by actor Julian Bleach), it seemed that the Doctor’s suggestion was still on his mind. Instead of a virus, his mad plan to set the Daleks above all involved the “reality bomb,” a device that would not only destroy the universe, but all possible universes.
People and planets and stars will become dust. And the dust will become atoms and the atoms will become… nothing. And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of creation. This is my ultimate victory, Doctor! The destruction of reality itself!
And that is why Davros has it all over the Master, my friends.
#57: The Return of the Time Lords
The final moments of “The End of Time, Part One!” For Gallifrey! For victory!
After I’ve had a chance to watch part two of “The End of Time,” I’ll be back with the last three items and some final thoughts.
Last weekend saw the premiere of “The End of Time, Part One” (more on that later), but while we wait for the conclusion here are more of my favorite things about Doctor Who.
#44: ”The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”
And once again, here’s Steven Moffat. Can you tell why I’m feeling pretty confident about him taking over the series?
Oddly, World War II rarely figures into Doctor Who. “The Curse of Fenric” was set during the period yet remained at a comfortable distance from Germany. (The enemy soldiers were Russians!) Aside from some leftover South American Nazis in “Silver Nemesis” and a number of metaphorical fascists, it seemed that references to the Second World War were verboten to the Doctor.
So it was a bit of a surprise when “The Empty Child” dropped the 9th Doctor and Rose into the middle of the London Blitz, quite literally in the young woman’s case. Rose found herself dangling from a barrage balloon during a Luftwaffe incursion.
There were other notable elements here, including the introduction to the series of sexuality as a theme. (See item #3.) Captain Jack Harkness (see next item) was said to come from a future time when humanity’s flexibility regarding sex even extended to alien species. Meanwhile, the crux of the plot–the titular child’s search for his “mummy,” who had passed herself as his sister–had much to do with the stricter mores of 1940s England.
“The Doctor Dances” was also famous for being the one in which the Doctor joyfully declared, “Everybody lives!” It wasn’t the first Doctor Who story in which no one was killed (exceptions from the old series included “The Edge of Destruction” and “Fury from the Deep”), but it was the first one that called attention to it.
#45: Captain Jack Harkness
“The Empty Child” also introduced us to Captain Jack. He was initially presented as a confidence trickster and a charming rogue. To Rose, Jack served as a counterpoint to the Doctor. A time traveler himself, he was sexually available, had a sweet spaceship, and favored aggressive weaponry over the Time Lord’s passive sonic screwdriver.
More to the point, while the 9th Doctor tended to brood, Jack was fun! He approached each moment with joy and (literally) loved everyone.
Unfortunately, Jack’s joie de vivre was squashed by the time he arrived at the spin-off series Torchwood. I can’t help but think that if Rose had to choose between the Doctor and the sulky, tortured creature that has replaced happy Jack as the leader of Torchwood Three, it’d be no rivalry.
#46: The Deadliest Fruit of All
While the Doctor’s love of bananas and respect for them as a good source of potassium was established in “The Doctor Dances,” it wasn’t until “The Christmas Invasion” that a fruit saved the day. Freshly regenerated and dressed in Jackie Tyler’s boyfriend’s dressing gown, the Doctor engaged the leader of the Sycorax in a sword duel on the ledge of the aliens’ hovering mothership. Defeated, the invader was forced to swear that his people would leave Earth and never return.
That promise lasted only as long as it took for the Doctor to turn his back. As the Sycorax leader rushed forward, sword in hand, the Doctor plucked a satsuma (a type of citrus fruit) from the pocket of his dressing gown and tossed it at a convenient wall switch. A portion of the hull fell away and the Sycorax warrior dropped to his death.
Apparently, satsumas are commonly used as stocking stuffers in England. I’d bet that on the Christmas Day that this episode aired, they became children’s weapon of choice.
#47: The 9th Doctor
When Christopher Eccleston barreled onto the screen, it was something of a cold slap in the face to old-school Whovians. This Doctor didn’t resemble the eccentric Brits who traditionally inhabited the role. He wore clothes, not a costume. He was dour, damaged and dangerous.
What was perhaps most shocking was how quickly he became the Doctor, and how much we missed him after his all-too-brief tenure.
#48: Missing Adventure
In the midst of the comic murder mystery “The Unicorn and the Wasp” came this exchange between the Doctor and budding author Agatha Christie:
Christie: No alibis for any of them. The secret adversary remains hidden. We must look for a motive. Use the little grey cells.
The Doctor: Oh yes, little grey cells. Good old Poirot. Y’know, I’ve been to Belgium. Yeah, I remember… I was deep in the Ardennes trying to find Charlemagne… he’d been kidnapped by an insane computer.
In a quick cutaway, we saw the Doctor trudging through a Belgian forest, a bow and quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder. We never found out what a crazed computer wanted with the king of the Franks or how archery would solve anything, and that’s how it should have been.*
*The official BBC web site published a short story that explained exactly what an insane computer wanted with Charlemagne. But I refuse to read it.
#49: ”Time Crash”
Pretty soon people are gonna ask why I don’t just go ahead and marry Steven Moffat.
Here’s the 2007 Children in Need mini-episode, the first and only “multiple Doctor” story of the new series. In it, David Tennant–himself a lifelong, diehard Doctor Who fan–got to appear alongside his favorite Doctor, Peter Davison.* And he delivered the following heartfelt speech:
You know, I loved being you. Back when I first started, at the very beginning, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important—like you do, when you’re young. And then I was you, and it was all dashing about and playing cricket and my voice going all squeaky when I shouted. I still do that, the voice thing, I got that from you. Oh, and the trainers. And… (putting on glasses) snap! ‘Cos you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor.
*In the following season, Davison’s daughter Georgia Moffett** played the title role in the episode “The Doctor’s Daughter.” Soon after, she began to date David Tennant. Way to live the dream, David.
**Georgia’s mother is Sandra Dickinson, who played Trillian in the TV version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If only I could work a Blake’s 7 cast member into this story, the resultant geek storm would rip the heavens asunder.
Continuing my marathon retrospective of the past five years of Doctor Who…
#38: ”Bad Wolf”/”The Parting of the Ways”
There are times that I wish I could resist the temptation of spoilers. Case in point: the two-part finale of the first season, which at first glance appeared to be a silly spoof of reality TV before taking a sharp turn into one of the all-time great cliffhangers.
Kidnapped from the TARDIS in mid-flight, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack found themselves aboard the Earth-orbiting Gamestation, forced to play deadly analogues of Big Brother, The Weakest Link and What Not to Wear. The centerpiece of the episode was surely the “Anne Droid,” a robotic version of host/dominatrix Anne Robinson that dismissed losing contestants with a disintegrating ray blast.
One might find it a bit unbelievable that they’re still playing a recognizable version of Big Brother in the year 200,100. On the other hand, how many times have we brought back Family Feud and Let’s Make a Deal?
The Doctor was devastated when it appeared that Rose had fallen victim to the Anne Droid, but soon learned that those “killed” aboard the Gamestation were instead secretly transmatted to a nearby point in open space…where a massive Dalek saucer fleet hung invisibly.
Now, if you’ve been following this series of posts, you’ve already seen the cliffhanger (item #11) in which the Doctor defied the might of a quarter million Daleks. Part two picked up with a daring rescue mission as the Doctor materialized the TARDIS around Rose, then stepped outside to confront the massive Emperor Dalek. The next half hour was thrilling and devastating, with the Doctor’s allies delaying the Daleks’ advance on the upper floors of the Gamestation while the Time Lord sought a means of defeating them.
The final solution involved a literal deus ex machina, with Rose granted temporary omnipotence after the TARDIS charged her with the energy of the Time Vortex. I usually find it a cop-out when a hopeless situation is resolved by someone unexpectedly glowing with cosmic power.* However, on this occasion I felt that there’d at least been sufficient signposting throughout the season that the sudden turn of events didn’t come completely out of nowhere.
And besides, there was a price to pay: the loss of the 9th Doctor. Christopher Eccleston, we barely knew ye.
*It happens more often than you might think.
#39: ”Look! I’ve Even Brought a Straw!”
In “Smith and Jones,” the Doctor raced to uncover a disguised Plasmavore before a squad of brutish Judoon police tore apart Royal Hope Hospital. The fugitive bloodsucker took the form of a sweet, old lady named Florence Finnegan. As if that wasn’t whimsical enough, her death-dealing implement of choice was…a bendy straw.
I might actually see Twilight if Edward armed himself with a bendy straw.
Ah, who am I kidding? Give me an old British woman over a shirtless, sparkly vampire any day.
#40: Harriet Jones, M.P., Flydale North
Portrayed by Penelope Wilton (Shaun’s mom in Shaun of the Dead), Harriet Jones was a local politician caught up in the crisis when the Slitheen infiltrated Downing Street. Her two most notable traits were level-headedness and an obsessive need to identify herself. (“Harriet Jones, M.P., Flydale North.”)
The Doctor–having knowledge of future events–noted that Jones would soon be elected Prime Minster and oversee a new “Golden Age” for Britain. Indeed, when we next saw Harriet, she was serving in that post. She continued to identify herself (“Harriet Jones, Prime Minister”) even though everyone–including the Sycorax and the Daleks–already knew who she was.
Unfortunately, she did not finish out her term. Destroying the retreating Sycorax spaceship during “The Christmas Invasion,” she was (unfairly, in my book) deposed by an angry Doctor who brought her down by suggesting to her aide that she “look(ed) tired.”*
Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister continued to fight the good fight, commissioning the creation of a “subwave network” to contact the Doctor in an emergency. When the Daleks transmatted the Earth to become a cog in their celestial engine, she helped the Doctor locate the missing planet and was exterminated for her trouble.
*Given that her successor was the Master, this was a poor move on the Doctor’s part.
#41: Jimmy Vee
Every sci-fi franchise needs a dependable little person to play aliens of shorter stature. For new Who (and spin-0ff The Sarah Jane Adventures), that actor is Jimmy Vee. He’s been the Moxx of Balhoon, the Space Pig and Nathan Slitheen. He’s also made several appearances as the mercenary Graske.
But his most significant role was the red, spiky Bannakaffalatta from “Voyage of the Damned.” One of the passengers aboard a space-going–and similarly doomed–replica of the Titanic, the charming alien successfully hit on a waitress played by Kylie Minogue. That’s pretty fly for a red guy.
Bannakaffalatta met a tragic end aboard the Titanic. The craft was sabotaged and its robotic servants reprogrammed to hunt down the survivors. Revealing himself to be a cyborg–something frowned upon in his society–Bannakaffalatta sacrificed himself by detonating his power core to cripple the angelic, android Hosts.
But as long as there’s a need for aliens with a height of less than four feet, I’m sure that Jimmy Vee will be there.
#42: Immediate Gratification
This is perhaps more of a Thing I Like About the Internet, but being an American fan of Doctor Who is now sooooooo much more satisfying than it was in the old days.
Back then, it could take years for new episodes to make their way into U.S. broadcast syndication. If you didn’t care to wait, you needed to find someone in England willing to record the series for you, then figure out how to transfer the video from Britain’s PAL format to our own NTSC. As for the rare “missing” episodes, your only recourse was to watch one of the fuzzy, fifteenth-generation VHS tapes circulated by fan clubs.
Fast forward to 2005 when an early version of the premiere episode “Rose” was leaked online before it had even aired in England. Peer-to-peer file transfer meant that U.S. fans had to wait hours instead of years for the latest episode. PAL to NTSC? Fergetabowdit!
“The End of Time” will be on U.S. television only a day after its BBC debut. While that’s not quite a record–1983′s 2oth anniversary special “The Five Doctors” aired on American public TV two days prior to its British premiere–it suggests that for stateside Who fans delayed gratification is history.
#43: Daleks Über Alles
At least as far back as the 1975 origin story “Genesis of the Daleks” there’s been a metaphorical link between the nasty pepperpots and Nazi Germany. Born in a Hitleresque bunker, the Daleks are proponents of racial purity, even exterminating their own kind for the crime of being not quite Daleky enough.
In the 2008 episode “Journey’s End” the metaphor was driven home in this brief scene set “60 miles outside Nuremberg.”
Part one of “The End of Time” premieres this Friday in England (and Saturday in the U.S.), but first here are seven more things I found notable about Doctor Who.
#31: ”The Girl in the Fireplace”
I’m not at all afraid about Steven Moffat taking over from Russell Davies as Who‘s executive producer. Not only did he create one of my favorite Britcoms (Coupling) and establish his bona fides as a Whovian with his affectionate spoof “The Curse of Fatal Death,” but out of the four stories he’s written for the new series, three of them have been out-of-the-park homers. (Or whatever it is they’d call the equivalent thing in a cricket match.) And while I don’t regard the fourth (“Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead”) as highly as do other fans, it’s still one of the better stories.
But we’re discussing “The Girl in the Fireplace,” which was hands-down the best episode of season two. In it, the Doctor landed aboard a seemingly abandoned spaceship only to find its clockwork robot crew taking an unhealthy interest in an 18th century girl named Reinette. For reasons which only became clear to the viewer in the story’s final moments, they sought out her brain to serve as a replacement computer for the damaged vessel.
The robots opened several “time windows” to various points in Reinette’s life, and the Doctor soon discovered that the clock moved much more quickly on his side than on hers. First encountering her as a very young girl, his subsequent visits saw her mature into a beautiful woman…the historical figure Madame de Pompadour. The two shared an intimate bond, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Of course, when the Doctor invited Reinette to travel in the TARDIS with him, one knew that it couldn’t end well. (It never does, unless you’re Billie Piper.) Betrayed by time itself, the Doctor’s heart was broken, and mine with it.
#32: The London Eye
In the episode “Rose,” the Nestene Consciousness used the massive Ferris wheel known as the London Eye to transmit a control signal to its army of Autons. Retroactively, that made it the first Doctor Who location I’ve ridden in!
#33: The Cult of Skaro
Introduced in the episode “Doomsday,” the Cult of Skaro added a bit of personality to the Dalek menace. Unanswerable to the Dalek hierarchy and given license to further their race by any means, they adopted such unorthodox alien concepts as assigning themselves names.
For their next appearance they holed up in the basement of the Empire State Building, experimenting with Human/Dalek hybrids. The Cult’s leader, Dalek Sec, made the heretical argument that they were not superior to all other races as always had been their presumption. After all, he reasoned, for all their conquests the Daleks had been reduced in number to only four survivors. This did not make him popular around the water cooler.
In the ensuing firefight between the Daleks and their demi-human offspring, Sec and two of his followers were killed. The remaining Cult member, Dalek Caan, made repeated attempts to break through the “time lock” that cut off the battles of the Time War from the rest of history. This had the effect of rendering him both insane and precognitive. In the end, he too recognized the deficiencies of his own species and secretly aided the Doctor to defeat the Dalek Empire.
#34: Extra-Special Effects
In the old days it was said that part of the charm of Doctor Who was the cheapness of its creaking, wooden sets and monsters made of cellophane. Something would be lost by making it look good.
Bullshit.
From snarling CGI werewolves to massive space fleets, the new series has been big on visual spectacle. And while I would never discount the importance of writing and acting to a good slice of British sci-fi, dazzling special effects are a welcome addition.
#35: The Toclafane
Deadly pawns of the Master during his year-long reign over the Earth, the Toclafane were small, metal spheres outfitted with spikes and laser emitters. Giggling with glee, they killed “because it’s fun.”
As the Master placed as much priority on humiliating and hurting the Doctor as he did taking over the universe, the Toclafane were chosen and named for maximum psychological effect. “Toclafane” was itself the name of a Time Lord myth akin to the Boogeyman. Even more chilling to the Doctor was his realization of the creatures’ true nature: they were the last remnants of the human race itself from the year 100 Trillion. Unable to escape the encroaching darkness of the end of everything, the despairing men and women regressed to childhood and built themselves into cyborg shells. Each Toclafane sphere housed a desiccated human head, fearful, mad and taking pleasure only in death. Creepy stuff.
#36: Irrational Fears
Doctor Who has long had a mandate to make children deathly afraid of unlikely things: store dummies, puppet dinosaurs, bubble wrap and Colin Baker.
The new series demonstrated its intention to uphold tradition by having a character eaten by a plastic trash bin in its very first episode. Since then, it has caused otherwise well-adjusted children to pee themselves over the following:
Shadows
Scarecrows
Statues
Santa
Satellite navigation systems
Skeletons wearing spacesuits
Angels
Beetles
Water
Crayon drawings
Gas masks
Television sets
French fries
British comedians
Fat people
Old ladies
People who repeat what you say
Billie Piper’s new teeth
#37: U.N.I.T. Schools the Sontarans
In the two-part story “The Sontaran Stratagem”/”The Poison Sky,” the warriors of Sontar used their technology to jam conventional U.N.I.T. weaponry. But with a change of ammunition–and an assist from the aircraft carrier Valiant–U.N.I.T. severely kicked some Sontaran ass.
Still another in a series of posts celebrating the past five years of Doctor Who…
#24: ”Midnight”
I’ve previously written about this one at length, so you can go back and read that entry if you like. But as far as I’m concerned, this is Russell Davies’ best Who script and it would be wrong to leave it out just because I’ve covered it before.
It’s a cliché about Doctor Who that kids watch it from behind the sofa. I watched this one alone at home in the middle of the night, and I wish there’d been a sofa to hide behind.
#25: The Master
Okay, I could’ve done without the bit where the Doctor’s deadliest enemy turned him into Dobby the House Elf. But in most other ways, the return of the Master was a welcome one.
The Master, as originally portrayed by Roger Delgado, was designed to be the antithesis of the 3rd Doctor. His sharp sartorial style–black Nehru jacket and Goatee of Evil–meshed nicely with Jon Pertwee’s ruffled wardrobe.
After Delgado’s death, the villainous Time Lord went largely unseen for seven years, appearing in but a single story as an emaciated, dying creature. Later reincarnated as actor Anthony Ainley, the Master regained much of his original look. And while the Doctor took on several new and wildly dissimilar personas in the ensuing eight seasons of the classic series, his rival stuck with the Nehru-and-goatee thing to the very last episode.
I believe that Russell Davies hit on something clever in casting John Simm as the regenerated Master, reinventing the character as the antithesis of David Tennant. Like the 10th Doctor, this villain was quirky, quippy and prone to pop-culture references. And with Tennant’s Doctor established as a sexual being, Simm’s Master went a step further and actually took a wife!
We even got a bit of an explanation for his madness (and his nonsensical masterplans). A childhood exposure to the Time Vortex left him with the constant sound of drumming in his head. Amusingly, the four-note sequence sounded suspiciously like the underbeat of the Doctor Who title theme. (Da-da-da-duh, da-da-da-duh…)
Simm (and perhaps the source of that drumming) will return in the upcoming “End of Time.” I wonder whether he’ll go on to bedevil the 11th Doctor, or be reborn into a foe tailored to incoming actor Matt Smith.
#26: Non-Chronological Order
For a show about time-travelers, old-school Doctor Who was surprisingly linear. No matter when in history the Doctor and the Master crossed paths, their meetings invariably occurred in the same order for both. One could safely refer to their previous televised encounter (“So, you escaped from Castrovalva”) without confusing the other (“Castro-whatwhat, now?”).
I have long thought it would be nifty if the Doctor landed on a planet for the first time only to learn that everyone already knew him because of another visit that was later in his own timeline but earlier in theirs. While that hasn’t happened yet, the new series has been much more willing to play games with chronology.
I don’t know if it was intentional, but non-linearity almost seemed to be a theme of new Who‘s third season. The first time Martha met the Doctor was not the first time the Doctor met Martha; he had come back in time from a point later in the same episode. Then there were the events of “Blink,” in which the messages Sally Sparrow received from the Doctor were the ones she later transcribed and presented to him before he ever wrote them.
Even the Doctor and the Master were finally allowed to muddle up their timelines. In the guise of “Mr. Saxon,” the Master had been operating on Earth under our noses as far back as “The Runaway Bride,” even though the events that caused him to regain his memories and travel back in time to assume the role of England’s prime minister would not occur until eleven episodes later.
Confused? Good. That’s part of the fun of time travel.
#27: The Slitheen
Yeah, I realize that a lot of fans think the Slitheen are rubbish. And I’ll grant that their signature flatulence was perhaps pandering too much to the younger members of the audience. Still, I’ve got a lot of affection for them, and here’s why.
The Slitheen were the first major addition to the Who rogues’ gallery. The various denizens of “The End of the World” were clearly one-of-a-kind characters, and the Gelth (from “The Unquiet Dead”) were sentient gas and therefore seemed rather limited in their future usefulness. By contrast, the Slitheen seemed to have what it took to be recurring foes.
Their design was striking: bulky, green humanoids with immense claws, topped with creepy, fanged baby heads.
They had a fun gimmick that also served as a meta-joke on the series itself. As aliens wearing human suits with a visible zipper, they were the inverse of traditional man-in-rubber-suit monsters. (I think that the farting was in its own way a meta-joke, as disguised aliens tend to have one trait that gives them away; for example, in the ’60s TV show The Invaders, they had oddly-angled pinky fingers.)
In a break with sci-fi series tradition, they were a villainous subset of an alien species, rather than an entire race of baddies. The Slitheen were merely a criminal family from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius, and we were given no reason to believe that other Raxacoricofallapatorians shared their ambitions. Contrast to the Daleks: no Dalek ever grew up wanting to be a dentist.
And the Slitheen had a wicked sense of humor. As part of their scheme to gin up a false alien invasion, they re-engineered a common farmyard pig to walk upright and wear a custom spacesuit, for no reason outside of playing a twisted prank.
The Slitheen have only made a couple of appearances in the parent series, but they’ve shown up a few times in the more kid-friendly Sarah Jane Adventures. There they can fart with abandon.
#28: J.K. Rowling Saves the World
While “The Shakespeare Code” lavished obligatory praise on the famous playwright, it spared a bit of love for the author of a certain boy wizard. We learned that one of the perks of time travel was not having to wait for Book Seven; the Doctor had nipped forward and read it several months early. And when a coven of witches attempted to weave a spell using the power of Shakespeare’s verse, it was Martha’s use of the familiar Hogwarts’ spell word “Expelliarmus” to complete a couplet that sent the Carrionites packing back to the Deep Darkness.
#29: The Valiant
Because flying aircraft carriers are never less than awesome.
#30: The Killer Christmas Tree
The robot Santas first seen in “The Christmas Invasion” remain mostly unexplored. The Doctor described them using a metaphor about “pilot fish,” scavengers travelling alongside a predator such as a shark. These “roboforms,” as they were later dubbed during their reappearance in “The Runaway Bride,” preceded the arrival of the Sycorax mothership. Inexplicably, they disguised themselves as Kris Kringle in an attempt to abduct the newly regenerated Doctor and use him as a power source. Exactly why writer Russell Davies felt it necessary to add android Santas to a story about aliens who already vaguely resembled Father Christmas also remains unknown.
However, I’m not complaining, because it meant we got a deadly, robotic Christmas tree accompanied by sinister jingle bells…
So I found it odd that I’ve had not one, but two Doctor Who dreams this week. A few nights ago, favored companion of fortysomething Whovians everywhere Sarah Jane Smith was traipsing through my head. Investigating a candy factory. I suspect that latter detail may have been due to my having seen a stage production of Willy Wonka a few weeks back.
However, last night I paid the price. Instead of confectionery companions, I was visited by a flock of Weeping Angels, those clawed and fanged monsters that only move when you’re not looking at them.
