Doctor Who 2005
Rose (episode 1)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Keith Boak
"Lots of planets have a north."
The Brilliant
The opening credits & revamped theme tune
Slick but adequate exposition of the basic concepts for newbies
The TARDIS exterior
The TARDIS sound effect
Googling, and the scene with the Doctor fan
A decided lack of screaming from the Companion
The episode opening, which made it clear in the first two seconds that this
was 21st C television
The credit to Robert Holmes. I cheered
The As-Yet-To-Decide
The Doctor. A few nice lines (I loved the exchange about the northern accent),
and it's nice to have an actor in the role, but on the whole Eccleston didn't
feel much like The Doctor. I kept having this sneaking suspicion that
some other Timelord had stolen the TARDIS
Rose. I warmed to her more than I expected from the spoilers, but at the moment
she feels a bit two-dimensional
The TARDIS interior. A bit dark
The Not-So-Brilliant
The plot. Perhaps squeezing the entire exposition into one episode including
introducing a new Doctor & Companion, plus explaining the concept to new
viewers, was a mistake
Despite the much-vaunted budget of millions, the monsters still looked like
men in suits, though I suppose that enhanced that hard-to-get BBC Drama feel
The lack of menace. I didn't jump once, and I'm easy to scare
The secondary cardboard-cut-outs ..cough.. characters
As an episode,
I'm going to be a touch grumpy and give it 5.5/10. A solid series introduction
which will hopefully appeal to a new generation of kids, whilst hanging on to
the basics... Here's hoping the plot improves next time...
27 March 2005
The End of the World
(episode 2)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Euros
Lyn
"Nice lianas!"
Billie Piper is really settling into the role of companion, and she got some strong scenes with the Doctor & Cassandra which fleshed out the character nicely. I wish, though, that she'd been given a more active role in this week's A plot. I'm more ambiguous about the Doctor, but I liked the tough streak brought out at the end.
The aliens were convincingly realised, for a change; I loved Cassandra "When I was a little boy" & Jabe "A cutting from my grandfather", and was sad to see them both sacrificed before the end. Some of the jokes actually made me laugh ('Tainted Love'), and the tips to classic British sf (Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Brazil) on the whole felt enjoyable, not plagiaristic.
The plot? Well there had to be a weak point, but at least the motivations behind the Cunning Plan felt contemporary. In general, I don't feel the 45-minute episodes are doing the storyline any favours, especially with the strong emphasis on building the relationship between Rose and the Doctor. This concept could easily have been built into a longer sequence, allowing a fuller exposition of the alien characters & a less perfunctory plot.
6.5/10. Not perfect, but by far my favourite of the first few episodes.
17 April 2005
The Unquiet Dead
(episode 3)
Written by Mark Gatiss, directed by Euros
Lyn
"I think it's gone a little bit wrong."
I don't know whether it's Christopher Eccleson or Russell Davies, but the Manic Grin Doctorian incarnation is beginning to grate. Even more troublingly, I'm still having trouble connecting this leather-coated, slang-speaking 'Doctor' with the real Doctor Who.
Rose had little to do, beyond look pretty & yell for help getting out (for the second episode in a row); while Billie Piper does both admirably, neither bode well for the 2005 companion. Even Simon Callow couldn't rescue the poorly written & pointless Dickens, and they seem to be getting into a nasty habit of building up potentially interesting secondary characters only to sacrifice them before the end.
On the plus side, the dark-toned visuals made a great contrast to last week, and the special effects were excellent & well integrated. Great window dressing, however, couldn't save this mishmash of clichés & wasted opportunities. I give it 4/10.
17 April 2005
Aliens of London,
World War Three (episodes 4,5)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Keith Boak
"Victory is best enjoyed naked!"
Aliens of London seems to signal a return to Doctor Who's origins. The double episode felt a lot closer to the old format, allowing a slightly more complicated plot, more character development and a cliff-hanger ending. The A-plot also returned to prime Doctor Who territory, refreshed with 21st century cgi, whilst the novel treatment of the companion -- torn between old & new attachments -- made a great soapy counterpoint. The extensive use of news reports contributed to the contemporary feel that has characterised this series, and I adored Andrew Marr's cameo & the snatch of Blue Peter.
The action plot, however, was rather pedestrian, with too many of the twists being oversignalled & overlaboured. Much of the action required a degree of idiocy that stretched plausibility ... even for civil servants/MPs/military, sacrificing any tension & menace. The pacing sagged in the middle, & even towards the heavy-handed, repetitive climax. (And someone should inform the BBC that running spoilers for the upcoming episode over the credits works spectacularly poorly with a cliffhanger.) In the heavy focus on the two leads, secondary characters have all been relegated to cardboard.
Billie Piper is continuing to do a fine job, and I love the ambiguity she's projecting in her feelings for the Doctor. I pray, however, this strand remains ambiguous (I don't think I can bear another Buffy/Angel scenario). On the other hand, I felt at times Eccleston was walking through his lines in this episode. I'm not yet enjoying Davies/Eccleston's version of the Doctor, with the ubiquitous grin -- I think it's high time for those dark secrets to come out.
After the dark-toned Unquiet Dead, Aliens of London was definitely heavy on the humour. One or two one-liners stood out (in particular the one where the boyfriend says he isn't seeing anyone else because everyone thinks he's a murderer); however, there was way too much schoolboy humour for my taste. I'm probably not the primary audience for the series, but a little of that kind of thing goes a long long way.
Overall, a mixed bag. By no means my favourite of the series so far, but I'm beginning to feel the connection with the old Doctor Who at last. Verdict: 5/10
Unfortunately, World War Three managed to amplify the worst features of its predecessor whilst misplacing all the good ones. The less said the better: 2/10.
16 April 2005
Dalek (episode 6)
Written by Robert Shearman, directed by Joe Ahearne
"You would make a good Dalek."
OK, it's stock SF plot #3, but Dalek worked -- most of the time, anyway.
The opening scene with the alien artefacts was brilliant, an inspired way to ground the new series in Doctor Who history, and I like the way they're cutting out exposition scenes to drop straight into the action.
The early scenes successfully created sympathy for the Dalek, without losing one ounce of its alien menace. I loved the views of humanity through its eyepiece. The Dalek itself looked, and sounded, beautiful. The Doctor's first encounter with it was exceptionally powerful, with Eccleston finally unleashing the acting qualities he was cast for. Finally we learn more about the Time War, and it was almost worth the wait. The ensuing action held a real edge of terror -- at last it's introducing kids to the joys of hiding behind the sofa -- and the tension was sustained right through to the credits.
For once it scarcely mattered that the secondary characters weren't so much two-dimensional as one-dimensional: the action focused so tightly on the tense triangle -- Doctor, Dalek, Rose -- that one hardly noticed. The new series has been criticised for concentrating too much on the relationship between the Doctor & Rose, but by interposing the Dalek between them, we got a few welcome pay offs here.
Dalek wasn't perfect. After the strong opening the episode felt to falter a bit, with several heavy-handed scenes and the usual overdose of Rose-related sentiment. I'm still not liking the 45-minute format: the ending, whilst genuinely moving, could have done with rather more space to develop naturally. Oh, and someone should have set the Dalek on whoever wrote the score!
7.5/10. Despite the flaws, a real high point.
2 May 2005
The Long Game (episode
7)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Brian Grant
"I call him Max."
Given the speculation over the media's effect on the election campaign, The Long Game's subject of media manipulation is pretty topical. It's been done before, though (notably by another long-lived franchise in Tomorrow Never Dies), and I didn't feel this treatment brought much insight. Little about the newsgathering technology made much sense (why process the news in a human brain rather than a computer? what are the subsidiary people for? why bother with an external datastream?). As the secret of Level 500 is revealed to the viewer early on, the episode lacked tension, and the CGI Exercise, whoops the Guaranteed-Easy-To-Kill* Alien of the Week, had a refreshingly bland World Domination motivation. (*It's beginning to remind me of that infamous B7 episode Sand.)
Like the main plot, the B-plot toyed with an interesting idea -- the ethics of time travel -- without exploring it in enough depth. Bruno Langley as the teen genius Adam acquired in Dalek never had much oomph, and I'm not particularly sad to see the back of him.
After the heavy investment in the relationship between Rose & the Doctor in previous episodes, I was disappointed that there was no fallout from the events of Dalek. Indeed, neither had much to do here, beyond holding hands in the lift.
All in all, The Long Game had a distinct lack of sparkle. The sets felt very 70s DW, and not in a good way: I wondered if they'd spent all their budget on twelve episodes, and had to squeeze this one in on the tea money. The satellite setting in a far-future Earth empire was over-reminiscent of The End of the World, which only highlighted The Long Game's relative poverty.
We're more than
halfway through the new season now, and some worrying glitches are emerging.
I commented earlier on the upbeat pacing, cutting straight to the action &
avoiding all those exposition scenes on the Tardis. The downside is that I'm
beginning to miss the grounding effect of the Tardis interior
-- like the Liberator flightdeck or the Buffy library it's
central to the show, even if scenes there tend to be workaday. The focus on
Earth in all the episodes so far is rational given the foregrounding of Rose,
yet I'm beginning to doubt the assertion that the new Tardis can travel in space
as well as time.
3/10. Last week's Dalek set a high standard, and The Long Game
just didn't deliver.
8 May 2005
Father's Day (episode
8)
Written by Paul Cornell, directed by Joe Ahearne
"The past is another country. 1987's the Isle of Wight."
At last, a win for the single-episode format. A simple story, told simply, Father's Day nevertheless packs a lot in: a half-decent backstory for Rose, top-notch acting (nearly) all round, bags of emotion for those who like a good cry, plus loads of symmetries for the structurally minded. A sense of dreadful inevitability pervades the entire episode: from the moment Rose intervenes to save her father, the end is unavoidable, but waiting for the characters to work everything through was a joy -- in the tearful sense. Best of all, it's a story that actually requires time travel; I particularly appreciated the fact that the demise of the Time Lords has wide-ranging, unexpected repercussions. Even the sound track is, on the whole, kept in check to allow the dialogue to shine.
There are too many highlights to list -- the shock of police box-sized Tardis interior among them -- but I particularly loved the way Father's Day plays with the concept of fiction: Pete is constructed by Jackie as the perfect father, and it's Rose's unwavering belief in this fictional construct which gives Pete the strength to save the day.
It's a pity that the makers got carried away with the cgi -- the reaper monsters were eerily perfect seen circling the church through the stained glass, but more than a touch ridiculous in plain sight. I felt the pace sagged a touch in the middle, bogged down somewhere in the midst of all the group hugs, and Camille Coduri's simplistic portrayal of Jackie continues to be a weak spot.
Though it felt at times like a cross between Eastenders & Doctor Who, Father's Day somehow manages to make the mix work, and the simple strength of the ending more than makes up for any shortcomings along the way.
I give it 7/10.
16 May 2005
The Empty Child
(episode 9)
Written by Steven Moffat, directed by James Hawes
"I don't know if it's Marxism in action or a West End musical."
Billed as the scariest Doctor Who of the season so far, The Empty Child lives up to the hype. Set during the London Blitz, it's a dark episode, both tonally & emotionally, with decided resonances of that other cult British sf series, Quatermass. The eerie repetitive cries of the lost child, the wailing sirens, the rows upon rows of sinister gas masks -- it all added up to a chilling episode. The gas-mask scene (you know the one I mean) was probably the first time in the new series that I turned off my "I'm quadruple the age of the target audience" vibe & just reacted. The subdued score knew when to pull back and let silence do its work.
The Empty Child really proves the value of the double-episode cliffhanger format: the tension wound up slowly, the action never felt hurried, and we had time to grow to love Nancy (solidly portrayed by Florence Hoath) before her life is threatened. Richard Wilson was also perfect in his brief spot as the other Doctor.
I didn't warm immediately to time traveller & self-confessed conman Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), and his lightning-speed romance with Rose didn't quite convince. However, his introduction to Rose provides an interesting mirror to her early encounters with the Doctor. Harkness is dashing & technically-savvy; unlike the Doctor in The Unquiet Dead, he wears clothes that fit the period. Best of all, after he rescues Rose he sticks around to ply her with champagne, rather than just wandering off. I get the impression he might fit Rose's ideal of a time traveller rather better than the Doctor, and I'm interested to see where they're going with the three-way relationship.
Rose got a bit of a raw deal this week, what with the screaming & the swooning, but it was about time the Doctor got to be proactive in his own show. Indeed, The Empty Child was an excellent episode for him, uniting both the dark & the light sides of the Ninth Doctor.
The Beeb is always good for a costume drama, and the interiors were all crammed with authentic-looking details. The stolen meal during the air raid was a wonderful touch -- though I did wonder why a family at that time would be eating tea at half past nine at night.
Nothing's perfect. The Rose-hanging-over-the-London-skyline moments were a bit "we can do cgi, nyah!"-ish, and in plot terms, I did wonder why Harkness decided to spill the beans so early. But the cliffhanger left plenty of other questions to while away the hours before next Saturday -- where did the virus come from (my money's on Harkness's nanotech)? will Rose abandon the Doctor to go off with the Captain? can the Doctor's 'red is camp' comment in the teaser just be a mauve herring?
The Empty
Child fuses old & new-style Who, and gives fans a new menace
worthy to join the Cybermen & the Daleks. I rate it 8/10 -- my favourite
so far.
22 May 2005
The Doctor Dances
(episode 10)
Written by Steven Moffat, directed by James Hawes
"What's life? ... Nature's way of keeping meat warm."
Teenage pregnancy, bisexuality ... The Doctor Dances certainly proves the Doctor's been updated for the 21st Century! The second part dials down the tension (though that typewriter was eerie) & adds a good splash of humour (my gizmo's bigger than yours, the two executioners, and of course the leg at the end). Though the plot held few surprises, it was a joy watching the Doctor put the pieces together.
I'm glad Nancy proved key to the puzzle -- not to mention managed to survive being a female bit part around the Doctor. (The foreshadowing of the blond kid in the house removing his gas mask was cool.) With her mix of grief, stoicism & calm courage, she's reminiscent of the Doctor himself. I loved the way she didn't bat an eyelid when Jack's spaceship swooped overhead!
I'm really warming to Eccleston's performance now. His exuberant joy at the end might have seemed a touch over-the-top earlier in the season, but here it feels a perfect response in someone teetering on the edge. At this rate, he's going to be my One True Doctor right about the closing credits of episode 13...
Captain Jack grated less this time round: he's a much more pleasant character when he's not trying to be nice. With his calm response to certain death I suspect it's going to remain the woman's job to do the screaming. I remain intrigued by the three-way situation that's been established. I really don't know how far they can push things, given the audience they're aiming for -- but it's got me at the edge of my seat!
Hmm... Bad bits. Given how well the plot had been set up in the first part, I rather missed the creepy atmosphere of The Empty Child, but the most annoying bit was the obtrusive score.
Concluding episodes
never quite make the grade of the original, and The Doctor Dances
was no exception. I give it 7/10.
28 May 2005
Boom Town (episode
11)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Joe Ahearne
"I bet you're always the first to leave, Doctor."
Russell Davies admits in this week's Doctor Who Confidential that Boom Town's plot is just an excuse to get to the scene with the Doctor & Blon in the restaurant -- and, unfortunately, it shows. The episode lifts somewhat when it shifts gear from lame comedy to character scenes. However, subtlety doesn't seem to be Davies' strong point, and everything in Boom Town is bashed home.
Much of the current series has played with rewriting the old Doctor Who concepts, turning the old formula on its head, so highlighting the mayhem that follows the Doctor around doesn't really come as much of a surprise (especially when it was stressed right back in Rose). Like everything else in this episode, the parallels with Dalek aren't exactly subtle; on second viewing I was particularly annoyed by the shaft of light at the end. In fact, the nods to earlier episodes fell so thick & fast this time I got the impression Boom Town is intended as a whistlestop tour of the season for late joiners.
Chris Eccleston is perfect in the pivotal restaurant scene, and Annette Badland, as Margaret/Blon, gives a memorable performance, delivering her lines with a decent blend of humour, pathos & menace. The scenes with Rose & Mickey left a soapy taste in my mouth, however, and Billie Piper's sparkle just shows up Noel Clarke's rather wooden delivery. Jack, stripped of his sexy RAF uniform, has little to do but spout technobabble.
It was good to get out of London for a change, and Cardiff centre makes a beautiful backdrop; I particularly liked the Tardis dematerialising against the Millennium building at the end. Speaking of SFX, I note the producers have nicked the fanficcers' method of generating amazing ones -- which, given their budget, hardly seems to be playing fair...
Though it wasn't
as bad as I'd feared from the trailers, Boom Town did feel uncomfortably
like filler between the stunning Empty Child two-parter & the finale.
Neat concept, pity about the execution: 5.5/10.
4 June 2005
Bad Wolf (episode
12)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Joe Ahearne
"Different times, different places, like it's written all over the universe."
Aliens in London/WW3 were among my least favourite episodes, yet last week's Boom Town proved unexpectedly watchable -- so I didn't switch off the television when another of my season lows, The Long Game, stepped into the reprise spot. I hated the idea of reality tv for higher stakes (there's got to be a pile of sf stories that play that card). Played out, though, it was more enjoyable than I'd anticipated: Jack's Dayna reprise was cute, and some of the re-envisaged programmes were hilarious (Ground Force, who knew?). The rapid intercutting of the three scenarios generated enough tension to drive things along.
In contrast, the stuff on the station felt like a return to the old running-round-in-corridors paradigm, and I worried that the Controller had been borrowed from somewhere else (Minority Report?). Despite the Bad Wolf references all season, the dramatic end seemed to come out of nowhere in particular.
In the plus column, Bad Wolf features another strong performance from Eccleston, who just seems to be getting better & better, and there are tonnes of solid supporting performances: Rodrick, Strood, Crosbie, Broff, Davage... in fact pretty much everyone except Rose clone Linda-with-a-y; here's hoping she's the obligatory female sacrifice for the finale.
Joe Ahearne's directed some of the most visually exciting episodes of the series, and Bad Wolf has pretty shots aplenty: Davage's blue-lit face when we first see level 500 & the Dalek in reflection struck me particularly. On the other hand, the Dalek fleet had an Ed Wood saucer-on-a-stick feel about it.
Despite my doubts about the ending, it does make an excellent concept cliff-hanger... How did the Controller bring the Doctor to the station? Did she plug in all the Bad Wolf references? How? Is there some link with the soul of the Tardis? Just who is the Bad Wolf? What are the Daleks doing with all the losing contestants? Are Jack's missing two years relevant to the Time Wars? Did the Doctor somehow bring about the Time Lords/Daleks destruction? Will he do the female thing, & sacrifice himself to save the world? Will he have to choose between saving Rose & Rose clone? And the biggie: how are they ever going to tie everything up in 45 minutes?
I give Bad
Wolf a solid 6/10, in hope that some of the above will prove to have interesting
answers.
11 June 2005
The Parting of
the Ways (episode 13)
Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Joe Ahearne
"See you in hell."
With Russell Davies at the helm, the new series has often felt more like fanfiction than television. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when character interaction takes precedence over plot then the feel of Doctor Who has a tendency to sidle out the back door. Worse still, it seems that Davies isn't just a fan of Doctor Who -- many scenes from The Parting of the Ways felt like a thinly disguised tribute to Joss Whedon.
The choices for the Bad Wolf & the Dalek controller were nowhere near as interesting as those I've read in fannish speculation, and there seemed to be only tenuous connections with the Bad Wolf episode. The massed Daleks lacked the menace that imbued the single survivor in Dalek, and their video-game-like invasion felt contrived & rather pedestrian. Gun-toting Jack felt like he'd wandered in from another series. And, oh dear, the literal deus ex machina ending -- let's just say Davies has now penned the Mary-Sue epic that every fanwriter needs to purge from their system.
There is plenty to enjoy in The Parting of the Ways. Chris Eccleston delivers a near-perfect performance throughout, and, as in Bad Wolf, Joe Ahearne makes him look almost Christ-like. I'm really going to miss the 9th Doctor. The Doctor's decision to send Rose home & her decision to return both felt right, and Rose's scenes in London worked surprisingly well. (I cheered when Jackie turned up with the tow-truck!) The various secondary characters were all given honourable deaths. Finally, one has to applaud the Beeb for daring Outraged of Tunbridge Wells with the same-sex kiss.
I award it a slightly grumpy 5/10.
19 June 2005
Best episode:
The Empty Child, by Steven Moffat, dir. James Hawes
Worst episode:
World War 3, by Russell T Davies, dir. Keith Boak
Best minor character:
the Dalek from Dalek (Nicholas Briggs/Barnaby Edwards)
Worst minor character:
Jackie Tyler (Camille Coduri)
Most under-utilised
big name actor:
Simon Callow (Charles Dickens, in The Unquiet Dead)
Best alien:
Cassandra from The End of the World (Zoe Wanamaker)
Worst alien:
the Jagrifess from The Long Game
Best cameo:
Andrew Marr in Aliens in London
Best animal:
the cat in The Empty Child (uncredited)
Best scene:
the Doctor first meets the Dalek (Dalek)
Worst scene:
Tie: one of the burping ones from Aliens in London/WW3
Rose-Sue does the Willow thing from The Parting of the Ways
Best setting:
the alien museum in Dalek
Worst setting:
satellite 5 in The Long Game
Best cgi:
the gas mask appearance from The Empty Child
Most pointless cgi:
the balloon ride, also from The Empty Child
Best death:
the 9th doctor in The Parting of the Ways
Most pointless death: Jabe in The End of the World
Best joke:
Tie: "The past is another country. 1987's the Isle of Wight."
(Father's Day)
"Lots of planets have a north." (Rose)
Best serious line:
"You would make a good Dalek." (Dalek)
Worst line:
"Victory is best enjoyed naked!" (World War 3)
Best director:
Joe Ahearne (Dalek, Father's Day, Boom Town, Bad
Wolf, The Parting of the Ways)
Production
person who most deserves being locked in a basement with a Dalek:
Murray Gold
20 June 2005