Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 757: Doomsday
Dear diary,
D’you know, it’s strange looking back to think that it took forty years for the Daleks and the Cybermen to go head-to-head with each other. I think I’m right in saying that the idea was proposed right back in the 1960s, and it was vetoed by Terry Nation, but it still just seems so strange that it took them this long to actually manage it. Does such a thing even happen in any of the spin-off media from the 1990s? Nothing springs immediately to mind. There’s also something curiously wonderful about the fact that these two great Doctor Who icons go head to head in their most powerful forms ever, and we don’t get some massive all-out war, but a bit of a bitch-fight in a corridor. It’s so perfectly Doctor Who, and I can’t help but love it!
That said, the Daleks and the Cybermen aren’t given a great deal to actually do in this episode, are they? The Cybers stop around the streets a little (and the constant clips of the same family that we keep cutting back to makes it seem like they’ve just picked four people to terrorise), while the Daleks go for a stroll to break their mates out of prison, and then the lot of them get sucked out in to the Void*. Still, there is at least a nice bit of mystery in the form of the Genesis Ark. Oh, the speculation at the time was so surely centred on the fact that Davros must be inside it, and that’s how he’d sat out the Time War. I think I prefer the idea that the Time Lords used their ‘bigger on the inside’ science to create prisons for the Daleks… it’s just a shame we don’t get to see more done with the idea before they vanish back down the plughole between realities!
Of course, I can’t discuss this episode without making mention of the fact we say goodbye (for now, at least) to Rose Tyler. At the time, I was so ready for her to leave. It had only been a little over a year, but it felt like she’d been the companion for ages - I suppose being the only regular female companion since the show had been revived made it feel like she’d been there forever - and I’d so disliked her throughout this second series that I was just ready to see someone new aboard the TARDIS.
Watching through this time… I’m warmed more to her throughout the second run. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot about the extremes of her character this series which rub me up the wrong way, but there’s other bits that I really disliked before which suddenly feel right to me. I’m talking mostly about that smug attitude that the Doctor and Rose share through many of these episodes, and I’ve grown to sort of enjoy it, in a weird way. Maybe it’s because I know this time around exactly what fall they’re heading for? Or because I’m more willing to just accept the fun that the pair are having in travelling the stars together?
Either way, I don’t think you can underestimate the importance that Billie Piper played in bringing the programme back. If Christopher Eccleston was the perfect choice to relaunch the Doctor (slightly unexpected, and more of a proper ‘actor’ than people may have expected), then Billie was certainly the right choice for the new companion. While I don’t think I can jump on all the hype of her as being one of the absolute best ever, I can certainly look back on her time in the show as being very strong, and that she was a big part of making that a success.
*Actually, that said, the Daleks get sucked back in to the Void, the Cybermen get lifted up from the ground, and then… well, we don’t see them again! Not a single shot of a Cyberman being sent in to Hell! This really bugged me at the time, and it really bugs me now - they’ve even been using nice handy CGI Cybermen throughout the episode here and there, surely they could have managed to add some in at the crucial climax moment?
