Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 761: Gridlock

Dear diary,

Macra! Hahaha! Oh, I love the fact that after almost 40 years, the bloody Macra can show up again in Doctor Who, and completely unexpectedly. Oh, true, they’re not really the same creatures that I loved so much back during The Macra Terror, but it’s still something truly wonderful and bizarre, and a nice way of linking the 21st century show right the way back to the early days of the Second Doctor. Mind you, we’re into 2015 now, and I’m still*waiting for the return of Zaroff and his Fish People…
Looking back at this story, it’s a bit of an odd one. I recall being really excited at the time because we knew the Face of Boe would be dying and passing on his final secret… but then everyone had sort of worked it out. As soon as I joined online fandom in the summer of 2006, it had already been taken as established fact that Boe’s final words would be ‘You Are Not Alone’, because they were the words used in Russell T Davies’ write up of the Time War for the 2006 annual. I can’t remember *how people had made the leap (did Russell make a comment that Boe’s secret was a four-word-phrase? That rings a vague bell in the back of my mind…), but when the moment came, and Boe breathed his last… it was a bit of an anti-climax, really.

I can’t help feeling that the same is sort of true for Gridlock as a whole. There is a certain amount to like in here - the different peoples on the motorway have been nicely sketched in with just a few brief seconds on screen for some, and the re-dressing of the ‘car’ set is very well executed, for example - and I’ve found on this watch that I’ve really enjoyed moments like the singing of the hymn, but I spent far too long thinking about elements that just don’t add up. Something’s never sat right with me about the whole idea of the people trapped on the motorway, and while this time around I connected strongly with the idea that they know it’s not right, but they just don’t talk about the fact, it still just didn’t really feel… I don’t know. Believable? Is that what I mean? It feels rich to be talking about the believability of a motorway in the year five billion, where giant crabs snap at your bumpers, but something just never really worked about the idea for me.

With that, we’re sort of back to the age-old problem that used to crop up from time to time during the ‘classic’ run of this marathon - once the story had lost my interest, it was something of a fight to get it back again, and I’m not sure it really managed it. There’s a lovely upswing at the end where the Doctor sits and tells Martha about Gallifrey, but I couldn’t tell you much, a few hours on, about other things which happened throughout the story. A pity, perhaps, but after the highs of the last few days, this one simply hasn’t found favour with me.