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

Day 779: The Doctor’s Daughter

Dear diary,

I can’t help but feel, watching this episode, that Martha’s involvement is little more than the programme trying to both have its cake and eat it. They need someone to pair off with the Hath, so that we can see them from a point of view other than that given by the humans. Equally, they want Donna to stay with the Doctor to help him come to terms with the sudden arrival of a new daughter. Solution? Have Martha kidnapped in the TARDIS at the end of the two-parter, and shove her off with the Hath so that we’ve got someone to cut to.

In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem, but it just comes across as so obvious, because Martha has nothing to do for the episode. Her entire storyline, really, is ‘get back to the Doctor in time to leave’. There’s a nice character moment when she uses her skills as a Doctor (and makes a point of saying that it doesn’t matter who her patient is, he needs treating), but after that it’s simply a case of getting to the right place before the episode ends. Even her trek across the surface of the planet feels devoid of any real jeopardy, because she feels so superfluous to the plot. I’m not entirely sure how I’d fix that issue, but maybe make the reason that the TARDIS shuttles off to this time and place related to Martha in some way? Just something to make it feel like there’s a reason for her presence.

The situation isn’t helped by the fact that Martha’s side of the narrative is all a bit… sloppy. I made a note early on that the Hath not speaking a recognisable language was a really nice touch because it gave them something unique, and made a point of checking if I was right in thinking that they originally did have a translation that we could understand… but then the episode answered that for me, because there’s several moments where Martha calls back to something her Hath friend has said, and by the time he reaches his sticky end, she knows his name. It just feels like less attention has been paid than usual, and it’s a pity.

Especially so because the other half of the episode, with the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny is rather nice in its own way. The idea of having the Doctor confront the idea that there’s another Time Lord (of sorts) around, having lost them all once, and then so recently lost the Master again, is great, but it never quite feels like it really gets there. We have moments - the Doctor describing a Time Lord as being more than just where you come from, as though he’s desperately trying to find a way to not face what’s happening is lovely, as is his confession to Donna that the part of him that can look after and nurture a child of his own died with Gallifrey - but they flicker into life and then burn out in the blink of an eye. As with the Sontaran episodes we’ve just been through, it feels like we’re another draft away from really cracking the interesting points of the story.

Actually, maybe that’s what needs to be done? Sorry, I’m working this all out in my head as I go. Maybe I you could solve my two big issues with this episode simply by swapping the roles of Donna and Martha? Donna gels wonderfully with the Doctor in this one (but then you can pretty much take that as read), but Martha was actually there when the Doctor cradled the dying Master. She has a connection to him as ‘the Last of the Time Lords’ that Donna simply doesn’t? It would make it feel - narratively - as though there was a better point to having Martha involved with this story, and I can’t help thinking that I’d have loved to watch an episode of Donna struggling to get back to the Doctor while getting increasingly irritated by the fact that she can’t understand the Hath.

Before long I’m going to just start sounding bitter about this one, but I have to bring it up before I sign off for today - Jenny’s survival at the end. It just, again, feels like the episode having its cake and eating it. They want a big emotional moment where the Doctor has grown to like this person and then had to watch her die, but it also wants to pay off the suggestion that she might be capable of some form of regeneration. Also, it’s been said for years that Steven Moffat suggested Jenny be kept alive at the end, so we’ve had to endure countless questions of when she’s coming back!

Sadly, for me, The Doctor’s Daughter has been the low point of Series Four, and if I’m honest, the low point of the 21st century run so far…

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

Day 778: The Poison Sky

Dear diary,

Throughout Series Three I felt like a bit of a yo-yo when it came to the subject of Martha’s family. I remembered them as being a bit poorly conceived when compared to the likes of the Tylers or the Nobles. But then, there were hidden dimensions to them that I’d forgotten about since broadcast, and nice moments which - while not quite elevating them to the same level as those other families - certainly put them on a more even playing field. Then, come the finale, I felt that they didn’t quite work again, and the threat wasn’t sold to me via them in the way I might have expected. Ultimately, I just didn’t care about them. Thankfully, in the end, Martha did, and it’s been used to great effect in this story. I love that she makes a point of telling Donna that travelling with the Doctor caused her family so much pain, and actively urges her to speak to her own family (it also leads to that great exchange between the Doctor and Donna about going home! Hah!). It’s also a nice touch that one of the things to tip the Doctor off that Martha’s been replaced is the fact that she hasn’t thought to phone her family yet - when he knows that’s the first thing she’d do after the events of the last series.

It also shows up just how much better Donna’s family are done, though - I’ve just clicked with them instantly. There’s a moment in yesterday’s episode where Donna walks down her street - taking in the fact that she’s just gone back to normal life once more - and then she sees Wilf standing in the driveway. He waves! he dances a little! He tears up… and so did I! Watching the 21st century series thing time around is making me well up a lot more than it ever did the first time, but there’s just something about the sight of Wilf there, so pleased to see his granddaughter back safe and sound that really struck a chord with me.

And then they go inside, and discuss the life that Donna’s been leading these last few weeks, and everything about the scene absolutely rings true. The way that Wilf tells her not to tell Sylvia, and the way Sylvia reacts when she thinks something is being kept from her. If anything, this is the most real family that the Russell T Davies era gives us, and it’s really the backbone of these episodes for me. You can keep your Sontarans, your intergalactic wars, and your poison skies, I’ll settle for just these family scenes, thanks.

But the beauty of the programme at this point is that we can have all these beautiful family moments, and have all those other things, too! So; the Sontarans. I spent a fair bit of time musing yesterday about the fact that I’d not really consider them to be particularly big or important monsters in Doctor Who, but I think - after the family stuff - they’re the thing I’ve enjoyed the most about this two-parter. Not necessarily their plan, or the story involving them, but just the way that they’re portrayed as a little bit comical, but also totally warlike.

Take the battle sequence, for example, in which they go to war against UNIT; there’s something in the sheer delight they take at the situation that makes them stand out from the other Doctor Who monsters. We’ve seen Daleks taking out people en masse, but when they do it, it’s simply functional. In The Parting of the Ways, for example, I praised the fact that we got to see them going down to Level Zero to kill all the humans stranded there. It was great, but it was calculated, and there wasn’t any emotion behind it from the point-of-view of the baddies. Watching as Dan Starkey stomps into battle, though, and likens it to sport makes me almost root for the Sontarans! Bless them, they’re only playing!

As for the story… well, as I say, I can take or leave that. I’m a little saddened that we’ve yet to see Sontarans in a proper all-out war, so spending two episodes with the Doctor musing that this is so unlike the Sontaran’s usual tactics means that I’m left longing for the story I want to see. It’s also just a bit ‘been there, done that’ in places, with moments like Luke’s students deserting him and his later being betrayed by the Sontarans falling flat because they’re more than a little clichéd, and because the students have only really been seen in the background so far - which means I don’t really feel anything for them when confronted with a gun.

On the whole, I think there’s a lot of great ideas in these tow episodes - and when it latches onto something real like the depictions of Donna’s homecoming, it really sings - but it’s a draft or two away from being as tight as it could be.

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

Day 777: The Sontaran Stratagem

Dear diary,

I’ve spoken before about the very clever way the 21st century version of Doctor Who slowly drip-feeds in bits from the ‘classic’ era, allowing it to organically become a part of the new mythology, rather than hitting you with it all at once (I didn’t mention it the other day, but can you imagine that speech from Voyage of the Damned cropping up in Series One? Half the audience would switch off! ‘Nice to meet you, Rose. I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred and three years old. Run!’). There’s been a fairly natural order for things to be introduced so far - the Doctor and the TARDIS are obviously top of the list, followed by the Time Lords (who are introduced through their absence, setting up a whole new backstory), and in terms of the villains it was always going to go Daleks/Cybermen/Master. Question is, though… where do you go from there?

At the time, it seemed perfectly natural and only right that we were seeing the Sontarans back next. I can remember the promotional picture they released of David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Freema Ageyman, and Dan Starkey’s first Sontaran, and thinking ‘of course it had to be them!’ but… um… did it? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love a Sontaran as much as the next person, but they’re hardly ‘top-teir’ are they? Two two-parters (hush, pedant at the back, The Invasion of Time is a two-parter for them), a three parter (hush, pedant), and a four parter spread out over a decade or so. But then, I’m not entirely sure that Doctor Who has really got a baddie after those big three who’s immediately recognisable, has it? I often see people calling for the Ice Warriors’ as the fourth place, but that’s not true! They, too, had four adventures in the show but last appeared in the classic series in 1974! I’d not say they’re especially remembered by the nation-at-large. That said, if I’m using that criteria to judge, then the next biggest baddie is probably the Giant Maggots by technicality. Well, we are in Wales… Does anyone have a particular theory on what the ‘next big baddie’ is after the Daleks/Cybermen/Master? Is it the Sontarans, and I’m just being awkward?

I’m not complaining, mind, because I rather like the Sontarans, and I’m especially fond of these modern ones. They really suit being properly short (after their growth spurt for The Two Doctors), and the masks look the best they have since the very first Sontaran from way back when. Also, turns out that blue is very much their colour!

What’s strange about this story is that it’s not the reintroduction of UNIT - they played parts in Aliens of London, The Christmas Invasion, and the Series Three finale - but it feels like it is. This is the first time we’ve really done a proper story set within UNIT. The Christmas Invasion is the nearest contender, but we only really see UNIT there because they have a means of tracking the spaceship, thus moving the plot on. There’s something I rather like about modern UNIT, too. As the Doctor says, it was all a bit more homespun in the old days, but I like the flashy, modern edge to the new chaps, and I’m glad they’ve made more of a prominent return in recent years, with recurring characters among their ranks.

And on the subject of returning characters… hello Martha Jones! I’ve said plenty of times across this marathon that I really like the Doctor having friends scattered across time and space that he can drop in on from time to time, and I love the idea of Martha calling him back down to Earth to help with a problem (it’s the same way I like Mickey going it in School Reunion)… but I’m not sure I like her being a part of UNIT. It just never sat right with me, in the same way that her becoming that lone warrior in Last of the Time Lords didn’t quite gel. If I’m honest, I think Martha’s entire post-Series Three story is a massive mess - she joins UNIT, gets engaged to a man she met briefly in a parallel time line, then dumps him for Mickey and becomes a gun-toting freelancer… it just doesn’t chime with the Martha we knew for most of Series Three, and that’s a shame. I'm finding it hard to take to the Doctor's distaste for her position here - especially since she points out that he's the one that got her the job in the first place!

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

Day 776: Planet of the Ood

Dear diary,

Oh, I’m going to sound like a right old misery here. Having complained yesterday that I wasn’t all that impressed by the exteriors for The Fires of Pompeii, for which they traveled all the way to Italy to film, I’m going to say a similar thing again today. Though this time around, I know why some of the location shooting doesn’t work for me - and it’s because it’s very much shown up by other areas.

I’ve no problem with the actual complex of Ood Operations. No, that looks good enough, and I was pleasantly surprised by it in places - early on, when characters are first moving about the industrial landscape, there’s no snow falling. I figured that it was because they simply couldn’t get the snow machines into such tight areas to use them… but then later on they do! It’s a little touch, but it makes it somehow all the better. My issue comes with the wide open spaces, specifically where the TARDIS lands right at the start. We pull back to a frankly beautiful matte painting of the Ood Sphere, with the Doctor, Donna, and the TARDIS parked up in one of the nicest alien landscapes the programme has ever shown us - with vast spires of ice, and caverns, ravines, plains in the distance… gorgeous.

…And then we cut in for tighter shots of the actors and we’re in a bit of a quarry with some fake snow peppered around (and not entirely convincingly, at that). There’s no hint of that vast landscape painted in behind the Doctor or Donna when we see them closer up, even though you’d expect to have a hint of it in there somewhere. I know that the programme doesn’t have an unlimited budget with which to constantly be painting in backgrounds to every single shot, but it just took such great work in the matte painting and let it go to waste. A real pity.

It’s hardly the end of the world, though, and there’s plenty else to enjoy about this episode. We’ve got another one here which I’ve not seen since broadcast (I’d not really noticed before just how many of these episode I’ve only watched the once), and there’s lots of nice depths to the story that I’d completely forgotten since my last viewing. Chief among them has to be the way that the Doctor and Donna act together - they’ve already slipped into being best friends, and it’s great to watch. In some ways, it’s not all that far removed from the way the Doctor and Rose were back in Series Two, but whereas that relationship could grate from time-to-time, this just feels natural, and fun, and I’m loving it. The way they rattle around in the console room at the beginning, or laugh as they cross the icy wastes of the planet, it’s all so lovely - it’s what I’d want time travel to be like.

There’s something so honest and human about Donna. The way she punctuates all of the Doctor’s pomposity simply be being real. I love that she misses the Doctor’s speech because she’s ventured inside to fetch a coat (on the subject of which, I love that she thought to even bring a coat, among other belongings!), and then the way that she reacts as the true plight of the Ood becomes more and more obvious. And then there’s that beautiful moment when she’s heard the Ood song, and it moves her to tears;

DONNA

I spent all that time looking for you, Doctor, because I thought it was so wonderful out here… …I want to go home.

That moment alone should be enough to silence anyone who dared to think that Catherine Tate wouldn’t be up to fulfilling the companion role long-term, because it’s such a wonderful performance. Truly heartbreaking.

And since I’ve started tracking the elements falling into place for the Tenth Doctor’s impending demise, today we’ve got that set up of the Ood’s song, which will sing the Doctor to sleep before too long, and the first of many hints that his song is closer to the end than the beginning…

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

Day 775: The Fires of Pompeii

Dear diary,

Way back at the very start of this marathon, I used to track a loose story arc involving the Doctor’s realisation that time isn’t as rigid as he’d always thought it was. I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t an arc consciously inserted into the programme by the production team, but rather something which evolved organically over time, ranging from The Aztecs, in which the Doctor is fairly certain that time can’t be altered (he’s very blunt about it with Barbara, but there’s a certain something in the performance that makes me suspect that it’s more techies of you can’t rewrite a single line because that’s what he’s always been told, not what he’s experienced) through to The Romans, in which he realises that the Great Fire of Rome was his fault. We’re almost seeing history repeating itself at the moment, and I’m rather liking that it happens in very similar setting - and in an episode where the Doctor actually namecheck the fire he caused!

Yes, I’m seeing patterns in things that aren’t there again. Following on from Voyage of the Damned, which had a few threads starting to appear that will become very prominent right at the end of this Doctor’s life, today we’ve got him once again realising that he’s a vital part of time - and more crucially, realising that he can bend time to his own will. Here, it’s just saving the one family from the eruption of Vesuvius, but by the time The Waters of Mars rolls around, this type of power will have gone to his head. Just like the arc in the 1960s, I’m fairly sure that this wasn’t placed here intentionally, but it’s lovely to see it starting to form in retrospect, when you look back at these stories with knowledge of where the tale goes further down the road.

It’s also fitting in some ways that The Fires of Pompeii should slot so neatly into the Doctor realising how flexible even ‘fixed’ points in time can be, because this episode is something of an important one for the programme’s timeline - with both Karen Gillan and Peter Capaldi making their Doctor Who debut here several years before they’d return to play a more prominent role in the series. I’m surprised we as a fandom don’t spend more time parsing the cast list for this one to see who else might crop up as someone major in the future (Oh, actually, Tracy Childs is in this one, too, and she’s an audio companion, so I’m not being entirely facetious).

Overall, I can’t help but quite like this one - there’a a nice enough story behind it all, and there’s several scenes that are especially well done - chief among them being the introduction of Lucius Petrus Dextrus, and the ‘seer off’ that follows - with both Lucius and Evelina revealing facts about where the Doctor and Donna are really from, become delving deeper into their personal futures to hint at someone returning, and something on Donna’s back. The whole scene is brilliantly written, perfectly performed, and directed with such a great style that it really helps to build up the tension. At the time, I remember there being a lot of discussion about exactly who might be returning - the general feeling seemed to be that ‘Rose’ was too obvious after the sight of her in the previous episode, and most people’s money seemed to be on the Rani (isn’t it always?). At the time, I thought that was ridiculous, but the way the line is delivered here, you can easily see why people might expect something more sinister than the return of a former companion.

If there’s one thing about The Fires of Pompeii which does fall a little bit flat for me, then I have to say it’s the actual setting. Save for the few plate shots taken in New York for Series Three with a skeleton crew and no lead actors, this is the first time that 21st century Doctor Who has properly travelled abroad to shoot scenes, and while they do look very nice… they simply don’t ‘wow’ me. I think, truth be told, I was spoilt last season with all the Elizabethan England scenes for The Shakespeare Code. Every single one of those floored me the other week when watching, whereas the Pompeii scenes here simply don’t have the same effect, and I’m not entirely sure what that is. 

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

Day 774: Partners in Crime

Dear diary,

Oh, the fury when it was announced that Catherine Tate would be returning to the show for a full season as the regular companion. Outpost Gallifrey was so cross that a comedy actress - God forbid - would be travelling in the TARDIS for so long. And then this episode aired, and people were split! An episode with a large dollop of comedy thrown in for good measure! Some people fell over themselves to do a volte-face and proclaiming that Donna would be a great boost to the series, while others simply pointed to the moments of levity in this one as signs that she’d be taking the programme down with her.

As for me, well, I was thrilled when they announced Donna’s return - I’d enjoyed her well enough in The Runaway Bride, and it sounded like she was going to be a lot of fun. When Partners in Crime aired, I was beside myself - it’s a great way to set up the new series.

For starters, it’s nice to open in such a different way to previous years. Rose and Smith and Jones are both about someone getting caught up in the Doctor’s adventures and enjoying the thrill (though both are very different stories, even if you can group them in this lose category), while New Earth was about continuing the adventure, with pre-established characters. Partners in Crime gets to be an unusual new spin on the format, with a character who’s already been established and allowed to peak into the Doctor’s world (I really love the way the Doctor tries to impress Donna in the TARDIS at the end, only for her to stop him with a simple ‘I know all that’), while at the same time allowing the ‘getting caught up in the adventure’ strand to play out. 

I’d forgotten just how long they play the whole ‘Doctor and Donna Missing Each Other’ thing at the start, but it’s all the better for it - when they finally spot each other across the office about 20 minutes in, the moment is lifted simply because they’ve been coming so close. And if there was ever need to prove that a comedic actress in Doctor Who can be a fantastic thing, just look at this scene! I’ve not watched the episode in full for years, but I must have seen this bit ten times over - it never gets old for me.

As for the story itself… Eh. I mean it’s not bad, by any stretch, but it’s just sort of ‘average’ Doctor Who. I can sort of take or leave the actual story of this episode, because it’s so much about the Doctor and Donna meeting again, and looking at the way their lives have changed since they last saw each other. I love Russell T Davies’ description in ‘The Writer’s Tale’ about the way you meet someone special and desire that your whole life is going to change, but then you get up the next day, and there’s bills, and work, and all that nonsense. It feels so very real8 that Donna should have failed to ‘walk in the dust’ after the events of *the Runaway Bride, and the sad way she admits it to the Doctor here is beautiful. As for the Doctor, it’s really nice for him to finally acknowledge just how much Martha meant to him, and to try and face the way that he treated her during their adventures. Something I’d never appreciated before is the way in which the Doctor says the Adipose here are just children and can’t help where they came from - Donna’s right, it is a real change, because he murdered the Racnoss children last time they met. I don’t think I’d ever noticed quite how nicely that parallels before, but it’s one of the highlights for me. 

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

Day 773: Voyage of the Damned

Dear diary,

I’ll confess I’ve not been looking forward to reaching this one. Not that I have any bad memories of it (indeed, I’ve quite happy memories of it - at Christmas, we used to rotate every year between which family member was hosting the evening meal, so I got to watch The Christmas Invasion at home, and the same for The Runaway Bride, because while Christmas that year was at the grandparent’s, they only lived thirty seconds the other side of the farm, so I could nip home in time to see the Doctor and the Bride. Christmas 2007 was spent at the aunt’s house, but myself and another family member were outvoted on who got the TV remote, so we ended up watching Voyage of the Damned on the tiny little telly in the kitchen instead - the irony of watching what it arguably the first real ‘blockbuster’ of Doctor Who on the smallest screen ever still isn’t lost on me, but it was fun to sit and watch and laugh our way through it, while picking at the leftover turkey).

No, the thing that’s been putting me off is the sheer size of this episode. It’s over 70 minutes! I’m easily able to set aside 45 minutes a day to sit and watch the latest Doctor Who for the Diary, but having to find a slot significantly longer than that was making me dread this a little bit, and then I started to think of the episode as being a bit bloated, over-long, and rubbish. It didn’t help that over Christmas, I routinely saw this episode listed second to only The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe as the worst of the Xmas specials. In short, I was worried that I’d be setting aside a large chunk of time to watch an episode that wasn’t very good. 

But in that wonderful way that’s happened time and time again throughout this process, I sat down, hit ‘play’, and absolutely fell in love with the episode I was watching! Why on Earth are people rating this so low among the Xmas specials? There’s so much to love here! Remember last Christmas (Oh, fine, ‘remember two weeks ago’), when I said that you could suddenly see the production team stretching their wings and really showing us what they could do? That feels like nothing compared to the scale of what we’ve got in this episode. That old irony of watching this one on such a tiny TV screen suddenly hit home even harder today, because I don’t think I’ve ever realised just how grand this one is.

And as for being bloated and over-long? Not a bit of it! I didn’t once find myself checking the tine (as I’d feared I might do). The story moves at exactly the pace it needs and wants to, and then ends when it’s done. The episode is 70-odd minutes because that’s how long it takes to tell it. It also means that we get to take a step back and really enjoy the story. I said a few days ago that Human Nature was quite a slow episode, devoting real time to setting everything up so that we really felt embedded in that world by the time things kicked off in the second half of the tale. We get to see that same system at work here again - with loads of time given over to just the Doctor wandering around the crowded room, meeting various people who we’ll be spending the adventure with, and setting everything in to place. Oh, it’s glorious. Even once we’ve done that initial set up, pulled back to reveal the Titanic is a spaceship hovering over the Earth (Which, by the way, is a great image to hook in your casual audience, perhaps more so than anything since the Daleks came back), we come out of the titles and resume at that same pace. The extended running time allows us to really enjoy the story, and not have to rush through it at breakneck speed. As if to underline that point, we don’t get our first sight of Kylie Minogue until five minutes in… and even then it’s only in passing, as we cut between images of different people in the room. A major guest star like Kylie on board, and they can afford to be leisurely about it!

Oh, but then the meteorites crash, and the action kicks into gear. We don’t lose that measured pace once everything kicks off - far from it, there’s plenty of time to stop, take stock, and share real character moments - but we get action sequences like the entire scene of the cast crossing the open engines, which really show off what this programme can do. A friend the other day described Series Four as being the most confident that Doctor Who has ever been, and that starts right here in this episode. This is Who made by a team who are absolutely certain of themselves, and all the better for it.

I’m not going to list everything that I’ve enjoyed in this one, because I’d be here all night (I’ve mentioned Kylie in passing, but not said how good she is, nor praised the performance of Geoffrey Palmer, who dies fairly early on but gives perhaps the best performance in the entire episode), but I do want to draw attention to something else - there’s subtle foreshadowing of the Tenth Doctor’s demise creeping in here, and it’s not something I would have noticed before, because when this aired, we still had another few years of Tennant to go (and I’m fairly sure, from repeated readings of ‘The Writer’s Tale’ that the Tenth Doctor’s downfall hadn’t even been dreamt up by this point).

No, I’m not talking about the first appearance of Wilf, though it’s fitting that he shows up here when these threads start to draw together. It’s the end of the episode, where the Doctor suddenly realises that Astrid was wearing a teleport bracelet, and tries desperately to bring her back to life. When it’s suggested to him that this simply can’t be done, the Doctor screams, and shouts, and kicks the stand of bracelets, while proclaiming that he can do anything. It’s the kind of arrogance that we see later on from the Time Lord Victorious, and I love that it’s then thrown into focus by Mr Copper just a moment later;

MR COPPER

If you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster. 

It was only afterwards, discussing this with a friend, that it was pointed out this theme really runs from now right up to the regeneration, and it’s certainly something that I’m going to be keeping an eye out for in the next few weeks… 

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

Day 772: Last of the Time Lords

Dear diary,

When you're in fandom for long enough, you start to get used to the same old complains about stories cropping up time and time again. This story is one of the ones that tends to rear its head on a fairly regular basis, and it's largely down to the ending. People complain that the 'reset button' way this story is closed - with the world being reset so that the events of the last year never happened weaken the story, but I'm not sure that's quite the problem. Certainly, something didn't sit quite right with me in today's episode - but it wasn't the fact that things got re-set at the end.

It took a discussion with my friend Nick to really hammer out what the big issue with this story was - it's all a bit too easy. I spent a fair bit of time yesterday praising the way that the stakes had been raised possibly higher than ever before - certainly things hadn't felt more desperate for the Doctor and his companions yet in the revived series. Cut off from any sort of support, and with the world in thrall to the Master… it really felt like there was no way out. By the time the episode ended, the Toclafane had begun the destruction of the Earth's population, the Doctor had been aged radically, and Martha had teleported away from the Valiant, stuck on her own, with only a quick whisper from the Doctor to tell her what needed to be done.

All of that, in theory, sets us up beautifully for today's episode, and certainly when we open in the world of 'One Year Later', it does feel desperate still. The Master is in control. Humanity is enslaved. He's built an army of warships ready to wage war across the stars. So far, so good (well, you know what I mean). But then, Martha arrives on a little boat and tells us about the struggles she's had to face in the last twelve months and it all just feels… I don't know. False? 

I think the fact that we don't get to see any of the hell the planet has faced in any great detail (the episode does its best to fill us in here) means that rejoining the story just in time for the downfall was always going to feel a bit off. Watching it through at this pace of an episode each day makes it feel like Martha laves the Valiant, then returns again and brings an end to it all. The threat is just dissipated too quickly. It doesn't help that the Doctor, Jack, and Martha's family are all still stuck aboard the Valiant in more-or-less the same state as when we last saw them. It doesn't feel like the 'Year of Hell' has actually occurred.

This is where we come back to that issue of the re-set ending. It shouldn't be a problem. So, the Year of Hell never actually happened for the people of the Earth, it all got undone. Well… so flippin' what? Because the preceding half hour has failed to really engage me with this so-called 'Hell', it doesn't feel like undoing it all makes that much of an impact. That's not the issue.

Realistically, resetting the time line and leaving those aboard the Valiant as the only people who can remember all those events should be a great opportunity for dramatic potential - almost all of Martha's family have been through it, and it forms the basis of her departure at the very end of he episode. But, as I've said, it doesn't feel like they've had much of a struggle. Yeah, the Joneses have been forced to act as the Master's 'staff' for twelve months, and I'm sure he's made them watch some of the horrors supposedly happening down on the surface, but… we don't see any of that. It's not even hinted at. Add into that the fact that we then don't get to see much of the fallout from the situation (we watch the family through the window when Martha heads out to say goodbye to the Doctor, but that's it), and that I've never connected to them in the same way I did with Jackie and Mickey… and we're just left with a bit of a damp squib.

Yesterday, I debated wether this finale was a three-part story (including Utopia), or a two-parter. I can't help but thinking that three parts might have been better pent by giving over 45 minutes to the 'Year That Never Was', actively showing us Martha as she walks the Earth, and the struggles that those aboard the Valliant were forced to endure, because as it is, this finale is certainly a three-parter, but the final third is far weaker than the two that precede it.

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

Day 771: The Sound of Drums

Dear diary,

I’ve seen a lot of debate over the years about the Series Three finale. Specifically, is it a two-parter, or a three-parter? Certainly, the BBC officially class it as a three-parter, and watching here it’s hard to disagree with that statement. Utopia doesn’t end with a tease into the next episode, and the next adventure, it ends on a proper cliffhanger, with the Doctor and his companions trapped at the end of the universe while the Master regenerates and escapes in the TARDIS. We pick up in today’s episode with our trio escaping those events, and following the Master’s trail back to 21st century Earth… in my mind this is clearly the next episode in a trilogy. I think the issue comes in Series Four, when Turn Left isn’t classed as the start of a three-parter with that finale, but I’ll reserve judgement for a couple of weeks until I’ve watched it again. How about you lot? Where do you stand on the great Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords debate? Two parts or three? Answers on a postcard (or just in the comments).

I’ve also seen a lot of debate as to the various merits or otherwise of this finale. I think it’s fair to say that it’s not overly loved by fandom, is it? In last year’s big story poll by Doctor Who Magazine, it was ranked as the 55th best story - meaning that only Season Six’s finale, The Wedding of River Song, placed lower (at number 129 - ouch), while all the other season finales of the modern era were ahead of it - some by considerable margins (The Name of the Doctor comes in at 15, with Parting of the Ways pulling the lead at number 13).

My memory of this one is that the story was all right, I suppose, but it was hardly Earth-shattering, and if anything it all felt like a bit of a mess by the end, so I’ve never really thought of it in a particularly positive light, truth be told.

That said, I’ve found a fair bit to like in today’s episode, and it largely starts with the scale of the threat. It really reels very desperate, doesn’t it? The Parting of the Ways faces us with an army of Daleks, and little hope of escape. That’s bad enough. Doomsday posits an Earth invaded by Daleks and Cybermen, ready to wage war over the planet. Also, fairly high stakes, though two weeks on from that one, it all feels a bit artificial. This episode, though, hits home by being so very real. Oh, yes, fine, there’s an alien as Prime Minister and he’s working in league with floating silver balls, but they only make up a very small part of today’s episode - and don’t really come in to play in a major way until the end. 

Instead, the majority of this one is given over to the Doctor, Martha, and Jack on the run. They’re ‘most wanted’ and on the news, so it’s not like the last couple of finales, where the Doctor can swan in and take command. They have to lie low. On top of that, Martha’s flat is blown up, and we have to watch as her family is dragged (literally kicking and screaming) into custody. Because we’re watching events that could very easily happen on any of our streets at any time (and, indeed, in some parts of the world aren’t all that unusual occurrences), it hits home in a way that the other finales simply don’t.

While I’m on the subject of Martha’s family… I said during The Lazarus Experiment that they never really worked for me, but I’ve been surprised on this watch through just how much they have. Oh, they’re certainly still the weakest of the RTD-era families, but they’re also a lot better than I’ve been giving them credit for all these years. One of my bugbears was the fact that they couldn’t get Reggie Yates in for filming more than a day’s work on these finale episodes, so he’s largely sidelined in the plot. For ages, that’s always been something that serves as a minor irritant, and the perfect example of why the family never really felt as strong as the others. Actually, though, it’s handled quite well! If I didn’t know he’d simply been unavailable, I don’t think I’d have batted an eyelid. Perhaps one of those times where knowing too much about the behind the scenes going-ons actively harms the programme itself?

So… cautiously, we’re not looking too bad at this middle stage. I’ll be interested to see if tomorrow’s episode continues this trend of things holding up better second time around… 

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

Day 770: Utopia

Dear diary,

A couple of days ago, I mentioned planning a holiday around the end of the series, and making sure I didn’t miss this episode by being away. It seemed like the most exciting thing in the entire world at the time. Not only was it the return of Captain Jack - who, of course, we’d spent thirteen episodes with the previous year in Torchwood, but hadn’t been part of the main series for a couple of years - but there were very strong rumours that the Master was going to show up in this one. Oh, that was the kind of spoiler that I love. You see, everywhere online fans were speculating about the return of the Master, and how likely it was that John Simm was playing him, and that he might make a surprise cameo in this episode… 

…and yet, as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t actually confirmed to be the case. not yet, anyway. Oh, sure, there were lots of things pointing towards it (though some of them felt ridiculous - someone had worked out that ‘Mister Saxon’ was an anagram of ‘Master No. Six’, and Simm would be the sixth actor to play the character, for example, but only if you didn’t count Gordon Tipple’s brief appearance, or you amalgamated the two versions of ‘decaying Master’ from the 70s into one, despite their being played by two different people. You see what I mean? It sounded silly!) But certainly I had managed to avoid any speculation about Jacobi also playing the Master, and regenerating on screen!

Oh, it was the most exciting thing in the world settling down to watch this episode, and slowly piecing it together in time with the professor as the adventure went on. I can distinctly remember watching all these words overwhelming the character and assuming that he was going to reveal that he knew another man who claimed to be a time traveller with a TARDIS, and here he comes now! I can’t remember when it dawned on me that Jacobi was the Master, though. I think the realisation kicked in the second that he produced the watch - even before he turns it over, you just know what it means.

And you know what, I can admit right now that this episode gets a slightly higher score simply because watching it brings back all those emotions of seeing it the first time around. Was the Master coming back? Even if he was, would he be putting in an appearance during this week’s episode? Where is all of this leading? Does the Professor know something? Some*one*? Even now, it’s watching that story unfold that really works for me. It’s watching Jacobi’s performance (just like bringing in Eccleston to fill the role of the Doctor before Tennant could take over and do it his way, it was such brilliant casting to get someone like Jacobi in to play the part of the Master here - he really steals the scene at every turn) that I enjoy the most about Utopia, because the story itself I can sort of take-or-leave. It’s all window-dressing for the real tale, and set up for the finale to come.

Jacobi isn’t the only one who lights up the screen here, though. I know I spent an entire entry the other day praising David Tennant’s performance, but I need to signal him out once more here. That scene, where he watches Jack through the window of the radiation chamber… oh, there’s something chilling about the Doctor here. There’s a look he gives Jack, and you can see the character’s darker side just for a flash. At the time, I recall it being something of a mystery as to why the Doctor had rushed off and left Jack behind at the end of Parting of the Ways - for ages, I speculated that he simply didn’t realise that Rose had brought him back (and that him telling her he had ‘plenty to do’ in rebuilding Earth’s Empire during the 2005 Children in Need episode was him trying to spare her the knowledge that he’d died, since she’d forgotten all the events of her ‘Bad Wolf’ moment), but I still like the idea that he simply ran away from the man, because he knew what had happened, and it made his skin crawl. Still, it’s great to have the character back, and I’m glad that he works so well with the Tenth Doctor - they gel so effortlessly in a way that he didn’t quite with the previous incarnation, and I can’t help but love him a little bit. 

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

Day 769: The Infinite Quest

Dear diary,

Oh, I debated over including this one in The 50 Year Diary. The debates that raged inside my head! Largely, those debates were centred on the fact that it was broadcast in three minute chunks weekly alongside the series, so would be an awkward format to sit through (though I briefly considered doing one part a day, to write about alongside the episodes proper). It wasn’t like Dreamland, which I’ll be coming to during the 2009 specials, which was one nice, complete episode…

…until about three weeks ago, when I happened to be browsing the shelves in a DVD store and spotted The Infinite Quest among the other titles. I couldn’t have told you that this ever made it to DVD, and it transpires that it’s a compilation version that makes it a complete episode! I’ve since been reliably informed that this version was shown on TV at the time, but it must have completely passed me by. Suddenly, this changed everything. I’ve said several times in the last month that some of these episodes feel like new ones because I’ve not seen them for so long… but this really is an entirely new-to-me episode of the Tenth Doctor era! Exciting! Plus, the DVD was only a pound, so who am I to say no to that?

Truth be told, I wasn’t really expecting all that much from this one. After all, it was produced to go out in those little bites alongside a children’s show to accompany the main series. This was never going to beat out the episodes I’ve been watching over the last few days. Actually, though, it does a pretty decent job of standing on its own as a kind of ‘bonus’ episode for Series Three. Certainly, the Doctor and Martha are well written, and fit in with their characterisations throughout the rest of the run (Though I’d say it’s fair to suggest that both Tennant and Ageyman ease into it as the story progresses and they get more comfortable with playing these parts to a different medium).

As for the story itself… well, it’s good enough if a little on the slight side. It can’t ever get too involved, presumably because of the original broadcast format (and having to build to a king of ‘mini-cliffhanger’ every three minutes or so does become a little wearing as the episode goes on - even in this omnibus form, it’s very clear where the breaks were originally), but it means that this Hartnell-esque chase across space is perfectly suited. That also gives me yet more ammunition in my continuing (and not entirely serious) suggestion that Series Three is one big homage to the Hartnell story The Chase. Some of the locations we get here feel uniquely suited to those kinds of Hartnell stories, too, with worlds of ‘twin suns’ (hence, very hot), and worlds of pure ice (hence, very cold). There’s even a jungle thrown in for good measure, on a world populated by insects!

The main thing to mention, I suppose, in an animated episode of Doctor Who is the actual animation itself. It’s… well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m honest. On the one hand, there’s some really lovely bits of design going on. The look of the Infinite as a marooned shipwreck caught in an asteroid belt is lovely (oh, one of my favourite images from all of Doctor Who, I’d dare to say - it’s very nicely done). Then there’s odd hints of that pseudo ‘3D’ style that Futurama is so well known for dotted about here and there - most obviously in the character of Caw - which works very well, too. But then there’s the animated versions of our heroes, and they’re not the greatest. Occasionally (and, again, it’s something that happens more and more the further into the episode we go) there’s a hint of a movement or expression which feels very in keeping with the performances I’m used to seeing on screen throughout the rest of Series Three, but largely they simply don’t work for me. It’s even more of a shame when you watch some of the behind-the-scenes footage on the DVD and Ageyman and Tennant are doing odd little things here and there which end up totally lost in the translation. A pity! 

I also can’t help but wonder if they missed a trick by making our lead villain look like a man with a bandage wrapped around his head. In an animated episode, you’re not bound by the kind of restrictions the live action programme has, so it seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to not have a villain which we’d struggle to see in a regular episode. I suppose that Caw fulfils that role to some extent, but having seen the kinds of creatures we’ve had in the show more recently (I’m thinking specifically of the huge robots from Dinosaurs on a Spaceship), I’d love to see how the production team might build a working version of him!

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

Day 768: Blink

Dear diary,

Oh, Blink. Blink, Blink, Blink. D’you know, in 2007, I was planning a holiday. I knew it would mean missing an episode from the end of the series, and so it was simply down to the brief previews there’d been in Doctor Who Magazine to help me pick which week to be away. This week seemed like the obvious choice. There was no way I’d miss Utopia, for reasons I’m sure I’ll mention in a couple of days, and this was the season’s ‘Doctor-lite’ instalment. If there was to be an episode I didn’t get to see straight away, it could probably be this one (Blink is the only Russell T Davies era episode I didn’t get to watch on day of transmission. Some were delayed until later in the evening, but actually having to wait until another day to see the new episode? That was almost unthinkable to me at this point. You can tell how desperately I wanted a holiday!).

If the past is another country, then 2007 was a place where I didn’t have easy access to the internet while I was away. That seems almost as unthinkable now as missing an episode was then, but that’s a discussion for another time. I went and sunned myself on a beach for the week, read the Tenth Doctor and Martha novel in which they fought the Zygons, watched Robot for the first time… I had a nice break, completely unaware that back home, people were absolutely raving about an episode that still routinely get’s listed as among the very best that Doctor Who has ever done (in last year’s Doctor Who Magazine poll, it ranked second out of almost 250 stories, placing it higher than everything in Doctor Who history but The Day of the Doctor). What a one to miss! I landed back on British soil, turned on my phone, and was inundated with messages from friends - some who weren’t even regular viewers - praising the episode. Naturally, the first thing I did upon arriving home was to sit down, boot up Sky Plus, and hit ‘play’.

Of course, I loved it. I thought it was all very well done, and when I sat a few days later in an interview for a university course (completely unprepared, having intended to take a gap year before just sort of… wandering into university), asked who my favourite director was, I simply started to babble about this episode, and the way that it was shot - especially the gorgeous direction of Larry trying not to blink as the angel approaches. How many times must I have seen that scene over the years, and yet it still made me jump tonight. Thankfully, at the time, the person interviewing me had seen the episode, too - another non-fan sucked in by such positive reviews - and I think it helped to sway his decision…

And yet, in the years that have passed since, I’ve become a bit jaded. Blink has sort of gone down in my mind as being ‘rather good, but largely over-rated’, in the same way stories like The Evil of the Daleks or The Caves of Androzani have garnered these ‘untouchable’ reputations that they certainly make a stake at deserving, but don’t entirely make it. But tonight, I’ve sat and watched and been really blown away by it! There’s so much of this episode that’s done so well, and it really takes the ‘Doctor-lite’ brief and runs with it. If anything, I felt the episode suffered a bit when the Doctor and Martha arrive to greet Billy in 1969 - the previous few minutes have done such a great job of building up the atmosphere and the tension, and then this pair sort of undermine it a little.

The real success of Blink, though, has to be the Angels themselves. They’ve sort of lost their appeal a bit for me now, following several return appearances to the programme, but it’s stunning just how effectively they work here. They were set up just right to tell the story at hand, and not everything that’s followed with them has strengthened the creatures (but I’m sure we’ll get round to more on that when the time comes). Everything about the Angels here - in a world where we’ve not encountered them before - is set up wonderfully. ‘The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely’, the Doctor says, and that’s exactly how they’re presented. Their introduction, largely through showing us the effect of their touch on Kathy, really works - you couldn’t ask for a much better interaction to them than this.

As far as I can think of, the Weeping Angels are the only 21st century Doctor Who monster to do the Dalek thing of being invented for a one-off appearance opposite the Doctor (or not opposite the Doctor, in this case - does he actually appear in the same shot as the angels at any point?), and being so popular that they simply had to come back again. Oh, sure, other aliens have made return appearances - the Ood, the Silence (though their returns were scripted), the Slitheen (though that was more popularity with the writer that ensured the return, and even then it’s the return more of the character than the monster), heck even the Hoix from Love & Monsters showed up in Torchwood - but I can’t think of any which have made their return after striking such a chord with the audience… and it’s not hard to see why these were the ones that made it.

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

Day 767: The Family of Blood

Dear diary,

I’ve not really spent much time discussing David Tennant’s performance in the last couple of weeks, but it’s only right that I bring it up today, because I think The Family of Blood features not only his best performance in the series to date, but also some of the best we’ve had of any Doctor throughout the programme. It’s perhaps typically Doctor Who that this should come during scenes where he’s not even playing the Doctor, but rather John Smith.

I think he’s absolutely at the top of his game from the moment he sees the TARDIS outside the school, right through to the moment he sits alone with Joan and tries to decide what he has to do. It’s simply pitch-perfect on every line, every action… the whole thing really holds together and just works for me. The scene where he sits with the woman he loves and sees flashes of their potential future is beautifully done, but I’d somehow forgotten just how wonderful that earlier bit was. And yet, as soon as we cut to that shot of the Family around the TARDIS, I could remember posting a clip of that scene on Facebook the night this episode aired, and proclaiming it to be the finest three minutes of Doctor Who I’d ever seen. I don’t think - even after watching for 700-something days - I’m far out with that declaration.

Not only in those scenes does Tennant get to shine, though; it’s almost as though this episode is specifically crafted to showcase his range as an actor - and as a Doctor. We’ve had flashes of this incarnation’s darker side since right back at the beginning, where he set up Harriet Jones’ downfall during The Christmas Invasion, but it’s here where we perhaps see it most clearly for the first time. We watch as he traps the family for all eternity - in black holes, and mirrors, ensuring that they receive the immortality they so desperately courted. Remember back in The Five Doctors, when the Doctors were all slightly stunned and fearful of Rassilon’s gift of immortality? This is taking that same idea and stretching it to the very extremes.

But those brief scenes aren’t the cruellest that we get to see the Doctor in this episode - that comes afterwards, when he goes back to visit Joan, and insensitively asks her to travel with him. Specifically, it’s this moment;

JOAN

Could you change back?

DOCTOR

Yes.

JOAN

Will you?

DOCTOR

No.

It’s a really cruel inversion of the decision John Smith has spent the last fifteen minutes wrestling with - and yet the Doctor doesn’t even have to consider it for a second. It serves to really highlight how different the two men are (and I’d never noticed it before, but it’s a play on the Doctor and Rose’s little conversation about changing back in the 2005 Children in Need episode - only here it’s far more assured and definite). 

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

Day 766: Human Nature

Dear diary,

Let’s start off with a confession, shall we? I’ve never been a big fan of the New Adventures novels. There’s some lovely ideas in there, and I love the fact that when Doctor Who finally gets taken off television (seemingly for good), it simply shifts over to another medium and continues to thrive there (am I right in saying that, taking into account the New Adventures, Missing Adventures, Eighth Doctor Adventures, Past Doctor Adventures, and the modern series tie-in novels, the Doctor Who book holds the record for most books officially published about a single character? Sure I read that somewhere…). The start of the New Adventures really is the start of Doctor Who becoming invincible - there was no way it was simply going to fade away quietly, simply because it wasn’t in active production any more. But despite that admiration, the stories themselves largely aren’t for me. It’s just not a style of Who that I can get properly invested in. But when they announced that Human Nature was to be adapted for the TV series, even I could appreciate what a big deal it was. Human Nature was probably (and still is, thanks in no small part to this adaptation) to most famous of all the New Adventures, and the central premise - the Doctor turns human - is such a good one, that it was automatically something to be excited about.

And speaking of things that you can be ‘automatically excited about’, am I alone in thinking that this episode might have the best pre-titles sequence in all of Doctor Who? Oh, it hits the ground running. Bang! There’s explosions, and laser bolts fired (inside the TARDIS, of all places - our safe haven). The Doctor and Martha are running - scrambling for their lives. There’s shouts, and screams, and pressure, and adrenalin. The Doctor is actively worried, and Martha (who’s shown herself to be so good at remaining calm and composed on the whole) is struggling to keep up with him. Then there’s a plan forming and the watch, and the statement that the watch is…

…before we wake up in a study. On Earth. In the past. The Doctor isn’t the Doctor, and Martha is his maid, and the Time Lord claims to be completely human. I come to this episode knowing that the main hook is ‘the Doctor turns himself human’, but it’s still so exciting. How must this feel to people who don’t know the basic premise? Talk about grabbing your audience’s attention!

Yet for all that madness, and rushing around, and blood pumping, Human Nature is a very measured episode. Oh, it’s slow. It’s possibly the slowest-moving episode we’ve had since the show came back. It ceases the running and panic once the titles have played out and opts instead to spend time setting up the world, introducing the characters, and evolving their relationships. We only get to find out the real nature of the watch and answer some questions about that opening scene in drips and drabs as the story progresses - only bringing things to light when the time is right and the narrative demands it. Actually, I’m not sure ‘slow’ is the way to describe this one - it’s ‘crafted’, and it’s done beautifully.

This is one of those occasions - and it’s been a little while since we last had one - where I have very little to actually say about an episode, because I’ve simply spent the time enjoying it. My notes are littered with things I’ve liked (ranging from lines of dialogue, to specific shots - mentions that the TARDIS looks beautiful here, both in the way it’s shot from the outside, and the way it’s been lit as ‘emergency power’ on the inside - and references to the Journal of Impossible Things*)^, but I don’t actually have much to write about them, because it would simply turn into a list of things from the episode, and I’d rather avoid that if I can. So for now I’ll just bask in the fact that we’re into a ‘golden’ period for the programme, and I’ll worry about trying to describe things like that tomorrow…

*Actually, no, I can’t not mention the Journal, can I? Doesn’t it seem strange - in a post-Night of the Doctor world - to think that there were debates as to the canonicity of the Paul McGann Doctor right up until about the point that this episode aired, and his face was front and centre among the other incarnations in the Journal? I still remember the reaction to that, with some people cheering because, of course, he’d always counted as a Doctor, while others complained that he shouldn’t really be there. Even at the time, I found the concept that he somehow ‘didn’t count’ bizarre, so it was nice to have some sort of official decree!

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

Day 765: 42

Dear diary,

Although I grouped it in under the heading of ‘appalling’ during a quick summing up yesterday, I’ve never actively disliked 42. It’s just one of those stories that gets forgotten about and overlooked - possibly in light of the run of episodes that immediately follows it. In comparison to adaptations of the New Adventures, the introduction of the Weeping Angels, and the return of the Master, 42 is just left as something of a filler in the middle of the season. And, sadly, that’s almost entirely what it’s become for me today, I’m afraid. I think it’s a combination of the fact that I’m looking so forward to the next week’s worth of episodes, and the fact that I’ve never really cared for this one. It all just clusters together in my mind and makes it hard for me to really muster the enthusiasm.

So, tell you what, I’m going to try extra hard, just for you lot, and find things that I like about 42. I could go all-out and try to find ’42’ things that I like about the episode, but we’d probably be here until Christmas. Anyway;

The design of the ship. I’m talking largely interior settings, here, though the exterior design is a rather nice one, and different to anything we’ve seen before in the show. No, specifically, I really like the kind of ‘run down’, ‘industrial’ look of the future that’s so prevalent in the Russell T Davies era, and it’s rarely (if ever) done better than it is in this story. The use of the steam and the very harsh lighting really ties everything together, and really gets you caught up in the setting. Lovely.

2) The ‘pub quiz’ doors. It’s a perfect example of taking something that’s a bit of a sci-fi cliche (having to get through several security doors, all coded, to reach the controls that you need to save the day) and subverting it through a Doctor Who prism. It also gives us that Beatles reference which allows me to see Series Three as a homage to The Chase, so that’s always got to count in its favour.

3) The ‘real time’ element. It’s odd to think that this had never happened before in the programme, but then I suppose that the serialised nature of the ‘classic’ series didn’t especially lend itself to introducing such a thing (and it wasn’t so much part of the television language in the 20th century in the same way it was when this episode rolled around). It’s a bit of a gimmick, but one that works nicely enough, and this is probably the best way of exploiting it for Doctor Who - ‘you’ve x minutes until this spaceship crashes into a sun’. Lovely. That said, it did start to bother me that the countdown was read out at completely random times - surely it would be set to announce the time exactly on the minute, or at least on a regular loop? Instead, we get random minutes and seconds such as ’12:55’, ’40:26’, ’34:31’… it’s a really pedantic niggle, but it bothered be more and more the longer it went on… 

4) It’s basically the same story as Planet of Evil, compressed down to a 45-minute time slot, and with a living sun as opposed to an antimatter gateway. I loved Planet of Evil. 

Oh, and I also rather like the red version of the Doctor’s spacesuit. But that’s a very small detail, so that really only counts as half a ‘thing I liked’. Actually, no, let’s make it count for less than a half, and dub today’s entry ‘4.2 things that I like about 42’…

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

Day 764: The Lazarus Experiment

Dear diary,

Series Three has always felt like something of an odd beast in my mind. When I look back on it, there’s a really good opening episode, a few good-but-not-great episodes in The Shakespeare Code and Gridlock, a run of appalling episodes from Daleks in Manhattan to 42 (inclusive), and then one of the programme’s strongest runs of episodes with the likes of the Human Nature two parter, Blink, and Utopia. In the end, it sort of fizzles out with a finale that I can remember liking but hardly loving. It’s always felt like a bit of a mishmash of very strong stories, nestled alongside very poor ones. But as has often been the way with this marathon in the last few years, on re-watch it’s not been anywhere near as black and white as that. Smith and Jones was still the great opener I could remember, but then The Shakespeare Code was an absolute blinder - and moved right up my list of favourites. Gridlock didn’t fare half so well, but even the two Dalek episodes surprised me by being really rather good. Sadly, The Lazarus Experiment hasn’t undergone a similar transformation (even if the elements are there, untapped, in its DNA… sorry, no, I am).

It’s fair to say that I wouldn’t, upon re-watch, call this story ‘appalling’ any more. Over the last 700-odd days, there’ve been only maybe a handful of episodes which I’d slot in to that category (and even then, I’d have reservations), and this isn’t one of them. I can’t hand-on-heart say that I’ve really enjoyed this one all that much, but there’s still lots in there that I have liked, and which have made today’s 45 minutes worthwhile. For example, there’s lots of dialogue in this one which I really like, including one bit that I’ve been able to quote verbatim ever since my only previous viewing, because I thought it was so beautifully crafted;

LAZARUS

I came here before, a lifetime ago. I thought I was going to die then. In fact, I was sure of it. I sat here, just a child, the sound of planes and bombs outside… In the morning, the fires had died, and I was still alive. I swore I'd never face death like that again. So defenceless.

There’s one or two other nice moments that stand out, too (I really like the Doctor and Martha’s various conversations around the subject of her leaving here), but none quite so much as that bit. It really moved me first time around, and I’m pleased to find it’s got the same poignancy today.

What’s pleased me the most, though, is Martha’s Mum. Martha’s family has never really worked for me. They’ve always come across as being a bit of a mess - especially when they’re outshone by the likes of Jackie on one side, and Sylvia and Wilf on the other. The dynamic is a good enough one (Mum, Dad, Dad’s Girlfriend, Brother, Sister), but they never felt as cohesive as I’d have liked. Part of that problem lies in the fact that - from their point of view - Series Three only takes place over a few days (meaning things like Tish’s frequent promotions and new jobs without mention in earlier appearances stand out more than they should). Another part of the problem is the availability of various people, meaning that when Reggie Yates couldn’t make the filming of the finale, they had to quickly script in a very brief scene to explain where he was. They’ve always felt far less rounded out than the other relatives of the Russell T Davies era.

But much as with the quality of these various episodes, it had become exaggerated over the years in my mind, and there’s a lot more to enjoy about the way Francine gets written here. I’d forgotten lots of little details like the Doctor knocking a drink out of her hand and the agent of Mr Saxon drip feeding her subtle warnings throughout the evening - in my head she’d just taken a dislike to the Doctor and then been approached by the government at the very end. I’m pleased to see that there’s a bit more to it than that. I’m also pleased to see that Leo makes an appearance in this one! I’ve mentioned above that they could only get Reggie Yates in for the single scene during the finale, but I thought that was the only other time he appeared after Smith and Jones! Granted, he doesn’t get a massive roll, here, but at least there’s a bit more to him that I could recall!

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

Day 763: Evolution of the Daleks

Dear diary,

Spoilers! I’ve never been able to make my mind up, really, when it comes to spoilers and Doctor Who. I’ve never been one to actively go out of my way looking for spoilers, but I’ve never really been the type to go into a complete sensory blackout, and avoid the things at any and all costs (something of a fools errand, I think. Does anyone ever manage to avoid everything? Really?). It’s funny that Doctor Who is the type of show that attracts spoilers, and it’s position and popularity over the last decade has meant that those spoilers are considered to be newsworthy. It means that occasionally, without even realising it, you’ve spotted a spoiler completely by accident, and there’s absolutely no way to avoid it. 

This story is probably the ultimate example of that - because in the week leading up to this story going out, the Radio Times cover was a nice big image of the Dalek Sec hybrid staring out at you, with the strap-line ‘Half-Human, Half-Dalek, Total Monster?’. I think this may be the only time that a Doctor Who spoiler has ever really irritated me, and it’s all down to how much I already knew. There’d been rumblings that Dalek Sec would be creating the ultimate heresy and diluting the Dalek gene pool by splicing DNA with humans (It may have even formed a part of the episode’s preview in Doctor Who Magazine), but they’d managed to keep a pretty tight lid on what the result would look like. Even if I knew that the hybrid was coming, it was to be a great reveal, and right in the closing moments of Daleks in Manhattan… and then it’s all spoiled by walking in to a shop few days before broadcast, and seeing this cover staring out at me from the magazine racks! That said, I’ve just googled the cover to check I’d written the strap-line correctly (I had - that’s how much it’s seared into my memory! hah!) and I’m impressed by just how dramatic that cover is. The photo of the hybrid is lovely, and no matter how much it annoyed me at the time, I can’t argue with the logic of using this as publicity for the story.

So I said yesterday that I’d be holding off on commenting about the actual story of this one until now, because I’d been enjoying it far more than anticipated, and wanted to see how the rest of the piece held up. If I’m being honest, I think I was expecting everything to fall apart in today’s episode and I’d find my previous dislike of this one justified, but that’s not happened - I’ve found a whole new appreciation for this two-parter!

My previous complaint was largely centred around the fact that I’d always thought of this as being a Dalek story for the sake of having a Dalek story - not because they had something interesting to actually do with them… but I’m not sure I’d agree with that any more. I’d rather forgotten the whole storyline about the humanised Dalek Sec starting to come around to the Doctor’s way of thinking, and I’ve never appreciated how well done it is across these 45 minutes. That it works its way in slowly, with the new hybrid becoming picked by the killings his ‘troops’ make is rather powerful, and I’m still surprised by Solomon’s death here (remember during Series One when I complain that Daleks later on don’t just kill people for the sake of it? I’d completely forgotten this death - and it actually shocked me on today’s viewing!). I can’t help but think that there should be some reference to the fact that the Daleks we had back in Parting of the Ways were desperate enough to start using humanity as a replenishment for their forces, though. Much is made today of the fact that this is only being considered because that’s the entire point to the Cult of Skaro - the rally dare to think outside the box - and it seems like a bit of a missed opportunity not to make a connection in there.

I’m also rather fond of the way the Doctor is written in this one. There’s something really rather fun about the way he greets the Daleks in the beginning (‘hello, surprise, boo, etc.’), and the way they interact throughout. It’s that daring to believe that there could be a spark of goodness indie a Dalek’s mind which is still plaguing the Time Lord right up to the most recent series. That line from yesterday - ‘they always survive while I lose everything’ - sums the Doctor up so well, and is perhaps the Time War summed up in seven words.

So, yes! A complete about-face from me on this story, and I’m really pleased. There’s nothing better than taking a story you previously thought very little of, and finding things to love about it. I’m in the middle of what I’ve always thought of as being a weaker batch of episodes, so I’m hoping that the trend might continue…

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

Day 762: Daleks in Manhattan

Dear diary,

I’ve made much in the last couple of days about the fact that Doctor Who has suddenly exploded in scope between the Second and Third Series. Everything has gotten bigger, and louder, and more extravagant, to the point that Series One feels almost quaint in places. It’s probably more noticeable to me watching through like this (it’s only been a month since I started out on Rose, so we’re racing through the stories), because at the time, the two years between that Auton invasion and reaching this point felt like a lifetime. Several lifetimes. And yet, occasionally, something comes along that makes even this third series look all innocent compared to what we’ve still got to come. Today’s episode is a case in point. I can recall Russell T Davies really promoting the fact that this two parter features shots specially filmed in America. A small team headed over, took some plate shots of New York, and then found a near-matching wall in the south of Wales somewhere to insert the Doctor and Martha in. It sounded huge at the time, and all the publicity was really geared towards the fact that they’d managed to do this. And yet, it feels quite provincial knowing that the following year they went off to Rose to film the fall of Pompeii, and then on to Dubai the year after that, then Croatia, and Utah, and… well, you get the idea. I’m really enjoying this aspect of watching the new series back, and seeing how it evolved over the years. It’s so noticeable in this episode-a-day format.

It’s also great - as I’ve said before - to go back and revisit my opinions on the episodes. This Dalek two-parter is another one of those tales I’ve not watched since the original broadcast in 2007. Even this morning, I was explaining to Emma that this story was a Dalek story for the sake of having a Dalek story, and that it hadn’t worked, and it wasn’t very good, and I wasn’t looking forward to watching it at all. And then, I’ve sat down, and found myself really engrossed for 45 minutes! With other recent episodes I’ve not seen since broadcast, bits and pieces have come back to me as I watch - usually just ahead of those same things actually happening on screen. Today, though, has been like sitting down to watch a brand new episode for the very first time.

Oh, I could remember the basics - Hooverville, Pig Slaves, Laszlo, Daleks in the Empire State Building (which, as far as my head canon is concerned, was a plan formed after they archived the building’s design during The Chase - that’s Shakespeare, now the Empire State Building… Isn’t there a question about the Beatles in 42? Series Three is shaping up to be a proper Chase-fest), but the actual story at the heart of it; the emotional beats of the tale? Not a clue. Maybe that’s worked in the episode’s favour? Having spent almost eight years thinking that it was one of the very worst stories in Doctor Who’s long history - and certainly one of the weakest from the recent past - I’d actually done the episode something of a dis-service. There was no way it would end up being as bad as I remembered (a similar thing occurred last week with Fear Her, though not quite to the same extent).

To that end… I don’t actually plan on really discussing the story here today. Sorry! I’m so surprised by the fact that I’m actually liking it, that I want to wait and watch the whole thing play out before I really make much of a comment on it!

One thing I will talk about it something that*does* still bother me a little bit about this one, and no matter how good the story turns out to be at the end of tomorrow’s episode, I doubt it’ll allay this particular complaint. It feels like there should be a sort of buffer between Gridlock and this one. It always felt a bit strange that the Doctor and Martha go straight from New New York (actually the fifteenth New York since the original, which makes it… no, actually, never mind) to good old New York, without there being more of a point about it (Martha comments ‘I've always wanted to go to New York. I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new one,’ but it doesn’t specifically make mention of the fact they’ve just come from the latter). In some ways, this feels like a similar scenario to School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace last season, where something has been missed in the changeover from one writer to another. There’s also something that feels slightly ‘off’, narratively, about having the Doctor first tell Martha about the Daleks and the war at the end of one episode… only to have them run into the Daleks in the very next episode. Until I’ve re-watched The Lazarus Experiment in a couple of days, I won’t really know if it might have fitted neatly in between Gridlock and this one (though I’m certainly going to be keeping it in mind), but it’s just something that’s always bothered me. Am I the only one? 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Andrew Smith

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: January 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online 

“Drawn off-course, the TARDIS passes through a CVE into a closed universe – a hugely improbable event with a tragically obvious cause. In order to escape inescapable E-Space, the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough are forced to venture in the wilds of planet Alzarius.

But they're not the only unwanted visitors to this strange world. A Starliner has landed, captained by Decider Merrion – but why would Merrion risk rousing the Planet that Slept, and the monsters in its marshes?

Mistfall is coming. The Marshmen are coming. But while Nyssa and Turlough find themselves caught in the open, in the hands of fanatics who model themselves on the legendary Outlers, the Doctor and Tegan discover that the supposedly secure Starliner affords them no protection from monsters both within and without...”

***

If there was any good thing to come from AudioGO’s demise (and ‘good’ is the wrong label to lose), then it was that timing led to the audiobook of Full Circle getting a release around the same time Mistfall was released by Big Finish (and frankly a novelisation-reading getting a fortuitous new release date is no compensation for everyone who lost their livelihood due to the company’s collapse).

Regardless though, the two releases fit snugly together as far from being a sequel to the televised version of Full Circle (though, erm, it is), Mistfall is really a follow-up to Andrew Smith’s own novelisation of his one and only television outing.  To quote myself (because no other bugger is ever going to) from my review of the novelisation in the fanzine Whotopia, Full Circle is:

A really rather lovely novelisation written by the young Andrew Smith from his own scripts.  What makes it such a winner is not so much the story, which is fine, but the obvious care and delicacy which has gone into writing this novelisation, with plenty of time given to delving into the Doctor’s thoughts and giving characters […] a depth which shows us a real desire to make this story the very best it can be.  There’s an almost tangible adoration– love, even– in this book, which grabbed and enthused me, even if the story isn’t the greatest ever told.

I hope you’ll forgive me for being indulgent and quoting myself as these same thoughts popped into my head upon listening to Mistfall: the greatest story ever told? No.  One which Smith is clearly enjoying writing? Yes! And not only that, one which makes good use of Doctor Who lore, most specifically Adric.  He may not be around, but his presence is felt, dragging people into E-Space and leaving a solemn shadow over people once it’s clear just where the TARDIS has landed.  Even the music feels indebted to Season Eighteen and the artful dodger that almost never artfully dodged.

Mistfall cracks along at a fair pace, clocking in as one of the shortest plays Big Finish have given us as part of the monthly range for a long time now, and whilst a lot of it focuses on people being a bit cranky in a spaceship, it also moves on the mythos of Mistfall and the Marshmen nicely, showing that Smith has a really solid idea of where his creations should have gone and of the world he devised back in the 1980s.

Whether returning to E-Space will prove to be anything more than a novelty for this current arc remains to be seen, but it works well enough here and it’s true to say that without it, this story could not have happened.  The ending also suggests a tighter continuation from story to story than we’ve seen for a while, so perhaps the setting will be fully justified across the next two releases.

I’m still not 100% sure on how I feel about Nyssa’s presence here after the events of Prisoners of Fate— for someone deeply regretting what they’ve done to their son, she hopped back on board the TARDIS fairly quickly, leaving him forever abandoned if the conclusion to that play is anything to go by.  It doesn’t feel very true to the character at all, but colour me at least intrigued as to how this trilogy is going to approach this.

Overall, Mistfall is not the best play I have ever heard, but it’s fair enough and a decent start to the year’s releases, and as always, it’s lovely to hear what Andrew Smith has to offer. 

Finally, a word on the cover art.  It’s not secret that I personally know Will Brooks, diarist for this very website and co-writer of a book with me, but I did want to, from a neutral, appreciative standpoint, highlight the frankly gorgeous cover for this play which he has designed.  It’s the first since 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men to really grab my attention, and makes a very nice change in pace to the usual one-alien-and-a-handful-of-generic-headshots approach which has dogged many releases lately, promising a return to more experimental and/or arresting covers such as that for Phantoms of the Deep, and indeed many of that series of Fourth Doctor Adventures before they returned to the (in my opinion) disappointingly repetitive Photoshop affairs.  The cover for next month’s E-Space adventure, Equilibrium, is equally pretty, so touch wood for even more from Brooks in the future. (He can pay me for the good vibes later.)

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: January 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online 

“Planet E9874 supports a developing civilisation known as the Tarl. The peaceful, technologically advanced Locoyuns are helping the Tarl develop rudimentary technology. What could be more innocent than that?

When the Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive, they find the delicate balance in the relationship between the two cultures reaching an unexpected crisis point. The spears are flying and the threat of all-out war is in the air.

The Doctor must use all his guile to tread a careful path with Tarl leader Ergu, while Leela and K9 discover an ancient power of unimaginable strength which threatens to tear the minds out of its victims.” 

***

Here we go then: another series of adventures for the Fourth Doctor, another old enemy returning to face our foe.  It’s fair to say that I have not been too taken with much of the Fourth Doctor Adventures range thus far, finding it to be the wrong format for this incarnation, as I noted in my review of The Philip Hinchcliffe Box Set.  There have been some good stories and some that really stand out, but for the most part they have merely plodded along for me, doing their best to not stir things and playing things ever so safely, and a lot of them have failed to make much of an impression.

I went into The Exxilons with a certain reluctance: another story in which the Fourth Doctor uncharacteristically encounters something from his past and has to defeat it whilst tiptoeing through a peppered field of continuity references.  John Leeson, Tom Baker and Louise Jameson would all be on fine form (they forever are) but the script would probably just… plod and do little for me.  Each to their own, I realized, but there we were: my expectations were set low.

I realize that complaining about traditional formats is going to make my next declaration of “imagine my surprise, then, when I really enjoyed it!” seem all the more clichéd, predictable and a tad hypocritical, but nonetheless the two episodes of Exxilon fun wowed me in a way that hasn’t happened for quite some time in this range.

Nicholas Briggs is a self-confessed big fan of Death to the Daleks, as his praise for it on the official BBC DVD and in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine will attest to, and quite right he is, too: it’s a marvellous story with a lot to recommend, plus a cliffhanger so utterly absurd that I never fail to burst into laughter when the end of Part Three approaches and the camera dramatically zooms in on some rather incongruous patterned tiling.  I mention Briggs’s love of that story as he has clearly given the Exxilons and their culture a lot of thought before writing this script: it shows in every playful nod to our first encounter with this alien race, every continuity-enhancing titbit concerning the Exxilon City, and oozes through in the Carey Blyton-esque musical score and original sound effects which enrich the atmosphere.  Briggs has managed to skilfully take points from Death which I never considered worthy of addressing, and has given them importance and development, in a way which actually enhances things rather than feel spurious or done for the sake of it.  This is a good case of actually using past stories to a purposeful and good effect, and for once the two-episode format of it really fits the story well and suits the team of K-9, Leela and the Fourth Doctor like a glove.

The story is simple enough but well told: our heroes land on a planet where the Exxilons are present and up to things disturbing the local natives who are unsettled by their presence.  Throw in some murder, maniacal dedication to The Cause, and subtle parallels between the Exxilon presence here and the Daleks’ in Death, and you’ve got enough meat to chew upon for the next hour.

The only minor niggle here is the presence of Hugh Ross in the guest cast: he is brilliant in the role and does it well, but is so associated now with Counter-Measures that it is hard to shake off Sir Toby from the mind’s eye whenever he speaks.  It’s unfair for me to criticize that aspect of the play, really, but here I am.

By the time the play ended, I was won over by it all and smiling at how much I had enjoyed it.  The CD extras show us Tom in a rather reflective and almost sad mood at times, which is notable all the more after such a joyful listen, but it had me rushing over to my DVD collection and grabbing Death to watch afterwards, which is about as good a sign for a play of this ilk as you can get, really.

Do I want more returning to the past time and again as has been the case more often than not with this range? No.  Done well as it is here and you get something good, but it’s all too easy to do it cack-handedly and the range could do with fewer nods and more of an individual identity (as well as a move away from two-episode stories, but that’s a moan for another day).  The trouble with these continual callbacks is that it slowly— slowly but oh-so-surely— squeezes the Universe(s) in which the Doctor travels, making it feel smaller and less spontaneous, which is a pity.  The magic of Doctor Who is its boundlessness, and the moment every third story involves meeting people or enemies or creatures from the past, the moment boundaries appear and that magic starts to ebb away.

Still, it doesn’t stop The Exxilons from being a lot of fun, from proving my fears wrong, and from being a strong start to this series of Fourth Doctor Adventures. 

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.

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

Day 760: The Shakespeare Code

Dear diary,

Let’s start today with a confession, shall we? I can’t bloody stand Shakespeare. His work bored me in school. It bored me at A Level. I’ve recently had a lodger staying while she took a part in Richard the Third, and it bored me when she tries to discuss the play with me (and seemed to take offence when I asked if they’d updated the plot to end in the car park). I know he’s considered the greatest English writer in history, and that his plays are heralded as works of genius, and talent the likes of which is rarely seen… but I just can’t get in to them. Nothing doing for me, I’m afraid. Maybe if he threw in a Dalek or two? 

Where I’m going with this is; I wasn’t all that excited when it was announced that the Doctor would be meeting the Bard in Series Three. I vaguely thought that it’d be inevitable at some stage (following a brief earlier appearance in The Chase some 40 years previous, and numerous mentions down the decades), but I wasn’t exactly hyped up for it. But then the genius of what’s been done with the man here is painting him in a way that you simply don’t expect. I was all prepared for something a bit stuffy and literate, but he’s written and played as some sort of rock star (I’m sure I’ve read an interview with Gareth Roberts where this was the stated intention, too). As soon as you realise that they’re doing something different and interesting with the man, it’s much easier to get on board. 

Quite apart from the way that Shakespeare is portrayed in this one, I’m rather fond of the Doctor and Martha, too. There’s the one moment of him pining for Rose, but really they’ve slotted very well into this whole ‘best friends in time and space’ thing, haven't they? There’s something so fresh about bringing in a new companion, and as much as I’d taken to the Tenth Doctor last series, it’s like he leaps up a whole lot more in my estimations across these last few episodes. I love the way he wanders around in Elizabethan London (the moment where he runs hand-in-hand with Martha to see the Globe is lovely), and I love they way they spark off each other. Humour is rife in this episode, and they get to share lots of it (my favourite moment - and it’s one I’ve always loved - is when the Doctor comments that Martha can tell people back home that she’s met Shakespeare, and she retorts ‘yeah, and then I can get sectioned…’).

I also have to confess that I love the confrontation between the Doctor and Lilith. I think I’m right in saying that it was originally a sword fight, right up to the point where the scene was being filmed, and a stuntman was injured (I might go even further and say I think he might have taken a blow to the eye, or something… it was nasty, nonetheless!), but the craft of the rewrite is such that I genuinely couldn’t tell. Until it was pointed out in a commentary, I’d have always assumed it was meant to play out thew way we see on screen.

Oh, but I can’t heap all the praise on to the writing. During The Runaway Bride, I said that you could really see the programme (and the production team) stretching their wings out and seeing just how far they could push this programme. How big they could make it. That’s carried on to this point, because The Shakespeare Code is possibly my favourite episode of Doctor Who from a visual standpoint. It just looks so good! Taking a week out from Wales and effectively touring the country to take in so many locations - including the Globe Theatre itself - really does pay off, because it gives this story a visual identity that really stands apart from anything else. I’ve been saying for two years now that the BBC are always very good at doing historical stories, but I don’t think we’ve ever had it done as well as we do here. From the outdoor locations to the sets, everything feels so perfectly right. 

That extends to the computer effects, too. The digital matte paintings for this story have always stuck in my mind - especially the shots looking out across the Thames, with the Doctor and Martha running around somewhere in the back of the shot. I can also recall Russell T Davies raving about the fact that you’ve got tiny little people running away from the Globe in those final shots of the theatre being consumed by the Carrionites, and can’t help but look out for them every time I watch.

And yet, despite all the praise I’m heaping on this one today, I don’t think I’d ever realised how much I liked it. It’s certainly been a good few years since I last saw it, and while I knew it was one I’d enjoyed, I’d always just thought of it as being a good story, if not a particularly great one. Yesterday, when I said Smith and Jones wasn’t ‘going to be the only high point in this run of episodes’, I was thinking more specifically of the latter half of the series, when we reach the obvious stories like Human Nature, Blink, and Utopia, so I’m delighted to see that I’m having to bring out the higher ratings sooner than anticipated - Series Three really is something a bit special!

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

Day 759: Smith and Jones

Dear diary,

When this first episode went out, I remember walking to the shop afterwards practically skipping with happiness (under a big full moon, no less!), because I’d enjoyed it so much. Having been less interested in ‘current’ Doctor Who during 2006, this suddenly felt like I was right back in the thick of it again. It’s by far the strongest season opener the programme has given us since the revival, and there’s lots of little things in here to really enjoy. Thankfully, I’m pleased to say that I’ve rather liked it this time around, too, and I think I’ve picked up on things that I specifically like in here.

One of those things has to be Martha. I’m not sure when it started, but there’s a general feeling among Doctor Who fans that Martha is a rubbish companion, and that no one ever really liked her. Is that true, though? I remember liking her the first time around, and I’ve never had any problem with her in the years that followed either. Maybe she’ll grow unspeakably rubbish as the series progresses, but certainly she’s off to a flying start in the companion stakes today. There’s large portions of this episode that are simply designed to thrust her into the companion position, and get her to shine. 

There’s lots of keeping a cool head during a crisis (and it’s even nicely - if unsubtly - demonstrated by the way her college reacts during the same scene, and making the Doctor single Martha out as the one to accompany him on his investigations), thinking logically and reasonably (the windows aren’t airtight, she reasons, so they must be getting their oxygen from somewhere), and just generally getting a bit stuck in when everything is going a little bit mad around her. My favourite ‘Martha moment’ (possibly of her entire tenure, thinking about it) comes when she’s out on the balcony with the Doctor, and they’re doing their proper introductions;

MARTHA

People call you the Doctor? 

DOCTOR

Yeah. 

MARTHA

Well, I'm not. As far as I'm concerned, you've got to earn that title. 

DOCTOR

Well, I'd better make a start, then.

Reading it written down, it could almost be read as flirty, but that’s not how it’s set out. It very much puts the Doctor on a different playing field, having spent especially the last season with a companion who completely worships the man, and never doubts him for a second. It’s good to see the Tenth Doctor having to work a bit to earn someone’s trust (even in The Runaway Bride, he kept telling Donna to just trust him for a while), and I love the dynamic of the two characters both impressing the other throughout the episode.

And then we do get some flirting! That final scene in the alleyway is a fantastic first look at the TARDIS for Martha (I’ve only just noticed that Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who has a thing about alleyways and being asked to travel in the TARDIS - it happens to Rose in, um, Rose, to Martha here, and to Donna in Partners in Crime next series. There’s something in that - the Doctor skulking round the back streets looking for his new companion! But the way these two characters play off each other here simply works for me, and I can’t help but love the way the Doctor repeats the ‘bigger on the inside’ line behind Martha on her way in!

It’s an incredibly strong start to a new series - I’ve spent a lot of today veering between giving it an eight or a nine out of ten (and it’s not often anymore that I have to really consider my score; after two years of doing this marathon it’s boiled down to something of a gut instinct), but I’ve played it safe and give with an eight for now. This isn’t going to be the only high point in this run of episodes, and I fear I’d be peaking too soon.

Still, I’m pleased to say that all this time later, Smith and Jones can ramp me up and excite me for the ‘new’ series - it does exactly what a season opener needs to, better than many others.

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

Day 758: The Runaway Bride

Dear Diary,

About a month before Christmas, 2006, there was a big Doctor Who concert held in Cardiff. It was - I think - for Children in Need, and it was designed to celebrate the scores that had been created for the programme since its return to screens the previous year. As much as I’d enjoyed the music in the series, that wan’t the reason I watched when the episode made it to TV (or the website? It’s hard to recall). No, the highlight for me was a brand new clip of the Christmas Special… and it was tremendous. They showed the TARDIS chasing a taxi down the motorway, and it looked amazing! In some ways, I’m surprised that it’s the moment they chose, because it’s such a highlight of the episode… but on the other hand I’m not surprised, because it’s not the only septic we get in this one! The Runaway Bride is perhaps the first time that you can really see the scope of the programme increasing vastly. By comparison, Rose looks positively lightweight!

Not only is there the chase with the TARDIS (which has dated a little, but still holds its own), but there’s the size of the Empress of the Racnoss prosthetic (which really holds up now - has there been a physical monster of this size in the programme since?), the amount of CGI and practical effects - especially in the climax… You can really see them going for it with this one, pulling out all the stops and making a point of saying ‘this is the scale we want to achieve with Doctor Who.

And as iff all of that wasn’t enough… we’ve got the introduction of Donna! Oh, can you imagine, there’s a world out there where Catherine Tate only showed up for this one special. That world is a cold, heartless place. It seems odd to think now that there was a time when this was all we had of Donna! It was ages (well, it felt like ages) before we had confirmation that she’d be returning for the fourth series, and I find it hard to imagine that we might have been deprived more of this character. She’s brilliant right from the off, if written a little ‘broader’ here than when she makes a comeback later on. I think the fact that I know what she’s like now as a regular companion means that there’s all the more to enjoy about her appearance in this one - don’t think I’ve actually watched The Runaway Bride since Donna and the Doctor hooked up again.

The story also serves as a nice way of moving the Doctor’s story on, following the departure of Rose. To pick up fresh here with a new companion would have felt a bit strange, I think, were we just carrying straight on into new companion territory (in the same way that Time-Flight only gives us the smallest of nods to Adric’s death before moving on - completely dispersing the atmosphere at the end pf Earthshock). Instead, it allows the Doctor’s story to carry forward, and we get some nice nods to Rose and the Doctor’s time with her scattered throughout, while making sure that there’s enough happening to keep these few and far between (and tied to the story). I can recall a lot of Series Three feeling like it had Rose’s shadow hanging over it, but if we carry on in the same vein as this one, then maybe it’ll be better than I’m remembering in that respect!

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?

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

Day 756: Army of Ghosts

Dear diary,

By the time this finale rolled around, it didn’t matter how much or how little I’d enjoyed the individual episodes throughout the season - excitement was at fever pitch, and I’d been oh-so-clever and worked it all out, you see. I’d been piecing it together for months. Little snippets of info would turn up in Doctor Who Magazine, or in press releases, and when you added it all together, it was obvious what was going to happen. Rose and the Doctor were going to break up. I didn’t know how, or why, or when, but before we reached the season finale, the dream team would be no more. And I knew this because at the end of School Reunion, Sarah Jane makes such a point of telling Rose to find her one day if she needs to - should the Doctor leave Rose behind. Oh, that was too significant to not be followed up on, so Rose was going to go and hunt Sarah Jane down, and then the world was going to come close to the end.

Because that was the other thing that had been confirmed - the Cybermen weren’t only going to turn up for one two-part story this season, they were coming back fro the finale, too. Doctor Who Magazine made a point of saying that the finale was going to be really heart breaking and terrible, and there was a press release that claimed the DVD artwork couldn’t be released until after the finale, because it had a special lenticular sleeve, and the artwork on there would give away major spoilers about the finale. Oh, it was all so obvious - Rose was going to get turned into a Cyberman! Somewhere else, a point was made that the Doctor and Rose would be separated permanently, and that there’d be absolutely no way to get her back; what’s more final that the companion being turned into a Cyberman, and the Doctor having to sacrifice his companion as part of the overall victory? That would certainly qualify as heart-breaking, it would explain the spoilerific DVD sleeve (obviously it was going to alternate between the face of Rose and a Cyberman), and it would tug nicely on the threads right back to the first season - ‘I could save the world but lose you…’

Oh, but then I was wrong! About all of it! Hah! Not the last time, either; we’ll be having another couple of paragraphs like this next month when we reach Journey’s End. There’s no Sarah Jane… Rose doesn’t become a Cyberman… there really is a way to get Rose back (repeatedly)… ho-hum. It was a nice theory while it lasted, and every new bit of information that slipped out fitted so perfectly into the narrative I’d imagined that it was too good to not be true! Well, almost every piece of information. Do you remember when the Doctor Who team went up to collect an award for the programme (was it a BAFTA?)… and Dalek Sec comes trundling out on to stage! A Dalek painted head-to-bumper in black. Well that certainly didn’t show up in Series One, so obviously the pepper-pots would be back again at some point… only then Russell T Davies made a point of saying somewhere that people were wasting their time speculating - they’d painted the Dalek black to match all of their own formal outfits for the awards event. It was clearly rubbish… but I fell for it hook, line, and sinker! It didn’t fit my nice neat theory, you see, in which Rose underwent conversion, so I was happy to go along with the idea that the Daleks weren’t going to be cropping up before the series was out. I didn’t even twig, until that moment when you get the tiniest hint of an eyestalk coming out of the Void Sphere. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I thought was in there.

I said, the other day, that Love & Monsters was perfectly placed within the season to give us a look at the way Jackie’s life has been affected by the Doctor, before she gets to take on a bigger role than usual for this finale. I don’t think I really appreciated just how true that is, though, because almost everything she does here is informed by what we see in that episode. Her conversation with Rose aboard the TARDIS, in which she worries about her daughter’s future is so beautiful, and true, and perfectly in keeping with the character as we saw her a few days ago. And then so’s the way she starts to describe the plot of EastEnders to the Doctor, too! Hah! Oh, I hooted at that one.

Jackie takes on an even bigger role than I remembered in this one - somehow I’d completely blanked out the fact that she has to pretend to be Rose for a while as the Doctor starts to investigate Torchwood. In many ways, she serves as the comic relief for the episode, and she does it perfectly. I’m glad she got the chance to really play up the humour in this second series (it all starts - in some ways - with the killer Christmas tree), and that she gets to leave the programme with this little sub-plot. It’s simply making me grin like a fool throughout. I really find it hard, watching the show back now, to think that I didn’t like Jackie to begin with, first time around!

One other thing that really stuck out for me today was the Doctor’s description of what a Void Ship does. Do you recall, just a few days ago, how the Doctor was so adamant that nothing could exist that comes from ‘before’ the universe? Well, here, he very quickly states that some people call the Void ‘Hell’, and that if you sit inside a Void Ship, you’re completely outside of time… and you could go past the end of the universe and into the next! Now, in fairness, he does say that he’d always thought of Void Ships and being merely a theory - not something that actually exists - but still, if he’s aware of the idea, then he wouldn’t be so set on his belief? Maybe meeting the Beast has loosened up his thinking on such things? 

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

Day 755: Fear Her

Dear diary,

Fear Her is another one of those stories like The Long Game, or Boom Town, which people tend to think of as simply being weaker elements to their respective seasons, and overlook. I’ve always thought of this one as being one of the worst episodes that the programme has given us, and I’ve consciously avoided watching it again since it was first broadcast. Over the years, I think it’s taken on such a reputation in my own mind that I’d grown to actively despise it. But then there’s my friend Nick. We tend to have pretty similar views than it comes to Doctor Who (indeed, I’ve mentioned him a lot throughout the course of the 50 Year Diary, and our views have usually correlated), and he really likes this one. Because of that, it went from being one I was approaching with a sense of dread, and instead became a story that I was looking forward to re-evaluating.

And you know what? It’s not as bad as I was expecting it to be. Not remotely as bad as that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete convert, and I can’t profess to really like this story now (sorry, Nick), but I’ve certainly come away from it with a much higher opinion than I had going in, and that’s always a positive thing. So; thing I liked about Fear Her this time around…

Well, for a start, it’s a very funny episode, and that can usually fare pretty well with me. Right from the TARDIS arriving the wrong way round, and the Doctor having to correct his parking (that’s the kind of thing I would have rolled my eyes at when I was younger and things had to be ‘serious’, which probably counted against this story on first viewing), through his flippant remarks and jokes as they investigate the missing children, and on to what might be one of my favourite exchanges in Doctor Who history, as Rose realises where the Isolus pod has crashed, and grabs a pickaxe to dig up the road;

KEL

Whoa, wait, wait, wait. You just removed a council axe from a council van. Put it back. No, don't, wait. Put the axe back in the van. That's my van. Give me the axe. No! Wait! No!
[Rose starts hacking at the road surface Kel has just laid]

KEL

No! You, stop! You just took a council axe from a council van and now you're digging up a council road! I'm reporting you to the council!

ROSE

It went for the hottest thing in the street. Your tar.

KEL

What is it?

ROSE

It's a spaceship. Not a council spaceship, I'm afraid.

Once again, it’s the kind of thing I know I’d have sneered at as a teenager, so I’m glad I can appreciate it this time around. That said, Rose is really getting on my wick again in this one. When people start to reappear, she just becomes absolutely useless, wandering around and whining that the Doctor hasn’t reappeared yet. Does she not think to go and check the end of the street where she last saw him? I know he’s quickly run off to chase the Olympic Flame, but it feels like Rose is too busy moping at people to actually think straight… 

I also have to confess that I really like the way they drop in the Doctor’s remark about being a father. It’s done so simply, without feeling forced, and lingered on for just the right amount of time before the story takes over once again and we’re back into the main thrust of the narrative. It’s part of a grander drip-feeding of information about the Doctor that we’ve been getting since the return of the programme, introducing new viewers to all these little things that had built up about him throughout the ‘classic’ years, and it’s very well done. It’s telling that we’re almost at the end of the second season, and we’ve still not had him actually name Gallifrey (that’ll be coming in the Christmas Special). It feels like they’re trying really hard to not overwhelm you with information about the show’s mythology all at once (though it did feel strange when the Doctor kept referring to it as ‘my home planet’ in The Impossible Planet…!) 

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

Day 754: Love & Monsters

Dear diary,

Has there ever been a more contentious episode of Doctor Who than this one? The summer of 2006 was when I first sort of stumbled into online fandom, finding discussions of the programme on various forums, and enjoying the opportunity to connect with other people who loved the show. When Love & Monsters is one of the first episodes to air after you’ve joined an online forum, you get something of a baptism of fire in the extreme reactions of fans. Generally, this episode seems to split the fandom right down the middle - there are some who would tell you that this is one of the biggest blemishes on the programme’s long history, while there’s others who’d say it shines as a prime example of just how malleable this format can be - allowing writers to tell a story which is so completely off-the-wall, and yet still make it fit neatly within the world of Doctor Who.

So, where do I fare with this one? Well, at the time, I remember not dis*liking the story, but not being especially blown away by it, either. Largely, I suspect that I was slightly disappointed by the lack of the Doctor from the tale (certainly, when the story was announced in *Doctor Who Magazine, I recall feeling a bit put-out that we’d be getting an episode of the programme with so little of it’s leading characters, even if I understood the practical reasons for producing it), and that coupled with my general apathy towards this series just meant it washed over my head. I’m not entirely sure if I’ve seen it in the years since first broadcast - though I’m fairly certain that I haven’t - so this is a chance to sit down and give it a shot as new.

Overall, I’m not particularly bothered. I certainly don’t hate the story, but I can’t say it’s ever likely to become one of my favourites, either. The lack of the Doctor lends this one a slightly strange feeling of not ever quite feeling like an episode of Doctor Who, even though there’s plenty in here which also makes it perfectly in keeping with Doctor Who (bear with, I’ll come to that, and I’ll try to make a bit more sense). No, instead, this feels almost like an extra-long mini-episode, or prequel to a story, rather than standing as a story in its own right. Series Two was the first time that they started to experiment with the idea of small prequels without the main cast, serving as a set-up to the story-to-come; Love & Monsters feels like this idea, expanded to fill a full 45 minutes*.

Still, that doesn’t mean that there’s not some rather nice elements to this story which make it worthwhile - and largely, it’s the fact that we get to spend so much time with Jackie Tyler, and see her when she’s left on her own. I spoke a lot during Series One about the fact that there’s various episodes which are perfectly placed to serve a purpose, and this is another one like that - we’re going to be seeing a strong role for Jackie in the series finale, so this is a great chance to catch up with her, and get a good look at the way she’s been affected by the Doctor. Plus, there’s few things funnier than her flirting!

I also can’t help but feel that this works very much as a Doctor Who episode because parts of it are completely ridiculous. There’s that scene with the Doctor and Rose chasing the Hoax creature in a full-blown parody of Scooby Doo, and you can’t help but think that that sequence must be exactly what Doctor Who looks like to people who aren’t all that interested by it - lots of running around, chasing weird monsters, and generally being a bit silly!

*While I’m on the subject of the TARDISodes, I should point out that I’ve not been watching them as I go along - and I didn’t watch them first time around, either, truth be told - but I did sit and view them this afternoon, which is possibly what’s made me associate this episode so strongly with them. Overall, I’m not entirely sure they work. There’s not any music on the majority of them, which leaves you with the sense that you’re watching something a bit half-finished, and makes them stand out as being a bit… well, rubbish. It’s a pity, really, because they’re nice little scenes on their own, and they serve as brilliant teasers for the stories to come. If anything, they’re even more impressive in hindsight; 60-second teasers which were primarily designed to be watched on your mobile phone. These days, that doesn’t sound out of place at all, but it was quite forward thinking at the time, and it’s a bit of a shame that we’ve not seen the return of something like this in recent years, when smartphones and tablets are all the more prevalent!

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

Day 753: The Satan Pit

Dear diary,

I made a note yesterday to the effect that the ‘reveal’ of the Ood (‘we must feed’) didn’t quite pack the same punch that it did first time around, now that we’re so used to the idea that the Ood are a largely peaceful slave race. Although I could recall it being one of the things I really liked about the episode the first time I watched it, having seen the creatures pop up several times since had somewhat taken the edge off things. But then, as is always the way when I’m writing up these entries, I ended up talking about something else entirely, and didn’t even mention the Ood. 

And it’s probably a good job,m because I’d be completely retracting that statement today! The Ood are actually scary. Scary in a way that I’m not entirely certain they were when I first saw this one (my attention had probably lapsed too much by this stage). I’d even go so far as to say that in this particular episode, they’re one of the scariest creatures the programme has ever given us. There’s just something about the way that they become damn near unstoppable once the Beast has taken possession, coupled by the way they move (especially in the not-a-ventilation-shaft-honestly sequences) that’s really made an impact on me today. Now, though, I can’t help but wonder if the success of the creatures here may impact the way I view them by the time we reach Series Four and Planet of the Ood - because they undergo a similar ‘red eye’ transformation there, and there’s a risk it may end up looking like a watered down version of this… 

Still, If I’m entirely honest, it’s not the only thing to have made an impact this time around which I’d not really picked up on before hand. I really like the idea that right up to the point where he’s facing down the creature in the pit - and even after that once they’re safely back in the TARDIS - the Doctor still tries to find excuses for what this thing can be. It’s nicely offset with discussions about the way that we all have our own set of rules about what we’re willing top believe, and it’s possibly the most interesting part of the episode. It also gives David Tennant a chance to really shine, as he hangs alone in the dark pit, just soliloquising. We’ve seen a fair few extremes of the Tenth Doctor so far this series (probably a broader range of emotions than the Ninth Doctor was able to give us in his year), so it’s always nice when we get to see him playing things quietly and with some real consideration. It’s when Tennant is really at his best.

I’m left wondering, though… the Doctor refuses to believe that the Best could have come from a universe before this one… but haven’t we encountered such creatures before now? Certainly if we take in to account things said in some of the novels and audios then creatures like the Animus, the Great Intelligence, and the Gods of Ragnarok are said to have existed in previous universes, but I’m sure we must have had at least one being in the series before now which is unequivocally stated to have existed before time? Ferric, maybe? Answers on a postcard…

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

Day 752: The Impossible Planet

Dear diary,

If The Idiot’s Lantern was especially notable because of the direction, then The Impossible Planet is notable for its music. There’s so many lovely cues in this episode that I could hum off by heart, despite having not seen this story since it was first on TV all those years ago. Evidently, I’ve listened to the soundtrack more often! Music isn’t something that I’ve really brought up a lot over the history of the Diary - only really commenting on it when it either stands out as being particularly beautiful or particularly rubbish - but this episode is one that I really have to lay some praise on. While I’m on the subject of music, mind… I finally understand those complaints that used to do the rounds about how bloody loud it’s been in these first two series. More than once, I’ve found myself having to sit adjusting the volume throughout the episode so that I can hear the dialogue clearly enough while not allowing the music to irritate anyone within a one-mile radius. I can’t say I ever noticed this in the past (though I was aware of other people complaining about it), but now I suddenly completely understand!

So, after yesterday being a lovely day where I got to talk of happy memories of watching the episode on first transmission, today we’re back to my usual, grumpy, recollection of the 2006 series. Oh, this one bored me to tears. For that one summer, I’d found myself really into a sport for the first and only time, and we’d set up a net on the lawn where we could while away the time playing. My only real memory of this episode’s first broadcast was wishing that it would hurry up and finish so we could get back outside and continue our game. I didn’t care about the people in the space base. I didn’t care about the black hole. I didn’t care that the TARDIS was lost down a cavern. I just wanted it to end!

I think, watching it today, that I know where my younger self was coming from. Compared to some of the other stories this year which start at a breakneck speed and simply refuse to let up for the entire running time, this one is positively glacial. Oh, there’s plenty of action - from the Ood closing in, to the earthquake, Scooti being sucked into the vacuum, and the decent in to the pit - but all of these serve to punctuate very long scenes in which people just… talk. I can’t remember the last time we had an episode as talk-y as this. Some sequences, notably in the control room of the base early on, seem to go on for ages as we’re introduced to each character in turn, given a history of their mission, told (repeatedly) how impossible it all is… everything really just slows right down for long stretches at a time…

…And it’s all the better for it. Oh, like I say, I can see where 2006 Will would perhaps get a bit bored with this one - nice day outside, an afternoon of tennis and the prospect of several more games ahead, and I’m sat inside watching people talk - but 2015 Will can’t get enough of it. I often see people online bemoaning the fact that two-part stories have become so scarce in Doctor Who over the last few years, and always thought that I wasn’t that bothered if we had one part or two (though, if I’m honest, I’ve always leant more towards the one-parters), but this episode totally sells me on the idea of a two-part story.

That long scene I’ve described above, where everyone and everything is introduced in great detail isn’t long and boring - it’s the atmosphere of the whole thing. You come out the other side of that scene with a real sense of this place, and the people within it. Everything is so much stronger for it. The slow pacing also means that the slow corruption of Toby is given the space to breathe that it really needs, and it picks up such a sinister vibe in doing so. I can’t imagine something as well crafted as that having any place in a single 45-minute story - you’d lose all of the atmosphere, and it would fall completely flat.

I think tomorrow’s episode is likely to pick up a greater pace now that everything has been manoeuvred into the right position for the story, but that’s probably necessary as the appropriate counter-balance to this instalment. Once again, watching things through with a few year’s distance and a more patient attitude is letting me see these episodes in a whole new light, and it’s good.

(Also, I shall rise from the pit. So there.)