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

Day 799: The Vampires of Venice

Dear diary,

I don’t know if it’s still a lingering hang-over from just how good The Shakespeare Code looked back in Series Three, but the location work for this story never really felt… right to me. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s some lovely footage in here, and some great locations used to represent Venice, but something feels… I don’t know. Off about it all. Maybe it’s because everywhere is quite washed out whereas The Shakespeare Code and The Fires of Pompeii really used colour to make a point in their locations? The Vampires of Venice always seemed to be a little beige by comparison. It also flags up a problem I had with Series Five at the time that I have to admit I’ve been somewhat struggling to find this time around - the feeling of things looking a bit cheap or empty on screen. I think I was probably recalling the Dalek spaceship in some ways, but the scene when the Doctor confronts Rosanna looks really bare. They’ve simply placed a throne prop into an otherwise empty room, and it just doesn’t have the impact that the designs for those other historical I’ve mentioned did.

It’s also a little bit of a shame that having gone all the way to Croatia to get some nice locations for bits of this story, it gets let down by some of the weakest CGI the programme has seen for quite some time. There are a few shots where water has been added in to represent the canals which really doesn’t work (I still don’t know if - five years on - we’re at a point where realistic CGI water can be done on a TV budget), and the clouds during that final sequence are so laughably bad that I’m almost astounded they were actually signed off for broadcast. It’s a good job that Doctor Who has a bit of a history of dodgy effects, because this episode certainly places on the scale somewhere quite high! That said, there’s some nice moments where the human characters are morphed into their CGI counterparts rather convincingly, so perhaps it’s just a case of the money being spent in different places?

All of this somewhat marry the story for me, because I’m too busy looking at elements of bad effects, or musing on how empty some of the shots look, to really get caught up in the events of the narrative. Oh, there’s some very nice moments in here, and it feels as though the writing team have finally landed on the way to write the Eleventh Doctor (this is perhaps the first time that there have been sequences that feel tailor-made for Smith), but I’m just not able to get sucked into the tale the way I have the past week or so. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either - it’s, again, just a bit beige.

If I had to pick a highlight from this story, then it would have to be Rory. First time around, I never really got the love for Rory as a character. H was alright, I supposed, but he wasn’t anything especially special. This time, though, I can see that that’s exactly his charm - he’s the character that we’d all be if we were suddenly thrust into the Doctor’s lifestyle. The Eleventh Hour, The Best Below, and Victory of the Daleks all went out of their way to make Amy look like perfect companion material, but this story does completely the opposite for Rory - making him a bit weak, and a bit silly, and a bit bumbling. His trying to fight off a ‘vampire’ with a broom, and making a mess of trying to get Amy into the school are exactly what makes him work - and I’m looking forward to seeing if I connect better with him on this watch through.

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

Day 798: Flesh and Stone

Dear diary,

Yesterday, I mentioned that the Weeping Angels were progressed quite nicely in this story from what we were given in Blink, and watching it again now makes that even more obvious. Have to admit that when this first episode went out I wasn’t overall keen about the various additions made to the ‘lore’ of the creatures, but the more I’ve thought about it over the years (and especially in re-watching this story in the last couple of days), the more I can’t help but notice how clever it all is especially when the Doctor realises what’s happening to Amy;

THE DOCTOR

A living mental image in a living human mind. But we stare at them to stop them getting closer. We don't even blink, and that is exactly what they want. Because as long as our eyes are open, they can climb inside. There's an Angel in her mind. 

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated before just how much scarier that makes the Angels. We’ve spent three years by this point thinking of them as being so easily defeated by simply being watched, and then this story comes along and makes even that part of their danger! Brilliant! It’s no wonder they’ve caught on as being the monsters of 21st century Doctor Who with gimmicks like these.

Something else which didn’t particularly work for me first time around which I’ve loved today is the sequence in the forest where we start to see the Angels move. I’m not entirely sure why, but when this was first broadcast, something about that moment felt really off to me. I sort of felt that seeing the statues move somehow lessened the fact that they can move so rapidly when we’re not looking. Actually, though, it’s really creepy, as they all start to realise that Amy can’t really see them. The fact that they start to move so slowly really helps to enhance the terror of the moment for me. It also sort of brings back to something I read recently which I’m starting to think may have been a real missed opportunity - in the original script for The Time of the Doctor, when we get that great shot of all the spaceships gathering over Trenzalore, there was supposed to be a brief shot with the shadows of the Weeping Angels flying past one of the ships. That, for some reason, has always struck me as very scary, and this sequence certainly plays into that same area.

There’s something in this story that surprised me first time around, and it’s done it all over again here - the Doctor starting to work out the mystery of the crack so early on into the season. When I got to see the scripts in the build-up to broadcast, I was only able to read as far as this one (and just outlines of everything to follow), and it struck me as being strange then. Throughout the Russell T Davies years, I’d become so used to the underlying mystery being teased across the series and picked up again when the finale rolls around. Now, suddenly, we’ve had a few weeks of the crack being very heavily used in the final shots of stories, and suddenly the characters are given the chance to use it! The crack - the running theme for the series - is integral to the whole plot of the episode! The Doctor even gets to work out what it is and start describing it.

There’s also that wonderful moment of the Doctor coming back to speak to Amy (who can’t open her eyes) and having his jacket on. The script specified that this was the Doctor from the finale (and the other scripts all featured bonus scenes with various characters who’d be integral for the opening sequence to The Pandora Opens), but I have to say I did enjoy the sheer fury that this moment caused on the forums at the time! People were so convinced that it was a massive production error, and a sign that the new team weren’t paying enough attention… oh, the fun when all was revealed a few weeks later and the humble cake had to be passed around at quite some speed…

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

Day 797: The Time of Angels

Dear diary,

When it was first announced (In Doctor Who Magazine, possibly?) that the Weeping Angels were to be making a return for Series Five, I can distinctly recall in-depth discussions with a friend about the ways they could be reintroduced. In the end, we decided that the story ‘had’ to revolve around Wester Drumlins - from Blink - being renovated. The new owners, or possibly the workmen on site, would move one of the four statues in the basement out of position and the Angels would be free to roam once more. If I’m honest, I think this discussion mainly stemmed from the fact that we genuinely wondered what the Doctor’s back-up-plan would be if such an event happened. I don’t think either of us expected what we actually got from this story - an adventure which takes what we know about the Angels from their first outing, and goes on to develop that, and add new facets to them. I’m sure I’ll come back to this more in-depth with tomorrow’s episode.

I can also distinctly recall being a bit non-plussed that River Song would be making a comeback. As I said a few weeks ago, I’d simply not taken to her during Silence in the Library, and the prospect of having her come back to the programme didn’t particularly excite me. Somehow, though, I completely bought into her from the second she appears in the story - which is right at the start, before the opening titles have even kicked in. Watching it again today, I can’t help but think that it’s because she’s just so much fun in that scene. Flirty, dangerous, packing weapons, and using that very Steven Moffat trope of playing with the format of a Time Travel programme to summon the Doctor. The way she catches his attention here is so much better than simply sending a message over the psychic paper, and I love watching both halves of this little narrative play out in tandem. Hello, sweetie!

It also doesn’t hurt that Alex Kingston and Matt Smith have such a great chemistry together from the off. Oh, sure, David Tennant played opposite Kingston very well, and when I watched their two episodes recently I was completely won over in a way that I simply wasn’t in 2008, but there’s something about the way that matt behaves when they share the screen together. I’m wondering if it’s simply because I know that it’s these two who’ll go on to play out the rest of the Doctor/River relationship, or because something just works between them, but it’s already a great dynamic that I can’t wait to watch evolve over the next month.

On the subject of which… we’re four episodes in, now, and i’ve not really mentioned Matt Smith’s performance as the Doctor. I’d love to say that I’ve been waiting for today as this episode contains the first scenes he filmed and thus made a fitting point to bring it up, but if I’m honest it’s simply because he’s so recent in my mind as the Doctor that I sort of forget that I’ve not mentioned it! Frankly, he hits the ground running, doesn’t he? He’s fabulous in this episode, and by the time he gets around to stories like Victory of the Daleks he’d really nailed down the way he wanted to play the part. There’s something about his energy that really resonates with me, and simply makes him feel like ‘the Doctor’. As his era originally played out, I couldn’t help thinking that his performance lost something from Series Six onwards, when writers stop writing simply ‘the Doctor’ - which Matt then filters in his own unique way - and start writing ‘the Doctor as played by Matt Smith’.

Everything started to feel a little bit more forced as his tenure went on, whereas here he’s fresh, playing it the way he thinks is best, and perhaps mores than any Doctor since Tom Baker, you get the impression that he’s simply opening his mouth and surprising even himself with the way he’s choosing to do certain scenes. I can’t say that I was against casting someone so young as the Doctor (but, equally, I can’t say I was overjoyed by the choice - I just sort of felt nothing), but when you watch him even in his earliest episodes, you completely understand how he changed Steven Moffat’s stance on wanting to cast an older Doctor - Smith is just so right for this part. I’m actively anticipating the chance to watch him develop the character now, and see if I was wrong first time around about it feeling more forced as time went by. I really hope I was wrong, because he’s won me round all over again, now…

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

Day 796: Victory of the Daleks

Dear diary,

I think it’s generally accepted, now, that the Paradigm Daleks were a mistake, isn’t it? I’m speaking specifically the design of them, not necessarily the idea of introducing a new type of Dalek. When I went off to see the scripts for this series early in 2010, someone showed me a photo on their phone of one of these new Daleks, and I honestly thought they were joking. Surely not? By the time they made it onto screen a few months later… nope. Just didn’t quite sit right with me. The 2005 design of Dalek manages to take the initial shape of the original, and update it convincingly to look like a little tank. It somehow manages to look exactly the way you always thought the Daleks looked, while also presenting a perfect step forward in the design. The Paradigm models feel like someone has set out to keep something that’s vaguely shaped like a Dalek, but at the same time is altered just that bit too far. Over the years, I’ve seen people claim that this or that is what makes them simply fail to work, and I’ve seen plenty of slight tweaks to this design which do, somehow, make a world of difference. Perhaps the most telling thing of all, though, is that this model goes on to make a cameo briefly in the next season, and play a small part in Asylum of the Daleks (alongside many of their predecessors), and then that’s it - over and done with. In years to come, I suspect this will be looked back on in commentaries with the same kind of bile as Colin Baker’s costume is these days…

But are they the sole reason that this episode generally doesn’t fare too well with fans? It placed at number 193 out of 241 stories last year when Doctor Who Magazine did their poll of people’s favourites (though, in fairness, five other Matt Smith-era stories rated below it). Well, I’ll be honest. I was expecting to write this entry very much from the stance of 'the new Dalek design is a big factor, but the episode is just generally rubbish, too'. Actually, though, it's a bit more complex than that.

The first fifteen minutes or so of this episode are brilliant. They’re dripping with just the right kind of suspense - we know that Bracewell’s Ironsides are Daleks, and therefore that they’re evil and probably up to no good, and the Doctor knows that, too… but everyone else simply can’t see it. The stakes are raised by the fact that we also know that Churchill is right; if these Ironsides are willing to serve the Allied forced, then the war could be over in a heartbeat. When we get as far as the Doctor asking for Amy to tell the Prime Minister about the events of The Stolen Earth and she doesn’t have a clue what he’s on about, the mystery is only heightened. The stakes feel high because it’s the world vs the Doctor, and the Daleks are there for good measure. That sense of unease and intrigue runs right through the first third of the tale, up to about the point that Bracewell is revealed to be a robot (Oh, and actually, isn’t that a brilliant moment? No, we created you! Wonderful!). All of this is heightened with some really brilliant direction by Andrew Gunn which means we often got shots of the Daleks gliding past in the background, and there’s simply no other word for it - they’re skulking. Little glimpses of the eyestalks twitching, and tiny movements that make it absolutely clear that they’re watching the Doctor, and biding their time.

After that, though, my interest more-or-less completely dropped off, and that seems to coincide with the arrival of the new Daleks. Now, it’s not entirely down to the appearance of the new guys (I’ll get onto them in a moment). After that Daleks have teleported up to their ship, all the tension and dread simply evaporates. Suddenly, where everything felt like the stakes were high and there was a lot going on, I find my ability to believe in the story wavering. The absolute pit of the problem has to be the moment we’re told there’s only ten minutes until German bombers reach London. Fine. We’re then remind (a few minutes into this) that Bracewell had plans for ‘Gravity Bubbles’, which would put a plane in space, though he reminds us that it’s only a theory. Fine. It’s all science-fiction nonsense, obviously, but I’ll buy it. But then, as the planes reach the East End of London (presumably around about that previously mentioned ten-minute-mark), Bracewell arrives to announce that they’ve put the Gravity Bubbles into action, and the planes are ready to launch.

I’m sorry, what? I get that Bracewell is Dalek technology, and therefore the Gravity Bubbles are probably Dalek in design, too, and thus he’s able to cobble it together quicker than usual, but the implication is that he’s managed to take it from a theory of something that could work and put it into practice across three planes in under ten minutes. I probably sound ridiculous complaining about something so trivial, but it lets down the entire episode massively for me, because it feels completely false.

The same is true, then, of the later revelation that Bracewell is a bomb. It feels as though the script was finished before someone pointed out that they were running five minutes short, and thus needed to stretch it out a little bit longer. Nothing feels real (or, at least, as ‘real’ as can be expected in a story about robots from oder-space hiding in the Cabinet War Rooms can), in the way that those first fifteen minutes did, and that’s a real pity.

As for the new Daleks themselves… well, I don’t think it helps that they arrive on screen at the same point the episode starts taking a nosedive. They suffer simply by association, because it feels like they show up and a promising episode goes to the dogs. But, equally, the design really is rubbish. I’ve already praised the direction in this episode, and I think it’s fair to say that it does a wonderful job of making the old Daleks here look like metal. The single bronze one on the ship looks lovely, and the two Ironside models are great. They’ve possibly never looked more like metalling beings. But then the New Paradigm turns up, and the daleks have certainly never looked more like they were made of plastic! It just helps to show up the flaws.

Oh, I could go on all day with a back-and-forth on ‘things Victory of the Daleks gets so right’ vs ‘things Victory of the Daleks gets so wrong’. Seriously, I think I’ve made more notes about this episode than any other in ages. I’ve not even begun to mention how great it is when the New Daleks destroy their predecessors because they’re inferior (and the fact that it’s a great little nod to the Daleks destroying Davros back in the day - the new breed will always destroy their creator, because they’ve been designed to think they’re superior), or how rubbish bits of the Dalek ship look - even if I completely get why it would be so empty. In the end, I think Victory of the Daleks needs another couple of drafts. Also, an extra fifteen minutes or so. Give it room to breathe a little, so that we don’t have to have ridiculously complex inventions made reality in a handful of minutes (seriously, even an earlier line in which Bracewell said ‘we’ve got these in development right now’ would have made it better! It would have made the drama more real, too, in the sense of ‘In theory these work, but we’re still only half way through!’), and then try something a little more traditional with the Dalek revamp… This really could have been a classic. Possibly the biggest missed opportunity that the 21st century Doctor Who has ever had.

(Oh, it was heading for at least an ‘8’ with that first third! I’ll stop banging on about it now, though…)

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

Day 795: The Beast Below

Dear diary,

Every so often in this marathon I find myself approaching a story that I just know I’m not going to like. Usually it’s because I’ve seen it before and it’s left a less than favourable taste in my mouth. When these episodes come along (thankfully, it’s a rare occurrence), I find that one of two things happens. Either the episode ends up being even worse than I remembered (as was the case last week with Planet of the Dead, which went from being one I didn’t remember fondly to being one that I really didn’t enjoy), or it swings the other way and ends up being rated probably a little above what it deserves because I’m so taken aback by the fact that I’ve enjoyed it. I’m pleased to say that today’s episode has fallen into the latter of those two categories.

I wasn’t at all expecting to like this one. First time around it felt like crashing back down to Earth after the highs of the previous week’s massively confident start to the new regime. Since then it’s simply occupied a place in my mind filed away with other stories that I never really intended to watch again in a hurry. But actually, there’s quite a decent little story tucked away in here! Oh, sure, it’s not ever going to win prizes as being the greatest episode of Doctor Who ever made, but it’s a perfectly serviceable one to pass 45 minutes, and if we take Series Five as being intended as a new start for an audience unfamiliar with Doctor Who (which is certainly what the production team seem to have been thinking in places), then it provides a crucial tent-pole in that regard.

We’re introduced to the idea that the Doctor is a Time Lord and the last of his kind. There’s none of the mystery built up around it that we had in The End of the World, because it’s not needed - from the point of view of an established audience, we already know what happened (roughly). From a new perspective the description of the Time War as ‘a bad day’ simply fills in enough to keep the conversation moving. The story gets a little less subtle towards the end when trying to about the point about the Doctor and the Star Whale being very similar (they make the point twice in the Tower of London, and then just in case you don’t get it, Amy comes to find the Doctor again and spell it out as plainly as she can), but on the whole it works.

There’s also some rather nice design work in this episode to help set it apart from the tone of Doctor Who from the last few years. One of the things that felt a shame first time around was that this story didn’t feel like it was following the same fresh new look established with The Eleventh Hour, and while it’s certainly true that this is perhaps less honed in places, it certainly does have its own unique style, and it’s really rather lovely. I’d never noticed, for example, the way that the elevators are designed to resemble the London Underground - right down to the tiling on the walls outside them. That’s a nice touch.

And while I’m on the subject of design, I’m going to mention it, because I know I’ll never get around it it otherwise: the new TARDIS. I remember not being all that fussed on the white window frames and shade of blue on the exterior when it was first revealed. I didn’t dis*like it, I just didn’t particularly love it, either. Now, though, I have to confess that I really *do like it. The interior… maybe it’ll grow on me this time around, but I was never that fond of this console room. Something about it just felt that bit too much like a set, in the way that the previous version of the room didn’t. It just doesn’t quite gel with me in the way that the coral did immediately. Not to worry, though, because the greedy Eleventh Doctor gets two console rooms, and his next one is much more up my street…

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

Day 794: The Eleventh Hour

Dear diary,

In the weeks leading up to the broadcast of The Eleventh Hour, I couldn’t have told you the last time I’d been more excited for the start of a series. I’d largely managed to avoid ‘spoilers’ throughout the 2009 filming, so the trailer released after David Tennant’s departure really did a good job of whetting my appetite ready for the new run. But then, in early 2010, I was working on a project which meant I had to be completely up-to-date with Doctor Who, so that the material would still be relevant by the time it hit the shelves. This meant having to do the most exciting thing in the world - go and be locked in a room at the BBC and read some of the scripts, as well as a general outline, for Series Five. All that work avoiding spoilers was for nothing, because this was the ultimate spoiler. I found, in the long run, that it hampered my enjoyment of several episodes on broadcast, because I’d spent months imagining them one way in my head only to be disappointed when they were presented differently on screen.

Largely it’s because I couldn’t have predicted the unique way that matt Smith would play the part, and I don’t think any of us could have predicted the huge shift in tone that the series undergoes from this episode on. Just look at that long shot which looks around Amelia’s garden before leading us to the scared little girl in the house. It’s like a film! And it doesn’t stop there - Adam Smith is one of my favourite Doctor Who directors, and I wish he’d come back to do more than the handful of episodes he was responsible for in this series. The rest of the episode looks completely unlike anything we had in the Russell T Davies era - it properly starts out confident and strong, proclaiming itself to be the start of something new.

Even to this day I can’t decide wether that’s the best thing or not. Everything has changed at this point. New Doctor. New Companion. New Man-In-Charge. New TARDIS interior. New TARDIS exterior. New Sonic Screwdriver… before the series is out we’ll be able to add New Daleks to the list. This is getting on for as bigger a shift in direction as the one between Seasons Seventeen and Eighteen in the ‘classic’ run, and I don’t think we’re a million miles away from the big change of Seasons Six to Seven. In some ways, I like that it’s such a confident casting off of what went before - a programme in a new form which is proud to stand up and be its own thing. On the other, as the original broadcasts played out, I couldn’t help but think it came across as a bit of a middle finger to the five years immediately preceding it, almost as a ‘you did it wrong’. With hindsight, I think it works, and it’s certainly not any kind of disrespect to the things which came before. It’s simply Doctor Who reinventing itself almost totally, which is just what it’s good at.

So, as for The Eleventh Hour as an episode… oh, it’s good, isn’t it? I’d spent so long dying to see what it looked like on screen and then in the run up to the broadcast, I found myself booking a date for the same evening. Even as it was being arranged, there was a little voice in the back of my mind that said ‘You can’t see her that night! That’s the start of the new Doctor Who season!’. Oh we’ve all been there. And what do you do? How do you choose? I went for the simple option - have your cake and eat it. Let’s get pizza at mine and watch the new series of Doctor Who. Yes, that’s romantic. I’m not entirely sure if she was at all keen on Doctor Who by the time the episode had finished (she certainly hadn’t been before hand), and was probably a little put-off by the fact that the date ended early so I could sit and watch the episode again later that night (I know, I know, priorities), but she did return for episodes sporadically throughout the rest of Series Five, so it wasn’t a complete bust!

Oh, but it was good. Immediately after broadcast, the figures of the Eleventh Doctor (in a two-pack with a ‘raggedy’ version) and his new Sonic Screwdriver were released. I’d managed to pick up my figure earlier in the day and took great delight in adding him to the shelf alongside all the other Doctors. Matt Smith had won me over completely, and we were standing at the dawn of an exciting new era. That’s the best feeling in the world…

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

Day 793: The End of Time - Part Two

Dear diary,

I can’t make my mind up as to wether the Tenth Doctor era has gone by quickly or not. I’ve spent more episodes with David Tennant’s Doctor than I have with any other since Peter Davison, but in some ways it feels like this Doctor has only just arrived on the scene. In others, it feels like he’s been around for ages. When I think back to specific episodes - anything from Series Two, for example - it feels like a lifetime ago, and the fact that Tennant physically aged quite a bit in the part makes that feeling all the more pronounced. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel all that long ago since he was promising trips to Barcelona, or bringing down Harriet Jones’ government.

But there’s no denying what an impact the Tenth Doctor made - had the profile of the programme ever been higher? Even now, with the show simulcast around the world to the biggest possible audience, it doesn’t feel like it’s at quite those dizzying heights of around 2007/2008, when you could barely move for Doctor Who. It was on the cover of the Radio Times every other week. The shops were stuffed with products of every kind. There were two sister shows running throughout the time of the year when the main show wasn’t… and everyone, even people who didn’t watch Doctor Who seemed to agree that David Tennant was one of - if not the - best Doctors ever.

And after all that… oh, I still can’t help but think that this finale is just a bit nothing for him. As with yesterday, I’ve found a lot more to enjoy in today’s episode than I was perhaps expecting to, but something about it just doesn’t gel with me. I wasn’t all that connected to the episode while watching, and nothing really spurred any particular excitement in me. I think it’s still the hangover of that feeling in 2009 of being a spectre at the feast, just wanting this Doctor to hurry up and clear off so we could get to the new chap. It certainly didn’t help that immediately after the broadcast of this episode a trailer for the upcoming Series Five appeared on the BBC website, and it was fifty times more exciting than anything which happened in this story.
Something I am pleased about, though, is that I’ve changed my mind about the sequence of the regeneration itself. For years now - ever since broadcast, really - I’ve thought that the Doctor should rage at Wilf, the final words of the Time Lord Victorious. He should scream, and shout, rage against the dying of the light, and then when Wilf tells him to simply go… he should. Okay then. You’re right. My life is more important than yours. See ya! I always thought that he should go and get his reward at that point. Venture off and see all his friends one last time. Martha, Mickey*, Jack, Sarah Jane, Rose… all those shining people who kept the Lonely Angel going. Kept him fighting. And then he should return for Wilf, who’s sad and alone in the booth, tell him that it’s his honour to give his life for such a man, and then we should pick up with the sequence as seen. Largely, I think I’d always thought of that as a better narrative because it means we can have the Doctor regenerate in the box - the Doctor uncurls from that foetal position and it’s Matt Smith! - but watching it today, I’m happy to admit that I was wrong; it works just fine the way it is, and the emotional beats hit at just the right points.

I’ve brought it up a few times in the last couple of weeks, but I can’t let today’s episode pass without giving one final mention… Bernard Cribbins really is wonderful, isn’t he? Can you imagine that there could have been a version of Doctor Who where he only made that on brief cameo appearance in Voyage of the Damned and then that was it? Horrible thought. A real pity that he had to step back into the programme in circumstances where another actor had passed away, but what a tribute to give - one of the best performances the show ever has. I’m so glad that he was given such a prominent role to play in these final episodes of the era, getting to really showcase his range and make you laugh out loud (‘God bless the cactuses!’) and tear up (‘I don’t want you to die!’) in equal measure. He really steals the show from Tennant in his final episodes, and I don’t think anyone could mind.

And now, we’re off into a bold new era! At the time, I found the Matt Smith years (well, the first couple, at least) far less to my liking than the previous few years of Doctor Who had been, and I’ve never really gone back to give them a second chance. With the exception of tomorrow’s Eleventh Hour and the 50th Anniversary special in a few weeks, I’ve never rewetted any of this era, so it’s like seeing it fresh and new, which is a very exciting thought.

It also means that I’m drawing to the very end of this mammoth project, and so I need your help! I need to decide how I’m going to be ending things. The original plan, way back in January 2013 when The 50 Year Diary kicked off was to stop with the 50th Anniversary. Nice and neat - hence the name - to cover every story from the programme’s first half-century. But then Matt Smith went and left just one episode later, so I thought I’d include that one, too, just to round off the era nicely. But now I’m wondering - with Series Nine only a few months away, and having enjoyed Series Eight so much when it was broadcast last year, do I carry on for an extra fortnight and do those episodes, too? That way, I’ll have covered all the episodes of Doctor Who. Let me know which approach you’d rather in the comments; do I finish with Time of the Doctor, or Last Christmas?

*I’m trying not to complain about the things I’m not so keen on in today’s episode, because it’s nice to keep things a bit nicer for a Doctor’s departure, but I have to grumble about the Mickey and Martha pairing. Not because I’ve specifically anything against the two of them getting together, but because it’s just another notch in that belt of Martha’s character being a bit rubbish after Series Three. She first gets engaged to a bloke she met in an alternate timeline for about 24 hours, despite showing very little chemistry with him in the first place, and then suddenly ditches him to marry a bloke she aired only a couple of scenes with in another episode (did Micky and Martha actually speak to each other in the Series Four finale?). It just felt so odd at the time, and it still doesn’t sit right five years on…

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

Day 792: The End of Time - Part One

Dear diary,

At the time, I recall being really disappointed with David Tennant’s exit from Doctor Who. I mused the other day that knowing almost a year in advance who his replacement was going to be and only having a few scattered episodes here and there (of varying quality) meant that by the time this two-part story rolled around I was just ready for the new Doctor. The regeneration was just another thing in the way of getting on with something different, and frankly more exciting. Then this story aired, and I wasn’t keen, and the same was true for almost my entire circle of friends. The general opinion among us was that the brilliant Russell T Davies era had gone out really feebly, and it was a pity after five years which had brought us some really brilliant television.

So I was pleased to find that today, there’s lots that I’ve found to enjoy about this one. The Doctor arriving on the planet of the Ood at the start (still not quite as impressive as the matte shots, but certainly a more interesting area than the basin of ‘snow’ the TARDIS put down in during Series Four), and the fact that he’s spent such a long time running away from his summons (I really wish they’d gone with the suggestion Davies makes in The Writer’s Tale, though, that the Doctor should emerge from the TARDIS with a few flecks of grey in his hair, as though he’d done anything and everything to put off this moment). In fact, everything on the Ood planet is rather nice, and I love the design of the ‘Elder Ood’. it serves as a nice way of bringing the audience up-to-speed with the events of the Master’s last story, too, while making it feel part of the narrative.

For some reason, last time around, I took issue with the Master’s resurrection, but I can’t for the life of me remember why, and I can’t say I’ve got any problem with it here - again it’s something I’ve rather enjoyed. And then there’s everything between the Doctor and Wilf, and that beautiful moment where the Doctor ruminates on the fact that people have had to wait centuries to meet him again, and then Wilf manages it in a single afternoon, as though he’s drawing all the threads together in his own mind…

But not everything is working for me, and I’m perhaps not surprised to find that the same things are bugging me this time around that did last time. The biggest one has to be the Master’s ‘superpowers’, for want of a better word. I just find that they’re taking me out of the narrative every time they crop up. It’s not the skeletal part which bothers me (last time, I know I wasn’t keen on that, but this time around that aspect kind of works for me), it’s the mega jumps which are causing me an issue. It’s most distracting just after an incredibly powerful scene between the Doctor and the Master, in which our hero realises that the drums in his foe’s head are real… and then the Master uses his energy to propel himself into the air like Iron Man. The entire beauty of that scene was completely shattered for me by that final moment. I’ve not even got an issue with the Master going berserk at that point - it’s very in character for this incarnation - but the ‘flight’ just doesn’t work for me at all I’m afraid.

The other thing that I’ve always found so off-putting that I can’t help but look out for it and notice it even worse now if the Vinvocci make-up. For some reason, the green of the faces was added digitally on this occasion instead of as regular make-up, and it doesn’t match with the bits of prosthetic at all. It really stands out like a sore thumb, and it’s a real shame that such a botched experiment occurs in - of all episodes - David Tennant’s final story.

Oh but enough with the whining, because you know what? That moment at the end, with the big speech about the return of the Time Lords, where we pull back from planet Earth and pan round to see the Narrator, catching sight of a Gallifreyan collar only a fraction of a second before he announces who they are… it’s so beautifully executed, and is probably the best cliffhanger of the entire Russell T Davies era. Now that’s one to go out on…

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

Day 791: Dreamland

Dear diary,

Much like The Infinite Quest alongside Series Three, I never really paid all that much attention to Dreamland. Because I’d taken a bit of a step back from Doctor Who in 2009, I’d missed a lot of the build up around it, and I have to confess that the broadcast completely passed me by. I picked up the DVD not long after, intending to give it a watch, but it’s simply sat still in wrapper on the shelf for the last five years. There was something quite exciting about unwrapping it for the marathon today - it’s like finding a missing episode and getting to experience it for the first time.

I’d been warned earlier this week not to expect too much, and especially that the animation in this one was ‘atrocious’, but actually I have to say I’m rather fond of it. Certainly, I prefer it to the style used for The Infinite Quest, and there’s something about the likeness of the Doctor in this one which really works for me. I don’t know if I can claim that it actually looks like David Tennant, but it certainly looks like the character of the Tenth Doctor, and that’s good enough for me. Oh, sure, there’s a few ropey moments scattered throughout - the way that doors open, or any time we get a look at character’s feet while they’re walking, for example - but on the whole I was hooked in enough to not really bother about that.

Which is the real point with this one - the story captured me enough to make me overlook the fact that I was watching an animated Doctor Who episode, and instead just allowed me to enjoy a fairly decent Doctor Who story. I won’t say it caught me right away - the first ten minutes or so proved a struggle, and I did almost think I was just going to give up half way and write about the fact that I was bored. Once things were properly underway, though, I suddenly found myself really captured - and enjoying it!

Oh, sure, the story is a bit simplistic in places (and more than a little bit clichéd), but that kind of works with the style of the whole piece - it’s a little bit of light entertainment before we head off for the Tenth Doctor’s final stand. A good way for him to have a nice simple adventure before the end. Plus it’s ignited an interest in all that ‘UFO’ nonsense again, and I’ve spent the last couple of hours enjoying increasingly outlandish ‘alien’ sightings on the internet, so that’s helped to pass an afternoon when there’s probably real work I could be getting on with.

What’s been most interesting, though, is thinking about the fact that this episode could very easily be made live action these days. In 2009, this likely would have felt a bit large scale to pull off in 45 minutes live-action, but almost all the elements have since turned up in the programme proper. The ‘American outback’ setting (complete with diner), the standard alien based on ‘Greys’… even the giant insect creatures could be pulled off now in more-or-less the same way the robots were created for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship - it’s interesting to look back and see how far we’ve come in such a sort time.

But I can’t put it off any more. Finally, from tomorrow, we’ll be headed for The End of Time itself… 

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

Day 790: The Waters of Mars

Dear diary

Oh, this felt more like it. After my disappointment in Planet of the Dead, I’d sort of drifted out of Doctor Who during the middle months of 2009. Oh, I never packed it in completely, but I rather avoided keeping all that up-to-date with the latest news and trailers. A lot of that had to do with avoiding spoilers for the upcoming Eleventh Doctor era, which began filming in the middle of the year (I failed spectacularly at this, as I’m sure I’ll discuss in a few days). It meant that I didn’t see a trailer for this one until a few days before the broadcast, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t really all that bothered by the prospect of incoming Who. By this point, I sort of just wanted the new Doctor to start already - knowing that Tennant would be leaving and Smith replacing him so far in advance, and without having many episodes to bridge the gap just made it feel like an incredibly long and drawn-out process!

When I did get to see a trailer for The Waters of Mars, though… oh, it looked interesting. It completely piqued my interest and got me excited for broadcast - everything a trailer was supposed to do. And then the episode aired, and I thought it was good. It was very good. I even recall being a bit annoyed with the friend I’d watched it with, because they fell asleep about three minutes int (it had been a long day), but all was forgiven when he caught up with the episode a few days later and text to say how much he’d enjoyed it.

The thing that really gets me - above and beyond the design, or the casting, writing, direction, which I’ll come to in a moment - is the idea at the heart of this one. We’re so used to there being moments in history that the Doctor can’t touch because they’re part of established events - we had one last season in The Fires of Pompeii, for example - but I don’t think we’ve ever had a story quite like this one, where we’re visiting the future, and the Doctor’s unable to do anything because it’s just as fixed as any of those things from our history that we know so well. Something about that idea really chimed with me, and I loved the way that they chose to demonstrate the situation, with the flashing up of news reports. It’s simple, but it’s very effective.

And on top of that, the Doctor goes and flaunts the rules anyway, by making changes to the events! Oh, that’s when The Waters of Mars kicks into gear. Oh sure, there’s lots to really enjoy before then, but once time itself stars fighting back against the Doctor and he simply rages his way through it… that really struck me, and it’s what made the episode for me. I mused a few weeks ago during Utopia that there’s something great about David Tennant’s darker side as the Doctor, and we get to see it properly unleashed here. After which, we get the perfect example of that ‘hubris before the fall’ that I was so keen on finding during Tom Baker’s tenure as the Doctor. The Doctor goes too far. He breaks all the rules. That’s not what does it, though. What makes it all the worse is that he then gloats about it. Look at me! Look how clever I am! And right then, when he’s king of the universe, and teetering dangerously on the brink of tipping over into total darkness… Ood in the snow. What an image. Came as a total surprise to me, and I love it. Such a great way to end it. 

I risk here simply pouring all the praise on those last ten-to-fifteen minutes of the episode because they’re the bits that really make it for me, but I can’t let today’s entry go by without at least touching on the rest of the story. I rather like the Flood - they’re the scariest monsters that the Russell T Davies era creates (take that, Weeping Angels), and probably about as far as you’d dare push it for the programme at that point. These days, with a slightly later time slot and seemingly a different intention at where the show is pitched, perhaps they’d go further, but I look at some of the scenes with these ‘Water Zombies’ (for want of a better phrase), and I’m genuinely surprised they made it through into the show as it was in 2009. And these are the toned down version!

What makes them all the more scarier has to be the direction of the episode. Those first two transformations we see, where the focus is on a character in the front while we don’t quite get to see what’s happening to the other person in the background is ten times more effective than simply showing it happening. We get a great impact when that does happen with the Doctor discovering a ‘conversion’ in progress, but that’s been shot in its own way, and the horror is simply ramped up by the confirmation of what we thought we saw on the two occasions before.

So, on the whole, I think The Waters of Mars is largely made by that last quarter, but there’s plenty of merit to be found in the rest of the story, too. One of the highlights of the Tenth Doctor era for sure - and the perfect way to gear up for the big finale ahead…

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

Day 789: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith

Dear diary,

I’m sure I must have mentioned it at some point before now, but I really enjoyed The Sarah Jane Adventures. For a long time, I would say that the average quality across the show had a better ‘hit-rate’ than Doctor Who did - there’s no episodes of this show that I think would rate below about a 5. For a long time, I seriously considered the idea of watching all of The Sarah Jane Adventures in tandem with modern Doctor Who, slipping it into the gaps between seasons as it was originally broadcast, and watching how everything ties up (for example, there’s a story just a few episodes before the one I’ve done today which serves as a follow up to Dreamland, which I’ll be watching in a few day’s time), but then I’d feel like I’d have to include Torchwood in the marathon, too, and it all just gets a bit messy. As such, I decided to limit myself to just doing the two stories in which the Doctor himself makes an appearance in Sarah Jane’s world.

What’s impressive is that despite the sheer presence of David Tennant, he never manages to overpower or steal the show. This is very much an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures which the Doctor happens to appear in, rather than a Doctor Who episode that’s been misplaced over to its spin off show. And yet, there’s still something that feels so right about having the Doctor pop up in this corner of his fictional universe - especially in the year where Doctor Who was so massively absent from TV screens. When the programme tried it again a year later, bringing the Eleventh Doctor into Sarah Jane’s world (and with Jo Grant, to boot), it just didn’t have the same impact that we have here, and that’s a pity. I’m sure I’ll look into that more in a few weeks, as I’ll be including Death of the Doctor after Series Five of the ‘parent’ show.

One of the things that this story does especially well is in pairing the Doctor largely with the young cast of the programme - Luke, Clyde, and Rani. It’s always a thrill to see the Doctor and Sarah Jane reunited, but there’s something extra special about seeing these new characters become a part of his world. Oh, sure, he got to speak to Luke on a screen during the last season finale, but there’s something jus that little bit extra special about seeing him trapped with the three of them in a single second of time. It also means that something different is being done with the idea of the Doctor and Sarah meeting up again, and it avoids simply becoming a rehash of their other recent reunions.

That doesn’t mean that Sarah Jane is left out of the story, though, and watching this episode back now I’m really floored by Elisabeth Sladen. When she pops up in Doctor Who during this period, she absolutely shines, but she’s really just one of many. Especially by the time we reach The Stolen Earth, she’s fighting for presence against so many other characters. This programme, though, is absolutely justified by the performance she gives here. Oh, there’s something beautiful about watching her and Peter fall in love. I remember complaining at the time that we should have seen those dates (or at least the secrecy aspect to them) played out more in the four episodes preceding these two, but watching it again now I’m happy to say that I was wrong on that. It’s written - and performed - so neatly that I completely buy the pair falling for each other. A large amount of the credit for that has to go to Sladen, because she sells it all so well, even when watching Sarah Jane fall in love isn’s perhaps something we’re used to seeing.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that they only go and get Nigel Havers in to play her hubby-to-be! Doctor Who has never been afraid of going for big names in the casting - especially at this point in its history - but I love the fact that the entire Who franchise had such stature by 2009 that you could get actors of this calibre to appear in a couple of episodes for CBBC! I’ve not really said an awful lot about these two episodes in particular - rather spent my time simply praising The Sarah Jane Adventures as a show - but I’m not sorry about that, because I’m just glad to have an opportunity to rave about it. If you’ve not indulged in this part of the Who universe before, please give it a go - some of the strongest material ever is tucked away across these five seasons…

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

Day 788: Planet of the Dead

Dear diary,

The ‘gap year’ of Doctor Who in 2009 felt like the worst thing in the world at the time, didn’t it? We’d become so accustomed to having a full thirteen-week run from around Easter that the thought of only having a few episodes scattered across the year (and, really, months apart, with only this episode at Easter and then nothing more until November!) was devastating. It did mean, however, that when the weekend of this episode approached it felt all that more special. It wasn’t just the start of a new run of Who, it was the only island of Who, and it needed to be savoured. It made it, as the name suggested, a special episode.

Which then made it all the more disappointing when the end credits rolled and I sort of went away thinking ‘eh’. I don’t think I’d thought it was bad, just that it hadn’t been great either, and when there’s not another episode along seven days later which might be more to your tastes, that makes it stick out even more as being a bit of a let down. I’d planned to give it another watch, once all the anticipation had died down and we were back into the longest drought of Who for several years, but I just never really found the enthusiasm for it. Over the years, this has sat in my head as just a bit of a ‘nothing’ episode - not great, but not awful either.

Today, though, I have to admit that it hasn’t captured me at all. There was a period (from about the time Christina jumped into the… um… I don’t know, ‘hole in the spaceship’ to the bus flying back through the wormhole where I completely tuned out. I was looking at the episode, and although I picked up on a few bits, it wasn’t really going in. I was going to skip back and re-watch those minutes over again, but just as with last time, I couldn’t really summon up the enthusiasm.

I’m not even entirely sure why that’s a problem here, because there’s plenty to keep you both engaged and entertained. There’s UNIT, for a start. Gorgeous locations in the desert (more on which in a moment). Plenty of threat. Some rather nice aliens in the form of the stingrays, and a nice idea behind what those creatures are and how they operate… and yet. something falls completely flat for me, and while all the right pieces are on the table, they’re just not moving in the right direction for me.

I’ll get onto the things I liked about this one in a moment, because contrary to the way I sound above I didn’t hate the episode, and there are some rather good bits, but first I’ll have to single out something which really let the episode down for me - and it’s Michelle Ryan. Something about her performance just comes across as wrong to my mind, almost like she’s focussing so hard on maintaining the right voice for the character that she’s forgetting to do more than blandly deliver some of the lines. I try to not criticise people’s acting skills if I can avoid it (and she’s a million miles away from the worst performance in Doctor Who which is still to come in a few week’s time), but she felt so out of place with the rest of the cast here that I simply couldn’t avoid it.

In contrast, you’ve got Lee Evans’ turn as UNIT’s Scientific Advisor Malcolm. I have to admit that I’ve never really been a fan of Evans’ comedy shows (I think it’s that old thing of so many people telling me how funny he is means that I simply can’t see it), so I wasn’t particularly thrilled when he was announced as one of the guest characters for the episode, but I can’t help but absolutely love him. The performance, the character… oh, everything. I’d love to see him pop up again at some point - I think he’d play nicely off Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, who would probably serve as a great counterbalance to Malcolm’s enthusiasm.

And then there’s the Dubai filming in the desert! It does look good, doesn’t it? There was a moment, when the camera pulled back from the doors of the bus to show the landscape of this world when I half pondered how beautiful it looked, and half wondered if it could have simply been done in the UK with some lovely matte painting (I've already praised the way the production team do those recently, and I think I’m right in saying that this shot has been beefed up with one?), but then later on when you get to watch the Doctor and Christina exploring the sand dunes, you really get a sense of why the programme went so far for these vistas, because they are gorgeous. 

We Are Colony has released Emily, the provocative short film debut of renowned producer Caroline Harvey, starring Oscar-nominee Felicity Jones (The Theory Of Everything) and Emmy-winner, BAFTA-nominee Christopher Eccleston (Thor: The Dark World, Doctor Who).

Harvey was formerly Head of Development at Mirage Entertainment, the company run by the late Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, where she produced the acclaimed short film Love Me More, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. The two remained close after Love You More, with Taylor-Johnson donating some of her Palme D'Or prize money to fund Harvey's directorial debut, Emily. 

Director, Caroline Harvey says:

"Emily comes from a place of frustration: about the form of short film, the fashion for them to be silent, to be genre driven, to be bleak, to have an obvious twist in the tail. It also comes from an irritation with the way in which women are portrayed on screen. Female characters are usually rigorously pinned to a narrative by a mass of explanation and consequence: ‘she’s that way because of this and now she’ll suffer…’ - a falsehood".

"The film is about gender roles, desire, control, frustration, the lust inherent in sorrow, the lies we tell ourselves and each other, the peculiarities of being English", she continues. "I wanted to write about a sexual encounter in which no-one is attacked, hurt, contracts a disease, gets pregnant, arrested or dies. Rather, the opposite: certain encounters allow us to learn about ourselves, our limitations, what we want and need. That these experiences are as capable of healing as they are of damaging us."

Felicity Jones plays a young woman who meets a man in a coffee bar (Christopher Eccleston). The two are soon chatting about snogging, smoked salmon blinis and sexual stirrings involving fingers in ears. "I wanted to do something unexpected," Jones has said.  She also produced the film, alongside Jack Sidey and Nicholas Hatton. The film premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and was nominated for Best British Short Film at Raindance Film Festival.

We Are Colony is a new global video-on-demand platform connecting passionate fans with great films, and their favorite filmmakers and talent.  We Are Colony releases exclusive special edition bundles of deleted scenes, cast interviews, making-of documentaries, production stills, scripts, storyboards, teasers and so much more. Get behind-the-scenes now at www.wearecolony.com. 

+ Check out the special features for 'Emily' on the We Are Colony website.

[Source: We Are Colony]

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

Day 787: The Next Doctor

Dear diary,

The speculation this caused at the time! David Tennant announced as departing the programme, followed by a story entitled The Next Doctor, and with David Morrissey - a potential Doctor candidate - cast in the part! I’m not sure if I ever thought that he could be Tennant’s replacement or not… I don’t think so, though.

The mystery of who this mysterious other Doctor is has to be the very heart of this episode for me. That first half of the story, in which the Doctor slowly pieces things together while we’re given glimpses into the strange versions of familiar objects that this Doctor uses (the hot-air balloon TARDIS is great, but I really love the joke about his screwdriver being sonic), culminating in a beautiful moment when we discover the truth about him, and why he’s been acting as a Time Lord from Gallifrey. If I’m honest, I quite liked all of that. Couldn’t put my finger on why I remembered this episode being so poor, because there were several really rather nice moments to enjoy.

But then, once the ‘reveal’ is out of the way it all got really boring. I love the Cybermen, they’ve always been my favourite Doctor Who monsters, and yet I just couldn’t find the effort to care about them here. They stomp around and talk about the construction of the Cyber-King… and even when that arrives on screen - a great big Cyberman-type robot powered by coal and steam and stomping its way across London… I was still bored. By the time we get the reveal that Jackson Lake lost not only his wife the night the Cybermen attacked, but his son too, I simply didn’t care one jolt. It didn’t help that his son is left standing like an idiot while all the other children are hurried from the building. It simply felt like an excuse to have the Doctor do a big stunt at that point of the episode, to keep the action going a bit.

Somewhere along the way, this story feels like it was split in two, with the emotional, human story of Jackson Lake, and the mystery of ‘The Doctor’ being consigned to the first half (along with the one bit of Cybermen action that I can claim to have enjoyed in this one; the attack on the graveyard), while the second half was made up of a rather rubbish Cyberman story. I’d say this is the absolute definition of ‘average’ Doctor Who.

A description I fear is going to be applied to a few stories coming up this week. From this point on, there’s only two stories (The Eleventh Hour and The Day of the Doctor) which I’ve seen more than once, and on both occasions that re-watch came within a few days of the original broadcast. I can remember thinking that Planet of the Dead was rather weak, The Waters of Mars was rather brilliant, and The End of Time was rather lacking as the end to such a fine Doctor. As for my thoughts on things after that… well, we’ll get there soon enough.

So, a brief note on how I’m going to be tackling the ‘Specials’ over the next week or so. I’ll be moving - as is traditional - onto Planet of the Dead tomorrow, dipping out the day afterwards to visit Ealing for The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (I’ll be cheating a little and doing both episodes on the same day, since the Doctor only really shows up in the second half), then The Waters of Mars, a quick trip to the US for Dreamland (which I’m particularly looking forward to, as it’s the last bit of Tennant-Who I’ve never seen), and then finishing off with two days of The End of Time. It’s almost the end, but the moment is being prepared for!

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

Day 786: Journey’s End

Dear diary,

At the start of this year, during my discussions about the Daleks for Dalek, and the Bad Wolf two-parter, I made several references to the fact that the Daleks in ‘new’ Who were never again as ruthless as they are in those stories. Frankly, I was wrong! I was a bit surprised when they turned up again for Doomsday and got to do their fair share of being rather scary and powerful, but here they’re well away! Certainly, they’ve lost a few of the ‘special features’ they had in Series One (the likes of a revolving mid-section, and the whole ‘being able to stop bullets’ thing - which I almost thought they’d brought back today before it turned out to be the result of a time-lock built around the Hub.

But the Daleks here are cold. They shoot Jack without a second thought (and while we know that he’ll be springing back up again in a few minutes, we get to experience the shock of the moment through Rose, who doesn’t know that she’s made that man immortal), and then you’ve got the way that the Supreme Dalek taunts the Doctor while Donna is left to burn in the heart of their Crucible. If I’m honest, the Daleks don’t really do a whole lot else in this one - they mull around and look menacing while really acting as pets to Davros - but those few moments really make them worthwhile, and I’m pleased to see how wrong I was about them losing their touch after that first year.

Not that I’m complaining about Davros, though! Oh, certainly, he means that the Daleks don’t really get an awful lot to do here because he’s the focal point for much of the episodes’ villainy, but let’s be honest, Julian Bleech is simply perfect in the part, isn’t he? My God he’s good. There’s something so wonderful about the way he slips from being the calm, collected, in control version of the character to the crazed, half-mad, ready-to-end-the-universe version. I think, on reflection, Bleech is my favourite of all the Davros incarnations (Davroses? Davrii?). And if the Daleks’ presence is justified by the few moments in which they’re ruthless and hurtful, then Davros’ presence is brought into the light by the moment he sees Sarah Jane after so long. ‘You were there on Skaro,’ he muses, and suddenly it’s never felt more right that Sarah should have stumbled back into the Doctor’s life. Oh, there’s something just magical about the fact that after all these years, Sarah Jane (and Elisabeth Sladen) is back in the Doctor’s life again, fighting the good fight alongside her best friend.

I can’t discuss Journey’s End without bringing up the… um… well, the ‘journey’s end’. In The Writer’s Tale, Russell T Davies wonders about the departure he’s given Donna here, and wether children will be able to connect with it in the same way they can the other companion departures. Rose gets sealed off in another universe and can’t get back. Fine. Martha chooses to stay behind and care for her family. Also fine. Donna has her world taken away from her, and simply forgets. It’s perhaps not quite as relatable as the other two departures, but it is wonderful.

And I think that it’s the right ending for Donna - it was this or death for her, I think, because not a lot else would have stopped this woman from standing at the Doctor’s side. The sense of loss through the whole situation is easy to feel, if not from Donna, then from the characters all around her. The Doctor is heartbroken, and Wilf, who I’ve said has made me want to cry every time he pops up on screen, is absolutely broken. It’s terrible, and beautiful, and such a moving way for Donna to go.

There’s one thing that’s always bothered me about it, though, and watching through the series again this last couple of weeks has really flared it up as a bugbear in my mind. Once Donna has ‘activated’, the Doctor comments;

THE DOCTOR

The Doctor Donna. Just like the Ood said, remember? They saw it coming. The Doctor Donna. 

But surely, in Planet of the Ood, the Ood call the pair ‘DoctorDonna’ because that’s how the Doctor introduced themselves? Frantically, then they thought they were going to be attacked, repeated over and over again;

THE DOCTOR

Doctor, Donna, friends. 

I always took it to be that the Ood went on to call them ‘Doctor Donna’ because that’s the name they’d been given. Yeah, yeah, I know that you could argue that the Ood were seeing more than that, and that they were seeing the Metacrisis, but it’s always sat ill with me…

We also need to make another stop today on my journey of ‘foreshadowing the regeneration’, because a lot of the dialogue here would go on to have greater significance once The End of Time came along. The Doctor muses that the timelines were all drawing together - getting Donna, then her granddad, then meeting Donna again… - because they were closing in on the moment that Donna and the Doctor became one. But actually, you can take Caan’s comment that ‘one will still die’ to mean not Donna in the sense of losing her memories, but to mean The Doctor, because we know now that the Doctor meeting Donna wasn’t simply fate - he claims that Wilf was ‘always’ going to be the way he dies. I’m really enjoying uncovering these extra little things buried in scripts where they were almost certainly never meant to be signposts of what was to come, but work beautifully as such in retrospect…

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

Day 785: The Stolen Earth

Dear diary,

John Barrowman once described The Stolen Earth and Journey's End as being 'The Five Doctors for 21st century Doctor Who', and it's hard to find a more perfect description for these two episodes. At the time, myself and the friends I discussed Doctor Who with were well aware that Rose was coming back for the finale (she'd been teased enough throughout the series even if the publicity and the previous episode hadn't been clue enough), and we were fairly certain that Martha would be putting in an appearance, and possibly Jack… oh, but then there was that 'next time' trailer from the end of Turn Left. Rose! Martha! Jack! Sarah Jane! Gwen! Luke! Ianto! Harriet bleeding Jones, former Prime Minister! Judoon! Daleks! Davros! Oh, it was the most exciting 'next time' trailer the programme had ever done (and, actually, very few have come close to the level of excitement this one generated), and all of us were immediately swapping the same excitable texts the second the credits kicked in.

Oh, and there really is something wonderfully Five Doctors-esque about the setting up in this episode. Today is really about manoeuvring all the characters to the right places ready for the ‘real’ story in the next episode, but that’s all part of the fun! Cutting from the Hub, to Sarah Jane’s attic, to New York (Martha must avoid that place like the plague these days - we’ve seen her visit the city twice, and she’s encountered Daleks on both occasions!)… it’s all very exciting when you’ve been making your way through the series in order (either on broadcast or in the form of a marathon), and getting to watch all these characters from different parts of the Doctor’s life come together is really rather special. That great big video-call is also home to the single best line in Doctor Who history;

WILF

(on the subject of a webcam) She wouldn't let me. She said they're naughty. 

I do have to wonder, though, how does this episode look to people coming to Doctor Who in the years since 2008? At the time, characters like Gwen, Ianto, and Luke made perfect sense to me, because I’d been following along with the spin-off programmes, but these days there’s plenty of people who’ve discovered the show since all those spin-offs ceased, and they don’t necessarily pick them up to watch too. Are any of my readers in that situation? Does it all make sense, simply as ‘well they must be Jack’s Torchwood team, and he must be Sarah Jane’s son?

There’s something rather brilliant, though, simply in the fact that Doctor Who at this point can do a story like this one. They can bring back assorted old companions - including Sarah Jane from the 1970s - and the audience will go along with it! The story is littered with little Easter Eggs for long-term viewers to spot (I didn’t notice the shot of Daleks attacking the Valiant for ages), and you really get the idea that several of them would actually be picked up on by the ‘casual’ viewer. There’s something a little bit special about that.

But then, of course, the big thing to make note of in this one is the regeneration. Or, specifically, the week that followed the regeneration. As soon as it became obvious what was happening, I declared that it was all slight of hand, and that there was no way David Tennant was going to regenerate and it not be announced before hand. But then… oh, it was a funny old week. All the papers were talking about it. People kept coming in the (largely Doctor Who-related) shop where I worked asking about it… and more and more it looked as though the BBC had managed to pull off a massive publicity stunt by having the Doctor regenerate half-way through the story. The more I thought about it, the more it all made sense. Of course, it was quickly brushed off when the next episode came around, but it’s worth it just for the sheer excitement of that week!

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

Day 784: Turn Left

Dear diary,

These latter episodes of Series Four are real barnstormers, aren't they? I can almost forgive the slight dip in quality (for me, anyway) in the middle of the series, because you can see perhaps where the entire production team were saving themselves ready to really go for broke with this finale. I mused a few weeks ago, at the end of Series Three, that Turn Left didn't feel like the start of a three-parter in the same way that Utopia did, and made a note to revisit that thought when I reached this point. Watching today, I think I'd stand by that comment… and it's largely because the central story of Turn Left draws to a close before we then get a cliffhanger at the end. That cliffhanger is integral to the story we've just watched (so it's not really 'tacked on' in the same way that the Victory of the Daleks lead-in is at the end of The Beast Below, or the cliffhanger to The Poison Sky is for The Doctor's Daughter, for example), but it comes after the resolution of the immediate plot - whereas the Utopia one is bang in the middle of it! So yes, I'll be standing by that thinking!

But enough about the relationship between this episode and the two that follow it - there's more than enough to keep you going here! People always seem to hail Blink as the best of the 'Doctor-lite' stories from the Russell T Davies era, but surely this one has to take that crown? In some ways, Turn Left plays out a bit like a clip show, going back over events from the last couple of series, and presenting them to us in such a nightmarish way. I'd love to see a whole series set in the world we get in this story - not even necessarily a Doctor Who series, just a programme that follows what would happen in such a situation, where the world is headed to hell in a hand basket. If I'm honest, I still hold out hope that Davies might write such a series one day - I think he'd do such a good job with it. With only a few brief lines and scenes, we get a real feel for the way that this world works, and some of it is simply beautiful in a kind of nightmarish way. A real highlight has to be Rocco being carted off to a 'labour camp', while Wilf tries to hold it together - Bernard Cribbins really sells that moment, and once again, I can't help but feel emotional when the man is on screen.

Cribbins isn't the only one turning in a tour de force of a performance here - Catherine Tate has never been more on top of her game. Tate proved to people how great she could be in Doctor Who right back in her earliest episodes, but Turn Left is the moment where she really silences the naysayers. When she's finally shown the creature on her back, or realises that she's going to die… it's simply stunning. Coming after forty minutes of watching Donna struggle against the tide of hell befalling the world, it's even more emotional. I’ve praised Cribbins and Tate over and over in the last few weeks, so I’d also like to make a point of mentioning Jaqueline King here. She’s been great throughout the series whenever she’s turned up, but this episode really gives her a chance to go for it, and combining these three as the Noble Family… well, it’s no wonder they’re such a great part of the series.

I could ramble on forever about how great the performances and settings of this episode are, but instead I just want to touch on something tiny and insignificant. The matte painting used for the world of Shen Shen at the episode’s beginning is gorgeous! I’ve been meaning to bring this up for ages - having pointed out how nice the Ood Sphere was in long shot (if not in close up), and then making a note to mention it again during The Doctor’s Daughter, for the surface of the planet there. I seem to say it a lot, but you can really see the confidence of the team at this point - creating alien environments so beautifully, even when they’re only used briefly to set up the story, before we’re brought back down to reality.

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

Day 783: Midnight

Dear diary,

It's a sign of just how far Doctor Who had come by this point in the revival that they feel confident in producing something as… experimental as Midnight, to air on BBC One prime time on a Saturday evening. It's about as far away from Daleks and Cybermen, or anything else you might expect from the programme at this point, as it's possible to get.

And you know what? It's great. It feels really nice to dip out of the usual pattern and do something a bit different with the Doctor, and it lets us see this particular incarnation in a new situation - the Doctor who's perhaps most reliant on his words as his only weapon (as recently exemplified by stories like The Doctor's Daughter) having his words removed, and being left defenceless.

It also serves as a nice counter-weight to Voyage of the Damned back at the start of this season. There, a group of 'humans' thrown together by circumstance pull together for the good of all, standing tall in the face of danger (even if they might not always agree), and making sure that as many people as possible can come through. Midnight on the other hand shows a different side to 'human' nature - with the group turning in on itself, and coming desperately close to committing murder. There's some beautifully observed moments in here along the lines of examining human nature, perhaps none more than Val's comment right at the end;

VAL

I said it was her.

I almost wonder if the script is partly so strong because it gives Russell T Davies the change to write about something real again, having spent the last few years having to write about Judoon on the Moon, and the last of the Daleks, and the Cybermen pushing across from a parallel universe. Taking any kind of recognisable creature out of the equation for this episode means that we have to really focus on the very true interaction between the characters, and although that's something that Davies often writes into scripts, here it feels like it's being given a whole host of extra weight.

You can't discuss Midnight without passing some comment about the sheer skill that has gone into producing it. For a story almost all filmed on a single set with a small core cast, I'd not be surprised if this was the most technically challenging episode that the production team had tackled up to this point. About halfway through, I decided to plug in a set of headphones so I could really appreciate the skill that's gone into making this one work, and I don't think I've ever really appreciated before just how good it is. Even when Sky and the creature aren't the absolute centre of attention, you can still hear the repetition going on in the background, and it's somehow eerie and beautiful at the same time… but it must have been a nightmare to get right!

For the first time in absolutely ages, I’ve watched today’s episode twice - not because I wanted to follow the story again as such, but because I wanted to hear the commentary. Almost every episode of the Russell T Davies era has two commentaries for each episode - the one on the DVDs, and the ones still available on the BBC website as ‘clips’ for each episode. The online commentary for Midnight features Julian Howarth (Sound Recordist), Paul McFadden (Supervising Sound Editor) and Bryn Thomas (Boom Operator), and it feels only right that the sound team get to take the spotlight on this episode, and you really get a sense for how much effort everyone put in to make this episode the best it could possibly be. If anything, it makes me respect the episode even more!

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

Day 782: Forest of the Dead

Dear diary,

Yesterday felt like a proper turn around for this story. Whereas I’d always thought of it as being terrible, and one of my least favourites, there were lots of elements to the proceedings that I was actually quite enjoying. It was never going to suddenly find itself sitting at the ‘top table’ among other favourite episodes, but equally it had managed to break free of the shadows (pun intended) it had been cast into for years.

But then today… Oh, I’m just a bit bored with things, if I’m honest. I think I’d normally say something about the fact that I’ve spent so many years not being fond of this story meaning that I’m simply failing to engage with it this time around, too, but that’s not really it - because I’d broken that pitfall with the first episode. I think it’s more a case that the things I found to enjoy yesterday had started to wear a bit thin by the time we reached this one.

That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing in here for me to enjoy, and it has to be said that in a complete turnaround from my reaction when this episode was first broadcast, my favourite thing about it is the presence of River Song, and watching her story with the Doctor both begin and end simultaneously. I mused yesterday that having now seen the rest of their time together makes the scenes they share here all the more poignant, and that’s certainly true in todays episode, as we hurtle ever closer to her death, and the realisation that the Doctor must have always known that this is how their life together would end. Tennant and Alex Kingston play those moments perfectly, and there’s something about the reproachful look that hangs over Tennant’s face one River is gone which really connects with me. I’m looking increasingly forward to watching their relationship play out now.

For me, the real highlight of this episode has to be the way that it ends - and no, that’s not me trying to be funny. There’s a beautiful kind of melancholy that really envelops everything from the moment we see the Doctor wake up to find himself handcuffed at a safe distance, right through to Lee teleporting away, and not quite being able to call out for Donna before he’s gone. I moaned a bit the other day about Jenny’s sudden ‘back to life’ at the end of The Doctor’s Daughter, when the Doctor and co all thought her gone for good, but this is almost that exact same idea, but done right.

That melancholy is only lifted by the Doctor suddenly realising that there’s a way he can save River. Oh, that’s a gorgeous moment. The episode is clearly over and done with. The Doctor and Donna have summed up, and started making their way off into the sunset… and then he comes charging back onto screen and we get a whole new ending that really sings, and is the perfect way of really establishing that River means the world to the Doctor at some point. Forget all that gibbons about his name (have we actually found out yet when she learns it?), this is the good bit! 

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

Day 781: Silence in the Library

Dear diary,

It’s strange coming back to this two-parter now that we’ve seen the rest of the River Song story play out. The speculation that abounded at the time - was she his wife? His mum? Romana? The Rani? Susan? I think people settled pretty quickly on to the idea that she was most likely his wife, but I didn’t pay it all that much attention because I couldn’t bare River. Really, really disliked her. The colleague I mentioned yesterday, who didn’t consider The Unicorn and the Wasp to be a proper ‘favourite’ episode, on the other hand loved her, and couldn’t wait to find out more about her. Ironically, those roles reversed once we entered the Moffat era - I absolutely fell in love with River, while he began to declare that she was the worst thing to ever happen to the show, and point out that he’d ‘always’ hated the character. Ho hum.

I can’t claim that it was anything wrong with River that made me take a dislike to her - I think it was just the fact that she was in this story, and for some reason it fell completely flat for me. I know I watched it with my then-girlfriend’s parents, and sort of cringed my way through it, because they’d happened to be watching it the week it was rubbish. I also know that I felt like it was simply a ‘Greatest Hits of Steven Moffat’, with repeated catchphrases, an everyday object being turned into something sinister, and elements of plot that were ‘timey wimey’. The sour taste these two episodes left in my mouth meant that I’ve not wanted to watch them since. It didn’t help that only a week or so before broadcast, Moffat had been announced as the successor to Russell T Davies, and everyone was proclaiming him as the ‘saviour’ of Doctor Who.

Watching tonight, though, I’m not sure what my problem was! Yes, I suppose it can be seen as a bit of a ‘Greatest Hits’ collection, but everything is being used for a reason, and I’m actually getting quite into it. As I’ve said above, knowing the rest of River’s story lends an extra weight to her appearance here (and I know it’s a subject that’s been batted back and forth over the years but the way she’s scripted here leads me to think that she definitely had at least one other meeting with the Tenth Doctor). The moment when River pleads with the Doctor to say he knows who she is actually tugs at my heartstrings a bit after watching all the merry dances she had with the Eleventh Doctor, and it makes me all the more excited to watch her story unfold over the next month or so. I think perhaps it bothered me at the time that it felt like Moffat was setting things up for his own tenure several years before we’d get any kind of pay-off, whereas now that we’ve been through it all, I can view all of this in a different way.

River’s not the only thing that’s faring better this time; the whole idea of keeping out of the shadows isn’t just taking something everyday and twisting it into something scary, it’s playing on children’s playground games, and giving them a Doctor Who connection. The repeated phrases… are still a bit rubbish, actually. Sorry. You can’t win them all. I get that the ending is supposed to feel like a bit of an onslaught with no escape for anyone but it doesn’t half go on a bit. Donna Noble has left The Library. Hey, who turned out the lights? Donna Noble has been saved.

It’s still not perfect - and certainly feels like Moffat’s weakest script for the show yet - but it’s a lot better than I’ve ever given it credit for!

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

Day 780: The Unicorn and the Wasp

Dear diary,

For years and years, I always used to say that this was my absolute favourite episode of revived Doctor Who. It even became a long-running argument with a former colleague, who insisted that this ‘couldn’t’ be my favourite episode, because it’s not a ‘proper’ favourite episode. I’m still not entirely sure what they meant by that, but I think the point was that this one doesn’t have any Daleks, or Cybermen, any of The Big Four, and isn’t some big, epic, game changer of an episode. It also wasn’t Blink, which was their favourite, and thus did count as a ‘proper’ favourite episode. For some reason.

Oh, but The Unicorn and the Wasp is everything I love about Doctor Who, and everything I love about Series Four in particular. It’s light and fun, but it can still be light and fun when it’s filled with death, and darkness, and a giant alien wasp. It perfectly encapsulates the Doctor and Donna’s relationship perhaps better than any other episode they share - you’d have no idea that this was the first story Tennant and Tate shot together for this series. Once again, the pair are having exactly the type of adventures that I’d want to have with a TARDIS - inviting yourself to a 1920s party, meeting people like Agatha Christie… effectively everything up until they discover The Body in the Library. Donna of the Chiswick Nobles, and The Man in the Brown Suit, flitting through time and space, Destination Unknown, just having a laugh.

And ‘having a laugh’ really is the right turn of phrase for this one, because there’s so much in this episode that makes me laugh out loud - even now when I’ve watched it perhaps more than any other modern episode. My notes today are filled again with lots of lines of dialogue which really sets me off - but my favourite has to be Donna’s discussion with Agatha about men, when she muses that her husband-to-be went off not with another woman, but with a giant spider instead. Oh, I’d forgotten that bit and it made me hoot.

I’m also always impressed by the way that everything hangs together as an Agatha Christie episode. In ‘The Writer’s Tale’, Russell T Davies points out how tricky it is to find an alien for pairing with Christie, because it’s not as obvious as putting Charles Dickens with ghosts, or Shakespeare with Witches. Somehow, though, the whole Giant Wasp situation really holds up, and I think it’s because it manages to take a murder mystery - the one thing that is a must in the Agatha Christie tale - and mesh it nicely with the format of Doctor Who. I can’t say that I actually worked out who the murderer was first time around, but it’s always nice going back and watching it with that knowledge, because there’s a number of little hints seeded in for us to find - though I’m not sure anyone could have pieced them together properly! Did any of you lot work it out first time? Or was it guesswork, like with me?

I’m possibly biassed because I’ve spent so long thinking of this one as being among my very favourite episodes, but I really can’t fault it, and it’s a massive turn around from yesterday! The latter half of Series Four is generally considered, I think, to be some of the strongest Doctor Who ever produced, and if it can keep appealing to me as this one has, then I’m in for a real treat over the next few days.

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…