Spotlight on Doctor Who 2005
 
 


“He’s back – and it’s about time”. So ran the tagline for Paul McGann’s debut in 1996, seven years after Sylvester McCoy wandered off into the sunset chatting to Ace about tea getting cold. Well, we’ll run the same tagline again in 2005 because it applies just as well now as it did then. We couldn’t have given that incarnation’s adventure the 2005 tagline of “it’s the trip of a lifetime” though, which proved so appropriate when Christopher Eccleston boarded the TARDIS earlier this year.

  Those cynics among us wondered if any new series could possibly live up to all the hype that the BBC publicity machine had mustered to promote it. With all the endless mini-trailers, plus the “trip of a lifetime” variants shown in the weeks beforehand, it was very, very easy to adopt the attitude that there was no way this was going to live up to expectations, however much we might wish it would do.

Well, we were wrong. Well wrong. Gloriously wrong.

Even though by virtue of the fact that any first episode has to establish the basics of a new series, even if it’s one that has been around before, Rose still crams one hell of a lot in with style and flair into its 45 minutes, and provides pace only where needed. It introduces us to a new Doctor, or The Doctor for anyone under the age of 9, the TARDIS in all its spooky, cathedral-like glory, Rose Tyler, our heroine of the piece, and mixes in other elements including her boyfriend Mickey and mother Jackie. Coupled with the basic plot of a story run in the original series 35 years before – hey, no one said everything had to be original? – and you have an entertaining episode that pulls no punches. Right from the word go, we as the audience are brought along on this madcap tale of alien invasion by living plastic dummies called Autons through Rose’s eyes, taking it all in together sight unseen for the first time since the original series started. For this might be Doctor Who in name, but Rose proved it was light years apart from the original, and for the new audience a case of “first time around” anyway.

True, it has to be said the episode is not perfect, no 10 out of 10. Eccleston’s characterisation comes across as a cheeky know-it-all who often actually doesn’t, but is still very likeable because unlike some previous Doctors you feel that he actually does have to work at it to save the day. Modesty is certainly not a trait you could give to this Doctor, who outwardly at least thinks a lot of himself. Sometimes he’s right to do so, but often it’s just bravado to hide something deep within, and his attitude can get a bit irritating. Rose’s boyfriend Mickey is actually less wooden – more plastic? - after he’s copied than when he’s human, and certainly gets the short end of the script which makes it rather easy to dismiss him as a stereotyped irritation the series could do without. Another seemingly superfluous character is Rose’s mother, who apart from flirting with the Doctor, comes across often as just another “blonde bimbo”. This is very unfortunate, as actors Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri are both far better than this episode would indicate.

However, all the other aspects of the episode work beautifully, from the effects which in the original series were often considered something of a joke, could have no such accusation levelled here, through production values such as sets and costumes, especially the magnificent TARDIS set – though I personally don’t approve of having the police box doors being part of the fabric of a very alien set – to the episode’s central character, Rose herself. Many, including myself, felt it could be a mistake to have cast former pop starlet Billie Piper in the role. How wrong can you be? Her performance as Rose, taking the new situation she finds herself in from the moment the Doctor blows up the shop she works in through to being attacked and menaced by a rampaging, headless copy of Mickey and entering the TARDIS for the first time before literally saving the day when the Doctor is held prisoner in the Nestene Consciousness’ hideout, is absolutely right on the nail, first class, from the word go. Billie may not have a long CV of acting credits, but she certainly proved she was up to the task and immediately dismissed any doubts about her being right for the role.

The script by Russell T. Davies is at turns serious and jokey, and while the plot may take second place to introduction of all the main series elements, it still evokes much of the old series while introducing a new, more energetic feel. Dialogue highlights include the oft-quoted “lots of planets have a north” and the Doctor’s explanation to Rose about who he is and while Davies may not write the most complex stories or even possibly the best episodes of the series, he cannot be faulted for his character-driven dialogue. A good start for a series after such a long break, and one that had the critics shouting “Encore!” for rather than “Get off!” as they had often done during the original’s run.

For Rose’s first real trip in the TARDIS rather than short hops around London, the next episode The End of the World sees the Doctor taking her into the far future to see the day when the sun expands and Earth dies. Long since abandoned by Man, its time is up and rather than leap in and save it as Rose expects, the Doctor has brought her to witness its destruction from Platform One, an observation deck there for that purpose and host to many alien representatives including the Moxx of Balhoon, the Adherents of the Repeated Meme, the Tree People and the Lady Cassandra, who considers herself to be the only ‘pure’ human left despite being no more than a brain in a jar with a sheet of stretched skin on a frame for a body! Unfortunately, although a social event, it isn’t long before someone tries their hand at sabotage using little robotic spiders and although the culprits would seem to be the Adherents, it later becomes apparent that Cassandra has engineered the whole thing to provoke a hostage situation in order to fund her continuing cosmetic operations. She escapes by teleport leaving the Doctor and one of the Tree People, Jabe, to make the repairs necessary. Jabe, like many of the aliens, doesn’t survive to tell the tale, but neither does Cassandra when the Doctor does a nifty bit of tinkering and returns her without the attendants she needs to keep her from drying out and she disintegrates.

This episode was a special effects extravaganza, taking the majority of the work for the series, and it could well be implied that it was a case of gloss over substance. The basic premise combines part of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy storyline, that of the Restaurant at the end of the Universe, with a ‘whodunnit’ and while it works well, that all it can ever be considered to be. That’s not to say that it’s not well done in every sense, but like Rose, The End of the World – and also written by Davies – isn’t much more than a “look at us, look at us!”, new Doctor Who’s version of the Star Wars cantina sequence to showcase that yes, British tv can do convincing aliens and lots of them, and that this sort of slick production is not just the province of the Americans; it never really has been of course, but is considered by the wrong people to be true. End… proved otherwise, but the story is still fairly lightweight behind that gloss.

Eccleston’s Doctor grows on you during this episode, especially when we find out that he is the last of the Time Lords and has plenty of baggage himself because of that. His self-assuredness is well and truly in place, but this time he’s much more readily likeable as Eccleston himself has grown into the part by the time it came to recording the episode. Piper builds on her performance in Rose and her reactions to meeting aliens for the first time – especially the Moxx of Balhoon’s pleghmy greeting – is a joy to watch. The visiting aliens all look the part, with an elegant portrayal by Yasmin Bannerman as Jabe and a lovely, bitchy voiceover by Zoe Wannamaker for Cassandra.

I especially liked the dialogue “Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion”, for without the former and the latter it could probably make our world a more peaceful place too.

It is in the third episode that old and new series collide and show what can be done when all the ingredients come together. The Unquiet Dead had the right Whovian ring of doom in its title so from the off this is a tour de force. Taking Rose back in time, supposedly to Naples in 1860, he lands the TARDIS up in Cardiff in 1869 on Christmas Eve. But this is no ordinary Christmas Eve because from the local undertakers of Sneed and Company, the dead are walking. The latest, an old grandmother, goes off to the theatre as she had planned to do to see noted, but jaded, author Charles Dickens give a reading of “A Christmas Carol”. While there, ectoplasmic lifeforms leave her and cause a mass panic. The old woman is captured once more by Sneed and his maid Gwyneth, but are spotted by Rose and as she tries to free the woman, she too is taken. The Doctor commandeers Dickens’ carriage and they set off in pursuit. At the chapel of rest, Rose is attacked by walking corpses animated by the Gelth, who the Doctor contacts during a séance conducted by the time-sensitive Gwyneth. The Gelth lost their physical forms during the Time War and want to take the corpses so they can again have a physical form. This is agreed to, but the Gelth trick them all; the time rift that has made Gwyneth sensitive is being used by their bridgehead and they are many in number, wanting to burst through, kill all the humans and take their bodies. Dickens flees when the Doctor and Rose are trapped, but when he realises how he can defeat them he returns and they escape. Gwyneth was dead as soon as she opened the rift for the Gelth she considered to be ‘angels’, but even so she manages to destroy the house in flame when the gas is turned full on. Dickens is reinvigorated by his adventure and vows to write his experiences into “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, but as the TARDIS dematerialises the Doctor informs Rose that he’ll not get the chance as he’ll die before the book is complete.

The first new series episode to be written by a different author, fan and League of Gentleman writer Mark Gatiss, this episode looked like an old chocolate box and had plenty of delicious soft centres by way of scripting, performance and set pieces. The costume drama is always something the BBC does well and this episode was no different, and with the Christmas setting it made it homely at the same time as making it ghoulish with walking corpses, séances and apparitions flying about all over, an effect that was again well realised. An excellent main guest cast of Alan David as Sneed, Eve Myles as Gwyneth and Simon Callow as Dickens complimented Eccleston and Piper well, both of whom by this time were well into their own portrayals. This episode harked back to some of the original series best stories such as Pyramids of Mars and Talons of Weng-Chiang for links and theory and as is the Doctor’s propensity in the past for name-dropping, this time we actually see him meet one of his own heroes. Eccleston plays the first meeting with Dickens as very much the over-enthusiastic fan with a great comedic touch but isn’t long before he pulls back and the Doctor takes him as just another human being.

If it had been on at Christmas last year, this episode would have been made a wonderful alternative to the usual Christmas Day fare, but as it is it really shows the series kicking into overdrive for the first time, a tribute to all involved especially Euros Lyn who also directed The End of the World but who was obviously more suited to this style of story.

By contrast, the following two episodes see the series slipping back a little to how it started out with Rose and to be honest this can be expected, partly from the point that the two part story is also set in present day London and partly because the episodes are likewise directed by Rose’s helmsman, Keith Boak. While Boak is a competent enough director, his style is not the most suited to Doctor Who’s format, new or old, with others such as Unquiet Dead’s Euros Lyn producing much better results.

Aliens of London and World War Three see Rose’s return to present-day London, only a year after she left instead of the Doctor’s promised twelve hours, and their involvement with the first ‘official’ human ‘first contact’ when a damaged alien ship crash lands in the Thames. The pilot’s body is taken away and the Doctor discovers it is a hoax perpetrated by the real aliens. The Slitheen, a family of commercialistic aliens from Raxacoricofallapatorius, have killed members of the Government and are using their skins as disguises, giving them the power as the only members of Parliament not to evacuate London – cowards! The Doctor, Rose and various alien experts are brought to Downing Street supposedly to discuss the situation, but the Slitheen intend to get rid of all the scientists in one go. This they do, apart from the Doctor, who along with Rose and MP for Flydale North, Harriet Jones, becomes trapped in the reinforced Cabinet Room. The aliens provide proof that an alien mothership – their’s of course – is hovering over Earth and must be destroyed before it invades. They obtain the release codes for nuclear missiles with the supposed intention of destroying the mothership, but with the real intention of turning them on Earth itself and turning the planet into a stockpile of radioactive fuel they can sell to the highest bidder. Unable to do it himself from the isolated room, the Doctor and Rose call Mickey at home and the Doctor directs him to use access from the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce website to fire a conventional missile at the main offices in Downing Street, hoping he and his friends will survive inside the armour-plated room. This they do, though nothing is left of the rest of the Government street. With the earlier death of the Prime Minister, Harriet leaves the Doctor and Rose to go and brief the press, little knowing that she’ll become Prime Minister very soon. Rose has to make another decision – to stay or to go with the Doctor and Jackie has to decide whether to trust her daughter to the care of this man who she’s already clobbered for making her disappear for a year…

As an “alien invasion” story, this was pretty good, well realised with some excellent costumes for the Slitheen and for the hoax “pig spaceman”. The model work, especially the damaged ship crashing through Big Ben and into the Thames, was marvellous, handled by original series contributor Mike Tucker. The premise for the story was well defined, with the hoax concept diverting attention in the early part of the story nicely while the Slitheen get on with making inroads into seizing control. The concept of repercussions of the Doctor’s travels and mistakes – returning a year late causing a missing person hunt for Rose in which Mickey is chief suspect – is also one that the original series never properly touched on and the consequences this time are shown well. Many of the performances are likewise excellent, with both Camille Coduri and Noel Clarke getting much more meat to work with and their characters become far more rounded and likeable than in their first appearance, to be expected but not necessarily something that would happen. Guest artists of note include Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones MP, although she only really gets much to do in the second half of the story, and Annette Badland as the female Slitheen, whose on-screen chemistry with Eccleston in this episode speaks volumes for her as an underrated acting talent.

The only big problem with this story really is that too much is made of some of the more laughable aspects. The gas exchanger machinery designed to fit a Slitheen into a suit, mentioned time and again, is only used to explain why the aliens keep breaking wind all the time and that particular schoolboy joke pails when it’s used as often as it is her; it wouldn’t have been so bad had it been a plot point on how the Doctor would defeat them. This playing for laughs got rather out of hand, and should have been toned down by Boak in his direction, and could have been as the “space pig” scenes, which could indeed have been played for laughs, are played as anything but; Eccleston filmed these on his first day and the temptation to ham them up (if you’ll pardon the pun) when faced by a space-suited figure with a perfect pig’s head running down the corridor making frightened squealing noises before it is shot by the Army must have been considerable. Yet the whole section is actually handled well, with sympathy for the poor animal from the Doctor and makes the proper dramatic impact when revealed to be the hoax it is; this style should have been brought to the Slitheen sections more.

The eventual hacking into UNIT’s website and directing missiles at Downing Street also seemed a bit easy; it’s a wonder no foreign power had done it before if a couple of passwords and a home PC could do it, even if Mickey did have the Doctor’s help! The editing of these episodes was a bit suspect, and at least a minute’s worth of material should have been cut from both episodes to tighten them up, both for pacing and for the humorous scripting. Still, even with these negatives, the story was still very entertaining – the intention after all? – and though obviously going to appeal to the children in the audience more for its big green monsters and schoolyard humour, there was still a good, basic story there for the adults in the audience.

If the two-parter could be considered one of the series’ low points, the next episode was anything but. Dalek. Not much more needs to be said – or does it? The return of the metal monsters from Skaro was obviously going to be a major selling point and one that was wisely kept back until around midway through the series in effect to give it a second launch. However, it was also possible that the series could fall at this point, what with all the inevitable Dalek jokes about sink plungers, egg whisks and inability to climb stairs still being around for the critic’s use. Would they be able to employ them this time?

A signal from somewhere in Utah in the yeah 2010 draws the Doctor and Rose to an underground complex, home of the collection of Henry Van Statten, a billionaire who collects anything alien – even an old Slitheen claw and a Cyberman helmet! He also has a “live” exhibit he has named the “Metaltron” which he has the Doctor shown when he and Rose are captured. The Doctor is horrified; for the creature is none other than a Dalek, battered and chained up, but still his mortal enemy, even if it doesn’t have the ability to kill him. He tries to destroy it, but is prevented from doing so by Van Statten and his men. The billionaire has him tortured to find out more about the Doctor as an alien; after all, he now has two live aliens in his collection. In the meantime, Rose, who has become pally with English alien artefact adviser Adam, goes to visit the Dalek and feels sorry for the creature. It exploits her pity and in the process she touches it. This is all it needs; taking Rose’s DNA as a time traveller triggers its own regeneration and it breaks free, renewing itself and tearing through the underground base like some mobile gun platform, unstoppable even able to levitate. The Doctor and Van Statten join forces to try and contain it, and although they do so at the cost of the lives of nearly all his men, they also shut Rose in with it. It seems to the Doctor that Rose has been exterminated by it, but this is one wily Dalek; it has kept her alive to use as a bargaining point. It tells her it wants to be free, it wants to feel the sunlight again. Clearly, this is no ordinary Dalek that emerges with Rose when the Doctor opens the way through. Still, the terror the Daleks have generated in him, and the memory of the Time War and what concluding that did to his own people, the Time Lords, nearly drives the Doctor to the edge, for while the Dalek becomes more and more passive, he becomes more and more aggressive and in the final confrontation he levels a giant rifle at it, ordering Rose to stand aside. She refuses; the mutant within the casing opens it up and they both see that not only is the last of its kind in the universe – as is the Doctor – but it is no longer pure Dalek, having absorbed some of Rose’s humanity during its regeneration. Faced with the fact that it is really no longer a Dalek, it self-destructs. Van Statten is arrested by his second-in-command and Adam joins Rose and the Doctor in their travels…

Were the critics able to employ their jokes? No, absolutely not. Those jokes are now firmly rooted in the series’ past. From the opening scenes with the Doctor and Rose arriving and looking through the exhibits – interesting choice of type of Cyberman helmet, one that shouldn’t have been there as far as we know… - you get the impression that here is an episode that could easily be labelled ‘feature film.’ The direction by Joe Ahearne is second to none, and he brings an epic movie quality to the story that works so well. I may have said earlier that American shows are often perceived as more polished in this genre than British ones and how the series so far would do much to debunk this notion. I’d have to say that give an American audience Dalek and they’d be asking who made it – Fox, Universal, Paramount? With an American setting and cast – who mostly aren’t American of course! – and the execution and presentation, I bet a lot of viewers over that side of the pond wouldn’t believe they were watching a British show. The excellent story by Robert Shearman shows a side to the Daleks that has never been seen on tv before – emotion. While they have always been big on racial purity – after all, they exterminate any race because it is not Dalek – the consequences of becoming impure as this one does is an extremely radical idea for them and one that is handled beautifully, both in script and on screen. It also brings the Daleks back as characters in their own right; for too long playing second fiddle to their creator Davros, this story shows the lone Dalek employing a wide range of states of mind, from the poor, pathetic creature that is tortured by Van Statten’s men in its holding pen through the wily creature that first goads the Doctor before he tries to initially destroy it and then gains Rose’s sympathy in order to get the woman to touch it and bring about its renewal, to the strategic cunning in its battle with Van Statten’s men where instead of blasting each individually it gives them a soaking from the fire sprinklers before firing at the water to electrocute them. Finally we have the emotional Dalek, questioning its own purpose in life now it knows itself to be alone in the universe and no longer the pure Dalek it originally was. No one could have expected to feel sorry for a Dalek before this episode, but by the end of it no one could expect not to. If that’s not down to a combination of good writing, direction, production and performance, not only from the human cast but also from the Dalek, I don’t know what is. A special mention has to go to Nicholas Briggs, whose vocal talents as the voice of the Dalek really went a long way into turning it into a fully-fledged character. I said I wouldn’t give Rose 10 out of 10 before; if any episode deserves it from this series, this has got to be one of the contenders – and there are others to come…

Sadly the next episode, The Long Game, is not in the same league and in fact I would have to rate it as the complete opposite end of the spectrum – however, let me state here and now that doesn’t mean it’s a terrible episode. Arriving on Satellite Five, 200,000 years in the future, ostensibly it is supposed to be a time of vigour and grandeur in Earth’s imperialistic history. But in reality it is a time of stagnation. All those aboard the station report the news from throughout the galaxy for the benefit of Mankind. But that is all that happens; Mankind no longer makes the news and is really limited to the role of spectator. In a hothouse atmosphere, the Doctor, Rose and Adam view a demonstration on reporting the news using a group of researchers connected to a information-gathering network by implants in their heads, during which one of them, Suki, gains a rapid promotion to Floor 500 from their current level of 139. Head researcher Cathica is suspicious; no one earns a promotion that fast and she is right. Suki has been detected by the Editor, the man in charge of Satellite Five’s human operations as someone with a dual personality, and when Suki arrives on Floor 500 – an icebound level far from the stories of streets paved with gold they’ve all been promised – she is unmasked mentally and introduced to the station’s real owner. The Doctor is growing more suspicious of what is going on – Mankind seems to have been stagnating since the time the station came online – and starts investigating, coming to the Editor’s attention. Meanwhile, Adam has decided to use his time travelling to carve out his own future wellbeing, and after an abortive call on Rose’s souped-up mobile phone to his own home answering machine, he finally decides to get proper access to the information that could make him rich; information he should not know in his own time. He has the implant for linking to the network and when the Doctor and Rose are taken before the Editor and questioned, Adam’s access is reversed and his knowledge of the TARDIS and the Doctor are used against them. They discover that the Human empire is in fact being run by the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodonfoe, a huge creature in the rafters of Floor 500, and who needs the cold atmosphere – which is why it was so hot on the lower floors. It looks like curtains for the time travellers, but the Editor and Jagrafess have reckoned without Cathica – goaded by the Doctor that she is not a journalist unless she, and everyone else, starts asking questions again. The woman follows the Doctor and Rose to Floor 500 and using derelict network machinery links herself into the system and reverses the heating controls. She and her friends escape as the Jagrafess overheats and explodes, smothering the Editor and his zombie-like controllers. After this mishap, the Doctor unceremoniously dumps Adam back home, wiping the answerphone message he left during the access that got them caught, and warns him he’ll have to live a very quiet life. After all, what would people think if they saw the implant, invisible until a click of the fingers opens a trapdoor in his forehead…

However enjoyably entertaining this episode was on the surface, after Dalek it came as a big disappointment. The basic plot – big monster in the rafters keeps mankind to do its bidding and is destroyed when the fans are turned off – is just that, very basic. Director Brian Grant, helming his one and only episode of the series, provides a competent enough job, but is nearer the style of Keith Boak than Euros Lyn or Joe Ahearne, and as such seems to be just going through the motions much of the time. Simon Pegg makes a good villain as the Editor as opposed to the Jagrafess itself which is very disappointing. Anna Maxwell-Martin is only okay as Suki, while true honours should go to Christine Adams as Cathica and Tamsin Grieg as the nurse who performs Adam’s implant. As far as Adam himself… personally I can only say I breathed a sigh of relief when the Doctor dumped him back home. Wetter than a fish, Adam was never long-term companion material and Bruno Langley, while doing what he could with the material he was given, couldn’t really rescue him from being just that. This was an Adric for the 21st century – but thank goodness we got shot of him quicker than the 80’s Alzarian. In fact, his getting left behind was probably the high point of this episode for me! If Dalek was the tops of the season, The Long Game was most definitely the bottom. Did this bode ill for the remainder of the series, especially as it was written again by Russell T. Davies who would be writing three of the six episodes? Stay tuned…

 


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article copyright PPS / M.Hearn 2005