Day 712: Tooth and Claw

Tooth and Claw. It's a story with two main driving forces behind it, character and plot. Both work well, and at least one sets out the tone for what will be the rest of the series.

Looking at plot, it's fairly basic. A brotherhood of monks who worship a werewolf have conspired to kidnap Queen Victoria to turn her into a werewolf. How the plot chooses to present itself, then, is by presenting what is a quite well done action movie. The first half, aside from a well-choreographed pre-titles sequence, is a fairly slow affair, letting tension build up around the wolf. This tension is then let loose in the second half, with a series of scenes where characters run down corridors and try to escape the fairly impressive CGI wolf. This is all very well directed by Euros Lyn, who presents a lot of it as quick shots, keeping the pace and making the wolf a palpable threat. Similarly, Murray Gold, the composer, makes the wolf into something truly epic with his excellent score, and the Director of Photography, Rory Taylor, imbues the story with a certain darkness, with everything feeling slightly grey, misty, and frightening. All in all, a well produced story of Doctor Who that's entertaining, but not much else.

But that's slightly wrong. Because the characters of the Doctor and Rose within this story are almost unbearable. They're joking about, laughing in the face of danger, even as other people are dying, and seeming to not take everything completely seriously. And what's important is that they're called out on this behaviour. Queen Victoria exiles them from the British Empire and sets up an entire institute dedicated into sorting out problems from alien worlds, known as Torchwood, explicitly as a warning to the Doctor. The Tenth Doctor with Rose is a dangerous pairing because they have become slightly too smug, slightly too happy with the way in which they work together. And this is becoming a problem, and even more notably, this is becoming a problem in their first proper story together (Tennant was missing from half of The Christmas Invasion and they spent much of their time together in New Earth with one of them possessed by Cassandra). Clearly, this series is going to be focussing on their relationship together, because it's not quite OK and something will need to happen to change things for them, possibly with disastrous consequences.

Day 711: New Earth

I'm never quite sure what to make of this episode. Every time that I watch it, I always slightly look forward to it, because there are several good things within the story. And yet, the final result always leaves me feeling slightly cold.

I think that it's because of one key factor: David Tennant. He's fantastic in the role here, again, bringing energy, intensity, and empathy (this episode marks the first instance of him saying "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry" in the series, incidentally). But the episode is clearly structured around him and his performance as the Doctor, in an attempt to show off this new Doctor and get people excited for him. And it works, because he's fantastic in the role, but to an audience viewing the story in hindsight, they're already familiar with the character, so there's not much to get them involved as well. To put it more succinctly, there's no real replay value to this story.

But it's not explicitly bad, and it does at least attempt to do interesting things. Cassandra's return is intelligently handled, treating her with a clear character development as she goes from comic relief to a slightly tragic figure. Similarly, the general conceit of the story focussing around breeding people as testing grounds for diseases, whilst thoroughly disturbing, is all too plausible. But aside from these points, there's not much that will get me to enjoy New Earth. Maybe they'll shine for me the next time I watch it. At the very least, it does have one of the funniest performances in all of Doctor Who's history...

Day 710: The Christmas Invasion

This feels weird. In case you hadn't noticed, I took most of November off to focus on my studies, deciding that an appropriate stopping point would be 'The Parting of the Ways', the last story to feature Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. So today I resumed this grand adventure with 'The Christmas Invasion', with a new Doctor: David Tennant. And it felt a bit weird because it had been a long time since I sat down and watched an older episode of Doctor Who. Whilst I have been keeping up to date with the current series, this story still felt like a step back into the past, and I'm not sure that I was ready for it. Everything felt slightly different, from the lighting to the direction, to the writing, everything just didn't quite gel. Which is weird, as I've watched this story countless times, so I should know it like the back of my hand.

I loved Tennant's first series when I was younger. In many ways, I was the perfect age for it: 11, going on 12, a young kid ready to be excited by alien monsters and eccentric heroes. And watching this episode, I can't help but be reminded of how much I loved that time. Because this story feels like it's part of a completely new era: one filled with energy and adventure. There's so much action in this story; within the first ten minutes we're attacked by robotic Father Christmases, then in the next ten, we're facing a deadly Christmas tree. And that's not forgetting the sword-fight that makes up the climax of the story. It's all a stark contrast to the last episode we encountered, where there was action, but it was all leading up to a key inaction by the Doctor, opposed to here, where the action leading up to the Doctor arriving only intensifies when he finally appears.

But the interesting thing that I found about this story is that it takes such a long time for Tennant to appear. He comes and goes in brief flashes throughout the story, but he only fully appears in the last twenty minutes or so. And this is an incredible gamble on the part of Russell T Davies, writer and showrunner, to hold off introducing his new Doctor for such a long time. Because he runs the risk of him not being fully formed in the role, leaving the audience with half of an idea of what the Doctor is rather than being fully prepared for their new hero (remember that 'Rose' featured the Doctor fairly regularly for much of its 45 minute running time, and similar things will be said about forthcoming post-regeneration stories 'The Eleventh Hour' and 'Deep Breath'). But it's a gamble that arguably works, with Tennant arriving into the role and giving a performance that's reasonably consistent with what we'll see throughout his tenure. He's energetic, bright, and has flashes of darkness that can disappear at an instant, but return again with more fury than you can possibly imagine. And it's a performance that can allow you to forgive the story for not letting you experience that Doctor for longer because that single short burst is more than enough to get you engaged and excited about the story.

And so Tennant's performance became this story's saving grace for me. I went from being slightly challenged by the different form of storytelling employed for this adventure to being excited for the time that I have ahead of me with this New Doctor. And, as I look at the ever dwindling list of stories that I have left to cover, I can look ahead to them and say We've Got Work To Do!

Blog Update - Time for a Break

Hullo. I'm just writing this to let you know that, after having 700 or so days of uninterrupted posts on this blog, I'm going to be taking a fairly large break of around a couple of weeks or so. The reason for this break suddenly dawned on me earlier this week, when I was typing up my entry for Father's Day. As I typed away, I looked at myself and realised that I should be doing some work on various Uni projects that would be due in soon. Normally, I'd have been able to balance this blog and Uni work effectively, due to the fact that the episodes were only 25 minutes long and didn't take too much out of my day. But with the advent of 45 minute episodes, as well as the fact that entire stories have been concentrated within those 45 minutes, it's meant that I've been spending more time watching the episodes, and also writing about them for the blog. So the time has come for me to take a break until all of my exams are over, which should be around the end of the month. I'm going to miss my daily episode of Doctor Who, but I need to focus on Uni at the moment, and put the blog to one side. So I guess that I'll be back at some point in the future, as right at the moment, We've Got Work To Do!

Day 709: The Parting of the Ways

Amongst the many fantastic things in this episode, the most amazing of them all is the regeneration from the Ninth Doctor to the Tenth Doctor. It begins with the Doctor knowing that he's going to die, but talking with Rose as if everything's normal. But something's clearly different, because the Doctor's nervously making jokes, and saying things that don't really make sense. Just as Rose begins to figure out that something's wrong, a burst of energy comes from the Doctor's body. He contains it, but it's now absolutely clear to him what's going to happen.

And in this brief moment, he comes to terms with everything. This damaged Doctor thanks Rose for the time that they've spent together, and then remarks that he's been pretty good as well. It's the culmination of the entire character arc that the Doctor has gone through, as he finally accepts himself as the Doctor and allows himself to be truly content with the way that he is. This is a man who has faced all sorts of horrors in the Time War, and has been left alone in the Universe. He's gone on a journey of healing, culminating in his death and rebirth.

And this death and rebirth is different from every other regeneration that we've seen so far. It's almost triumphant with the Doctor embracing it with a smile, and standing up, ready to take his end and be born again. It's a happy moment, and one of my personal favourite regeneration scenes in the history of Doctor Who.