Day 756: The End of Time Part 2

Part 2 of The End of Time is, after watching it again, actually quite good. I think I always picked up an air of negativity about this episode from various fan podcasts and reviews that I engaged with after this episode, which led me to have a reasonably poor image of this story in my head. Combined with the fact that my knee once dislocated whilst talking with friends about this episode (Other great knee dislocation stories include trying to get in a car and falling over, and sitting down on a lounge), and it stands to reason that my memories of this episode may not necessarily be fond. And yet, I still somewhat admire quite a fair bit of this episode for what it is.

To me, there are three parts of The End of Time Part 2 that make it what it is. The first is the sense of fun that permeates through the whole episode. A fair chunk of the first 45 minutes of the episode is content with being light and fun, albeit with slightly greater stakes than usual. A scene where the Doctor is captured by the Master, whilst it could have been written as the Doctor's weakest moment, instead turns into a scene with a little bit of bondage related subtext that just feels right for the tone of the series - a tone that allows for drama to be told but with an underlying knowledge that the audience wants to have fun as they watch it. This carries through much of the episode, such as the "worst rescue ever", or the gleeful scene of seeing the TIE Fighter scene from A New Hope rewritten to feature Bernard Cribbins and one of the cast from Horrible Histories as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. This simple allowance for the story to have fun makes it all the more enjoyable and helps alleviate some of the problems that the first half of The End of Time had.

Of course, one of the other great parts of The End of Time is Bernard Cribbins as Wilf. All of his scenes are perfect, because he brings the viewpoint of a simple normal person. When he's sent into space, whilst everyone else runs through the ship, trying to prevent a further calamity, he just stares wistfully at the Earth, allowing the beauty of the situation to sink in. His scene with the Doctor where he tries to give him the gun is so beautiful because of Cribbin's performance. As he cries over the fact that he's trying to save the Doctor, it's not overplayed, instead feeling absolutely real. Cribbins represents one of the great actors that Doctor Who has had, and his appearance in this story makes every scene he's in all the better.

Except, unfortunately, for one of the last scenes. The Doctor's decision to have a little tantrum over the fact that he's morally bound to rescue Wilf, and in the process of doing so kill himself, just doesn't work in my opinion. It reveals the Tenth Doctor to be quite a selfish person, and damages the overall character of the Doctor in my opinion. The scene is slightly rescued when the Doctor makes the offhand remark that he's lived too long, that helps give the impression that he himself has realised that he's not acting as he should be, and that maybe it's time for the new guy to take over. But even that is slightly ruined by the Tenth Doctor's final words. Approaching his oncoming death with the words "I don't want to go", whilst interesting and quite beautiful for some people, doesn't quite work for the Doctor.

The writer Terrance Dicks once famously described the Doctor as "never cruel nor cowardly" In his final Doctor Who story, Davies has written a Doctor that can be both of those things, cruel to Wilf, a man who would do anything for the Doctor, and cowardly in the face of his oncoming demise. Whilst I'm still able to enjoy this story, I think that it's time for a change, and I openly welcome the era of Matt Smith and Steven Moffat.

Day 755: The End of Time Part 1

There are many problems with The End of Time, in my opinion. Leaving behind the issues with Tennant's death, which we'll deal with in the second half tomorrow (where we'll hopefully get to some of the better parts of this story), the first half has its own myriad of issues.

I think that the largest issue is in the story's treatment of the Master. It decides that, instead of allowing the Master to be as he was before, where he was slightly unhinged but still in control of his situation, the production team decide to make the Master go completely insane. He literally jumps across the screen, turning into a mixture of Skeletor and Iron Man as he flies through wastelands, firing off electric beams as he dances. It looks impressive, but it doesn't quite allow for us to see the character as something that is engages on any sort of intellectual front. There's no equivalent scene of the phone call in The Sound of Drums, instead we're left with the Master eating turkey in less than seven seconds flat.

There's also the issue of the fact that the story is stuck with having to build up to a big finale. Normally, being part one of a two part story has not really been an issue for the Russell T Davies era, with Davies ensuring that enough happens in the first half so as to keep the audience's interest, while at the same time holding enough back for the finale to ensure that it's worth sticking around for. But the problem here is that Davies has held too much back for the finale, so we're stuck with an hour of waiting for the dual revelations that the Master has turned the human race into the Master race (which is too good a pun for me to say is a bad idea) and that the Time Lords are returning. Both of these ideas are strong, and both will be dealt with reasonably well in the second half of the story, the only problem is that the rest of the episode lacks anything meaty, instead leaving us with just the bare bones of a story.

Still, I'm fairly sure that things will improve when the second half of this story come along tomorrow. Then again, I'm also fairly sure that things will end up getting worse...

Day 747: Forest of the Dead

I have to say, my relationship with Forest of the Dead is one that has evolved over time. On first viewing, I didn't actually care a great deal about it. Yes, I speculated about who River Song was in the lead-up to this episode, but when it first aired on Australian television, I actually found that I wasn't that engaged by it, possibly due to the fact that I was doing my Maths homework at the same time as watching it. But every viewing after that first bad impression has made me re-evaluate it, making it better and better. And the joy is that this is something that's still happening, because even yesterday I stated that I thought that this two-parter was Moffat's weakest for Davies. Now, I'd be inclined to say that it's his best.

There are so many reasons as to why I've come to think this. There's the horror of being in a virtual dream-state of a world, where you believe that everything is real despite the fact that it doesn't make complete logical sense. It's something that taps into my inner hypnophobia, or fear of sleep, where I occasionally have panic attacks about my state of mind when dreaming. The entire idea of a loss of control over such basic mental processes frightens me, and yet it is something that we deal with on a regular basis. It's one of the more overlooked things in Moffat's script - most people focus on the fact that he tried to make shadows scary. I'd argue that he succeeded in making dreaming scary.

There's also, of course, River Song's story. While yesterday I bemoaned the fact that knowing River's backstory with the Doctor takes a whole lot of the fun out of the adventure, in Forest of the Dead it makes it all the better. Given the events of The Husbands of River Song, where we see the Doctor's penultimate encounter with River, and where the groundwork is laid for the ending here, it makes the ending all the more heartbreaking. We see this character that we know so well die such that her future time with the Doctor can be preserved, and her speaking of the Doctor with the suit and new haircut immediately brings to mind Capaldi's beautiful performance in The Husbands of River Song. And of course, it makes it the ending triumphant as well, because when the Doctor realises that how to save River, it doesn't feel like Tennant coming to this realisation, it feels like we're seeing the final leg of a relay race, where Tennant, Capaldi and Smith have been constantly running through time and space to try and rescue River. It's a beautiful moment, and helped me to re-evaluate this story immensely, making it one in a long line of Doctor Who episodes that I'm glad I watched again as part of this blog's voyage through time and space.

Day 746: Silence in the Library

It's become incredibly difficult to experience Silence in the Library, and its follow-up story Forest of the Dead, as they were originally intended. It's not any fault of the story itself, which is otherwise rather fine, if perhaps the weakest of the four stories that Steven Moffat wrote under Russell T Davies. Instead, it's a problem with the way in which the series developed after these episodes aired.

You see, this story features the first appearance of River Song, not just for the Doctor, but for the audience as well. Our reaction to her, as originally written, should be confusion and a sense of unwariness, because we're encountering this person who supposedly knows the Doctor from the future, and yet we've never seen her before in our lives. Moments like her revealing her own sonic screwdriver, or the fact that she's overly familiar with the Doctor are clearly written and directed as if they should be quietly shocking, and yet they aren't.

The reason is, of course, that we've met River Song countless times over the course of the series, it's just that we've met her in episodes after Silence in the Library. And because she's such a prevalent character, all of the mystery that originally surrounded her is now lost. Even the most recently broadcast episode, The Husbands of River Song, explained the presence of her sonic screwdriver in this episode. And whilst this is a necessary thing in terms of the overall structure of the series, I can't help but feel a bit sad that I won't get to experience that original mystery about this character again.

I can't help but miss the joy of fan speculation as to who River Song is, as well as other things like what happened to Donna in the cliffhanger, or the meaning of CAL. I remember going online and delving just a little bit deeper than I normally would into the world of the online Doctor Who fandom, which led to me discovering set reports, and like-minded fans who had their own crazy theories as to what happened. But that time is over now, and we've moved on with a new Doctor, and new stories to speculate about. Funnily enough, whilst writing this blog, I looked up some of those blogs earlier. One has devolved into a shadow of its former self. Another hasn't been updated since 2012. A further one just announced that they're going to be under new management. It's sad to see that they've gone away, it feels like some of that magic of a time gone by has passed on.

But still, time marches on, and other sites popped up to replace the old ones that I moved away from. And I can still speculate on other stuff forthcoming in the next series of Doctor Who. It's just a constant reminder, I suppose, that We've Got Work To Do!

Day 724: The Runaway Bride

The Runaway Bride begins the tradition of the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Yes, there was The Christmas Invasion the year previous, but that, as the first Christmas Special, felt more like a one-off episode, an actual special as opposed to an annual event. And besides this, The Runaway Bride feels as if it establishes so much for all of the Christmas Specials that follow it.

The first major influence is its size. The Runaway Bride feels big, such as the fact that Tennant's co-star is a well known comedian in the form of Catherine Tate, showing the draw that the series has in terms of the actors it can get. There's also the climax, featuring a Christmas Star descending on London and wreaking havoc, whilst the Doctor empties the Thames into a hole reaching to the centre of the Earth, or the scene where the TARDIS chases a taxi-cab on a motorway, which makes the story feel just that bit more epic than a normal episode. And whilst precedence for the epicness was arguably set for the specials with a spaceship over London in The Christmas Invasion, it doesn't quite match the scale of what's seen in The Runaway Bride.

And beyond this, The Runaway Bride is fun. I found myself laughing uproariously at this story, even though I've heard these jokes a dozen times. Tate is a well known comedian for a reason, she has an innate sense of how to make things funny. Her delivery is impeccable, such as on the taxi cab scene, or the "pencil in a mug" moment. What's more, she has a natural chemistry with Tennant, and it's little wonder why the two were brought back together for Tennant's third series. But that's in the future. Focussing on the present, there's also the direction of Euros Lyn to consider. He acknowledges the tone of the story as comedic and heightens it, giving the story a certain broadness with exaggerated camera movements and most likely encouraging the actors to heighten their performances as well.

It all adds up to a story that feels fun to watch, and imbues it with a certain 'special'-ness that makes it sl influential for every story that follows it. Even the upcoming special, The Husbands of River Song, on the basis of the trailer, looks to be more rompy than what surrounds it. And that aspect makes me look forward both to that episode, and indeed all upcoming Christmas Specials for this wonderful series that is Doctor Who.

Day 721: Fear Her

Fear Her is relentlessly disliked. In a recent survey in Doctor Who magazine, ranking all Doctor Who episodes from worst to best up until The Time of the Doctor, Fear Her was ranked 240th out of 241. The only story that it was better than was The Twin Dilemma, which is arguably a story that helped to speed along the cancellation of Doctor Who. So that should give you some idea of how much this story is hated. But why is there so much vitriol for this story? It's a question that I've asked myself time and time again, because I honestly can't see it.

Granted, this story isn't particularly good. It's a cheap episode, and it clearly shows, given that the episode goes out of its way to avoid showing effects shots, at one point substitution the monster with a red light. Similarly, while the episode does have an interesting hook to it: being that a child can draw pictures that kidnap people, it doesn't quite work on screen because it never really follows up on the premise by looking at the people affected by it. Compare Fear Her with The Idiot's Lantern, for instance. The Idiot's Lantern quite clearly shows people distressed by the threat of people being taken away in vans to some undisclosed location, and that shows itself in some emotionally charged scenes peppered throughout the episode. For Fear Her, we get a few scenes of people looking worried, and that's that. It's a failure both in terms of the story, because it should have clearly thought about the emotional impact of what is happening and the acting, which never truly is able to convey the emotion of having children abducted on a regular basis from that street.

But the story does succeed in some areas. It does have an interesting undercurrent dealing with an abusive father, which is a very different area for the series to go into, and I feel that if this sub-plot were part of a better written story, then it would be more well regarded. Also, the 'love conquers all' ending, whilst relentlessly cheesy, is still rather fun, and whilst I may have been laughing at certain moments (the line "We did see a flash of lightning earlier that seemed to strike him" never fails to make me laugh by how understated it is) rather than laughing with certain moments, at least I'm enjoying the story. Overall, it's not as bad as its reputation suggests, and certainly not the second worst episode of Doctor Who ever (<cough> Warrriors of the Deep <cough>). It's just a bit of light relief as the calm before the storm...

Day 717: The Idiot's Lantern

The Idiot's Lantern is, quite simply, a romp. It's a fun run-around in 1950's London with no major consequences for the series ahead. And whilst it generally succeeds in being watchable, it's mostly forgettable, aside from a few brief images and concepts. So what else is there to talk about with respect to this episode?

Well, there's Euros Lyn's direction, for a start. He has made the curious decision to shoot almost all of the episode on a Dutch angle, tilting the camera to one side so that everything looks slanted and slightly unnerving. And whilst this does create a certain amount of atmosphere in the episode, it is unfortunately over-used. This ended up taking me out of the story completely, because I became fixated on the angle that the camera was on, trying to figure out when it would go back to being normal again. So whilst Euros Lyn clearly had the best of intentions with this decision, I can't help but fault him for what he did.

There's also the basic design of the episode, which feels as if it has been based on the Quatermass serials in the 1950's. Now, these are actually some rather fantastic pieces of television, filled with paranoia. But while the design of the story feels as if it wants to be part of that, having men in suits, and dark rooms with mysterious goings-on, it never quite works because the story just doesn't have the tension of the original serials, leaving this to feel like a pale pastiche of a better story.

But, despite the fact that I've been reasonably harsh on this story, I did enjoy it, and it has gone to further cement Tennant in the role of the Doctor, giving him a story where he can be the complete hero. He runs about, drops witty remarks, and saves the day whilst praising ordinary people. It's a fun performance to watch, and clearly part of why Tennant was so loved in the role, even if some of his stories weren't particularly good.

Day 714: The Girl in the Fireplace

My Mum hates The Girl in the Fireplace with a deep and unbridled passion. Last night we had a wide ranging discussion of her hatred of this story, which seemed to revolve around the fact that she felt that the clockwork droids were underused, she felt that the plot was too complicated and that she has a strong dislike of Arthur, the horse. Now, I'm quite fond of this episode. It's not the best of the series (we'll get to that in about a week or so), nor is it Steven Moffat's best written work or Euros Lyn's best directed work (I have to be honest and say that his best directed work, Children of Earth, is outside the scope of this blog, but it is truly marvellous), but I do rate it highly. So I am forced to start this on the defensive, to defend this story from those that would attack it.

So I should perhaps begin with the plot. It's fairly basic, to be honest. Over the course of 45 minutes, the Doctor, Rose and Mickey land on a spaceship and discover that clockwork droids are attempting to steal the brain of an 18th century French aristocrat, Madame de Pompadour, when she turns a certain age, the age of the spaceship, and steal her brain so that they can repair their spaceship. So the Doctor and co. embark on a wild race to try and find her at that age, to stop the droids from killing her. But that's not the point of the story. The point is instead looking at the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour as they fall in love, but whilst it's over a long period of 30 years for Madame de Pompadour, it is only a couple of hours for the Doctor. It's an interesting commentary on the role that time travel has for the Doctor, where he can meet people and flash forward through their lives, while they are destined to take the slow path and settle down. It means that relationships can flash by in an instant for him, whereas they're eternally long for others. It's quite heartbreaking to realise at the end that the Doctor has missed her death, of natural causes, because of a foolish mistake he made in the heat of the moment. But that's the curse of the Doctor, as he never settles down to take the slow path.

Now, all of that said, I will admit that there are some issues with the plotting of the story. It's clearly structured as a love story, and yet it's completely done and dusted within 45 minutes. It literally feels like one second she's kissing the Doctor, the next, she's in a hearse being led away from Versailles. It means that the full flow of the story doesn't quite work, but that's a small problem in an otherwise excellent story.

Moving on to the clockwork droids, their design is excellent. It's a visually arresting thing to see their masks ripped off to reveal some clockwork beneath them, like examining an antique cuckoo clock. They're creepy as well, their masks looking not quite human, and yet the time period that they're in means that they don't look out of place. And, aside from that, there's a fantastic jump scare in this episode that caused me to give off a very manly scream. So I'm inclined to reject the notion that they're not effective as monsters, and instead I should say that I think they work rather well.

And as for the horse, it's completely worth it for the exchange

"What's a horse doing on a spaceship?"

"Mickey, what's pre-revolutionary France doing on a spaceship? Try to get some perspective!".

So, in my opinion, I think that The Girl in the Fireplace is an amazing episode of Doctor Who, and I look forward to watching it again. Unfortunately though, I know that it will never be that way for my mother, who instead has a bizzare love of The Lazarus Experiment...

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 699: The Unquiet Dead

The Unquiet Dead is the first story in the revived series to be credited to someone other than Russell T Davies, being written by Mark Gatiss. Gatiss will continue to be a figure throughout the revived series, writing 8 stories, including one which has not yet aired by the time that this post is written. So looking at this story, it's interesting to consider what sort of stories Gatiss will provide for the series.

For a start, this story is reasonably safe. There's no big scene like the ending of The End of the World here, where the character of the Doctor is revealed to have changed and to be completely different from what we would expect him to be. Instead, we get a fairly light historical romp with ghosts and Charles Dickens. It's not a bad story, with some engaging characters and a darkly comic beginning where an undertaker discovers a zombie walking about, not with shock, but instead with a sort of resigned sadness that says that this is not the first time that zombies have been coming to life in this home. The only problem with the story is that it doesn't really do much that's new and interesting with the characters.

However, that last statement isn't entirely true. There's a moment halfway through this story where the Doctor realises the truth behind the ghosts. They're gaseous beings that have had their bodies taken from them due to the events of the Time War. This plays on the Doctor's guilt, and he's given a strong amount of drive to help them get some form of their bodies back, even if it is through possessing the dead. It's not a major moment for the series, but it does show that Gatiss is able to understand the character of the Ninth Doctor, and write him convincingly. So, in short, Gatiss, whilst not writing strong and earth-shattering stories, is able to write basic and fun romps where the characters are all strongly written, giving us an enjoyable little story.

Day 698: The End of the World

There's a scene in the middle of this story that sums up what the forthcoming series is going to be about. The episode so far has been focussing on the perspective of Rose as she sees all of the amazing things that the TARDIS can bring her, and it slowly dawns of the real ramifications of becoming a traveller in the TARDIS, like the sudden realisation that visiting the future means visiting a time when everyone that you've ever cared about is dead, or the fact that the TARDIS has entered her head in order to translate everything into English for her. So she talks about this with the Doctor, and the conversation reaches a point where she asks where he's from. What's interesting is that he refuses to tell her, becoming combative and and angry at the prospect of revealing this information. Not since The War Games have we seen the Doctor so reluctant to reveal his past, meaning that this sudden reluctance is a little worrying for what might have happened.

Events continue throughout the story, that I won't go into too much detail here, but I will focus on the ending scene. Rose, after witnessing the death of the Earth, is brought back to Earth in the modern day, and looks at the life that exists there. And in that quiet moment, the Doctor tells Rose that she should enjoy Earth because he can't enjoy his home planet. It was destroyed in a War, taking all of the Time Lords with it. Suddenly, everything becomes clear. We're dealing with a damaged Doctor, one who is trying to cope with this traumatic event.

This renewed focus on the character of the Doctor is interesting, and one of the major changes that Russell T Davies has brought to the programme, moving it from standalone stories to moving through time and space with the characters of the Doctor and Rose. And, funnily enough, it's kind of a callback to the work of the original story editor David Whitaker, who always put the focus squarely on the characters in the TARDIS and not so much on the worlds around them. All in all, then, it's worth continuing to watch the series, as we explore and get to know these characters of the Doctor and Rose.