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.

Day 708: Bad Wolf

Cliffhangers, in my opinion, can be generally divided into two categories. The first is 'Peril', where a character is placed in mortal peril at the end of the episode, and the tension of the cliffhanger is built upon seeing wither they live, and more importantly, how they lived (an example of this ending are the cliffhanger to The Magician's Apprentice, where Missy, Clara and the TARDIS are seemingly destroyed). The other category is 'Development', where the ending is pivoted around a major plot development that changes the entire structure of the story (an example of this could be the ending to Under the Lake, where the 'ghost Doctor' is revealed, changing the story slightly from being about ghosts attacking a base to how the Doctor became a ghost in the first place). Bad Wolf's ending doesn't quite fit into either of those categories, and it's all the better for it.

On the surface, it's a 'Peril' ending. The episode clearly ends on the point of the Daleks stating that they are going to go and conquer the Earth, which puts everyone in danger, increasing the tension in the story. But there's also the argument that the cliffhanger didn't begin there, instead it began around 5 minutes earlier when the Daleks were first revealed, showing that they have been in command of the Game Station for all these years, as well as surviving the Time War, changing the focus of the episode from a story about homicidal game shows to a fight against the Daleks. This would put it in the 'Development' column, although there's enough 'Peril' in there to make it a hybrid of the two.

But that's all missing the entire point of the ending. The real meat of it is the Doctor's speech, where he stands up to the Daleks, ready to take them on in an instant. The notion of the speech is fantastic, as we get steadily more and more excited as he lays out his aims for the next episode. But we don't get to see his actions, which makes the next episode all the more exciting. It turns the tension present in the cliffhanger on its head, not using events that will happen and you need to see the conclusion of said events in the next episode, but instead you get told about the events happening and the conclusion of the events within the cliffhanger, making it more of a trailer than a cliffhanger ending. But it still works, and it makes for one of my favourite scenes in the history of Doctor Who.

Day 707: Boom Town

Boom Town is a story of two halves. The first half is a simple and fun adventure, as the Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack arrive in Cardiff, meet up with Mickey and stop one of the members of the Slitheen (hence referred to as Margaret Slitheen) left from Aliens of London/World War Three from destroying the Earth. It's delightfully fun, with some great comedic moments (the Doctor attempting to meet with Margaret is one of the truly great moments in Doctor Who history), but it lacks substance.

But then, in the second half, we get something new and different. Margaret Slitheen is put on board the TARDIS and told that she will go back to her home world, where she will apparently be executed. As her final wish, then, she takes the Doctor out for dinner, to plea for a second chance at life. It's something that's rarely been seen in Doctor Who, the idea of the villain talking with the Doctor after their plan has been foiled; the idea of consequences to the Doctor's actions after the closing credits have rolled. We're drawn into the moral dilemma with Margaret, because we know that she has killed and could kill again, and yet she has shown mercy to others, including a pregnant journalist at the start of the episode. It's a pity that these scenes don't go on for longer, as it's a well-meaning consideration to put forward and an interesting idea. We are unfortunately prevented from seeing the Doctor's decision regarding her life, as a botched plan from her ends up regressing her to an egg through the power of the TARDIS. The Doctor watches on though, comfortable with the proceedings and almost glad for her as she realises that she will be given what she needs.

So we're left with a fun and farcical first half and an interesting discussion for the second half in Boom Town. All in all, it's actually rather a fun episode to watch, and I can't help but feel that this story is a little underrated by fans. But then again, maybe that's just me.

Day 706: The Doctor Dances

One of the defining moments for the Ninth Doctor comes at the end of this story. After two episodes of a relatively traumatic adventure, the Doctor is able to save the day through the power of love and nanogenes. And then, he actually gets a chance to properly save the day, spreading the nanogenes throughout all those who have been affected by the gas mask zombie 'plague', for want of a better word. "Everybody Lives!", he proclaims joyfully, as the episode comes to its conclusion.

And it's a truly joyful moment for this Doctor, because of the circumstances in which it comes. He's just been involved with a war that has destroyed his own people, and that has left him damaged. And a good portion of the stories that we've had since then have dealt with the ramifications of the war, be it through the desire to change history, or dealing with the fallout of the war to other species such as the Gelth. So for this Doctor to be given this opportunity to save everybody from dying is extraordinary, because it represents a moment for the Universe to finally give him a break, and allow him to have one legitimately happy moment.

And whilst it may not be the truly defining moment for this Doctor (we'll look at that on Sunday), it is an iconic moment for him that's part of an iconic story.

Day 705: The Empty Child

As good as this episode is (and it is very good indeed), I can't help but think instead that I should write about something else entirely. When I was around 10 years old, I was a regular visitor to the Doctor Who website. I'd read episode guides, photonovels of missing episodes, watch webcasts (I felt really brave when I watched Real Time, given that it was advised to be watched by only mature audiences), and grow steadily addicted to the 'TARDIS Tennis' flash game (an event which would later foreshadow a crippling addiction to online flash games that would hamper my results in my final year of schooling). Later, though, I stopped visiting, for one reason or another, and moved onto other things. Curiosity drove me back to the website, where I was greeted with a bit of a shock.

Everything on the website was updated, to reflect the new series that was currently airing. Suddenly, there were a whole raft of new features, from fear factors to trailers to episode previews that had me hooked every single day to this website. Except for one week in May. For on that week, the home page was changed to reflect the upcoming episode: The Empty Child. Instead of seeing the Doctor and Rose, up to mischief, there was instead the haunting image of the child in the gas mask as you see at the top of this page. This was accompanied by a steady heart beat, as a child's voice slowly cried out for his mummy. It was thoroughly distressing to say the least, but the entire experience is etched in my memory as an example of the hype that was personally building for me around the series.

Day 704: Father's Day

This story is, in many ways, a further contemplation on the events of The Long Game. Once again, we get a companion (this time it's Rose) trying to change history, and once again, we see the Doctor's rage at this fact. But there's enough to differentiate it from The Long Game to make it unique, as well as allowing us to sympathise with Rose and give what is possibly a better story.

For a start, Rose's intentions are honourable. Whilst there is the point to be made that she wishes to use time travel for strictly her own benefit, she's doing this by saving her father from dying in a hit and run accident. It's certainly more morally just than taking data from the future back to the present day, because it's all about saving a life rather than just improving one. Indeed, as Rose points out, the Doctor saves lives all throughout history, and that's alright, but the Doctor's response is that he's allowed to because he understands how to go about it and in what circumstances he can and can't save people (and indeed, this will be explored at length through the rest of the series, particularly in The Fires of Pompeii and The Waters of Mars). But the point is that we can see that Rose is trying to do a good thing, and so we can sympathise with her.

That said, the consequences are far more visible this time around. Creatures from the Time Vortex come through to the Earth, killing the entire human race in an effort to set time back in progress. It's a shocking image to see, and a handy reminder of the stakes of the story, as we get the ever-present visual of seeing them swirl around the church where the Doctor, Rose and a group of others are gathered in hiding. With all of this, one would expect the Doctor to be cruel to Rose, but he forgives her. He can understand where she's coming from, and he feels her pain, so he allows her to apologise and indeed, jokes about it immediately beforehand with a baby version of Rose.

But as events reach their inevitable conclusion, Rose's father goes out and decides to die, making events go back to the way they were. But they didn't quite go back to normal, because history was subtly changed. The hit and run accident, became more of a simple accident, with the driver staying around to accept the blame and help where he could. And, perhaps most importantly of all, Rose stayed with her father as he died. It's not an earth-shattering moment of changing history, but it's a good one, and it improves the world in a far better way than what Adam did in The Long Game. It all just goes as further evidence to show that Rose is one of the best companions to be on screen ever.

Day 703: The Long Game

The most interesting thing about this episode is, oddly, not the main plot. Instead, it's the new companion, Adam, who was brought into the series in the previous episode, Dalek, and leaves the series in this episode. It's not an awfully long tenure, and it's easy to see why when you watch this episode.

The Long Game feels like Russell T Davies showing the audience that the role of companion isn't just for anyone. After however many years of the Doctor seemingly picking random people off the street and choosing them to be his companion, Adam is the one that manages to buck the trend in a massive way. He's not an example of what we as humans should strive to become, with the most heroic act that he does within this episode being to bravely try a 'kronkburger' in order to experience the culture of Earth in the year 200,000. Everything else that he does is profoundly selfish, as he wanders through the story trying to get as much information as possible about the future, such that he can return to Earth and use it for his own purposes. This ends up creating a lot of problems, not least of which putting the Doctor and Rose in danger when they end up being captured.

So, upon realising that he's made a terrible mistake and that Adam is going to be a nuisance, the Doctor takes him home and dumps him. It's the first companion that we've ever seen get explicitly dumped, everyone else leaves more or less of their own accord. Suddenly, the role of companion feels just that bit more sacred in the eyes of the viewer, because we get to see someone fail at it. It draws to attention just how good the previous companions have been, if only by contrast to the way in which Adam managed to ruin it for everyone. And whilst I'm not the biggest fan of Adam, I do appreciate what he represents, being The Companion Who Couldn't (to quote the working title for the story), and showing us how fantastic companions have been, both past, present and future.

Day 702: Dalek

Dalek ranks as one of my favourite stories in Doctor Who of all time. It's easy to see why, and I feel that this is best seen in one of the final scenes in the story. The lead-up to the scene is that a Dalek has been methodically going through a base, killing everyone that it comes across. This is thanks to Rose accidentally regenerating it by giving it power, somehow. The Doctor, meanwhile, is hell-bent on destroying it, in part because the Time War was between the Daleks and the Time Lords, and he blames the Daleks for so much. So the scene comes about when the Doctor, whilst holding a massive gun, meets with the Dalek while Rose is kept captive by the Dalek, for reasons that confuse it.

Over the course of the scene, we see the entire relationship between the Doctor and the Daleks play out. The Doctor turns up, all ready to kill the Dalek once and for all. But he can't, because he's shocked to see that the Dalek has opened up its casing and destroyed a potion of the roof, just so that it can feel the sunlight on its tentacles. Rose points out that the Doctor is the one with the gun, and that the Dalek is slowly changing, and that it isn't killing any more. The Doctor puts down his gun, in a moment of realisation of what he has done, whilst the Dalek, realising that it is becoming something impure, commits suicide.

This scene shows how much the Time War has changed the Doctor. A man who abhors violence, and has almost always sought peaceful solutions to events, even those concerning the Daleks, is now so legitimately furious at the Daleks that he needs to destroy it himself. But Rose stops him. Just as Rose healed the Dalek, so too does Rose heal the Doctor. She helps him realise what a person he has become, as well as striving for him to be someone better.

Meanwhile, in one of the story's cruellest jokes, the Dalek can't cope with the fact that it's changing, but the story desperately wants it to change and become nice. The music, for instance, by Murray Gold is at times overly sentimental, whilst the direction from Joe Ahearne desperately tries to get beauty out of sunlight dancing off the Dalek's tentacles. But being nice is so against the very nature of the Dalek that it must die, and so it does, defying the story that is being told and instead remaining true to itself. It's a slightly warped joke about the concept of the Daleks, and how we should never sympathise with them, because it's just wrong.

And that's just a small sample of what is a truly fantastic story that manages to do what could be seen as impossible: it makes the Daleks scary again.

Day 701: World War Three

This episode feels remarkably underrated. I loved it as a kid, mainly due to the comedy aliens, but now that I'm a bit older, it's easy to see that there's a fair but more to love than just a story about farts and it's something truly special.

For a start, it's incredibly funny. There's a fair range of jokes in this, going from the basic joke of having farting aliens to the truly great moment of the sergeant bursting into the Prime Minister's office to let them know of the crisis, only to discover that the room is filled with aliens, at which point he promptly decides that leaving would be the best course of action. The latter joke is also good because it comes in the ending sequence, where events are reaching breaking point. We then get a series of quick cuts, going from the tense scenes as the Doctor, Rose, and Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North) try to figure out their best chance of survival, while the Slitheen flounder about and provide light relief to the otherwise frightening events. This juxtaposition makes both the Doctor's scenes feel slightly tenser, as well as the Slitheen's scenes slightly funnier, making for, although an uneven in tone sequence, a relatively even in quality series of events.

There's also the social satire present within the story. The acting Prime Minister (actually a member of the Slitheen in disguise) tries to get the Earth's nuclear codes by claiming proof that there are "Massive weapons of destruction", with clear danger present for all humans living on Earth. It's a clear comment on the Iraq War, where the war was brought about due to apparent proof of weapons of mass destruction, which may not have been fully correct. This story, then, looks at the trust that we place in our leaders, not knowing whether they have our best intentions in mind, and gives us the moral that we shouldn't rush recklessly into such an event like this.

It's telling, as well, that the only politician who Davies writes sympathetically is Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North), who is clearly just a backbencher that just wants the best for her constituents and has no delusions of leadership. This search for people who speak truthfully, and genuinely make what they find to be the best decision for the people, and not the best decision for them, is the heart of what democracy should be about, and seeing a character like Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North) is actually kind of life-affirming.

And all of that makes for a surprisingly underrated gem of a story that I would heartily recommend and say is clearly part of one of the best series of Doctor Who ever broadcast.

Day 700: Aliens of London

Aliens of London looks at something that was never really explored in the past with Doctor Who. Throughout all of the series, we rarely, if ever, explored the consequences of travelling in time with the Doctor. The story begins with us returning to Earth, in the present day. As Rose goes to see her mother, it soon transpires that, whilst Rose has been gone for a couple of days by her perspective, by the rest of the world's perspective, she's been gone for a year. Suddenly, everything is thrown into disarray.

Jackie, Rose's mother, for instance, has spent the past year in a fair amount of shock, owing to the fact that her daughter has disappeared off the face of the Earth for an entire year. She's angry at the Doctor for taking her daughter away, angry at Rose for never letting her know where she's been, and generally reacting like a normal person would after an event such as this would have happened. It's refreshing to see this emotion as it shows that travelling with the Doctor is an action that has consequences. It is stupid to think that people can just vanish for protracted periods of time and then return as if nothing had ever happened, but it's what has been thought for the previous 700 or so episodes. Now Russell T Davies has changed all of that by pointing out what the consequences of that are, bringing an amount of reality to this fantastical situation.

But it's one of the things that Davies has done and will do throughout his time on the series. He tells stories that look at reactions to things, not the things themselves. The entire opening of this story isn't so much focussed on plot, but more on the reaction to Rose returning, and then the reaction to an alien spaceship crashing in London. It's new for the series, and a change that I'm pleased to see has been made, as it breathes new life into this fantastic programme.

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.

Day 697: Rose

Rose is, quite simply, one of the most important episodes in Doctor Who that has ever been produced. It has to re-introduce the entire concept of the series to a brand new audience, but in such a way that it can build on what has come before so it can also attract the attention of people already familiar with the programme. And thankfully, it succeeded in this wholeheartedly.

Regarding the idea of the premise of the series, it introduces everything perfectly. We start by focussing on the life of a perfectly normal young woman, Rose, in a 3 minute long sequence as we look at her perfectly normal life. She then, whilst doing some work in a basement of a department store, encounters the Autons, causing some juxtaposition between the normal and ordinary person to the alien and extraordinary world of the Autons, and then later, the Doctor. This harks back to the first story of the entire series, An Unearthly Child, where the entire focus was on the ordinary schoolteachers discovering the extraordinary world of the Doctor. It worked then because we were able to use the schoolteachers as easy identification figures, and travel along with them as they discovered all about the Universe with the Doctor. One must also remember that it took some time for us to even trust the Doctor when the series originally started, so having an audience identification figure in the form of Rose is a strong move by Russell T Davies, writer of Rose and showrunner of the series from this point onwards.

Regarding new things to reinvigorate people already familiar with the concept, there is of course Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. For 35 minutes or so, he plays the role as if it were a modern version of the Doctor. He's funny and charming, but can also be deadly serious when needs be, such as in the famous 'Turn of the Earth scene". He effortlessly proves himself as the Doctor, and one can easily look forward to his future time on the series. But that's not all. Because towards the end of the episode, we see him being put through pain. And not just any sort of pain, but clear emotional trauma. There was some sort of war that he fought in, and it appears that an awful lot of bad things happened in that war, which the Doctor feels guilty about. It's an interesting tack to go on for the character, and reintroduces much of the mystery that was prevalent within the first few stories with respect to the Doctor. It's enough to keep the audience watching and to keep them entertained for the next series.

And, more than all of that, Rose ensures that, once and for all, Doctor Who is back on our screens and ready to wow a whole new audience.