Category: Doctor Who
Doctor Who episode 741: Gridlock (14/4/2007)
‘You think you know us so well, Doctor. But we’re not abandoned. Not while we have each other.’ A story that’s superficially a Ballardian (or Stephen Wyattian, I suppose) black comedy about a global traffic jam. But, like the motorway, it has layers upon layers, of blind faith and true faith, and the difference between a belief and a lie, of sacrifice and redemption, and of the undercity rising up to inherit the (New) Earth.
Doctor Who episode 740: The Shakespeare Code (7/4/2007)
‘The grief of a genius.’ After Series Two cautiously trod in the footprints of Series One, with a Victorian werewolf instead of ghosts for example, Series Three has upped the ambition considerably. This flirts with the template of The Unquiet Dead, taking a mysterious lost work (Edwin Drood/Love’s Labour’s Won) as a plot element, supernatural monsters and a great author in historic England, but is bigger and bolder, done on the scale of The Empty Child, in recognisable London locations.
Doctor Who episode 739: Smith and Jones (31/3/2007)
‘You’re quite the funny man. And yet, I think, laughing on purpose at the darkness.’ This is, what, the new series’ third relaunch since Rose? It is, by some distance, the best. It has a confidence and swagger that it can do this, that there is life after Eccleston and Piper. There’s no sense that this is a tentative testing of the ground. Rose is name-checked but her ghost doesn’t hang over it, even when, as in the scene of the Doctor grabbing Martha’s hand and telling her, ‘Run!’, it explicitly evokes her. The result is audacious and brilliant.
Torchwood episode 13: End of Days (1/1/2007)
‘There’s something you can do, otherwise what’s the fucking point of you!’ Chibnall’s first series finale gives a few hints of his approach to Doctor Who: a mysterious and knowing villain from earlier in the season pops up to dispense revelations while chaos unfolds around the still point of the lead, plus cameo returns of incidental characters drop cryptic hints – here, a de-CyberWomanned Lisa, Owen’s Out of Time lover Diane, and PC Andy. Then there’s a big, impressive monster, an important death and a heroic sacrifice. The whole thing looks like a series finale is meant to look, without necessarily understanding how one works.
Torchwood episode 12: Captain Jack Harkness (1/1/2007)
‘That Rift took my lover and my captain. So, if I die trying to beat it, then it will all be in the line of duty.’ The best episode to date focuses on the ideas of duty trumping desire, wrapping it in a love story that’s more romantic than the last several because it doesn’t revolve around sex. It’s also a sequel to what was – at the time – the most beloved episode of new Doctor Who, and finally begins to work out a way to make Jack work outside the parent show.
The Sarah Jane Adventures episode 1: Invasion of the Bane (1/1/2007)
‘Miss Smith, she seems familiar with the concept of alien life. Far too familiar.’ I’ve never bought the idea that a middle-aged woman is an unlikely lead for a children’s TV series: I grew up with Uncle Jack, T-Bag and Simon and the Witch among others. I like that The Sarah Jane Adventures is never shy about its central character, and I particularly like how she’s introduced as prickly, stand-offish and mysterious – just like the ninth Doctor. Or, looking further back, and acknowledging she ends up as the adoptive parent of an unearthly child, even Hartnellish. In her burgundy velvet coat, she’s even dressed like the third and fourth Doctors as she last saw them.
Doctor Who episode 738: The Runaway Bride (25/12/2006)
‘Am I ever going to see you again?’ As much as The Christmas Invasion, this feels like another Day One for the series, continuing it beyond the end of Rose’s story. When Ian and Barbara, the only real classic series analogues for Rose, left the audience had already had six months to get used to the Doctor and Vicki team. Wisely, I think, RTD judges that the new series’ audience isn’t likely to take kindly to the Doctor instantly getting over Rose and picking up with a new woman (although I suspect he also underestimated their ability to move on – Martha’s plot feels like it’s undermined by the fear of replacing Rose). Donna is the result, conceived as a one-off comedy double-act for the Christmas episode to help the Doctor through his post-Doomsday grief, and get the audience ready for the real replacement.
Torchwood episode 11: Combat (24/12/2006)
‘I was getting bored of your fuck-tricks anyway.’ The show woozily refocuses its attention on some of the relationships it’s left simmering in the background (or, less charitably, forgotten about) for the past few episodes, as Gwen’s relationships with both Owen and Rhys suddenly come under pressure. Rhys feels unloved, Owen is smarting from his fling with Diane – which clearly meant more to him than his affair with Gwen. By the end of the episode both have reached a turning point: Gwen’s confessed her sins to Rhys only to retcon his memory of the conversation, and she’s broken up with Owen, who’s personifying the idea articulated by slimy estate agent Mark Lynch (The Boys’ Alex Hassell): ‘what we become when all we have left is our rage.’
Torchwood episode 10: Out of Time (17/12/2006)
‘There’s no puzzle to solve, no enemy to fight. Just three lost people who have somehow become our responsibility.’ Essentially the Star Trek TNG episode The Neutral Zone reimagined with three people brought from the past to their future and trying to make sense of their place in this strange new world. The implications are sensible, the story has some touching moments, but it has the slight whiff of American syndication television.
Torchwood episode 9: Random Shoes (10/12/2006)
‘I don’t think I can bend the rules, just cos he’s dead.’ Narrated by a geeky young man, this plays in the same space as Doctor Who: Love & Monsters, to which it inevitably looks like the poor relation. However, the intent is slightly different. While Love & Monsters was about Doctor Who fandom and not losing sight of your childhood dreams in the grind of adult life, Random Shoes is about not wasting your life waiting for something to happen. It occasionally drifts into mawkishness, but not egregiously so. The result is the most touching episode of the show to date.
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