Category: Doctor Who
Doctor Who episode 725: New Earth (15/4/2006)
‘The lady’s moving on. It’s goodbye trampoline, and hello blondie.’ A story that seems to exist in two minds literally and metaphorically. While Cassandra hops between Rose, the Doctor and Chip, the Doctor can’t quite make his mind up whether he enjoys the impossibility of the Face of Boe living forever or thinks that Cassandra has ‘lived long enough’. The notion of bringing back the Year Five Billion to provide some familiar reference points as the audience get used to Tennant is sound, but it plays into the idea that Series Two is much more cautious than its predecessor. It leads to my least favourite bit of the episode, as Rose suddenly declares, ‘Oh, I love this. Can I just say, travelling with you, I love it’ almost like she’s begging the audience to agree with her. It’s as if RTD has realised what he’s doing halfway through carrying a priceless vase across a polished marble floor and is suddenly stepping much more carefully.
Doctor Who: Attack of the Graske (25/12/2005)
‘Reckon you could hack it as my companion?’ This is a lovely, basic interactive game pitched at a younger audience that lets the player take the role of the 10th Doctor’s temporary companion (Rose is at an ABBA concert in 1979), and gives viewers their first proper glimpse of the fully-regenerated Doctor at the controls of the TARDIS, dashing about as you, the player, use your TV remote control (linked to the sonic screwdriver) to locate the Graske’s victims, track the evil alien through time and break into its cryogenic vault to free its captives.
Doctor Who episode 724: The Christmas Invasion (25/12/2005)
‘The Doctor wouldn’t do this. The old Doctor, the proper Doctor, he’d wake up. He’d save us.’ The Christmas Day special has been the last bow for the past three Doctors, but I prefer this. Sneaking in the new Doctor like a present under the Christmas Tree and giving us a chance to unwrap and enjoy, rather than just a tantalising glimpse. RTD leans into this, gleefully, with an episode that’s replete with all the festive trimmings, given an Avengers twist: (killer) trees, (deadly robot) Santas, a (cancelled) Queen’s Speech and a tangerine.
Doctor Who: Children in Need (18/11/2005)
‘Can you change back?’ A charming bridge between The Parting of the Ways and The Christmas Invasion which serves mainly to trail the new Doctor. He’s faster, spikier, full of energy, darting about while the last version might have been watchful and, in a sort of safe version of the fifth regeneration, has a manic episode that puts Rose in danger as they speed back towards 2006 Earth and Christmas Day.
Doctor Who episode 723: The Parting of the Ways (18/6/2005)
‘The Time War ends.’ Had the revival series failed and this became the new Survival it would be a worthy enough end: the last day of the Time War, the conflict that’s hung over this season and particularly this episode. Without having to show it, the Doctor’s ultimate decision – press a button and destroy Dalek and human alike – is clearly meant to be a replay of the fall of Gallifrey (and it’s no surprise that when we eventually see this it’s the Eccleston understudy agonising over pressing a big red button). The Doctor even says, ‘That’s the decision I’ve got to make for every living thing.’ The difference is, this time he has a god in his time machine more powerful even than the God of All Daleks, the ultimate end point of a series where he’s inspired others to save the day. You could imagine the series closing with Rose resurrecting Jack, the Doctor saving Rose, and then, with one small amendment, the three of them zooming off to cold tea and rivers made of song.
Doctor Who episode 722: Bad Wolf (11/6/2005)
‘Someone’s been playing a long game.’ The first of RTD’s season finales sets the tone for years to come, with an opening half packed with pop culture references leading to a cliffhanger that puts the whole Earth in danger. A crucial difference, though, it’s the Earth of 200,100 AD: it’s not Jackie or Wilf cowering down there as the skies fill with Dalek spaceships. It’s made relatable through Lynda (who might as well have been one of Rose’s colleagues, there’s no suggestion she’s a cyborg transhuman from Jupiter for example), but it’s still an unfamiliar, unvisited place, choked by the Great Atlantic Smog Storm and with a murderous approach to gameshows.
Doctor Who episode 721: Boom Town (4/6/2005)
‘But they were French. It’s not my fault if “Danger Explosives” was only written in Welsh.’ My favourite RTD episodes are the ones that don’t have to “do” something – open or close a series; celebrate an event; change the regular cast. Boom Town is the first of a select group that also includes Love & Monsters, Gridlock and Midnight. Conceived to be budget-conscious ahead of the finale, necessitating more dialogue, less action, RTD picks up the gauntlet thrown down by Moffat and writes the funniest episode of the series.
Doctor Who episode 720: The Doctor Dances (28/5/2005)
‘The world doesn’t end cos the Doctor dances.’ The elegance of this story is that everything established in the first episode is neatly resolved in the second, in one of the most satisfying pay-offs in the show’s 42-year history. This is phenomenally good, maybe even dishearteningly so: it must have been daunting for Steven Moffat when his first go was near-universally recognised as the best Doctor Who story in at least 16 years, and there’s probably a tiny element of trying to relive this one’s glory (particularly the audacious, hidden-in-plain-sight solution) in every subsequent script for RTD.
Doctor Who episode 719: The Empty Child (21/5/2005)
‘Finally, a professional.’ After a dress rehearsal for Comic Relief, Steven Moffat makes his debut with what were, at the time, hailed as the stand-out episodes of the revival. 16 years later, and with the benefit of seeing where Moffat took the show, it’s interesting to look back and spot some of the emerging themes he kept returning to for the next decade. These include the idea of lonely childhood: ‘It’s never easy being the only child left out in the cold’, which recurs all the way through his work from Reinette, Amelia, River, Grant Gordon, even the Doctor himself in in The Girl in the Fireplace and Listen. Here, it’s employed in the service of 1970s style creeps as Jamie haunts Nancy and her kids, querulously demanding, ‘Are you my mummy?’ via the phone or gramophone and eventually everyone he’s infected. He’s a figure of dread, pointing accusingly, refusing to lie down and die. He’s also a lost little boy, and a lot of the power of this episode comes from this heartbreaking juxtaposition.
Doctor Who episode 718: Father’s Day (14/5/2005)
‘Now, Rose you’re not going to bring about the end of the world, are you?’ I suggested that in future years World War Three was the kind of story they might do in The Sarah Jane Adventures. I reckon if it had been 18 months later, Father’s Day would have been a candidate for Torchwood. It’s noticeably heavier than the rest of the first series (this wild variation in pitch is one of the few giveaways that in 2004 no-one was exactly sure who the audience might turn out to be be). It’s dialogue heavy and lacking much in the way of chases or action sequences, and with a script laced with introspection, incest and infidelity.
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