An Hour of Who a Day

January 12: "New Earth"

Series 2 gets to its real start here with "New Earth", our first trip beyond the solar system this century -- but before we get there, there's a quick teaser. Each episode this series has a quick scene called a TARDISode, designed for mobile phones -- the one for "New Earth" is an infomercial for the hospital we see in the episode. (And for some reason these short scenes weren't released on the DVD...)

But yes, it's our first extra-Solar trip, with a "new new Doctor". They don't want to go too far afield and scare off the casual viewers though, so we get another sequel story -- this time it's a sequel to "The End of the World", set about twenty years in the future (I think? Comparing the dates given in the two stories is slightly hazy...), with the Face of Boe and Cassandra both returning, even though Cassandra appeared to be dead at the end of it. And really, the only alien-looking creature on display, other than the Face of Boe, is the cat nurses running the hospital -- everyone else is either human or humanoid with a different color of skin. It's even explicitly a planet called New Earth, rather than anything more exotic. They're making this first alien planet as safe and accessible as possible.

It's not a terrible story, though -- don't misunderstand me. It's got a lot of great moments, and David Tennant is clearly having a grand time in his first regular story as the Doctor (as opposed to being sidelined and then rediscovering himself in "The Christmas Invasion"). The joy in which he experiences the disinfecting process in the elevator is gorgeous (and Rose's initial shock at the same thing makes it even better), and the life and energy he puts into his scenes makes him incredibly watchable. It's also interesting how much of a contrast he makes from the ninth Doctor; there was a core of steel in Eccleston's performance, as if he was afraid of letting people in too much, but Tennant's Doctor seems to be putting it all out there. Really, the only misstep is when he's possessed by Cassandra, which strays a little too far to the camp side of things.

Billie Piper, on the other hand, is clearly having a great time playing Cassandra-in-Rose, with a posher accent and a more overtly sexualized performance. She's almost note-perfect, and scenes like her kiss of the Doctor (which half looks like an effort to distract the Doctor and half like she just really wants to kiss him) are handled really well. (And the Doctor's reaction is priceless: initial bemusement giving way to a sort of pride -- "Yep, still got it," he says in a pleased tone.) The farcical body swap moments are handled very well.

The infected new humans crave physical contact. ("New Earth")
©BBC

Unfortunately, they're unwilling to make an all-out comedy, and the ostensible main "serious" plot is just a little too generic to really shine. The basic idea is intriguing (breeding human tissue and infecting it to study it and thus create a cure), but this essentially turns into a cut-rate zombie film -- but there's little of the sheer terror and intensity needed to make this aspect truly effective. We get a handful of shots that suggest what they could have done if they'd really gone for it, but they're really few and far between. The gas-mask plague victims in "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances" were more effective than this -- heck, the Lazars in Terminus felt more worrying than this.

And if we're going to bring up last series's standout story, it's hard to escape the feeling that the resolution here is awfully similar to the one there. Here it's a cocktail of different disease cures (um, how would that work exactly?) instead of reprogrammed nanogenes, but the Doctor passing the cure to the new humans feels awfully derivative of that earlier tale. It's not exactly "Everybody lives!", but it clearly wants to be (note how triumphant the Doctor is -- although "I'm the Doctor, and I cured them!" doesn't have quite the same ring).

It has a lot of problems, but "New Earth" just about manages to pull it off. The "zombie" plot threatens to make this story collapse, but the Cassandra interplay elevates this enough to make it worth watching -- and the final scene, where the dying Cassandra goes back to see herself when she was younger and still beautiful, works far better than it has any right to: Zoë Wanamaker and Sean Gallagher (as Cassandra-in-Chip) really sell it. It's got some fabulous make-up (the cat masks here are light years ahead of the last time they tried this, in Survival) and some impressive setpieces (like the bit where they zoom down the elevator cable) -- if the rest of the episode had been up to the caliber of these moments, this would have been a knockout. But as it is, our first trip to an alien planet is decidedly average.

January 11: Children in Need Special / "The Christmas Invasion" / "Attack of the Graske"

A brand-new Doctor for a brand-new series...well, sort of. Strictly speaking, the series doesn't begin until "New Earth" -- but the Christmas special is included with the series 2 boxset, so I'll count it as part of the series. And before we even get there, there's a quick little scene to view -- officially known as the Children in Need Special, although it also goes by other names.¹⁶⁹ Other than giving us our first mini-look at new tenth Doctor David Tennant, there's not much of note here -- Rose wants the Doctor to change back, and the regeneration is causing the Doctor to become increasingly erratic and dangerous as he causes the TARDIS to go out of control. Oh, and, oddly, he seems to know that Captain Jack is alive back in 200,100. But that's about it.

No, the main event is "The Christmas Invasion" -- Doctor Who's first Christmas special. (Not its first Christmas episode, as you may recall -- but "The Feast of Steven" wasn't a standalone special.) We get our first real look at David Tennant as the Doctor, still dealing with the effects of the regeneration. And, in a canny move, Davies sidelines the Doctor for much of this story, leaving Rose feeling helpless and Jackie and Mickey trying to help pick up the pieces. The result is a planet on the brink of disaster, ready to be enslaved by an alien race.

The Martian probe is a nice idea (although why would you put an extrasolar friendship package on something heading to Mars?), even if it seems to suggest that mankind hasn't actually been to Mars yet -- true for the real world, but not for the Doctor Who universe, if The Ambassadors of Death is to be believed. (Then again, we've sent people to the moon and still get interested when probes are sent there, so maybe we can let this slide -- but the Ambassadors of Death problem will rear its head again later.) The way the crisis evolves is really well done -- having a third of the population under control and heading to the roof is a neat trick that helps provide a genuine sense of worry and tension. (Incidentally, Wikipedia suggests it's roughly 28% of the world's population with A+ blood -- closer to a fourth than a third, but still within the ballpark.) Plus we get to see UNIT back in action and the return of Harriet Jones, now the Prime Minister of the UK. She gets a running joke of introducing herself to everyone, which is either amusing or tiresome, depending on your mood. And another mention of something called Torchwood (after a fleeting mention in "Bad Wolf").

"Did you miss me?" ("The Christmas Invasion") ©BBC

But this episode is ultimately about providing a huge threat to the world that only the Doctor can fix and then leaving him out of the action. The others try to cope in his absence (with some nice set pieces, like the robot Santa "pilot fish" and the surprisingly impressive spinning killer Christmas tree), and while the new Doctor regains consciousness from time to time to remind us he's still around, essentially the humans are left on their own -- despite Harriet Jones's on-air pleas for the Doctor to help deal with the Sycorax. (Which leads to Rose breaking down and sobbing, "He's left me, mum." Nice of her to have a sense of perspective.) This seems to be demonstrating one thing: that Rose, despite traveling with the Doctor and having her horizons expanded as a result, cannot do what the Doctor does -- no better illustrated than in the scene where the Sycorax laugh at her after her attempt to posture the way the Doctor would. And so it's up to the Doctor to step in, with that great reveal of the TARDIS translation circuit beginning to work again, as he swoops in and easily saves the day -- breaking the blood control over the A+ people ("That's all blood control is, a cheap bit of voodoo," the Doctor says afterwards. "Scares the pants off you, but that's as far as it goes. It's like hypnosis. You can hypnotise someone to walk like a chicken or sing like Elvis. You can't hypnotise them to death; survival instinct's too strong") and standing as the Earth's champion against the Sycorax. This sequence is overflowing with great lines from the Doctor, from being disappointed in not being ginger to accidentally quoting The Lion King to fighting the Sycorax leader in a swordfight -- one where he gets his hand chopped off and grows another one back. Tennant is really wonderful in this sequence -- I don't even mind "This new hand? It's a fightin' hand!" -- and it's easy to believe that he really is the Doctor, just the way Davies presumably intended.

Great ending, too; it's nice to have a bit of a "down" ending, with the destruction of the Sycorax ship by Torchwood more than a little reminiscent of the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano by a British submarine during the Falklands War. We get a great speech from the Doctor ("I gave them the wrong warning. I should've told them to run as fast as they can, run and hide because the monsters are coming. The human race") and the bit about six words to bring down Harriet Jones is really good too. And I love how the snowfall on Christmas turns out to be ash from the Sycorax ship burning up in the atmosphere -- a wonderful subversion of the cliché.

It's got a compelling story, a great new Doctor, and some really clever writing. It looks good and is suitably Christmas-y without being overly saccharine or sentimental. It's even got a nice weighty storyline, instead of a throwaway plot. "The Christmas Invasion" is one of the best Christmas specials they've done yet -- it's just a bit of a shame it came first, because you know it's not going to be quite as good as this at Christmas again.

And one last little treat: an interactive adventure (originally on BBC Red Button but also available online if you're interested) called "Attack of the Graske". It's essentially a simple "choose your own adventure" game with specially filmed footage of the Doctor guiding you through the events. It's rather cute (although I think they missed a trick by not having the word YOU showing up in the credits after David Tennant's name), but the thing that's most striking about it is how comfortable David Tennant is addressing the camera directly; he seems very committed, and it's easy to become a part of the Doctor's adventure. The only main quibble is that the very last scene with the Doctor is the same no matter how you did -- although some of the earlier "bad" outcomes, where the Doctor is increasingly exasperated at you, are awfully amusing (and the "bad" ending with the family is way more entertaining than the good one -- I love the way the girl causes the Christmas tree to fall over). Frankly, even though it's ultimately a bit of fluff, "Attack of the Graske" is far better than it really has any right to be.

(Oh, and my friend Charlie finds the line "Got as many doors as Jim Morrison" (so, three) incredibly funny for some reason.)

¹⁶⁹ A genuine title controversy! There's no title given on screen; the DVD release just calls it Children in Need Special, which is usually what it's referred to, but some reference works call it "Born Again" for no clear reason whatsoever. Russell T Davies referred to it facetiously as "Pudsey Cutaway" (after both the Children in Need's mascot Pudsey, and "Dalek Cutaway" -- which you'll recall is the "technically correct" title (somehow) for "Mission to the Unknown"), which really should be what we're calling it.

January 10: "The Parting of the Ways"

The opening moments of this episode are really impressive, with the TARDIS charging toward the Dalek mothership to rescue Rose. (And it's still spinning as it travels, I'm pleased to say.) There are so many Daleks streaming out of their saucers that the end result is worthy of a feature film, never mind a television show.

But while there are some impressive visuals in this (not just that shot, but the one of the Emperor in all his glory surrounded by Daleks, or Jack destroying the Dalek in the TARDIS), the best moments in "The Parting of the Ways" are the character interactions. The Doctor's confrontation with the Emperor, where he's being unnaturally cheerful, is impressive (and the times when that mask slips are also really good) -- and the moment where he reenters the TARDIS, leaning against the door with his head bowed, listening to the Daleks outside, is astonishing. Captain Jack also shines in his efforts to rally his troops in what he knows will be a futile gesture, an effort to buy the Doctor more time, showing off his leadership qualities, and his farewell kisses to both Rose and the Doctor -- each delivered in exactly the same way -- are quite lovely. "Wish I'd never met you, Doctor," he says. "I was much better off as a coward." He also gets a great death scene: "Exterminate!" a Dalek grates. "I kind of figured that," Jack replies defiantly, arms open wide as the Daleks kill them. The Daleks themselves are an impressive force; their fanatical worship of the Emperor (whose story of how he survived is close enough to that of the Dalek's in, er, "Dalek" for them to plausibly be the same individual -- again, it would explain all the early 21st-century reality shows we see here) is scary enough, but their decision to invade the Gamestation (another great shot, by the way) and head to the lower levels for no other reason than to exterminate everyone is genuinely chilling. "Dalek" reintroduced the Daleks; "The Parting of the Ways" reestablishes them as a galaxy-conquering force.

Rose-as-the-Bad-Wolf can stop Dalek blasts. ("The Parting of the
Ways") ©BBC

And then there's Rose, who's willing to go to the end with the Doctor but is tricked into heading back to her own time, so that the Doctor can fulfill his promise to Jackie to keep Rose safe. She's frustrated and angry, and she tries really hard to explain how she feels to Jackie and Mickey: "The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. ... That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away..." That speech sums up the ethos of the show right there. It's the realization that the "Bad Wolf"s have been following her, not the Doctor, that seems to ultimately convince her to break open the TARDIS console so she can go back and provide our first convenient deus ex machina ending to a BBC Wales series. (Although the way the sequence with the chain and the truck is shot suggests there's no way that should get the TARDIS console to open, and definitely not based on the way we see it open.)

Christopher Eccleston regenerates into David Tennant. ("The
Parting of the Ways") ©BBC

But while Rose might become the Bad Wolf, the heart of this story is ultimately the Doctor himself. It's a tour de force performance from Christopher Eccleston as he frantically tries to save humanity from the Daleks, full of intensity and a huge breadth of emotions -- but the best moment isn't while he's wiring up the delta wave transmitter or confronting the Daleks: it's during his prerecorded message to Rose in the TARDIS, when he turns to look at her and gives that gentle, easy smile. It's a beautiful moment in an episode filled with intensity.

But what's most interesting is that we can see the completion of the ninth Doctor's character arc here, from someone cold and aloof and faking cheerfulness to someone who's learned how to feel again and is ready to move on -- and his decision not to activate the delta wave and doom all of humanity (in what we now know, in light of subsequent revelations, is a very similar setup to what he (believes he) did on the last day of the Time War) shows how far he's come. "What are you, coward or killer?" the Emperor asks. "Coward. Any day," the Doctor says, unwilling to make the same choice again and stronger for it.

And then Rose saves him and wipes out all the Daleks (and brings Captain Jack back to life too, even if the Doctor doesn't seem to know this -- or else why would he leave Jack behind?) but is dying from the Time Vortex flowing through her, which leads to the Doctor kissing Rose to pull the Vortex out of her. It's what the series has been building to, but it's written in such a way as to give the audience the kiss many of them have been waiting the whole series for without upsetting the old fans (who were irate at McGann kissing Grace in the TV Movie). But the Doctor ends up sacrificing himself to save her (becoming the second out of three Doctors to date to give his life for a friend), getting a fabulous departure in the process:

DOCTOR: I absorbed all the energy of the Time Vortex, and no one's meant to do that. Every cell in my body's dying.
ROSE: Can't you do something?
DOCTOR: Yeah, I'm doing it now. Time Lords have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death. Except it means I'm going to change, and I'm not going to see you again. Not like this. Not with this daft old face. And before I go—
ROSE: Don't say that.
DOCTOR: Rose, before I go, I just want to tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? So was I.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Parting of the Ways)

And with that we get our first regeneration standing up instead of lying down --supposedly because David Tennant hadn't been cast when Eccelston finished his scenes and it was easier to match standing shots rather than lying-down ones, but it's also a much more heroic-looking pose.

And so we say farewell to Christopher Eccleston, who leaves after just one series. The reasons why he left are still unclear (Eccleston's still unwilling to more than hint at them, and no one else is saying anything), but nevertheless he was (and is still) proud of the year he did on the show. He should be; not only did he help relaunch the show and make it a huge success, but he took the character of the Doctor and turned it into a genuine person rather than just a sort of archetype. It's a fantastic performance from an amazingly talented actor, and the show was lucky to have him.

But what a way to go out, eh? "Bad Wolf" / "The Parting of the Ways" is, like Eccleston's performance, a tour de force -- an unabashed "season finale" full of action and drama. Everyone excels in this, turning a tale about reality television into one of the biggest threats the Doctor has ever faced on screen. It's still BBC Wales' best season-ender to date. In a word, fantastic.

Kudos, therefore, to Russell T Davies and everyone who worked on this series. It was definitely a gamble to bring Doctor Who back, and in such a way as to capture as large an audience as possible, but they succeeded handily -- and with the strongest run of stories since, well, season 26 -- but season 18 before that. And what's more, they did so in a way as to retain the spirit of the original show, not by rebooting it or changing it but by simply updating it for the modern viewers -- just like the programme has always done. Definitively, emphatically, Doctor Who is back.

Now the question is, can they keep it up?

January 9: "Bad Wolf"

And right after our first sequel we get our second, as this two-parter deals with the consequences of the Doctor's actions in "The Long Game". Well, sort of. This episode says that the problems Earth faces in 200,100 are the result of what happened on Satellite Five a hundred years earlier, but given the reveal at the end that the Daleks have been working behind the scenes for quite some time, it looks like they're more likely to blame.

But here we are, at the beginning of Christopher Eccleston's final story as the Doctor, dealing with those consequences mixed with a healthy dose of reality television. It's rather tragic that this is the end of the ninth Doctor, because Eccleston's performance here is so good. He was never really "off" in his performance, but those early episodes have some moments of what feels like forced jollity -- perfectly in keeping with the characterization, but there nevertheless. But here there's none of that. We get all the range Eccleston's been showing the whole season, but there's never a sense that it's forced, even when he's asked to turn on a dime (such as in the Big Brother house, when he learns that the losing contestants are killed and he goes from annoyed to confused to determined in the space of a few seconds). He's also incredibly charming with Lynda and seems genuinely pleased at the thought of her traveling with him once this reality television situation is sorted. But then there are his more serious moments -- he's very intense when he's silent, after he thinks Rose is dead -- and it's really wonderful how he doesn't say a word until "Let's do it" to Jack, who immediately springs into action. But his intensity here and in the speech to the Daleks at the end are marvelous to behold.

"Do I look like an 'out of bounds' sort of guy?" ("Bad Wolf") ©BBC

Captain Jack also comes off really well in this too. He's highly entertaining in his reality TV moments ("Ladies, your viewing figures just went up," he tells the two droids after they remove his clothes on live TV, and then there's the moment where he pulls a concealed blaster from somewhere while naked -- "You really don't want to know," he tells them when they ask where he was hiding it), but what's more striking is how he seems to instinctively follow the Doctor's orders and settles in comfortably as a subordinate. He even calls the Doctor "sir", and not facetiously either. Really, the only one who doesn't shine in this episode is Rose, and that's because she spends a lot of this episode either forced to play The Weakest Link Deadly Edition or thought to be dead. (And don't worry, she'll get a chance to stand out next episode.)

The reality TV stuff (the main plot of this first part) isn't as biting a satire as it could have been -- partly because the production companies that own the rights to these shows have given permission to use their logos and music and such (and thus wouldn't be terribly thrilled with too barbed an approach) and partly because Russell T Davies is an admitted fan of the genre. As such, the parodying focuses more on a "what if?" scenario regarding deadly game shows -- not exactly the most original subject (and one Doctor Who itself had already sort of tackled in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy), but one that they get a surprising amount of mileage out of.

But ultimately this is about bringing all the "Bad Wolf" clues to a head (complete with a recap of some of their appearances during the course of the series), as the Doctor realizes that "someone's manipulated my entire life," and giving us the big reveal at the end of the episode that the Daleks are back, somehow -- and in the grand Terry Nation tradition of waiting till the end of the episode (and referring to them as something other than "Daleks" -- "my masters", in this case) before making the big reveal, even though the previous trailer spoiled the surprise (and now that the episodes are 45 minutes, you have to wait twice as long as when Nation did it). But now they've shown themselves; the end of the ninth Doctor is almost here.

Fantastic cliffhanger, though:

DALEK: We have your associate. You will obey or she will be exterminated.
DOCTOR: No.
DALEK: Explain yourself.
DOCTOR: I said no.
DALEK: What is the meaning of this negative?
DOCTOR: It means no.
DALEK: But she will be destroyed.
DOCTOR: No! Because this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to rescue her. I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm going to save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!
DALEK: But you have no weapons, no defences, no plan.
DOCTOR: Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death? Rose?
ROSE: Yes, Doctor?
DOCTOR: I'm coming to get you.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Bad Wolf)

January 8: "Boom Town"

Oh look, it's our first sequel of the BBC Wales run -- we even get a brief recap of the events of "Aliens of London" / "World War Three" at the beginning in case you've forgotten who "Margaret Blaine" is.

It's kind of a weird episode though, is "Boom Town". We get some really lovely scenes with the TARDIS crew, joined by Mickey and clearly having a great time in 2006 Cardiff. It's especially nice to see how effortlessly Jack fits in, creating a really fun dynamic with the regulars. I also really like the way he's incredibly enthusiastic about Margaret's tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator. ("It's a surfboard," Mickey says, after Jack explains what it does. "A pan-dimensional surfboard, yeah," Jack replies.) Captain Jack will rarely be better than he is in these first series episodes, and we won't really get another "chummy" moment like we do at the beginning for a long time.

But then Russell T Davies decides to give us a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, with a returning villain who may not actually be as bad as we thought -- it's certainly hard not to draw parallels with TNG's fifth season episode "I, Borg" (in which the Enterprise finds a lone Borg and decides after talking to him that maybe they're not so bad after all). To Davies' credit, though, he never goes full bore with the "she's just misunderstood" aspect, and in fact the moments where Margaret claims just that sound more like a desperate plea to avoid being executed than genuine remorse. Nevertheless, it's hard to shake the idea that Davies really wants this to be an examination of both Margaret and the Doctor. In this light, it looks like it wants to be the counterpart of stories like "Dalek", taking a hard look at the character of the Doctor. Unfortunately, it runs into two problems: first, unlike "Dalek", this character examination is the main plot of the episode, rather than a sidelight, and so it does feel a bit lightweight; and second, the Doctor's analysis of Margaret feels a lot more compelling than her probing questions to him (even if he doesn't seem to have ready answers for all of them). "You've been in that skin suit too long," the Doctor tells Margaret. "You've forgotten. There used to be a real Margaret Blaine. You killed her and stripped her and used the skin. You're pleading for mercy out of a dead woman's lips." We're supposed to be thoughtful about the Doctor's lifestyle and motives, but Margaret's questions don't hold as much weight as that moment from the Doctor. It also doesn't help that she turns out to be selfish anyway, willing to destroy the whole planet in order to surf her way out of there -- which makes it even harder for us to take her points seriously.

The other, more minor quibble is regarding Rose and Mickey's scenes. The exploration of their relationship is actually rather good, and Mickey's decision at the end to ignore Rose is a striking one (even if it'll be completely ignored in the next story). There is, however, something rather frustrating about listening to Rose describe to Mickey all the cool planets she's been to without having experienced any of them ourselves.¹⁶⁸ After all, so far we've been to Earth, two space stations orbiting Earth, and, er, that's it. This is in part because of a calculated move on Russell T Davies' part, to ensure that the younger, more mainstream viewers aren't scared away by anything that looks too much like a "cult" show that they therefore wouldn't be interested in -- remember, for a large part of the audience, this show isn't about "an adventure in space and time" (as the Radio Times once put it) but instead is about Rose's relationship with the Doctor. But it's still a bit perverse to hear about these places without seeing them ourselves.

So "Boom Town" is ultimately a really uneven episode -- the good moments are really good, but the weak moments almost cause the whole episode to collapse under the weight of the surrounding scenes. This is worth watching for the performances and the interaction between some of the characters, but not much else.

Oh, and one additional note: we finally see the Doctor notice how the words "Bad Wolf" have been following him around for the past few episodes (the clue meant to keep longer-term viewers interested and guessing), even if he ultimately dismisses it as coincidence. Except that the next episode is called "Bad Wolf"... (And the trailer at the end of this episode appears to spoil the big cliffhanger at the end of that one.)

¹⁶⁸ Well, unless you're the sort of person who reads the tie-in books -- Justicia, the setting of the second Ninth Doctor Adventure The Monsters Within, gets a name-check here. In that book Justicia's explicitly Rose's first alien planet -- a moment you'd think we might have been allowed to see, rather than just read about.

January 7: "The Doctor Dances"

Great cliffhanger resolution here, as the Doctor sternly tells the advancing patients to go to their room -- reasoning correctly that the people here have a connection with the main child who is acting as the leader. "I'm really glad that worked," the Doctor says. "Those would have been terrible last words."

If the first episode concentrated on a sense of suspense and creepiness, this episode is more of an action-based one, with more chases and a couple death-defying feats near the end. That's not to say that there's no suspense or creepiness on display here -- indeed, there are just as many worrying moments, with the bit with the typewriter (an added scene when the episode was running under length) and Algy's transformation into a gas mask victim being two particular highlights. It's also really wonderful how the Doctor's solution to the cliffhanger comes back to bite them. "I sent it to its room," the Doctor realizes, as he, Rose, and Jack look around the room in the hospital that the child was kept. "This is its room." It's moments like that, presented with supreme confidence and panache, that help sell this story.

But perhaps even more impressively, they've also got time for some character moments. Steven Moffat seems to delight in puncturing some of the show's more sacred cows -- the sonic screwdriver is scrutinized and comes up somewhat lacking ("Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, 'Ooh, this could be a little more sonic?'" Jack says disparagingly), but most pertinently the question about whether the Doctor can be involved in anything beyond a platonic relationship is brought up playfully, most often using the euphemism "dance". "The world doesn't end because the Doctor dances," Rose says, and while she's actually talking about dancing here the subtext is clear. (And, in case you missed it, they make it about as explicit as they can later, when Jack proves to be interested in both women and men: "Relax, he's a fifty-first century guy. He's just a bit more flexible when it comes to... dancing.")

But there's a third meaning at work as well, one that's often overlooked even though it's referred to in the title. (After all, the first meaning makes for a really strange name and the second doesn't happen, unless we really missed something off-screen.) Even though he may not be the smoothest suitor (or even be interested in being a suitor at this point), when it comes to saving people and doing the right thing there's no one more adept. "You want moves, Rose? I'll give you moves," the Doctor declares, as he sends the upgraded nanogene software to the rest of the nanogenes. And thus we get an absolutely joyous resolution, as everyone affected by the gas mask plague (thanks to the nanogenes) is restored to perfect health: "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!" The Doctor dances with joy as he's able to save everyone. It's a beautiful moment, and everyone affected does live -- even Captain Jack, who was ready to sacrifice his life to stop a German bomb from killing everyone in the railyard, is saved by the Doctor and brought onto the TARDIS before the bomb explodes. Looks like they have a new traveller aboard.

"The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances" is a supremely confident story, one that moves at a good clip with a swagger, as if it knows just how good it is. It helps that they've made this a two-parter; a single episode version wouldn't have been nearly as good. We get some fabulous performances from everyone and a new companion in Captain Jack Harkness, who'll go on to have lots of adventures without the Doctor (although none of them will ever explore or even refer to the missing two years of his life as a Time Agent that he mentions as a motivation here). It's scary, it's funny, it's brave, and it's unabashedly happy. "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances" isn't just a standout story of Eccleston's tenure, or of the BBC Wales run, but of the entire programme.

January 6: "The Empty Child"

And so, sixteen years after the show first dipped its toe into the waters of World War II with The Curse of Fenric (a story, you might recall, about vampires attacking a British army base in the northeast part of England while a small Soviet force tried to steal a computer), Doctor Who dives headfirst into the subject in "The Empty Child", set in London during the Blitz.

Except...it doesn't. This is set during the Blitz, certainly, and we get some details here and there to support that, but Steven Moffat (who you might remember from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death -- he's gone and done Coupling since then and thus at this point is also quite a big name in British television) is more interested in the Blitz as a backdrop rather than an event. Instead, we get a suspense-filled episode as a child wearing a gas mask goes around following people in London -- and those who've encountered him are terrified of him. That's really the main thrust of this first part: the Doctor does some investigating, which leads to the discovery that anyone who's come into contact with the boy develops the same symptoms -- physical trauma and a gas mask (why the gas mask gets fused to the body and not any of the other clothes is left unanswered). It's a really creepy idea that they do a good job of selling -- director James Hawes makes good use of angles and lighting to enhance his shots. But perhaps the most impressive part of this main storyline is the scene around the dinner table, where Christopher Eccleston shows just how good he is with children. We've never really seen this Doctor interact with kids before, but there's something magical about this moment, as he jokes with them but also gets information from them -- it gives you a look into why Eccleston took the job in the first place.

And while that's going on, Rose clings to an unmoored barrage balloon while a German air raid is happening, only to be rescued by a charming man named Captain Jack Harkness, who is emphatically not from 1941 (seeing how he has a spaceship and all). John Barrowman makes a strong debut as Jack, oozing charm and rakishness, and even though he reveals himself to be a con man and may have inadvertently caused the gas mask plague, you still can't help but root for him. Rose certainly seems taken with him -- and she seems more pleased with his actions (doing things like finding the Doctor by searching for alien technology) than with the Doctor's (asking around about things falling from the sky). (And her comments about "Spock" are the first overt references to Star Trek in televised Doctor Who.) Jack in fact seems here to be written as almost the opposite of the Doctor -- both "freelancers" but behaving in different ways. We'll have to see if they carry this through to the second part.

It's a very good set-up episode -- the empty child is incredibly effective in its eeriness, and his plaintive cries of "are you my mummy?" are deservedly memorable, a juxtaposition of the helpless with the deadly. The moment where Dr. Constantine succumbs to the plague is really quite horrific, and the final scenes in the hospital, where Jack finally meets the Doctor and describes the con, are also good -- and the cliffhanger is really effective as well. And look, they've moved the "next time" trailer to after the credits (supposedly at Moffat's insistence), to avoid spoilers for anyone who wants to remain ignorant of the next episode's events. (Although this trailer isn't nearly as "spoiler"-y as the one after "Aliens of London" was.)