January 31: "Greeks Bearing Gifts" (TW)

Finally, an episode that isn't embarrassingly stupid.  That's not to say that there aren't stupid moments (as well as some excruciating ones), but as a whole "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is less offensively idiotic than most of what we've seen before on Torchwood.

In fact, the main plot of this episode is really rather good.  Having given all of the other characters a spotlight episode, it's finally Tosh's turn -- and the show decides to tear her down.  To be fair, this is so that she can be in a vulnerable state and ready for Mary to take advantage of, but it still has the unhappy side-effect of making Tosh seem like an outsider on the team -- and the fact that Owen and Gwen have started shagging and are bad at hiding it certainly doesn't help, since it seems that Tosh has a crush on Owen for some unfathomable reason.

Mary threatens to kill Tosh unless she gets her way. ("Greeks
Bearing Gifts") ©BBC

So while the decisions that Tosh makes regarding Mary and her pendant are rather stupid, they're all too easy to sympathize with.  We don't shake our heads at Tosh, wondering what in the world she's thinking; no, writer Toby Whithouse (who, you may remember, wrote "School Reunion" for Doctor Who) gives us a clear path to see, one that it's not too hard to see ourselves walking down.  All right, maybe without the lesbian kiss and implied sex, but that looks more like an effort to keep up Torchwood's "adult" reputation than a logical conclusion of what we're presented.

In fact, that tendency toward "adult" content (rather than actual adult -- as in "grown-up" -- content) hurts things somewhat, because without that aspect "Greeks Bearing Gifts" actually has one of the most grown-up storylines the show has yet provided: what would it be like to eavesdrop on other people's thoughts, and would that be far worse than reading someone's diary?  What would it be like to hear the thoughts people don't even want to admit to themselves?  It's an interesting idea that they have some fun exploring -- notably with Tosh stopping the ex-husband who's going to kill his family; the pendant can lead to positive results as well as negative.  There's also a welcome discussion about Torchwood's rather xenophobic tendencies: "You'll examine me, assess whether or not I'm useful, whether I'm a danger, then lock me in a cell," Mary tells Tosh after revealing she's an alien.  "You're not interested in understanding alien cultures.  It's just as well you haven't got the technology to reach other planets yet.  Yours is a culture of invasion."  Both questions are ultimately sidestepped, as Mary is revealed to have been killing people for 196 years (according to Tosh's analysis at the beginning¹⁷⁹), but as the first question isn't one that there's an easy answer to, its unresolved nature is okay -- and the fact that Tosh and Jack discuss it a bit afterwards also helps.  (And they can't really explore the second question without fundamentally changing the nature of the show -- something that it looks like they're unwilling to do.)

Really, the main problem with "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is the relationship between Gwen and Owen.  Owen seems about as much of an ass as ever, but Gwen is now heading in his direction as well.  The teasing of Owen feels like it's overdone, and while it's admittedly her thoughts that we're privy to (with the catty thought about jeans in boots -- was that true in the UK?  Because it was the exact opposite in the US...), they don't do her any favors.  And her attempted justification to Tosh at the end is lousy as well.  "This should be my wake up call," she tells Tosh.  "I should stop, but I won't.  What does that say about me?"  "That you're a bad person," my wife and I simultaneously yelled at the screen.  So much for the audience having any sympathy for Gwen.  I guess that leaves Tosh and maybe Captain Jack.

So other than the ongoing train wreck that's most of the main characters (but Owen and Gwen in particular), "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is a decent episode.  Somewhat miraculously, Tosh's character comes out of this unscathed (in the audience's eyes, if not necessarily in her own) -- that alone is cause for celebration.  Now that they've finished examining each character, maybe they can get on with telling more interesting stories -- and in that respect, "Greeks Bearing Gifts" is certainly a large step in the right direction.







¹⁷⁹ Our first major dating conflict: series 1 of Torchwood is supposed to occur in 2007 or so, but Tosh's inexact dating of the soldier's body places this episode in 2009 or so.  We're forced to conclude, based on all the surrounding evidence (much of which we haven't seen yet, so you'll have to take it on faith for now), that Tosh is even less exact than she thought.

January 30: "Countrycide" (TW) (Second Attempt)

All right.  For all the cheap shock value and dread that "Countrycide" gives us, there does seem to be a point at its heart: namely, that humans can be bigger monsters than actual monsters.  The problem with that point is that a) we don't really learn it until near the end, and b) it's not exactly the most original point ever -- Torchwood's parent show makes that point every three episodes or so, and they don't have to put it in a wannabe slasher movie to do so.

The Torchwood team approach a seemingly deserted village.
("Countrycide") ©BBC

Up to the point where we learn it's just (just) cannibals in rural Wales, rather than an alien threat, "Countrycide" (which is a rubbish title, by the way -- yes, puns and all that, but taken at face value, it means "killing the country") keeps trying to have it both ways: suggesting there's an alien presence/influence at work while trying to play out a slasher flick at the same time.  Now I'm not the biggest fan of slasher films, so I might not be the best person to judge, but it seems like this one pulls most of its punches.  We get some gore in the form of human carcasses, a bunch of blood and a few unidentifiable entrails, and some severed limbs.  And that's about it.  No on-screen killings (or even attempted ones -- unless you count the scared kid Kieran shooting Gwen in the stomach with a shotgun), no sense of people tempting fate or disregarding warnings, no examination of what made the villagers this way... it's like Chris Chibnall wants to ape the conventions of slasher films without putting any real reason into why.  Now, it's likely there are BBC guidelines for what can be shown on television, even post-watershed, that prevents the production team from going all out on this.  But then why bother?  If you can't go full out, and you don't have a deeper purpose behind your slasher episode than "Let's see if we can," what's the point?  It's like the thought of an alien presence is enough justification to go through the motions without putting in any deeper context, and we should applaud them for trying.

And while "Countrycide" does a decent job of building up tension and making the audience nervous (so at least director Andy Goddard is trying), it never follows through on any of its threats.  It doesn't even kill Kieran, who seemed for sure like he was there to be the token victim, to demonstrate just how dangerous the cannibals are.  It's the televisual equivalent of one of those haunted houses people put on in October: lots of stuff that might startle you or make you nervous, but nothing that will ultimately hurt you.  When you don't know that, on first viewing, that might be enough.  Every subsequent time it's frankly boring.

Then, as if to rub salt in the wound, we learn at the end that Gwen is cheating on Rhys with Owen (that's the same Owen who's back to prick mode in the first part of this episode and looks like he's on the verge of sexual assault in the forest scene, is it?) because "I can't share [these new things I'm experiencing] with anyone."  Ay yai yai.  What is wrong with these people?  (Oh, and as long as we're wondering about stupid things... why is it necessary for everyone in Torchwood to head out to rural Wales -- overnight, it turns out -- to investigate some disappearances?  What happens if something occurs back in Cardiff?  Why is Ianto out in the field at all, given he appears to be little more than a glorified page?)

I said at the beginning that there seems to be a point buried in "Countrycide".  But that's not strictly true.  It's more like an afterthought, a way to try and rationalize the last forty-five minutes.  And that's not enough to justify the meaningless episode we've been subjected to.  This almost works if you've never seen it before, or if it's been long enough that you've forgotten most of the details; then some of the surprises and the "is it aliens?" angle might actually keep you interested.  For everyone else it's a tedious slog through a story that has nothing to say and no clear point.  It's a hotly-contested title, but "Countrycide" might be the worst episode Torchwood has ever put out.

January 30: "Countrycide" (TW)

What the hell was the point of that?

January 29: "Small Worlds" (TW)

It's nice to finally get an episode that doesn't feel vaguely mean-spirited in some way.  One of the problems with Torchwood thus far is that it's a very negative show -- very dark and unhappy.  "Small Worlds" is still rather unhappy, but it stems more from the stories being told than because they're artificially trying to be "adult".

It's not perfect in this regard; we still get a paedophile following a young girl, and while we see him apparently attacked while in the process of luring in a young girl and later killed by these same somethings, it's hard to feel any real worry or regret about his death.  Still, at least he wasn't successful in his attempted kidnapping -- it's all too easy to envision a version of this story where that happens -- and so it's nice to see a bit of restraint.

Those "somethings", by the way, are Torchwood's take on the Cottingley fairies, a hoax from the early 20th century where two girls had claimed to have taken photos of fairies.  As Gwen points out, both women admitted that the photos were a hoax, but at the time they had taken hold of England's imagination -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was just one of many convinced of their veracity.  (Houdini wasn't one of them, though -- Owen gets that wrong.)  But Jack says that's just a way to make people comfortable with their existence, and that they're actually evil "from the dawn of time" (just like Fenric, eh?).  He also makes an offhand reference to the Mara, which may or may not be the Mara from 20th-century Doctor Who.¹⁷⁸

Jack and Estelle. ("Small Worlds") ©BBC

This leads to probably the most interesting parts of the episode: its exploration of Captain Jack.  The stuff in 1909 Punjab is intriguing for the hints it gives us of other things Jack has done, but it's his relationship with Estelle that is the most touching.  The implication is that Jack has been on Earth for a long time, and it's sweet how he visits the girl he loved in the 1930s now, even if he tells her he's the son of the man she knew.  It shows us a tender side of Jack, one that's been largely missing from Torchwood, which seems to want him to be a brooding loner instead.  It's a good move, showing him vulnerable as he stays the same age while the rest of the universe moves on but still in love with the people he's known (and I have to say, it works a lot better for Jack, who had immortality thrust upon him, than it does for the Doctor, who's a member of a race of incredibly long-lived people), and it gives Estelle's death -- poor, sweet Estelle, who thought the fairies were benign creatures -- a greater impact.  This is in fact the most emotionally involving episode we've seen yet.  "Ghost Machine" and "Cyberwoman" both tried really hard to pull on our heartstrings, but both efforts felt too calculated, with not enough substance behind them.  "Small Worlds", on the other hand, does this quietly and sweetly with Jack's reactions to Estelle.

I also like the ending, which feels right even if it's a bit bleak (and, to jump ahead here, this isn't the first time Jack's had to sacrifice a child for the good of humanity; see Children of Earth).  The idea that fairies aren't good is hardly a new one -- that idea's as old as the idea of fairies itself -- but they do a decent job pulling it off here.  It doesn't always succeed -- there's a slight issue with making most of the targets of the fairies' wrath not nice people, which dulls their impact somewhat -- but "Small Worlds" is finally an episode of Torchwood you can watch without cringing.







¹⁷⁸ It's not clear if this is a reference to Doctor Who's Mara or the one from folklore.  Jack's description suggests the latter, but it's just about possible that author Peter J. Hammond (best known as the creator and main writer of Sapphire and Steel) is trying to tie them both together.  After all, he'd been tapped to write one of the segments of The Trial of a Time Lord (the third one -- his story was known as Paradise 5 but was rejected because Nathan-Turner disliked it), so it's conceivable that he'd done some research on the show and knew of the Mara.  Producer Chris Chibnall definitely would have known about the Mara, so this is likely an intentional decision to tie the two together, rather than a coincidence.

January 28: "Cyberwoman" (TW)

It's really hard to see what the point of this episode is.  I can see what director James Strong is going for -- he wants to make this a scary episode, with lots of handheld camera shots and dark shadows for Lisa the Cyberman to get lost in.  He even partially succeeds.  But what is Chris Chibnall trying to do with this script?

In some ways the script wants to be tense and claustrophobic and terrifying, and those are probably the moments where "Cyberwoman" comes the closest to succeeding.  The moments that pit Jack against Ianto work surprisingly well, even if Ianto's repeated accusations that Jack is a monster and "worse than anything locked up down there" ring rather hollow (they want it to be like Margaret's accusations against the Doctor in "Boom Town", but works even less well here because Jack's trying to stop a rampaging alien monster from destroying them the way Torchwood One was destroyed, so it's really hard to keep sympathizing with Ianto by the end).  The tension as they point guns at each other is very effective (even if it's hard not to see this as a success on Strong's part rather than Chibnall's).

Ianto looks at the partially-Cybernized Lisa. ("Cyberwoman") ©BBC

But there are some massively stupid things going on in "Cyberwoman".  The first one is the appearance of Lisa herself.  They bend over backwards to explain why her body is still there when we saw in "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" that all the Cybermen were taking was the brain (because they needed to move fast or something), just so they can present us with this bizarre sexualized creation.  It's not just the literal breastplate, or that fact that the Cybermen cut a groove on the butt plate to make it look like she has a butt.  It's not even the way the bellybutton is highlighted and exposed.  It's the fact that she's wearing Cyber-heels, for heaven's sake.  It's like a technofetishist's wet dream.  There's also no explanation as to why she wasn't sucked into the Void along with the rest of the Cybermen in "Doomsday", beyond a passing reference to using "Earth technology", which could mean anything.  (The associated website tried to explain this -- and it's not a good sign when you have to explain plot holes on your official website -- by arguing that the Cybermen started using our resources to convert people, and that only things that had originated in Pete's World were pulled into the Void.  Fair enough, but that doesn't explain why Lisa seems to be the only person made entirely with "our" Earth parts, or why there's only one Cyber-conversion unit made with our resources. -- or why they decided to start giving their fellow Cybermen defined breasts.)

There's also the stupidity of Ianto hiding this thing in Torchwood's basement -- it's understandable, entirely human stupidity, but it's still stupidity -- and the longer it goes on, as he refuses to see the evidence of his own eyes, the less we feel for him.  Owen snogging Gwen while in the mortuary cooler is in keeping with what we know about Owen.  What's not in keeping is Gwen deciding to kiss him back.  Lots of people stop and stare at Lisa even after being told to run and do things as quick as they can while others buy them time that they're currently wasting by stopping and staring.  And the fight between Lisa and the pterodactyl is also daft -- and it doesn't seem to have done a damn thing one way or the other.  And why do all the doors to the top-secret base obligingly open for Annie the pizza delivery girl?

Here's the thing: you can forgive stupid things if there's a good reason behind it, or if it adds to the drama in some meaningful way (such as the fifth Doctor not drinking the queen bat's milk right when he gets it, because his impending death overriding just about everything else is part of the reason the end of The Caves of Androzani works so well).  But there's no sign of that here.  There's no point to any of this.  At least Chibnall's last script ("Day One") had something to say about sexuality in Western culture (even if that something appeared to be little more than, "Hey, Western culture is sexualized!").  There's not even that here.  This looks like it was designed to have a sexy Cyberwoman scare everyone and nothing else.  There don't even seem to be any real consequences at the end of it, as we see Ianto back to work and cleaning things up.  It's unbelievably shallow, worryingly misogynist, and ultimately pointless.

January 27: "Ghost Machine" (TW)

Well, it's certainly better than the last episode...

So I understand that they're still finding their feet with these characters and this set-up, but the episodes seem to be all over the map stylistically.  "Everything Changes" was an attempt to create a secretive but fun organization, but show some of the consequences of that kind of life, while "Day One" just looked like a way to get some cheap thrills while pushing the boundaries of good taste.  "Ghost Machine", on the other hand, feels like it's somewhere between these two approaches.

Owen watches (via the quantum transducer) Ed Morgan prepare to
kill Lizzie Lewis back in 1963. ("Ghost Machine") ©BBC

One of the good things it does is it pulls Owen's character back from the being the right bastard he was in the first two episodes.  He's still kind of a prick here, going to a murderer's house and confronting him about it to "put the fear of God into him", but at least we can understand his reasoning behind it -- and making him so affected by the events of the past that he witnesses, it's not too hard to sympathize.  He's still something of an asshole, but at least he's not completely irredeemable.

It's still a story that requires its main characters to behave like idiots at times, though.  The scene with Gwen using the quantum transducer in her flat is bad enough (given what's happened with the device so far, why would she a) take it with her at all, and b) expect to experience anything but unhappy memories inside her flat?), but at least it doesn't adversely affect things.  Much worse is the resolution of the main storyline, which needs to have both Gwen use the completed device -- even though the only other person she knows who's done this saw his own death -- and to hold the knife pointing out once she takes it away from Owen.  That might be more forgivable if she wasn't a trained police officer; you'd think they'd cover what to do with weapons when you've taken them from people (such as "don't brandish them at people"), even if they don't train you how to use them.  But then the same thing happens earlier when she points a loaded gun at Jack's face (to his alarm), so maybe they don't train them for these sorts of situations.  It still seems contrived, though.  (And making Morgan walk straight into a knife pointed at him doesn't help; Tosh later says that he wanted to die, but that sure doesn't look like what's happening.)

However, while "Ghost Machine" has its flaws, it's not nearly as unpleasant as "Day One" was.  Of course, it's no standout either; despite some good performances (particularly from Blake's 7's Gareth Thomas as the old Ed Morgan -- but if we're discussing characters, why is Captain Jack so angry for large parts of this?), this is an entirely forgettable and average episode.

January 26: "Day One" (TW)

Generally speaking, the first episode of a new show is there to set up the premise of the show and introduce the main characters.  The second episode is the first chance for a show to set out its stall and say, "This is what this show is going to be like."

So what kind of show does "Day One" suggest Torchwood is going to be like?  The answer, worryingly, seems to be, "Not a very good one."

Russell T Davies stated on Torchwood Declassified (the sister show to Torchwood in the same way that Doctor Who Confidential was to Doctor Who) that "when we're launching a new adult science fiction drama, it's kind of inevitable you're going to do the sex monster."  Setting aside the fact that that doesn't really seem to be true (to pick a couple shows at random, there's not really a sex monster in Star Trek (unless you want to count the Salt Vampire in "The Man Trap", but that's more about seduction) or at all in Babylon 5 -- but on the other hand, it comes up pretty early in The X-Files, which is what Torchwood looks like it wants to be like), it suggests that the definition of "adult" that Torchwood wants to be is closer to the pornographic side.  It's not an encouraging decision.

The (sigh) sex monster enters Carys Fletcher. ("Day One") ©BBC

But alas, you can't just wish this episode away.  "Day One" (and it's rather painful to write this bit) features the team dealing with a gaseous sex monster (entertainingly, the TARDIS wiki calls it "Sex Gas") that feeds off orgasmic energy -- specifically male orgasmic energy, as Gwen apparently is no use to it.  To this end we get a number of scenes of the possessed Carys absorbing men as they climax (plus one of a bouncer masturbating to a CCTV feed inside the women's lavatory), as well as a make-out scene between Gwen and Carys -- apparently because of the intense pheromones that the sex monster emits.  This also leads to the first indication that the members of Torchwood Three are all idiots.  So first they capture Carys, who's possessed by a gaseous alien -- and Torchwood know that, because they're the ones who accidentally released the alien in the first place, when Gwen tossed a "chisel" (that looked more like a spike) to Owen and missed -- and lock her in a cell in their base (which is disgustingly filthy, by the way -- doesn't Ianto ever go in there with a hose and some bleach?) with great big holes in the wall, perfect for gas to seep through.  (Not that the creature ever tries to escape that way.)  But anyway, Gwen goes in to talk to her and ends up making out with her -- something Owen notices on the CCTV and calls Jack and Tosh over to see.  Do they immediately realize that Gwen's in danger from a monster that kills people while having sex with them?  No, they all just stare appreciatively at the camera output for a while (even Tosh) before Jack decides to go stop it.  And then later the sex monster gets out because Owen went to talk to her alone and was seduced by it, leaving him naked and in handcuffs.  It's sort of hard to feel remotely bad about Owen, though, given that he spends the entire episode as an asshole and a scumbag and less likeable than anything we've seen in this show yet.  It's not remotely clear what they're trying to achieve with this character, but they're doing a superb job of pushing the audience away.

Good bits?  The way in which the main cast treats these events is surprisingly straight -- despite the premise, they manage to treat this as a serious threat, and Gwen excels by being concerned about the girl the gas has taken over.  The scene where they're eating Chinese food and discussing Jack's mysterious past is rather nice.  Meanwhile, Kai Owen as Gwen's boyfriend Rhys is just about the best thing in this, but John Barrowman still does a good job as Jack -- and his extreme paranoia over a severed hand in a jar is interesting.  There are also some nice directorial choices -- such as the scene illustrating all the sexually-charged advertising that Carys walks past, which works significantly better than it has any right to -- which make it at least interesting from a purely visual standpoint.

But ultimately "Day One" feels like a tawdry and tasteless attempt to show that Torchwood is different from its parent show: "Look how adult we are!" it seems to be yelling.  There are some good performances, but there's nothing really meaningful being expressed here -- no commentary on the nature of sexuality or anything like that; that advertising montage is the closest we get.  It really does look like they just said, "Hey, let's do an episode about a sex monster!  We'll work out why later," and they never really did.  Throw in some truly unlikeable moments (seriously, why does anyone in there tolerate Owen Harper?) and the result is an unpleasant mess.

January 25: "Everything Changes" (TW)

So.  Series 2 of Doctor Who concluded on 8 July 2006.  But between then and its return at Christmas, a brand-new spinoff came out (on 22 October, to be precise) -- not a one-off, like K-9 and Company had (fortunately) been, but a full-fledged series: Torchwood.¹⁷⁷  And unlike its parent show, Torchwood was designed to be a post-watershed show (so late night after the kids have gone to bed), with a lot more swearing, sex, and explicit violence than you might find in Doctor Who.  So, not exactly the sort of thing the general audience would go for.

Based on this first episode though, by Russell T Davies, they might actually pull it off.  Far and away the best thing about Torchwood is the return of John Barrowman as Captain Jack.  He's not quite as great as he was in series 1 of Doctor Who, as he has to be more of the straight lead here rather than the rogue he was with Eccleston, but he still does a good job.  But "Everything Changes" focuses primarily on PC Gwen Cooper, who's investigating a murder when this outfit called Torchwood comes along and takes charge.  Gwen spends the rest of the episode trying to find out more about Torchwood and what they do.  It's all very "pilot"-y.

We do learn some things, though; this is explicitly set after "Doomsday", and while the Torchwood in London (Torchwood One) was completely wiped out, the Torchwood in Cardiff (Torchwood Three) is still around -- even if there doesn't seem to be a central authority for Captain Jack and his team to answer to anymore.  We also learn that this is after "The Parting of the Ways" for Jack: "Something happened to me a while back," he tells Gwen.  "Long story and far away.  But I was killed, and then I was brought back to life.  And ever since then, I can't die."

But as far as first episodes go, this one isn't too bad.  It doesn't assume that the audience has seen Doctor Who, which means that it does take some time to set up Torchwood for that new audience, with the "we take care of alien stuff".  It's sort of like a reverse X-Files, dedicated to covering up alien involvement instead of exposing it.

Suzie confesses to Gwen while Jack stands on the perception-
filtered lift. ("Everything Changes") ©BBC

They make some good moves (such as the gag about letting Gwen inside the base and then being unable to stay in character, or how the actress playing Suzie is treated like one of the main cast -- with a credit and everything -- only to be killed at the end), but there are some problems as well.  The aforementioned Suzie is shown to be a killer (even if this is shown as a hazard of the job), and while she gets her comeuppance at the end, Owen Harper (Torchwood's doctor) is shown to be a date rapist, essentially, with no consequences -- indeed, it's hard to shake the feeling that we're supposed to find this funny.  Still, at least Gwen, Toshiko, and Ianto come out more or less okay.

It's not the best episode ever, but "Everything Changes" does a decent job of setting the series up.  It's nothing incredible, but it does the job it was meant to do -- even if you're still not quite sure at the end what sort of show Torchwood will be.







¹⁷⁷ As you may already know, Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who.  The name was originally used as Doctor Who's codename during series 1 (à la Return of the Jedi and "Blue Harvest"), but Davies liked it so much he used it for the top-secret organization we see here.

January 24: "Doomsday"

The last TARDISode shows a (frankly strange-looking) broadcast warning people about the Cyberman invasion.  It's also notable for using the name of the episode in the dialogue -- something that doesn't happen in the main event itself.

"Army of Ghosts" was going really well.  So what happened with "Doomsday"?

Actually, to be fair, this is another one of those episodes where the director almost pulls it off.  Graeme Harper fills the screen with lots of dynamic, energetic shots that really keep things moving, and the temptation is definitely there to just sit back and let it all wash past you.  But there are major major problems with "Doomsday" that really stop you from doing this.

The Daleks realize the Doctor is standing behind the Cyberleader.
("Doomsday") ©BBC

The problems start early, with the Daleks and the Cybermen squaring off for a (rather out-of-character) bitch fest, as each snipes at the other.  It really wants to be a huge, epic moment, but it ends up dragging on for far too long as they grate at each other ("It's like Stephen Hawking meets the Speaking Clock," Mickey remarks, rather insensitively) -- and what's worse, we're meant to be paying attention to the Doctor during this scene, so any childhood fantasies this scene evokes end up secondary to that.  Then they end up shooting at each other, while the Doctor gets on with the actual plot.

And the trouble is that it's not a terribly exciting plot, is it?  For all they try to dress it up and distract you with all the action sequences, for all they talk about two unstoppable foes wreaking havoc on the planet... the solution ultimately comes down to pulling a big lever and reversing everything.  It's a nice-looking lever, very solid design and all that, but it's still just a large reset switch.  Nothing exceedingly clever or imaginative, just pull a switch and fix everything.  (It probably also doesn't help that the bit right at the climax, where it looks like Rose is going to be sucked into the Void until Pete pops back and saves her, is mind-bogglingly nonsensical: how did Pete know to come back, and at exactly the right place to catch Rose?  Why wasn't he sucked into the Void as soon as he showed up?  And how did he transport Rose when we were told earlier that the yellow button devices could only take one person?  (All right, maybe he slipped an extra one on her, but it's not remotely obvious.))

As I said, Graeme Harper almost gets away with it, and there's perhaps no better example than the moment immediately after the breach closes, with the Doctor and Rose leaning against the same wall but separated by a universe -- which works far far better than it has any right to be.  (It also helps that composer Murray Gold goes not for a string-filled sappy piece to accompany this, but rather a wordless soprano solo with a constant pulsing bass guitar underneath that gives the scene a real sense of drive.  Gold's instincts are occasionally a little too pedestrian -- for instance, he loves to underline "funny" scenes with "funny" music -- but he's 100% spot-on here.)  Whether you find that final moment between the Doctor and Rose on the beach intensely tragic or incredibly frustrating is probably a matter of opinion.  I'm rather on the "frustrating" side -- just let him say "I love you"!  You've been building two whole series to this moment, just pull the trigger!  Or are they worried that that would really make series 3 feel like a letdown, if the Doctor is undeniably, irretrievably heartbroken over Rose?  At least this way they have a bit of wiggle room.

However, it's hard to not to realize, while watching this sequence, just why Rose had to leave.  It's not so much because of the smug, bitchy characterization they've been giving her this season (for who knows what reason), but because they've turned Rose into the Doctor -- even Jackie comments on it in "Army of Ghosts".  But we already have the Doctor; we don't need another character doing the same things.  The fact is that Rose has long ceased to be the main audience identification figure, and without that her purpose is gone for everyone except the shippers¹⁷⁶ -- not that we should discount their opinion, but they don't make up the majority of the audience.  And so it's time for her to leave.

There are other minor nitpicks throughout "Doomsday" that don't help either: the scene between our Jackie and alternate Pete stops the story's momentum dead as they express plot points at each other -- even if Mickey's reaction to Jackie's line about how "there was never anyone else" is priceless.  (Mind you, even Davies himself has commented that this scene is too much.)  And while it's tragic that Yvonne Hartman is turned into a Cyberman, the idea that she can somehow resist the conditioning is not only silly but rather violates one of the main horrors of being turned into a Cyberman, that you can't resist being like them.  And the tear is risible.  And it's things like this that point to the main problem with "Doomsday": despite Graeme Harper's best efforts, it's hard to shake the feeling that Davies included things just because he thought it would be a good or fun idea, with little thought as to how these ideas would connect up with all the other things.  In this respect, somewhat ironically, we're not a million miles away from your standard Eric Saward script -- the sort of thing this incarnation of the show had previously been working to avoid.  The only difference is that the callbacks here are from the last two series, rather than the entire history of the show.  Whether that's a better move is a question for debate.

But then there's a sense in which series 2 has been slapped together in a hurry.  I think it was Noel Gallagher of Oasis who said that you get five years to write your first album, and then six months to write your second.  In many ways that's what series 2 feels like: as if Davies had planned out series 1 long long ago, and then suddenly realized he had to come up with another series when the first one was such a huge success.  (It probably didn't help that the plans for series 2 changed as things went along: "The Runaway Bride" was pulled to become the second Christmas special, while Stephen Fry's 1920's story -- about which almost nothing is known -- fell through and had to be replaced in a hurry with "Fear Her".)  There's a lack of cohesion throughout the main thirteen episodes of series 2, as if Davies is juggling so many things that he's had to take his eye off the ball when it comes to the details.  It's not an appalling mess or anything, but series 2 too often has moments where you have to make allowances, where they only just get away with it.  It's a perfect illustration of the sophomore slump.

But in some ways it doesn't matter: Doctor Who is back and huge.  The show is everywhere in Britain, at the peak of its popularity (much in the same way 2011 would be for the show in the United States).  It doesn't matter what the quality of the actual episodes is -- the overwhelming goodwill and popularity that the show experienced in Britain in 2006 more than overrides any individual story concerns.  For many people David Tennant and Billie Piper are still the quintessential TARDIS team, regardless of what the actual evidence suggests, and nothing will change that.  If you thought the show was big by the end of 2005, that's nothing compared to what 2006 brought: a tremendous wave of popularity that Doctor Who will ride for the next few years.







¹⁷⁶ shipper, n.  Someone whose primary interest in a work of fiction is the (usually romantic) relationship -- hence the term -- between two (or more) characters, whether that's realized within the piece itself or outside it (as in fan fiction, artwork, etc.).

January 23: "Army of Ghosts"

This week's TARDISode: a reporter learns about Torchwood, but just as he's about to print the story, Torchwood comes along and takes him away...

Odd opening notwithstanding (the whole "this is the story of how I died" thing, which is a nice hook à la The Lovely Bones but turns out to be something of a cheat -- but we're getting ahead of ourselves), "Army of Ghosts" is a solid, entertaining episode.  It's the start of series 2's season finale, which means we finally see the Doctor meet up with Torchwood, after dropping hints since "Bad Wolf".  This might be slightly more interesting if they hadn't announced the upcoming Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood between series 1 and 2 of Doctor Who, but since they did, it's hard not to be a bit cynical about the whole thing.  (Of course, Torchwood would end up being rather different from what we see under Yvonne Hartman's leadership, but we didn't know that at the time, and that cynical feeling remains.)

But it's interesting to see what "Army of Ghosts" does right.  Somewhat remarkably, we don't waste much time introducing the Doctor and Rose into the main events: once the Doctor's established that the "ghosts" that everyone sees everywhere aren't ghosts at all, but something pushing its way into our world, it's off to Torchwood itself so that the plot can keep moving forward.  And, in a good move, we get a look at a Cyberman quite early on (as it menaces soon-to-be companion actress Freema Agyeman, albeit in a different role here) -- no sudden revelations that it's the Cybermen pushing through.  This does mean that the audience is slightly ahead of the Doctor, but the misdirection regarding the Void Ship ensures that we don't spend a large portion of time just waiting for the Doctor to catch up.  And since Graeme Harper is at the helm again, it's all shot very effectively, so even when it's a lot of exposition (as when Yvonne is explaining things), it never feels like it.

Yvonne Hartman, the Doctor, and Jackie watch as the Cybermen
invade. ("Army of Ghosts") ©BBC

There are some really nice moments here, too: the Doctor's interactions with Jackie are a lot of fun, and his explanation of what happened when the Void Ship entered this dimension, complete with spidering glass, is nifty.  (We also get some wonderful dialogue, as the Doctor sees that the TARDIS is surrounded by troops with guns: "Doctor, they've got guns," Rose warns him.  "And I haven't," the Doctor replies.  "Which makes me the better person, don't you think?  They can shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine.")  It's also interesting how the Doctor is ostensibly Torchwood's prisoner, but Yvonne would rather use his knowledge than just lock him up.  And hooray!  Mickey's back!  Ooh, and look, a Pyramids of Mars reference (the sarcophagus next to the TARDIS)!  There are lots of lovely little moments like this, which makes the big moments like the Cybermen's invasion more effective, as the goodwill that's already been engendered carries right on through.  And the big reveal at the end, as it turns out to be not Cybermen but Daleks inside the Void Ship, is a really good one.  So far, "Army of Ghosts" has done just about everything right.  The question, however, is whether they can deliver in the next episode, as they have to deal with both Cybermen and Daleks...

January 22: "Fear Her"

The TARDISode shows us a programme called Crime Crackers, investigating missing children in a London close (what Americans would call a cul-de-sac).  Although frankly this looks more like a silly parody than anything of serious intent, which doesn't bode well for the main event...

"Fear Her", for some reason, has become the pariah of 21st-century Who -- the most recent Doctor Who Magazine poll listed it at 240 out of 241 -- just ahead of The Twin Dilemma.  It's frankly hard to see why "Fear Her" evokes such vitriol, as the finished episode is barely worth remembering.

The Isolus encounters Chloe Webber. ("Fear Her") ©BBC

It's not perfect, but it's certainly not appalling -- unlike the aforementioned The Twin Dilemma, which really makes you work to find any nuggets of quality, there are quite a few lovely scenes in "Fear Her".  The Doctor sticking his finger in the marmalade is quietly wonderful.  The idea of the Isolus is interesting (even if, perversely, they've given such an intense family organism a name that looks a lot like "isolated"), and we finally unequivocally get the series 1 Rose back -- she's the most likeable she's been since "The Christmas Invasion", and her efforts to carry on where the Doctor left off (after he was snatched away by Chloe/the Isolus) are very well done.  Plus, the off-hand mention of the Doctor being a dad is great (and was presumably a surprise to new viewers -- though it's been established, more or less, since "An Unearthly Child"), and the gag about how the TARDIS materializes the first time is cute (even if they'd already done that joke in Ghost Light).  It's also clear that someone's put some thought into the fact that they're shooting a story set in July 2012 in January 2006, so we get dialogue about how the Isolus's ship is sucking the heat out of everywhere.

But there are still some major problems with "Fear Her".  A couple of them are production-related (such as how Abisola Agbaje isn't quite up to the task of portraying the possessed Chloe Webber (although, notably, she seems a lot more comfortable when she's playing the Isolus-free version)), but primarily the issues are at the scripting level.  Chloe's powers seem to be inconsistent (so when she draws people they're transported into her pictures, but when she draws something imaginary like the scribble creature it appears in real life (and incidentally, the Doctor's trick with the eraser is strange -- try erasing the tip of a pencil and see how far you get) -- and when she draws someone who was alive but is now dead, he appears to live in a halfway point between the two), and both endings (the nightmare dad one and the Doctor/torch one) are quite painful, albeit for different reasons.  The dad one feels awfully saccharine and twee -- essentially the equivalent of just wishing bad things away -- and the torch one tries so hard to force you to cheer that the natural reaction is to gag instead.

However, the underlying concern with "Fear Her" isn't a matter of a bad plot or an inept production.  No, what ultimately sinks it is a general smug sense of "aren't we clever?"  From the opening TARDIS gag to the Doctor lighting the torch, there's a sense in which the episode is repeatedly yelling at the viewers, "Look!  We're doing fun and interesting new things!"  If they were actually doing fun and interesting new things, it might (might) have been okay, but although they occasionally do slip a moment through, there's not really anything worth engaging with in this story.  It's a lot like a bore at a party telling everyone how interesting they are.  And as with the bore, you might find some things here and there in "Fear Her" worthwhile if you stick around, but it might just be better if you walk away.

January 21: "Love & Monsters"

This TARDISode shows something trying to locate the Doctor-hunting group LINDA...

"Love & Monsters" seems to be one of those intensely polarizing stories Doctor Who turns out from time to time -- you either hate it or adore it.  (Other examples of what About Time calls "Marmite stories" -- after the slogan for Marmite, "Love it or hate it" -- include The Web Planet, Ghost Light, and, it seems, "Listen" (based on initial reactions, at least).)  It's certainly an unusual format for the show, being narrated by a guest character who describes the effect the Doctor has had on his life.  As such, it's an "outside looking in" interpretation of the show.

It also happens, I'm told, to be a very accurate portrayal of Doctor Who fandom in the '70s and '80s.

My experience in fandom is rather different from what's shown here, as I'm both a bit too young and from the wrong area -- there weren't many fan groups for kids in late '80s/early '90s Michigan.  My experience as a fan didn't really blossom until the rise of the Internet, but things had changed by that point.  However, the consensus seems to be that "Love & Monsters" -- and LINDA in particular -- is exactly how fan groups were in the '80s: people who were brought together by their love of Doctor Who, but who became friends because of other things.  LINDA develops along exactly the same lines (albeit with the Doctor instead of Doctor Who), and Victor Kennedy is said to be representative of those fans who wanted the others to take the Doctor Who aspect seriously -- when for others that was about the last thing they actually wanted to do.  (Despite how accurately "Love & Monsters" portrays the British fan experience though, Russell T Davies has said he himself was never a member of one of these groups.)

Ursula and Elton. ("Love & Monsters") ©BBC

Now, I can't directly attest to how "Love & Monsters" relates to fandom, but I can tell you how it looks to everyone else.  It's a cool move to show us how the contemporary events of the last couple series have looked to others, and it's rather impressive that Dan Zeff and crew make the recreation of those events look just as good with less time and money as the originals.  But what this episode really hinges on is its main character -- and happily, Marc Warren delivers in spades as Elton Pope.  Elton is endearingly awkward, charming, and generally all-around likeable.  It's quite a burden for a guest star to carry, but Warren pulls it off with ease.  Meanwhile, Peter Kay, as Victor Kennedy/the Abzorbaloff, is on just the right side of creepy, while still being fun -- and the Abzorbaloff is a nice creation, and the tie-in with Blue Peter to make the monster is a really lovely touch.

But what's especially nice about "Love & Monsters" is how it fleshes out the character of Jackie Tyler.  Up to this point, Jackie has been primarily defined in terms of Rose, with little beyond that -- but here, we get to see a more nuanced side to Jackie, as we see that she basically doesn't want to be alone, and that manifests itself in chasing men but also in being fiercely protective of her daughter.  It's really nice to see her interactions with Elton, and it's heartbreaking to see how quickly that turns sour.

It's not perfect (the bit at the end, where the Doctor brings Rose to Elton just so she can chew him out, probably looked funny in an isolated context, but in the scheme of the larger series looks like another incredibly petty move from Rose, making her more and more unlikeable), but "Love & Monsters" succeeds more than just about any other story from this year.  There's no need to make allowances or excuses for this story -- it's a beautiful tale, a love letter to the older fans, and a fascinating perspective on the events we sort of take for granted in the Doctor Who universe.

...yeah, I'm pretty firmly on the "love it" side of things.

January 20: "The Satan Pit"

Not only is today Tom Baker's birthday, but it's also my brother's 30th!  Happy birthday!  I...have no way to tie that into "The Satan Pit", so let's just move on...

The TARDISode for this episode appears to take place between the last TARDISode and the start of "The Impossible Planet", as someone looks through Captain Walker's effects, sees that book burst into flames, and then is found with sigils all over his face.  This might be fine if these events or either of these two characters were ever seen or even mentioned again.

So here's the thing about "The Satan Pit": director James Strong almost gets away with it.  His direction is very dynamic, filling the screen with tons of energy as Ood charge down ventilation shafts and the Sanctuary Base crew start to lose it as the pressure on them builds and builds.  But he also gives us quiet moments; Ida's conversation with the Doctor, as he's dangling inside the pit, is really beautiful -- all subtle and calm.  And his (seeming) last words to the outside universe -- "If they get back in touch...  if you talk to Rose... just tell her...  Tell her...  ...Oh, she knows" -- are far more lovely than they have any real right to be.

But the problem lies in the script.  "The Impossible Planet" builds really well, and the cliffhanger, with the Beast escaping and the Ood turning into killers, is very well judged.  But then "The Satan Pit" just sort of...sits there, working through its running time until it gets to the points it wants to explore, which basically starts with the Doctor dangling in the pit.  Try to imagine this as an old-school four-parter, and then picture part three, and you'll see the problem.  As I said, Strong makes all the ventilation shaft sequences look tense and compelling, but they don't really contribute to the plot, and the way in which the Ood are dealt with by the halfway mark only makes this clear.

The Doctor confronts the Beast. ("The Satan Pit") ©BBC

No, Matt Jones is clearly more interested in exploring the nature of the Doctor's beliefs and faith.  It does come across as strange to long-term fans though, as the Doctor struggles with the idea of something existing "before time" (so presumably from before this universe began) -- even though he had no trouble with the concept in Terminus.¹⁷⁵  (But hey!  Support for my "previous universe" theory in "The Impossible Planet"!)  Even independent of Terminus, though, it's not clear why the idea of a universe before this one would freak him out -- it's treated as if the idea is enough, without any real exploration of it.  Then there's also the problem with the Doctor's theorizing about the Beast having an influence on all the civilized races in the universe -- no problem with this per se, but one of the planets the Doctor mentions is Dæmos, which only serves to point out the conflict between what this story states and what we hear in The Dæmons.  Did the Beast make the Dæmons look (a bit) like himself?  Did he inspire them to go manipulate other races because he was their devil figure?  Or is it just a coincidence?  And finally, there's the minor issue of how the big climax of the story is that Rose isn't a victim, and that he believes in her.  It's a good moment, but we already saw it in The Curse of Fenric, so it's not the huge revelation the script wants it to be.

In fact, there's more than a little of The Curse of Fenric in this story's genes.  Here it's evil from before the dawn of time instead of the dawn of time itself, but the idea is still the same -- and Fenric as a creation was a lot more subtle than a huge growling dude chained up underground.  We still have the Doctor's belief in his companions as a motivator, and we have the evil being manipulating events to bring about its release, but less interesting discussions about faith here than there.  The idea that the Doctor keeps traveling to be proved wrong is nice, but it's less interesting than Reverend Wainwright confronting the loss of his faith in God, or Captain Sorin's faith in the Russian Revolution.  Instead of evil in human form, with all the guile and cunning that entails, we get a giant mindless shouty thing -- which sums up the two different approaches toward the same basic point, really.

Look, this is another series 2 story that just about works on balance.  "The Impossible Planet" is really really good, and a lot of that goodwill translates over to "The Satan Pit".  That, combined with Strong's direction and some good performances (Billie Piper continues to be a lot more likeable here than she has been, even if this seems to be the story that starts to see her actively transform into the Doctor), makes this worth watching.  The main problem is that "The Satan Pit" is a lopsided episode, exploring questions already examined more intriguingly in earlier stories.  To be honest, it's not clear how they could have done better, other than restructuring/rewriting "The Satan Pit" to ramp up more smoothly -- but the minute they decided to include a huge CGI devil, there was no way this was going to be as interesting as "The Impossible Planet" promised.  As I said, it just about works (and it still carries that New Adventures feeling over both episodes, right down to exploring the idea of ancient gods), but it's James Strong's win, not Matt Jones's.







¹⁷⁵ Well, maybe.  One reading of Terminus suggests that Terminus is from this universe, traveled back in time to the beginning of the universe, jettisoned the fuel that caused the Big Bang, and traveled forward in time as a result of the shockwave (thus creating a paradox).  This rather lessens the impact of Gallagher's ideas (admittedly not well-realized on screen) about the original crew of Terminus being like giants who have been long since gone (except for the Garm) by the time mankind finds the place, though.

January 19: "The Impossible Planet"

The TARDISode suggests that someone wanted this impossible planet to be found -- even if the map was found on the other end of the galaxy (although, given it's full of the untranslatable symbols, how did they figure out where the place was?)...

This first episode of the latest two-parter is probably the closest the BBC Wales series has come yet to capturing the spirit of the New Adventures, Virgin's '90s novel series featuring the seventh Doctor which frequently dealt with ancient beings and crazy set-ups.  "The Impossible Planet" has the feel of those books (perhaps not the most surprising thing, given that the author of this, Matt Jones, wrote one of the last NAs, Bad Therapy), with an isolated human base uncovering an ancient force that's gathering its strength.  (It's also rather like a Tom Baker story, but as there's no story or legend being overtly remade, it's not as clear-cut a connection as you might think.)  But while there are lots of hints as to what's going on, we don't really get anything too explicit here; sure, the Ood at the end refer to the Beast as Abaddon, Satan, and Lucifer, but that's not really proof (after all, the Doctor suggests in The Dæmons that it was the titular beings that led to the idea of the "Horned Beast").

But what this episode does really well is create an atmosphere of solitude and tension; the conditions of the planet are such that help isn't coming¹⁷³, and even the Doctor and Rose are isolated when the part of the base that the TARDIS is parked in disappears down into the depths of the planet.  This means that, as things start to go to hell (sorry), there's no escape for any of them; they have to deal with the events head-on.

They do a really good job of making things feel more dangerous with their throwaway lines.  The way the Ood matter-of-factly say things like, "The Beast and his Armies shall rise from the Pit to make war against God," is nicely done, and the whole sequence with Toby and the voice in his quarters is suitably creepy -- and the sight of all the sigils on Toby's hands and face are extremely effective.  (Although the fact that they've cast Gabriel Woolf -- who, you might, recall, was Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars -- as the voice of the Beast looks like a deliberate effort to make long-term fans think something different is coming in the second part from what we actually get.)  The death of Scooti is really distressing, and the discovery of her body, framed against the black hole, is a memorable moment.  (Though as long as we're here, let's note that the black hole shown isn't a very accurate depiction of the genuine object; supposedly they looked into doing a scientifically accurate rendition but decided it wasn't as visually interesting.  Wait, really?  That suggests they were doing it wrong...)

And one of the nicer moments in this episode is the Doctor contemplating life without the TARDIS, having to settle down and do normal things.  It's a quiet interlude, and Rose's awkward fumbling as she tries to suggest living with the Doctor is rather sweet; happily, in fact, "The Impossible Planet"'s characterization of Rose is a lot closer to series 1's than what we've been getting -- other than some painfully forced laughter right at the beginning (oh, and the moment when the Doctor realizes the TARDIS is gone where the script makes her distressingly thick -- but that looks like it's been included for any viewers who haven't cottoned on to the problem, rather than as a character point for Rose), this is a much more pleasant and sympathetic Rose.  And while Rose is doing a lot better, the Doctor is also firing on all cylinders -- he's clever at the right moments, worried when he should be¹⁷⁴, and somber when the story needs him to be.  Even his hug of Zach and his little speech about humans (which by all rights should have been an excruciating moment) is passable.

Danny watches as a guard is killed by a possessed Ood. ("The
Impossible Planet") ©BBC

Meanwhile we get a great new alien design in the form of the Ood -- the tentacles hanging from the mouth area are creepy without being terrifying, and the eyes rotated so that they're at a diagonal to the rest of the face is a cool move.  The overall effect is rather pleasing -- alien but not threatening.  Making them a slave race is also rather distressing -- despite any protestations from the Ood themselves -- and this firmly puts us on Rose's side, as well as making them feel unthreatening.  But that makes their possession by the Beast, as they become the Legion of the Beast (complete with red eyes), all the more scary, as these rather benign creatures start killing people, all while they're apparently mentally screaming.  It's a really effective moment.  The only real downside is that they're still slaves -- just to the Beast, rather than humanity.  (To be fair, this aspect will be addressed in series 4, in Planet of the Ood.)

There are other minor problems here and there.  There seems to be some artifacts from earlier drafts that lead to strange moments (most notably, Ida scoffing at the idea that the planet they're on has a name -- "Don't be stupid.  It hasn't got a name.  How could it have a name?" -- and then a few minutes later stating that "in the scriptures of the Veltino, this planet is called Krop Tor"), and while the orange spacesuits look neat, putting lights inside the helmet like that seems really impractical.  Oh, and it's all well and good grabbing public domain files for your sound effects, but maybe don't pick one intimately connected with the sound of a door opening in the one of the most popular and influential PC games of all time (Doom, if you need to be told).

But ultimately "The Impossible Planet" is a huge success -- we get a nice slice of terrifying Who, done through suggestion and the development of tension rather than cheap shock moments.  If they can deliver in the next episode, this story might go down as one of the best ever.







¹⁷³ Something to note is that no one ever mentions relativity effects, which would probably make help largely useless anyway; possibly this is handled by the gravity funnel that let them get to the planet in the first place, but then that gravity funnel seems to collapse at the end of the episode.  But then, if relativity was a factor, wouldn't it be pointless trying to get the power source from the center of the place?  By the time they were successful the rest of the universe would have long since passed them by, presumably rendering the attempt irrelevant.
¹⁷⁴ Namely, at the language so ancient that the TARDIS can't translate it.  But what does that actually mean?  Presumably the written translation function works by the TARDIS scanning the brains of the people in the area (via that telepathic field), working out how their written language works, and then giving that information to the Doctor (and any other relevant people).  So if the TARDIS can't translate it, that must mean it's never encountered any other speakers of that language.  Of course, given the size of the universe and everyone in it, this perhaps isn't the most surprising thing ever.  Nevertheless, the Doctor treats this as an impossible event, which suggests that this race had already come and gone before the Time Lords came about -- and that they either made no impact on the universe (despite their advanced technology, and the fact that one of their books made it across the galaxy (as seen in the TARDISode)) or they deliberately shielded themselves from the Time Lords (or that the Time Lords never ventured back to the beginning of time, but this seems unlikely); either way, the Time Lords (and, by extension, any TARDISes) never encountered these people.  Odd no matter how you look at it.
     (There's a possible get-out clause: if we assume that this civilization is actually from the universe before our current one -- which seems to have been established as a real thing (in internal continuity terms) in Terminus -- and that they never made it to this universe (perhaps their dying act before our Big Bang was to ensure that the Beast would be imprisoned), this might explain the stuff about the language being unknown by the TARDIS.  This theory comes with its own set of problems, though.  (Such as, for starters, how did the Beast and the planet survive the Big Bang, and why (jumping ahead here) is the Beast found in the legends of so many races?))

January 18: "The Idiot's Lantern"

The TARDISode for this story is a little unusual; normally these are set before the events we see in the story, but this one seems to be set during the title sequence -- between the cold open and the start of the rest of the episode, as we see Tommy's gran get her face sucked off after the Connollys' television is delivered.

Rose becomes the latest victim of the Wire. ("The Idiot's
Lantern") ©BBC

The actual episode is a bit of an odd beast.  There are moments it does really well and moments that fall flat, and it never quite strikes the right balance between these two things.  It might be worth noting that the episode starts to hit its stride once Rose has become a victim of the Wire, but that perhaps has less to do with Rose and more to do with the structure of the story.

That said, the bits with the Doctor and Rose in the Connollys' house don't come off the way Mark Gatiss presumably intended them to.  Eddie Connolly is a bit of a bully, certainly, but it hardly seems like the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him harder.  The Doctor's response to Eddie's attempts to gain control ("And I'm not LISTENING!!!") feels a bit forced, but Rose's crack about the Union Jack versus the Union Flag feels incredibly mean-spirited (and also isn't actually true).  If this had been an isolated incident they might have gotten away with it -- certainly the rest of Rose's behavior (other than the bit about the Union Flag being upside down) is reasonably sympathetic -- but coming after a long string of other questionable character decisions, it just increases the sense of distaste toward Rose's character.  It becomes so noticeable, in fact, that viewers at the time were wondering if they were setting Rose (and the Doctor, to an extent) up for a fall, so insufferable was their behavior becoming.  Alas, it seems to be more a matter of poor script editing across stories than a concerted effort to give them hubris that they'll pay for; no one appears to have considered the cumulative effect of these more negative aspects.

Once the plot gets going, though, things improve.  There are some lovely moments (everyone mentions it, but the part where the Doctor, when asked to tell the police everything he knows, starts with "I know you can't wrap your hand around your elbow and make your fingers meet," and then while DI Bishop is yelling at him the officer behind him is trying to see if the Doctor's right, is a moment of understated joy), and the Doctor is in full righteous mode (even if it seems to be the fact that Rose was affected and then left on the street that ends up being the final straw), challenging the Wire.  The Wire herself is a reasonable villain, travelling along electromagnetic signals and trying to absorb the electrical impulses of the brain (though it's never clear why those signals are preferable to any other electrical signals -- nor why this causes people's faces to disappear), but her cries of "Hungry!" are awfully reminiscent of Paradise Towers (and if you think Mark Gatiss didn't know this you haven't been paying attention).  Still, she provides an interesting villain, and the method of dealing with her is rather clever.  The ending's a bit odd, though; we're supposed to be pleased that Mrs. Connolly has finally gotten rid of the bully in her life, in the form of her over-bearing husband, but then we get a speech from Rose about how families are super-important and Tommy should go to his dad -- even though Eddie is a bully and had earlier jokingly talked about beating the "mummy's boy" out of Tommy (and if you take seriously the subtext that Tommy's gay, this becomes even more worrying -- but as I noted under "The Unquiet Dead", subtexts tend to pass Gatiss by).  It's a bit of a duff note for an ending, and certainly not the one the production team intended.

And then there's the matter of the direction.  Euros Lyn is using an awful lot of low angle shots and skewed shots, trying to convey a sense of things being off-kilter -- but he takes it too far, and once you notice it it's hard to unnotice it, and you find yourself wondering if someone's just neglected to make sure the camera's level.  It's a nice idea, but it's ultimately distracting.  This is a shame, because there are lots of other good shots (such as the climb up the transmitter tower) that do a good job of conveying the action in interesting ways -- but that tilted camera overwhelms everything.

But ultimately "The Idiot's Lantern" isn't a terribly successful episode.  I confess that I have a bit of a soft spot for it, but it's not hard to see why others wouldn't care for it.  I rather like the plot with the Wire, and there are a number of good moments scattered throughout -- but if you're not impressed by the Wire, you might find this all rather tiresome.  It has a few nice moments, but it's not the triumph it could have been.

January 17: "The Age of Steel"

This week's TARDISode:
     All around the woooorrrrld
     Gotta spread the woooorrrrd
     Tell 'em what you've hearrrd
     You're gonna be a Cyberman
 
The main problem with "The Age of Steel" (for me, at least) is that it's really hard to get worked up about the fate of people in a parallel universe.  I'm really not sure why; it's not like Doctor Who is normally a documentary or something, but nevertheless the fact that what we're witnessing doesn't affect "our" universe makes it hard to get really invested in events.  (And unlike, say, Inferno, we're not witnessing a cataclysmic disaster that leads to a breakdown in everything or directly comparing it to "our" world (which is what made that story worthwhile), but rather are simply seeing the sort of event that happens roughly once a year nowadays in the regular Doctor Who universe anyway.)  So even though we see Ricky killed by the Cybermen, it's hard to feel genuinely upset about it because Mickey is standing right there -- and as he was the only one present alongside his double, it felt more like bookkeeping than anything else.  Meanwhile, Jackie's conversion into a Cyberman is presented in a way that looks like we're supposed to be horrifically upset by this, but as it's not "our" Jackie it's hard to muster up the energy to care as much as it seems we're supposed to.

But where this episode (and really, this story) succeeds is in Graeme Harper's direction, which he makes impressively dynamic.  The scene of the Doctor and Mrs. Moore walking through the Cybermen-infested cooling tunnels is really well done, and manages to be tense and suspenseful without seeming too much like the crew of the Enterprise walking through a Borg ship on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And Mrs. Moore's death actually is genuinely upsetting; she's been one of the best things about this episode, and to see her killed in such a shocking moment has a major impact on the viewer.  (Although how did that Cyberman come up behind her without anyone hearing it stomping?)  And the part right before, where the emotion inhibitor in the Cyberman is deactivated and we get a sense of who the Cyberman used to be, is really good -- it explores the idea of the dehumanization of the Cyber-conversion process in a way we haven't seen before, and the thought that the Cybermen have removed all their emotions not because emotions are "weak" (even though Lumic seems to be suggesting that later) but because it's the only way to stop them from going insane is a fascinating one, and it's a scene enhanced by Harper's direction, with a close-up on the Cyberman's face as "she" wonders what's going on.

Mickey says goodbye to the Doctor as Jake and Rose look on.
("The Age of Steel") ©BBC

But it's still hard to shake the idea, after everything is over, that we're meant to care a lot more than we actually do.  The moments that involve the regulars work way better than most of the ones that don't; we're cheering when Mickey saves the day by tricking the robot Cyberman into smashing the transmitter controls, and when he works out what the Doctor is telling him to put the Cybermen out of action for good.  As such it's genuinely sad to see him go at the end of the episode; Mickey has become the audience identification figure, and he's had a larger and more complete character journey than Rose has -- compare his first appearance in "Rose" to how he is here, and it's clear how much he's grown.  It's genuinely sad to see him go, even when you know he'll be back later.

However, ultimately "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" is a story that doesn't quite work.  As a straightforward action tale it does a good job; there's enough action here to keep you happy, enhanced (once again) by Harper's direction, and it's probably a good move to have a simplified Cyberman history.  (Although subsequent tales are going to make things even more complicated than they ever were before.)  But you get the feeling that this two-parter wants to be more than that; it wants to examine some familiar characters in a new light and see what comes out.  But no one's different enough for this to work: Ricky is probably the furthest away from his counterpart, but that just makes him angry all the time.  Pete Tyler is still a good man and Jackie is a bit more snobbish, but it's hardly a reach for her character.  What it comes down to is that they don't give us enough of a reason to care about the fate of Pete's World, and so we're distanced from the events we see on screen; it's not affecting "our" Earth, so why should we care?  It's a question that "Rise of the Cybermen" / "The Age of Steel" struggles, and ultimately fails, to answer.

January 16: "Rise of the Cybermen"

The TARDISode shows a report about some strange goings-on related to a man named John Lumic, which Noel Clarke (as Ricky) is watching in a blue van...

Our first two-parter of this series takes the TARDIS to a London with zeppelins in the skies and Pete Tyler alive and well and a millionaire, thanks to hawking a drink called Vitex.  (Which you might remember as one of the products in his flat in "Father's Day".)  Yep, nineteen episodes into the revived series and they've decided to do a parallel universe story.  Fortunately we don't see too many duplicates between Pete's World (as it'll be called in "Doomsday") and our regular world, so the actors aren't using this as an opportunity to do something different from normal -- and in fact the two who do show up in both universes (Noel Clarke as Mickey/Ricky and Camille Coduri as Jackie) don't play significantly different versions of themselves: Ricky is more intense than Mickey, and this Jackie seems a lot more stuck-up than "our" Jackie, but that's about it.  (Incidentally, we get confirmation of the "+1" dating, with Mickey commenting that it's right when they left their universe, on 1st February, and that Jackie is claiming that she shares a birthday with Cuba Gooding, Jr., even though she's a year older and is actually turning 40.¹⁷²)  Rose really wants to find Pete, and when the Doctor is forced to choose between her and Mickey, he chooses Rose.  Even though Mickey has by this point replaced her as the audience identification figure, being a lot more likeable and sympathetic -- check out the scene between the Doctor and Mickey in the darkened TARDIS console room, where they both seem really comfortable with each other, if you need proof.

So then why is this set in a parallel universe?  It's not to destroy it, as in Inferno, and while it's nice to see Shaun Dingwall back as Pete Tyler, it's unlikely that's the main impetus either.  No, it looks like this is designed to jettison all the backhistory of the Cybermen and start afresh.  (And in fact, this story started out as another Big Finish remake, like last year's "Dalek" (which was a remake of Rob Shearman's own Jubilee): this time of Marc Platt's "genesis of the Cybermen" story Spare Parts -- although you can be forgiven for not realizing that, as there's very little overlap between the two.  (Nevertheless, Marc Platt gets a "thanks to" credit during the end titles.))   No one apparently wanted to untangle all the Mondas/Telos stuff, so we get a brand-new beginning here.  Instead of being created on Mondas as a desperate response to deteriorating conditions there (if Spare Parts is to be believed), the Cybermen of Pete's World were created on Earth by a wheelchair-bound genius named John Lumic.  It seems no one mentioned Davros to writer Tom MacRae (and MacRae is on record as having to be brought up to speed on Doctor Who when he wrote this, so he wouldn't have known about Davros on his own).

But that's fine; other than the "it's been done" factor, there's no real reason the Cybermen couldn't have been created by a Davros-like character.  The problem with the episode as broadcast, though, is that Roger Lloyd-Pack is woefully miscast as Lumic.  Lloyd-Pack seems to be taking the opportunity to play Lumic as one-note as possible, with wide staring eyes and a melodramatic tone to every one of his lines (one online commentator -- I don't remember now who -- described the performance as if Lumic is spending the entire time touching cloth, which is as good as a description as you're likely to find).  It's thus incredibly hard to take Lumic seriously, and even when his Cybermen are stomping around he's still essentially a buffoon of a villain.

Lumic's Cybermen stomp around the grounds of Pete Tyler's
mansion. ("Rise of the Cybermen") ©BBC

The redesigned Cybermen, however, fare rather better.  They look pretty good, with some classic bits (the jug handles, the teardrop eyeholes, the external cables running along the arms) mixed up with some brand-new design elements -- most notably the metal plating over semi-exposed bunches of cables.  It also helps that they're all moving as a well-trained single unit, stomping along in unison.  In fact, that's probably my only real complaint: these Cybermen sure are loud, aren't they?  They could hardly sneak up on someone while clomping along like that...

But they still look pretty good (even if I still prefer the Earthshock design), and thanks to some good direction their big reveal is held back until the end, when they burst into Jackie Tyler's birthday party and kill the President of Great Britain (as played by Don Warrington, who Big Finish fans will recognize as Rassilon from various Doctor Who audios).  And look!  It's the return of Graeme Harper, last seen directing Revelation of the Daleks in 1985; there's nothing quite as visually striking as anything in either of Harper's '80s stories (partly because stylistically, the rest of television had caught up with him by 2006), but there are still a lot of nice touches, with a number of blurred shots and out-of-focus elements in the extreme foreground while we concentrate on something further back in the shot.

It's not a perfect first half, but it's got enough to keep us engaged and wondering what will happen next time.  (And there's no "next time" trailer to tease us for this episode either -- apparently because the episode was running long as it was, but it's still a good move to keep us in the dark.)







¹⁷² Well, sort of.  Cuba Gooding, Jr. was indeed 39 in 2007, but his birthday is actually January 2nd.  But in American dating, where the month comes first, that's written as 1-2-1968 -- which, if you think it's British dating with the day first, looks like 1st February.  So the question is, is this a mistake made by Jackie/her biographer and included as a (very) subtle character detail, or a genuine one by Doctor Who's production team?

January 15: "The Girl in the Fireplace"

This episode's TARDISode shows the ship being damaged by an ion storm, which leads to the repair droids killing the crew so that they can use their bodies as parts to fix the ship...

The episode proper begins after this, with Mickey's first trip in the TARDIS: "It's a spaceship.  Brilliant!  I got a spaceship on my first go!"  And no one seems to have told writer Steven Moffat about Rose's reluctance to have Mickey around (as we saw at the end of "School Reunion"), so consequently she's a lot more likable here -- she and Mickey seem to be having a good time, at least until they're captured by the repair droids.  In fact, this is easily the closest we've gotten to the first series's characterization since "The Christmas Invasion", and it's a welcome return.

A clockwork robot confronts the Doctor in pre-Revolutionary
France. ("The Girl in the Fireplace") ©BBC

But "The Girl in the Fireplace" isn't really about Rose and Mickey; it's about the Doctor and how he keeps popping up into a young girl's life -- a girl who turns out to be Jean Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour.  It's a relationship made possible thanks to some powerful 51st-century technology that's punching holes in time, stalking Madame de Pompadour for a reason left unknown until the closing shot of the episode.  But that reason (the ship is the SS Madame de Pompadour), while useful to know, isn't really germane to the issue -- it's just a way to cap off the events.  The real issue is the Doctor's effect on Reinette, and her effect on him.  Owing to the clever use of "time windows", the Doctor periodically shows up for a bit during moments of Reinette's life, providing an interesting relationship between the two, as Reinette is forced to take "the slow path" while the Doctor flits between moments.  It wants to be a romance, albeit one with clockwork robots, as well as a man who's 900 years old.  But they do manage to pull this aspect off -- Reinette is clearly infatuated with her "fireplace man", and while the Doctor's interest is pitched more as intellectual fascination, there still seems to be a spark there (and he definitely kisses her back during that first kiss).  Plus there's the whole "drunk Doctor" scene, where he swoops in all cheer and goofiness, singing "I Could Have Danced All Night".  He may indeed be playacting (as suggested by his sudden change in demeanor, as he pours "anti-oil" (er...) over the lead clockwork robot), but the choice to play drunk didn't come out of nowhere.¹⁷¹  And there's the heart-breaking finale, as the Doctor learns, after offering to take Reinette along with him to travel in the TARDIS (hey, it could happen; Mary Shelley traveled with the eighth Doctor for a time, if Big Finish is to be believed), that he's come back too late, arriving just after her death.  "I'm always all right," the Doctor tells Rose at the end -- although it's Mickey who's sharp enough to notice that the Doctor needs some time alone.  Really, the only problem is the Doctor's mindlink with Reinette, which looks so much like a Vulcan mind meld that's hard to take it seriously (particularly since it's not an ability he's ever exhibited before; it'll come up again down the line, although the method of thought transference will be different).

It's a story well-suited to Doctor Who, and an idea that hadn't really been explored before this point.  The clockwork robots are a great design, and they give a nice bit of impetus to the story -- and there's something appealing about no one considering the possibility that their repair droids might use people to effect repairs and thus not programming them to not do that.  But this is ultimately about getting a number of different looks into someone's life, and everything else is secondary to that.

The last three episodes of this series, we've had to make allowances for a number of questionable choices, and while the finished products might have ultimately come out ahead, it's been with a lot of qualifiers.  There are no such reservations here.  "The Girl in the Fireplace" is a gorgeous tale about history and romance, with some clever SF ideas underpinning them.  Like Moffat's last story, it won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.  It's an honor well-deserved.







¹⁷¹ Given the extra meanings of "dance" floating around Moffat's last script for the show, it might be worth pondering just how far things went between the Doctor and Reinette.  (Though for what it's worth, Moffat has said they didn't get to that stage.)