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.
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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.)