April 30: "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" [Additional Scene #2] / "The Vampires of Venice"

When we last saw Amy and the Doctor, Amy had some serious misunderstandings about the relationship between her and the Doctor.  This bonus scene takes place immediately after that, as the Doctor tries to explain to Amy why he takes companions along with him, which leads to Amy's accusations that, despite the Doctor's claims that he's like a "space Gandalf", he generally seems to take pretty girls along with him.  This is a better scene than the other series 5 bonus scene, because not only does it actually provide a smoother transition between the end of "Flesh and Stone" and the start of "The Vampires of Venice", but they also get a chance to flash a whole bunch of previous female companions on the screen.  "Thanks, dear," the Doctor says to the TARDIS.  "Miss out the metal dog, why don't you?"  It's a quick, charming scene.

"The Vampires of Venice" introduces a new angle for the show: it starts questioning the Doctor's actions and whether the good he does outweighs the bad that he leaves in his wake.  This is sort of new thinking; the 20th-century version never even considered the question (not even during Andrew Cartmel's script-editorship)²¹⁷, but it's the sort of subject the novels during the Wilderness Years -- especially Virgin's New Adventures -- grappled with quite a bit.  Russell T Davies chose to ignore this particular line of questioning, and when it was brought up, the answer was generally "of course he's worth it."  (Indeed, it's worth noting that the only story during Davies' era to dispute this position is "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood" -- as exemplified in Joan's last question to the Doctor: "If the Doctor had never visited us, if he'd never chosen this place on a whim, would anybody here have died?" -- which is a New Adventure adapted for the screen.)  But now Steven Moffat's at the helm, and so the rules have changed a bit.

It's going to get a bit tedious in series 6, but here the question is far more interesting.  Writer Toby Whithouse starts with Rory, having seen a bit of what the Doctor's life is like and heard about more of it from Amy, laying an accusation against the Doctor: "You know what's dangerous about you?" he says.  "It's not that you make people take risks, it's that you make them want to impress you.  You make it so they don't want to let you down.  You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around."  It's a valid point and it's easy to see Rory's point of view here.  What's more, the Doctor seems to see it too, so he orders Amy back to the TARDIS ("We don't discuss this.  I tell you to do something, Amy, and you do it.  Huh?") for Rory's benefit.  But then after Amy and Rory's fight with the unmasked Francesco (and we should pause a moment to ask how, exactly, Amy was able to turn him into dust with a beam of sunlight -- even setting aside the fact that it appears to be a dreary, overcast day in Venice, hasn't Rosanna just switched on her storm machine and filled Venice's sky with clouds anyway?), we see that Rory has changed his mind:

DOCTOR: Get out.  I need to stabilise the storm.
RORY: We're not leaving you.
DOCTOR: Right, so one minute it's all "you make people a danger to themselves", and the next it's "we're not leaving you".

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Vampires of Venice)

It's a satisfying resolution to the question, because not only does it provide an internal answer for Rory, but one for the audience as well: yes, the Doctor might be dangerous, but he's doing the right thing, and so his companions are doing the right thing too, even if it's dangerous for them as well.

Saturnyn sisters in human form. ("The Vampires of Venice") ©BBC

That's the deeper question at the heart of "The Vampires of Venice", but it's wrapped in a really smashing layer of excitement and fun.  One thing that stands out is how much fun this episode is.  From the opening gag of the Doctor bursting out of a cake at Rory's stag party and then telling Rory that Rory's lucky because Amy's a good kisser ("Funny how you can say something in your head and it sounds fine..."), to the various one-liners scattered throughout the script ("Tell me the whole plan. (pause) One day that will work"; "Yours is bigger than mine."  "Let's not go there"; "I saw her; they're not vampires, they're aliens." "That's good news?  What is wrong with you people?"; and many more), to the great sight gag of Guido wearing Rory's stag shirt so that Rory can wear his clothes, "The Vampires of Venice" is simply bursting with energy and wit.  There's also some cleverness on display: the Doctor can't see the girls' reflections in the mirror because the perception filters the girls are using "manipulates the brainwaves of the person looking at you.  But seeing one of you for the first time in, say, a mirror, the brain doesn't know what to fill the gap with, so leaves it blank, hence no reflection."  It's a nice little spin on the old "vampires don't have reflections" bit.  Ooh, and a little in-joke, as the Doctor flashes his psychic paper at the girls and we see it's William Hartnell's face on the card.  It's also gorgeous to look at (even if the weather is overcast) -- they've gone overseas to Croatia in order to recreate 16th century Venice, and the result is really nice, with lots of old stone buildings and squares for the camera to take in. 

It may occasionally feel derivative, with more displaced aliens (although this time because of the Cracks in Time and something called the Silence -- although the moment at the very end where it's suddenly silent in Venice doesn't seem to match with what we later learn about the Silence) and more aliens in human guise (Whithouse did this in his last Who script ("School Reunion") as well as his Torchwood script "Greeks Bearing Gifts")), but that's hardly the worst of sins.  What is clear is that "The Vampires of Venice" is a fun time with a thoughtful question at its heart, and that's just fine by me.







²¹⁷ You want proof?  Take a look at The Trial of a Time Lord, which actually does seem to pose this question -- except that it's clear from the beginning that the Valeyard (who's the one asking the questions) is meant to be a villain and thus we shouldn't take his view of events remotely seriously.  That the story ends with the Valeyard revealed to have engineered the whole trial for his own nefarious ends (rather than because he thought the question had serious merit) and the Doctor completely exonerated reinforces this.

April 29: "Alien Avatar" / "Aeolian" (K-9)

Blah blah blah "Alien Avatar" aired before "Flesh and Stone" blah blah blah.

Two kind of middling episodes today -- not awful, but not spectacular.  The first one, "Alien Avatar", is relatively straightforward: Drake is holding two aliens called Medes hostage (of course he is) so that he can learn the secret of their invisibility, because apparently he really likes spying on people.  Meanwhile, Drake's people are polluting the river in their efforts to replicate the alien invisibility technology, which K-9 predicts will kill 85% of the life in the Thames Valley.  (So nice work, Drake.)

Honestly, it would be nice if there were more to the episode than that, but other than the extra trick of the Medes being able to project holographic avatars of themselves (thus letting K-9 know about the problem), there's really not much to see here.  Drake is as slimy as ever, and Connor Van Vuuren delivers the same exaggerated performance as ever.  The best bit might be how June and Starkey charge after Jorjie and Darius after June realizes they're walking into Drake's restricted area, and Gryffen tries to follow but can't overcome his agoraphobia.  It's a nice little nod to something that hasn't come up much lately.

It's certainly not a terrible episode; it's entertaining while it lasts and the disappearing effect for the Medes is genuinely impressive.  It just doesn't have any ambitions at all beyond filling its 25 minutes -- no comments on pollution or imprisonment or this society or anything.  The mission of "Alien Avatar" appears to be to get in and get out with a minimum of fuss, and at this, at least, it succeeds.

The Aeolians are reunited. ("Aeolian") ©Screen Australia, Pacific
Film and Television Commission Pty Limited, Park Entertainment
Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions
Pty Limited

The second episode today, "Aeolian", is significantly more interesting.  There's something wonderfully mad about the idea that music can affect weather, and to their credit they do explore the idea a little bit.  Plus it gives them a chance to sneak in a cheeky bit of dialogue: "Severe weather conditions all over the country!" Gryffen says.  "Hurricanes in Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire..."  "But they never happen here," Starkey protests.  "Well, hardly ever," Gryffen replies.

The best thing about this episode, though, might be the handheld shots that director Karl Zwicky chooses to use.  Up to this point K-9 has been a fairly static show, with lots of conventional camera set-ups (partly, I'm willing to bet, because of the relative difficulty of getting a hovering K-9 into shots, either as CG or practically), but Zwicky has chosen to shoot this episode in the form of a documentary.  It's a simple but effective way to give this episode a shot of energy to the arm, and it really works.  Thus when, say, Jorjie is struggling under the debris that's trapped her on her bed, it looks a lot more dynamic than it otherwise would.

But I also like the resolution of the story.  The alien behind the storms, an Aeolian, is a creature that apparently communicates via song, and I like the way they've extended the idea to the costume, so that they look not unlike an 18th-century composer.  All she really wants is some love from her lost partner, and she's willing to destroy the planet if it means her message will reach him.  Touchingly, it does, and they're able to leave in peace -- despite Drake's best efforts.

And while that's going on, we see Darius's unsuccessful efforts to free Jorjie from the wreckage pinning her down.  This leads to a surprisingly touching conversation between the two of them -- surprising because there hasn't really been any evidence up to this point that either Philippa Coulthard or Daniel Webber were really capable of this sort of nuanced acting.  It's a nice moment, even if it requires Jorjie to be rather astonishingly oblivious.  Poor Darius.

Overall, this is a nice little episode that's elevated by some wonderful direction.  It's not the sort of thing that will set the world on fire, but it's a good example of the sort of thing K-9 can be when it flexes its muscles.

April 28: "Flesh and Stone"

So the resolution of the cliffhanger (where the Doctor shoots the gravity globe) allows not only our heroes to gain a new perspective on things but also the audience, as we move from the stony Maze of the Dead to the forested oxygen factory aboard the Byzantium.  Thus this story really is a game of two parts, and not only does the setting change but so does the emphasis.  Before it was a relatively straightforward thriller about being surrounded by Weeping Angels, but now they've added the extra element of the Crack in Time, which distorts the second half of the story around it.

The Doctor faces the Weeping Angels. ("Flesh and Stone") ©BBC

As such, Steven Moffat cleverly balances both the Weeping Angels and this new threat in this episode -- it gives the Angels a motivation to take over the Byzantium and a reason as to why they're getting stronger and stronger.  It's a big idea that works very well, and as we see the power and effects of the Crack, how it can unwrite people from time and make it so they never existed, it becomes just as much of a danger as the Angels -- perhaps even more so, as even the Angels become terrified of its power.  And if the Weeping Angels are scared of something, it must be something very worrying indeed.

But the best thing that Moffat manages is to have two equally dangerous threats menacing the Doctor and company and still have time for quiet, creepy moments.  Amy slowly counting down is very effective -- particularly if you don't notice it right away -- and the matter-of-fact way in which Church soldiers are wiped from existence (with the remaining soldiers confused by Amy's insistence that used to be more of them) is well handled.  There's also something wonderfully magical and smart about the idea of trees enhanced with technology being used to create oxygen for a spaceship.  And then, just to show how much he's thought things through, Moffat also includes the goof-that-isn't, as the scene of the Doctor talking to Amy while wearing the jacket (despite having just lost it to the Weeping Angels) is actually clever foreshadowing for the series 5 finale.

That last moment there might sum up "The Time of Angels" / "Flesh and Stone" -- it's a supremely confident move, to hide a piece of foreshadowing in such a way as to make everyone think for eight weeks that they just screwed up the continuity rather than its genuine purpose.  But that's the general attitude that pervades this story, one of deftly juggling the various pieces and resolving them in a way that not only feels perfectly clever and appropriate (dropping all the Angels into the Crack, which causes it to seal itself up) but also highlights the larger arc of the series in a way we haven't quite seen yet -- and it does it in a way that doesn't necessarily require you to have paid attention.  If you don't care about series 5's overarching plot, there's still more than enough here to maintain interest, with loads of creepiness and tense moments on display, and it's all done with skill and care in a way that makes something that was surely reasonably difficult to pull off look easy.  It doesn't have quite the same impact as its predecessor "Blink", but "The Time of Angels" / "Flesh and Stone" is possibly the better story -- it's certainly the more sophisticated of the pair, and it frequently feels more satisfying.

April 27: "Curse of Anubis" / "Oroborus" (K-9)

Yep, "Curse of Anubis" is technically another episode that aired before last time's Who episode.  Same deal as before.

K-9 flanked by two Anubians in the redecorated police station.
("Curse of Anubis") ©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television
Commission Pty Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge
Post Pty Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

This is a rather offbeat episode of K-9, without being obviously that way.  The basic premise of K-9 being worshipped as a great liberator by an alien species is an interesting one -- it's nice that they keep getting mileage out of mining K-9's forgotten past, as it's an idea with a lot of life to it.  As such, it's interesting to hear from the Anubians of how K-9 came to save them from slavery and is now revered as a hero in their culture (to put it mildly).  The pictures in their book are well done as well -- they're beautiful to look at as well as looking appropriate for their race.²¹⁶

It does go a bit bonkers, however; the idea of the Anubians controlling Gryffen's mind isn't too bad -- and the clothes and makeup he's in as a result are outrageously wonderful -- and the way both Starkey and Jorjie fall under the Anubians' control does raise the stakes quite a bit, but it's frankly bizarre that K-9's behavior is explained away not as also being under some form of control, but rather as being so deep in thought that he's simply oblivious to the Anubians' conquering ways.  This seems at odds with what we've started to come to expect from K-9, even if it looks like it's there to allow Darius to be the hero of the hour, because he frankly has never seemed that oblivious, no matter how deeply he searches his memory banks.  Oh, and while it's improbable that Darius would be able to work out how to fly the Anubian spaceship, it's still nice to have him ultimately save the day, as he's been somewhat overlooked in that department up to this point.  Plus it lets us enjoy the hilarious sight of CCPCs leading the Anubians away in handcuffs.

It's a fun episode, even if there's not too much depth going on -- but as an episode of K-9 (a show not exactly distinguishing itself with its appeals to deeper connections) it fits in perfectly well.

The other episode today, "Oroborus", is an interesting one because it plays with the idea of time.  It's filtered through K-9's "kid's show" filter, so anyone expecting a serious or thoughful exploration of the topic should look elsewhere, but within the confines laid down this is a nifty concept.  We get a creature, the Oroborus, that not only consumes time itself, but conceals its presence by selectively editing time itself, so that people don't remember seeing it.  Starkey is immune from this because apparently his parents ran experiments regarding alien immunization on him, and this apparently includes the Oroborus's abilities.

I like how there's a sense of paranoia being fostered in this episode by no one remembering the time loops except Starkey, which leads to the other accusing him of lying and sabotage.  There's been a sense of comfort about Starkey's arrangement recently, and it provides a good bit of drama to see that upended, even if we know it'll be put back right by the end of things.  We also get a chance to see Starkey save the day by luring the Oroborus (which is a frankly impressive CGI creature, particularly given how cheap much of the rest of the show often looks -- compare with the Anubian spaceship from the previous episode) into the space-time manipulator's field, which is a good bit of work.

Like "Curse of Anubis", this isn't a particularly ambitious episode, but it does have clever moments that help sustain interest over its 25 minutes.  It's also nice to see a script that isn't completely reliant on somewhat convenient and/or ludicrous events to wrap things up -- there's a sense of convenience, sure, but it's signposted rather than coming out of left field.  "Oroborus" is thus a reasonably strong entry for K-9.







²¹⁶ Intriguingly, their book contains pictures of a Sea Devil and an Alpha Centaurian (from the two Peladon stories).  The Sea Devil is particularly interesting because it suggests that some of the Earth Reptiles left Earth before the rest went into hibernation.  And look, a Silurian spaceship turns up in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", unwittingly giving support to this.

April 26: "The Time of Angels"

What's particularly impressive about "The Time of Angels" is that this is Matt Smith's first performance as the Doctor, production-wise, as like Christopher Eccleston he got a chance to simply play the Doctor before having to be introduced as him.  This is impressive because there's nothing here to suggest that Smith is in any way unsure of what he's doing or how to approach the character -- he is emphatically the Doctor, fully formed and ready to step in and save the day.

It helps, of course, that he's been given such a good script to work with.  This episode might strike Steven Moffat's best balance yet between flashy, quick-fire moments and longer scenes of slowly mounting dread, as both are on equal display here.  And so we get the bravado opening, with River trusting that the Doctor will rescue her from the Byzantium²¹⁵ (albeit after getting the message 12,000 years in the future) as she ejects herself into space -- but we also get the quiet moments in the Maze of the Dead, as the small exploration party nervously checks the shadows and all the statues for the Weeping Angel.  This leads to the frankly marvellous realization that all the statues are Weeping Angels that are slowly waking up, thanks to the radiation leaking from the crashed spaceship.

"The image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel." ("The Time of
Angels") ©BBC

But then this episode is full of clever moments like this.  There's the idea of how the image of an Angel becomes an Angel, which means that you can't even take a picture of them without it trying to kill you, and the related idea that Angels can essentially reproduce by placing the idea of themselves in your mind, done by looking into their eyes.  There's the fantastic throwaway mention of the last time the Doctor faced down the Angels, but "those were scavengers, barely surviving"; if the Angels in "Blink" were on the verge of death and able to do what they did, then what must an Angel in its prime be like?  The thought is terrifying.  And there's the horrifying yet fascinating use of Scared Bob's voice by the Angels to taunt the Doctor, to make it clear that the Doctor couldn't save him and therefore he won't be able to save the rest.

And we can't talk about this episode without mentioning River Song.  Alex Kingston turns in another fabulous job here, and the moments in the TARDIS are particularly fun, as they show a cheekier side to her before she has to join up with the Church's army and become the River we already know from her debut story.  There are some lovely gags about her knowing how to fly the TARDIS better than the Doctor and how museums are his way of keeping score, but what's particularly great is the chemistry between Alex Kingston and Matt Smith.  Smith chooses to play the Doctor as grumpy and bad-tempered, while Kingston goes for flirtatious.  It shouldn't really work, but it does because these are two actors who clearly already respect each other and are willing to give the scenes space.  It's also great how well they work together when things become serious (such as when Amy is trapped with the image of the Angel), putting aside any differences they might have to work as a well-oiled team.

There's frankly tons to adore about this episode (and it's only the first part!) -- it's put together so well that it remains compelling viewing even when you know the twists that are coming.  This is full of fabulous performances and wonderful imagery, with just the right amount of tension to keep you worried.  The final opinion will partially hinge on how well they can wrap this up next time, but as of right now it would be hard to find a better or more effective episode than what "The Time of Angels" accomplishes in its 45 minutes.







²¹⁵ This therefore being the crash of the Byzantium River mentions in "Silence in the Library".

April 25: "The Fall of the House of Gryffen" / "Jaws of Orthrus" / "Dream-Eaters" (K-9)

Three episodes of K-9 today, as I'm trying to maintain both series order and broadcast order.  For whatever reason "The Fall of the House of Gryffen" didn't air until 12 June 2009 (the same day as "The Lodger"), so I'm squeezing it in before the two episodes that did air the weekend of 17 April.

These three episodes continue the trend of being middling, mildly entertaining kid's fare.  "The Fall of the House of Gryffen" does a nice job of building up an effective, creepy atmosphere, as Gryffen's house is visited by the ghosts of his wife and children.  Only they're not ghosts, they're actually some sort of non-corporeal beings trying to take on physical form by leeching off of Jorjie and Darius, and who've taken on the form of Gryffen's family.  There's some surprisingly nifty work in this story -- the way the children fade out of existence, leaving an outline behind that also fades, is really nice, and the makeup on the "ghostly" family is genuinely impressive.  Countering that, however, is a plot which does spend a bit too much time having Jorjie and Darius being "helplessly" sucked into the portal created by the space-time manipulator while Gryffen comes to terms with the fact that this isn't actually his family, and that our three heroes in fact are his family now.  But this is a minor quibble, and despite the "laughing" end, this is a decent episode.

The Department deals with opposition to their plan to put
microchips in everyone. ("Jaws of Orthrus") ©Screen Australia,
Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty Limited, Park
Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty Limited, and Metal
Mutt Productions Pty Limited

The second episode of the day, "Jaws of Orthrus", is more interesting because it focuses more on K-9 and how Drake is a slimeball.  For some reason the Department seems surprised at the opposition to their plan to put chips in everyone (well, June seems surprised), although it's somewhat surprising that we don't see the CCPCs trying to shut the protest down.  Some of the signs are hilarious though -- my favorite is "We are human not humachine!"

But the actual focus of the episode is on K-9, who's seen trying to assassinate Drake.  They actually do a nice job with the question of whether K-9 did in fact go on the attack, and while there's not really any doubt in the audience's mind, they do keep the door open on the possibility, which is a nice touch.  The only issue is that the target of the attack was Drake, and while we probably all want to see him go, it's a pretty big hint that shenanigans are afoot.

Of course, the title is the clue: Drake's made a K-9 clone (under the codename "Operation Orthrus" -- Orthrus being the brother of Cerberus, hence the clue) so that he can get a warrant for the real K-9 and take him apart.  It's actually a clever idea, and leads to the hilarious moment of the fake K-9 shooting up Darius's beloved car Mariah and writing K9 WOZ 'ERE on the windscreen.  Sadly, we don't get the full K-9 vs K-9 shootout we should've, but there's a brief clash and I suppose that'll have to do.  So overall it's a reasonably entertaining episode, complete with Drake trying to sweet-talk Darius over to his side, and while it won't win any awards or anything, it's fun while it lasts.  Even Connor Van Vuuren's reined in his performance -- things must really be looking up.

Darius, Starkey, and Gryffen, wearing tinfoil hats to shield
themselves from psychic energy. ("Dream-Eaters") ©Screen
Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty Limited,
Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty Limited,
and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

It's the last episode of the day, "Dream-Eaters", that might be the best, however.  This is almost like an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, concerned as it is not with Drake's latest villainous scheme but instead with an alien artifact that's putting all of London (and possibly the world) to sleep.  Other than the really obvious studio backlot (with a shot of the London skyline stuck in the background), this looks pretty impressive as well, with the Bodach being a nice design.  Oh, and that's another parallel with The Sarah Jane Adventures/Doctor Who: the main villain, the Bodach, appears to be an old legend, the Celtic equivalent of the Bogeyman (and is sort of the male equivalent of the Cailleach -- see The Stones of Blood).  But in fine Who tradition, the Bodach is an alien entity that feeds off of people's dreams -- but it needs a focal point, and when the Department recently unearthed a structure with two special red gems, this was enough to awaken the Bodach.  So we get scenes with people sleepwalking, under the Bodach's control, while the Prof tries to enter the dreamworld to confront the Bodach.  It's great fun, and it's a nice move to make June the physical host for the Bodach -- it keeps the Bodach suitably mysterious, and it isn't Drake under the mask (like I half-suspected), which is welcome.

The introduction of ancient legends and mysticism into this show is a smart move.  It's sort of hard to see them going down this road again, just because of the nature of what we've seen thus far on K-9, but if they did it's clear, based on "Dream-Eaters", that they could get quite a bit of mileage out of this approach.  This is probably the best episode this show has yet produced.

April 24: "Victory of the Daleks"

Despite the fact that what we've gotten onscreen so far has seemed to be largely business as usual, despite the change-over, there have been signs that the new production team want to be seen as a bold new beginning.  Part of this was the (frankly bizarre) insistence that Matt Smith's first series would be known as series 1, rather than series 5 (although almost no one, including the BBC marketing people, took them up on this), but now we're presented with another change: that of the Daleks.

The Doctor confronts the new Dalek paradigm. ("Victory of the
Daleks") ©BBC

This isn't necessarily a disaster in the making -- after all, the new titles, sonic screwdriver, and TARDIS interior (and exterior, a bit) are all similar reenvisionings without too much trouble -- but the problem with "Victory of the Daleks" is that it ultimately feels like that's all there is to this episode.  They give us a story set during the Blitz with Winston Churchill (played admirably by Ian McNeice), and instead of exploring this at all, we get a remake of The Power of the Daleks instead.  I mean, I suppose if you're going to remake old Who stories, start with the best, but while it's effectively surreal to hear Daleks saying things like, "Would you care for some tea?", and they look surprisingly good in their olive khaki paintjob, we don't get the same payoff here as we did in the Troughton story.  Instead of holding back the Daleks only to unleash them at the end while the humans are busy infighting, here their big plan is to, er... get the Doctor to confirm that they're actually Daleks.  It's not the most exciting thing ever, and the new Daleks we get as a result are problematic.  Even setting aside the designer color scheme (which I don't really mind), the new design just seems clunkier.  I think they were probably going for "more powerful", but what they actually ended up with is "fat".  I doubt that they were actually designed purely to sell more toys, but it does rather look that way, with the bright colors and the overt plastic look.

But again, just because they've come up with a crap design for their brand-new Daleks, that doesn't mean the episode is bad.  No, that comes as a result of what looks like the result of too few drafts for the script.  Why else would we get Spitfires retrofitted with fancy new technology in the space of a few minutes (that itself seems to be purely theoretical twenty minutes earlier) just so they can dogfight with the Dalek saucer?  Why do we get a bomb that is literally defused by the power of love?  As with much of the rest of the script, this seems to have been thrown together with an eye toward "what would look cool?", rather than "what would make any bit of sense?"  It also doesn't help that there's a distinct sense of unresolved business at the end of this; rather than the Daleks being defeated -- or even the Doctor being defeated, which, despite what he says, doesn't seem to be the case -- they head off at the end, leaving the sense that they're going to show up in a major way down the line.  If they actually had this might be OK, but while we've had subsequent Dalek stories, none of them have remotely felt like the follow-up to this.

Any good things?  Matt Smith continues to impress, with the Jammie Dodger bit being a nice highlight that contrasts well with his attack on the Dalek soldier -- "Kill me!" he yells at the Dalek, and while it's not quite on the same level as David Tennant's similar performance in "Evolution of the Daleks", it's still very good.  Ian McNeice, as I said before, is well-suited to the role of Churchill, and Bill Paterson does an excellent job in the rather thankless role of Professor Bracewell.  The curiosity of how Amy has no memory of the events of "The Stolen Earth" / "Journey's End" is handled well, and the appearance of another crack ties in nicely with that.

But if they wanted to update the Daleks with a bang, they've failed rather miserably.  It's telling that, while these new Paradigm Daleks don't disappear completely, they fade into the background in favor of the RTD-era design -- suggesting that even the production team realized this was a mistake.  If they'd had a story that hadn't had that reveal as its centerpiece, "Victory of the Daleks" might have been OK.  If they'd actually gone further down the road of remaking The Power of the Daleks, it might have been OK.  If they'd done anything risky and clever, such as exploring Churchill's character or the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks, instead of merely opting for things that look good, it might have been OK.  But they didn't, and so it's not.

April 23: "Sirens of Ceres" / "Fear Itself" (K-9)

Sadly, I think we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that K-9 is overtly intended to be a children's show and is pitching itself accordingly.  If you're willing to do that, though, then there's some fun to be had here.

The first episode today, "Sirens of Ceres" (which, like "The Korven" and "The Eleventh Hour", technically aired before "The Beast Below"), is probably the better of the two just because it feels like it fits in with everything we've seen so far.  Starkey and the rest are living in an oppressive system, and here we just get more evidence of this oppression, as Inspector Drake is his usual slimy self with his latest plan, to turn people into obedient servants with the help of an alien mineral.  Connor Van Vuuren is often somewhat painfully overacting as Drake, as if he knows he's in a kid's show and is adjusting his performance accordingly; as a result, there are lots of clenched fists and intense emoting as his plan goes right or wrong (depending on the scene) that's sort of mesmerizing to watch.

Melaina is flanked by two girls in her study group. ("Sirens of Ceres")
©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty
Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty
Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

One of the nice things about K-9 so far has been the fact that, despite the oppressive regime controlling things, we see signs that life goes on -- this isn't one of those dystopias where everyone's living in caves as slaves, but instead people still live their lives, just in a police state.  "Sirens of Ceres" continues this trend; while attacking the robot police officers (called CCPCs) is obviously an offense, the punishment doesn't appear to be execution or anything like that, but simply reeducation.  This is Jorjie's fate, and it's what leads to the main plot, as Drake tries his mind control bracelets on the pupils at the reeducation academy.  They do a good job with their Midwich Cuckoos-esque students, as the affected become perfect little angels.  It's not super-creepy, but it is sufficiently effective -- and it gives K-9 a chance to be the hero, as he swoops in and destroys all the bracelets, thus foiling Drake's plot.  It's a nice little story, and the only weird thing is how they make Starkey fall head-over-heels in love with a girl who he must know is being mind-controlled but nevertheless assumes that she's sincere in her affections.  It doesn't really fit with anything we've seen thus far regarding Starkey, so it sticks out like a sore thumb.

But other than that, and allowing for the children's television factors, this is a decent episode.  If they did more like this it wouldn't be a bad thing.

On the other hand, the second episode I watched today, "Fear Itself", borders on incoherency.  There are moments where it seems to be about some sort of shadowy alien that exists to help breed fear in the populace, and others where it's just about conquering one's irrational fears, but it never feels like these two plot lines connect up in a meaningful way.  It certainly doesn't help that we get people behaving out of character -- in particular, Drake seems oddly unfazed by the presence of Starkey, Jorjie, and Darius at the weird cupboard and far more concerned about the possibility of an alien inside the cupboard.  But then it turns into a discussion about emotions and what they mean, as K-9 seeks to learn about fear and then somehow succumbs to it, and the resolution appears to be that there was nothing to be afraid of after all -- except for the impossible wardrobe with a huge pit inside in it (that's strangely reminiscent of parts of Mark Z. Danielewski's book House of Leaves, where an impossible dark space is found inside a house that seems to drive the people exploring it mad, despite the fact that there's nothing actually in that space.  This is almost certainly coincidental, though).  Oddly, this doesn't seem to remotely interest June Turner when she examines the wardrobe at Drake's request.

The resolution leaves things unclear: was there anything alien regarding the wardrobe?  Was it causing the riots and things?  Or was it really all in the mind?  We never find out, and while it might be pleasing in a different context to have this ambiguity, here it just feels unfinished.  A few more explanations (or even gestures towards explanation) would have helped, but as it is we have two storylines that are closely related but seem to be working at cross-purposes to each other and no clear way to resolve the conflict.  The final result is thus something of a mess.

April 22: "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" [Additional Scene #1] / "The Beast Below"

We start out with a scene designed to link "The Eleventh Hour" with "The Beast Below" (which technically wasn't released until the DVD/Blu-Ray box set was released, but as it's meant to go here we'll watch it here).  It's sort of cute, I guess, but it also seems completely unnecessary; we get more babbling from Amy as she tries to process what she's seeing, as well as a slight continuity hiccup (as the Doctor tells her here that he's an alien, yet she seems surprised by this in "The Beast Below"), and while it's nice to see her reaction to being in space, there's not much beyond this.  But I suppose there's only so much they can do, inserting a scene where one didn't need to go, and as long as you weren't buying the box set solely for this scene, it's probably all right.

The Doctor and Amy explore Starship UK. ("The Beast Below")
©BBC

"The Beast Below", on the other hand, is much more interesting.  The UK (minus Scotland) evacuated the planet after solar storms threatened the place in the 29th century (in what's almost certainly a reference to The Ark in Space²¹⁴), and we get a chance to see this new Doctor in his element, flexing his muscles and learning the dark secret behind Starship UK.

Except this is the Matt Smith story that it's probably easiest to imagine David Tennant in. All the things writer Steven Moffat's given the eleventh Doctor are the sorts of things you would expect the tenth Doctor to do (with the possible exception of comforting a crying child, and even then it's more a matter of emphasis than new personality).  It's easy to picture David Tennant gently pointing out to Liz 10 how old her mask is, or him raging against humanity for what they've done to the star whale.  This doesn't make it a bad story or anything like that, but it does make it slightly harder for Matt Smith to really set himself from his immediate predecessor.  He turns in a great performance, and if you were worried about the new boy you can rest easy, but they're not exactly going out of their way to give us a uniquely eleventh Doctor story (the way, say, Paradise Towers seems like a story designed for Sylvester McCoy).

Fortunately the central storyline is a good one, so it's not like they're selling Matt Smith short, as we're presented with an odd conspiracy that everyone is complicit in, although they can't remember that they are.  But we get the spirit of democracy, as everyone gets to either protest the treatment of the star whale or forget about the whole thing.  It's a nice little conceit, particularly as even the people who are investigating the truth behind Starship UK -- namely Liz 10 (and look, it's Sophie Okonedo, who you might remember was Alison Cheney in Scream of the Shalka) -- are going through the same motions as before, choosing to forget when they finally discover the truth.  There are also nice little touches that add to the feeling of a coherent world, from the bunting everywhere to the offhand reference to Scotland having set off on their own to the Starship UK logo that's designed to resemble one of the old BBC logos.  Thought and care has gone into this, to the point where it's very hard to actually poke holes in any of it, either in story terms or in visual terms.

Of course, another reason why it doesn't really matter that we don't get a showcase for the new Doctor is that this is a showcase for the new companion instead.  We see Amy not as the perfect companion but instead as a human one, one who's both made a mistake -- who's seen the history of Starship UK and has chosen not only to forget but also to try and keep the Doctor from discovering the truth, so that he doesn't have to make a decision about what to do -- and who's done what the Doctor said earlier, to observe.  It's this that brings her to (it turns out) the right conclusion, to stop forcing the star whale to fly Starship UK because the star whale wanted to help in the first place.  Amy makes the right decision, just by observing not just Starship UK but also the Doctor:

DOCTOR: Amy, you could have killed everyone on this ship.
AMY: You could have killed a star whale.
DOCTOR: And you saved it.  I know, I know.
AMY: Amazing though, don't you think?  The star whale.  All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind.
DOCTOR: But you couldn't have known how it would react.
AMY: You couldn't.  But I've seen it before.  Very old and very kind, and the very, very last.  Sound a bit familiar?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Beast Below)

"The Beast Below" isn't a flashy story, and we don't get much of an insight into what makes the eleventh Doctor different from the tenth, but what we do get is a solid, well-thought-out tale designed to appeal to our sense of wonder as it shows that Amy Pond has the right stuff to be the Doctor's companion.  It's a story that can make us both ashamed and proud to be human.  Not bad for only their second outing.

(Oh, and look... another crack, shaped just like the one in Amelia's bedroom...)







²¹⁴ Thus complicating Earth's history enormously for anyone trying to work these things out, as, while the Doctor thinks the Ark was built in the late 29th/early 30th century, fandom had generally assumed that either a) the Doctor is just way off-base with his guess, or b) the Ark was in service as Nerva Beacon (Revenge of the Cybermen) for a long time before it was converted into an ark to avoid the solar flares and that the beacon was built in the 29th century, as placing the solar flare event in the late 29th century tends to cause massive problems for anyone trying to square this with all the other things we know about this time period (such as The Mutants, which is set in the late 30th century and explicitly describes the Earth as "Land and sea alike, all grey.  Grey cities linked by grey highways across grey deserts").  But now that they've reinforced the date, I suppose we're stuck with it, and we just have to explain why they're still on Starship UK in the 34th century, despite things like The Mutants and Terror of the Vervoids seeming to contradict this.

April 21: "The Korven" / "The Bounty Hunter" (K-9)

After a brief airing of the first episode six months earlier, K-9 finally makes its series debut in the UK with the third episode, "The Korven".  And strictly speaking, this aired two hours earlier than "The Eleventh Hour" did (were they capitalizing on Doctor Who's publicity?  Perish the thought!), but as they're airing two episodes a week at this point, it's easier to lump them together than try to do it strictly chronologically.  I'm sure you care deeply about this.

The Korven arrives to take Professor Gryffen. ("The Korven")
©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty
Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty
Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

There's little here to distinguish these two episodes from the last two that aired, though.  Both "The Korven" and "The Bounty Hunter" seem to follow the same basic pattern: an alien comes through Professor Gryffen's space-time manipulator in order to try and capture one of our heroes: Professor Gryffen in the first case, K-9 in the second.  And while the stakes are allegedly high, as it's our heroes who are in trouble, it's somewhat difficult to get particularly worked up about it, as these episodes don't raise the stakes high enough for us to really think these characters are in real danger.

All right, that's not fair; both episodes do actually do a decent job of making Gryffen and K-9 seem like they should definitely be worried about their chances.  The problem is more that it's still hard at this point to really care about the other characters: the teenagers have already been reduced to basic characteristics (Darius likes Jorjie and dislikes Starkey, Starkey's the rebel with a heart of gold, etc.), acting more as ciphers than real people.  Far and away the best character is Professor Gryffen; this might be because Robert Moloney is a more experienced actor than the others, but it's also because they've actually given him characteristics to distinguish himself as an actual person (his agoraphobia, but also his calm behavior in the presence of Ahab the bounty hunter, offering him tea and casually chatting with him).  There's also an effort to introduce a recurring villain in the form of the Department Head of Security, Inspector Drake, but he's portrayed as such a slimy git that while it's easy to loathe him, it doesn't do much for their efforts to flesh this show out.  (Although placing a fake bomb as a publicity stunt?  That is pretty slimy...)

Ultimately the problem with both of these episodes is that they're too straightforward; we don't get much in the way of nooks and crannies in the plot to explore, and subtlety isn't K-9's strong point.  Even something like making K-9 initially appear to have been a killer pre-amnesia in "The Bounty Hunter" falls flat, because we know that something will happen to vindicate K-9, and we're right.  These two episodes aren't actually bad, but they are rather unsophisticated.  This is a format that seems like they could actually do something with, but thus far they've been content to play it safe -- but playing it safe isn't really going to cut it for the whole series.

April 20: "The Eleventh Hour"

DVD and Blu-ray releases

So.  A new producer and a new cast, but the same show as ever, as "The Eleventh Hour" makes clear in its opening moments, as the TARDIS is crashing towards Earth after the events at the end of The End of Time.  Even in this scene you get the sense that things will be OK with this new Doctor, as he struggles back inside the TARDIS and then relaxes for a moment, until the TARDIS goes out of control again.

And then it's straight into the brand-new title sequence, with a new arrangement of the theme tune (although, other than being in a higher key, it's not actually that much different from the last one) and a new logo.  The sequence looks oddly retro, with the cloud time vortex and the lightning bolts -- it's not hard to imagine this being the sort of titles Doctor Who might have had in the '90s.  The DW TARDIS logo is kind of cheesy, though.

But as I said, other than such overt changes, this largely looks like business as usual for the show. Visually this isn't much different from the previous stories -- we're not talking about a sea change as large as the one between The Horns of Nimon/Shada and The Leisure Hive, and with Murray Gold still providing the music, the sense of continuity between the two eras is reinforced.  No, where the differences happen is in the details, the emphasis.  Russell T Davies, in some respects, pitched Doctor Who toward teenage girls; Steven Moffat, by contrast, is explicitly targeting children, with the expectation that everyone else will happily go along for the ride.

The most obvious occurrence of this is Amelia Pond, the little girl who encounters the newly-regenerated Doctor after he crash-lands in her garden.  We learn almost immediately that this Doctor is incredibly comfortable with children and that children are comfortable with him, and that there's a sense of magic at hand.  It's this sense of magic and wonder that sustains "The Eleventh Hour" -- it's only the first episode for the new team (well, all right, first broadcast -- it's actually the fourth episode they made), and already that sense of supreme confidence that pervaded David Tennant's final hours is here in full force.  Steven Moffat's given us a great script to latch on to, one that plays with time travel a bit but makes it firmly about the effect of the Doctor on a little girl's life, as this crazy man whirls into her life and then disappears for twelve years.  "The Eleventh Hour" is never worried that the audience will have a tough time with any of this, and it's right not to: this makes perfect sense.

One other contrast that's clear fairly early is that Matt Smith is a huge presence in this episode.  "The Christmas Invasion" had David Tennant removed from much of the action, but here they know that we're getting a brand new cast, so they wisely make the Doctor front and center and have everything revolving around him -- and while he's "still cooking", he seems more or less settled early on.  ("Well, that's much better," the Doctor says at one point, after Amy's hit him with a cricket bat.  "Brand new me.  Whack on the head, just what I needed.")  In this regard it's a lot like Tom Baker's debut, which established the fourth Doctor pretty quickly and then let him get on with it.  We get a similar thing here.

"Hello.  I'm the Doctor.  Basically... run."  The new Doctor warns
the Atraxi away. ("The Eleventh Hour") ©BBC

And let's be clear: Matt Smith is amazing in this -- he's absolutely the Doctor almost from the word go, and his ability to play both drama and comedy (sometimes at the same time) is perfectly attuned to the show.  It's not hard to see why they cast him, but he's incredibly watchable in every scene.  It helps that he's been given some good material -- discussing the crack in Amelia's wall, convincing Jeff that he has to be great to help save the world, being incredibly dismissive of Prisoner Zero's attempt to disguise itself as him ("Well, that's rubbish.  Who's that supposed to be?" he says.  "It's you," Rory replies bemusedly.  "Me?  Is that what I look like?" the Doctor asks surprisedly), and calling the Atraxi back just so he can tell them to clear off... Matt Smith does it all and makes it look easy.

None of this is to denigrate the other cast members -- Karen Gillan more than holds her own as Amy Pond, and Arthur Darvill is wonderfully grounded as Rory ("Did he just bring them back?" he asks no one in particular.  "Did he just save the world from aliens and then bring all the aliens back again?") -- but "The Eleventh Hour" is wholeheartedly about this new Doctor, about the effect he had on a little girl and how he's definitely still the same man he was.  The sequence at the end, with all the Doctors in sequence followed by the eleventh, merely confirms what we already know.  It's hard to think of a better debut than this one, in terms of doing everything they need to do and doing it with such style.  This episode is an absolute knockout -- and it's only the first one!

April 19: The End of Time Part Two

The High Council of the Time Lords deliberate on the last day of
the Time War on how to save themselves. (The End of Time
Part Two) ©BBC

In some ways this is a story that threatens to tear itself apart.  Russell T Davies is consciously crafting an epic story to send the tenth Doctor out on, but he's throwing in so many elements that it's hard to see the line connecting everything.  We get a planet full of Masters, a technobabble-y plan to bring the Time Lords back from the end of the Time War, a bizarre nuclear monitoring station set-up, a spaceship dodging missiles, and lots of death-defying stunts in between.  Any one of these would have probably been enough, but we get them all instead, and so the story threatens to collapse under the weight of it all.

More worryingly, things that look like they might actually have some bit of logic turn out not to.  You might think, for instance, that the Master has turned the entire planet into himself so that he could use everyone to help figure out more about the drumming sound.  He does do this, but it occurs to him after the fact, while talking to the Doctor -- it's not the actual reason for his plan.  That, in fact, seems to be something of a mystery; maybe he did it just because he could?  (There's a hint that he was trying to stabilize his body -- "The Gate wasn't enough.  Your body is still dying," the Doctor says -- but that's all it remains, a hint.)  And while there's a certain sense of perverse justice in learning that it was the future Time Lords who drove the Master mad all those years ago, just so that Rassilon and the High Council could try and escape from the Time War and destroy everything, it's another thing that you just have to accept (that the High Council could put the drumming in the Master's head in the first place, or that they could get a fancy diamond out of the Time War, despite the fact that it's apparently "time locked" and nothing can get in or out).  Then there are lesser problems, like how we're repeatedly told that if Donna remembers her time with the Doctor her mind will burn, but when she finally does it just knocks her (and everyone around her) out, with seemingly no other ill effects.  (Let's quietly draw a veil over the question of how the Doctor could survive the jump from the Vinvocci spaceship when a similar fall killed his fourth incarnation.)

Where this story succeeds, however, is in the character moments.  Part one had a number of them, and this episode has just as many.  You can rest assured that any scene Bernard Cribbins is in will be amazing to watch -- he's so good an actor that you don't realize how much he's working during a scene; it just feels like he's providing the most natural reactions in the world.  And so when matched with someone like David Tennant, it becomes mesmerizing to watch them both -- the scene aboard the Vinvocci ship, where Wilf tries to give the Doctor the gun and he repeatedly refuses, is fantastic, as both of them display the full range of emotions buried just beneath the surface.  It's not just them, though; when Tennant and John Simm get the chance to play a quieter scene together, they're just as good, as the Doctor asks the Master to come with him, while the Master just wants the drumming to stop.  And even the final confrontation at the end, with a desperate wounded Doctor squaring off against both the Master and the Time Lords, is worth watching because of the actors involved: Timothy Dalton is every inch the proud Time Lord, seemingly driven mad by the Time War but unable or unwilling to realize it, while the Doctor is determined to stop the Time Lords.  "You weren't there in the final days of the War," the Doctor tells the Master.  "You never saw what was born.  But if the time lock's broken, then everything's coming through.  Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres.  The War turned into hell."  The Doctor seems torn about who to attack, until he sees one of the women with Rassilon -- the one that keeps appearing to Wilf²¹² -- and that helps him decide to send them all "back to hell", with the aid of the Master at the last moment.  It's a big moment, with the Master redeeming himself as he sends himself back with the other Time Lords.

David Tennant regenerates into Matt Smith. (The End of
Time Part Two) ©BBC

So there are lots of action sequences, thrown in seemingly without too much thought, to give the tenth Doctor his send-off.  But it's ultimately the small moments that make this work, with perhaps none so small as the tenth Doctor's final fate.  All the stuff he experienced, and it's ultimately just the act of Wilf saving someone in the nuclear station thing that dooms the Doctor.  These moments are heartbreaking, not just because the tenth Doctor rages against the universe when he realizes what that "Planet of the Dead" prophecy was really about, but because Wilf understands what it will mean for the Doctor to save him and he begs him not to: "Look, just leave me. ... No really, just leave me.  I'm an old man, Doctor.  I've had my time."  It's the anguish on Bernard Cribbins' face, as he sees he's dooming the Doctor, that really cuts to the quick -- and while the Doctor is initially mad, his true personality reasserts itself: "Wilfred, it's my honour [to save you].  Better be quick," he adds.

The follow-up sequence, with the Doctor seeing all his previous companions as his "reward" before he regenerates, feels an awful lot like the end of "Journey's End", and thus in some ways is like the Russell T Davies' equivalent of the Doctor seeing all his companions' faces swirl around him as he regenerates in the 1980s stories.  But even here we get some lovely surprises, such as seeing the great-granddaughter of Nurse Redfern from "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood", Verity Newman.²¹³  "Was she happy, in the end?" the Doctor asks. "Yes.  Yes, she was," Verity replies.  "Were you?" she asks, but the Doctor doesn't answer.  And the scene with Rose at the very end is clever and understated, which is exactly what they needed.  (It's still the scenes with Bernard Cribbins that make me tear up a bit, though.  God bless that man.)  Nevertheless, this closing sequence does exactly what it's meant to, hitting the right notes as the Doctor dies.

The End of Time is therefore an incredibly uneven production; there's so much going on that just seems to be happening without good reason that you can see why some people hate this story (and make no mistake: some people hate this story).  But because the character interactions are so good, and because that air of supreme confidence fills every corner of the screen, it's easy to give in and go along with this, and to enjoy it for what it is: the final epic storyline for a Doctor (and showrunner) who has often delighted in epic storylines.  It may, in fact, be almost the prototypical Russell T Davies Who story, with all the virtues and faults on display in equal amounts.  You might be one of the people who hates this: fair enough.  I personally rather love it.

And so we say goodbye to the tenth Doctor, the most human incarnation of them all, with humanity's greatest traits and its worst ones existing side-by-side in David Tennant's portrayal.  It's slightly ironic that we're reminded here of "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood", which went out of its way to show us that the Doctor is emphatically not human, because there's nothing quite so human as what we see here, as even at the very end he tries to hold on to his life (as opposed to other Doctors -- like, say, Jon Pertwee -- who approached their death with more dignity).  "I don't want to go," he cries, before the regenerative energy that he's been holding back finally overwhelms him as it explodes outward, damaging the TARDIS in the process.  (At least, that seems to be what's happening.)  David Tennant has not only consistently shown us how good he is as the Doctor, but he's also managed to get better and better with each series -- such that he's rarely in better form on the show than in this final story.  I have to admit, when watching these stories the first time I was often unconvinced by Tennant.  "This doesn't really feel like the Doctor," I thought to myself.  I can now wholeheartedly admit that I was wrong; Tennant is emphatically the Doctor, the Doctor that's most like us.  He certainly leaves huge shoes to fill, both in terms of performance and in the public consciousness -- it's an awful lot like Tom Baker finally leaving the show in the latter regard.

He's not the only one leaving with big shoes to fill.  Russell T Davies did what many at the time said was impossible; he not only brought the series back, but he made it a mainstay of British television again and captured a whole new audience.  He did so by doing what the best producers of the show have always done: making it for a family audience, rather than a niche demographic.  He wasn't a perfect producer by any means, but his knack for knowing what works for that larger audience was on target more often than it wasn't.  Even if all he had done was bring it back, that would be probably be enough -- the fact that he made it a tremendous success worldwide is proof of how good he was at updating the format while keeping the core of the show the same.

But now it's time for Steven Moffat to take over with a new lead actor, and if the final moments of The End of Time are any indication, we should be in for a good time with Matt Smith...








²¹² No, you're not supposed to know who this mystery woman is.  Theories range from the Doctor's mother to his wife to his daughter (aka Susan's mother) to Susan herself to Romana to someone unknown, but we intentionally never find out for certain who she is.  Unless Steven Moffat wants to tell us in a future story, we'll likely never know -- and it's probably better that way.
²¹³ I see what they did there.

April 18: The End of Time Part One

And so here we are at last, at the end of David Tennant's time as the Doctor -- as well as Russell T Davies' time as Doctor Who's showrunner.  This is, strictly speaking, the 2009 Christmas special, but while Christmas is a part of this, The End of Time Part One has a lot more to do than worry about Christmas.

It starts oddly, though; we get some portentous (some might say pretentious) narration about the "final days of planet Earth", but then it's a complete change of pace with some frankly appalling jokey material regarding the Doctor.  The TARDIS remote-locking fob (complete with car locking noise) is bad enough, but we also get some nonsense about the Doctor marrying Elizabeth I and her having to change her nickname.²¹¹  And it also seems strange that the Ood are suddenly this race with the power to transcend time in order to call the Doctor to them.  (Mind, even the Doctor thinks this is strange, but the explanation is only half-formed; hopefully they'll elaborate in the second half.)

There's also a worrying amount of technobabble going on; the Master's resurrection seems strange enough, with its secret disciples of Harold Saxon and a counter organization designed to stop them, but then this somehow leads to the Master turning into a super-powered madman who can fly like Iron Man, leap like Superman, and shoot electricity from his hands like the Emperor from Return of the Jedi -- there are some passing references to how "[y]our resurrection went wrong.  That energy.  Your body's ripped open.  Now you're killing yourself," but that's about it.  Combined with the utterly mad cliffhanger of the Master turning everyone into himself, you start to worry that maybe it's Russell T Davies who's lost his mind.

The Doctor welcomes Wilf aboard the TARDIS. (The End of
Time Part One) ©BBC

But where this episode comes up trumps is in the character moments.  The Master flying around is bizarre, but the Master talking to the Doctor, making him hear the constant drumming in his head...that's a great moment.  And even after everything, the Doctor still would rather help the Master than fight him.  "Let him go!" the Doctor yells as Joshua Naismith's men capture the Master.  Plus we get the welcome return of Wilf, and just about every moment with him is special, from him rounding up the senior citizens to help him find the Doctor (which leads to the great moment where Minnie the Menace (played by the legendary June Whitfield) grabs the Doctor's butt, much to his surprise) to having conversations with the Doctor about death and Donna.  That particular scene, in the cafe, is astonishing; we've never seen the Doctor quite so vulnerable before, as he opens up to Wilf about his impending death:

DOCTOR: I'm going to die.
WILF: Well, so am I, one day.
DOCTOR: Don't you dare.
WILF: All right, I'll try not to.
DOCTOR: But I was told.  He will knock four times.  That was the prophecy.  Knock four times, and then...
WILF: Yeah, but I thought, when I saw you before, you said your people could change, like, your whole body.
DOCTOR: I can still die.  If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead.  Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying.  Everything I am dies.  Some new man goes sauntering away, and I'm dead.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The End of Time part 1)

It's an amazing piece of acting from both David Tennant and Bernard Cribbins, as the Doctor starts to lose it at the thought of dying, while Wilf just wants to desperately to help the most amazing man he's ever met.  It's a very powerful scene and one of Tennant's best-ever scenes as the Doctor.  But he also gets other great moments, such as dealing distractedly with Wilf's first look inside the TARDIS after Wilf barges in ("You can't come with me," the Doctor says.  "You're not leaving me with her," Wilf replies, indicating Sylvia.  "Fair enough," the Doctor replies, as he lets Wilf in) or offhandedly deactivating the Vinvocci's "Shimmer" camouflage without even looking.

These are the sorts of things that make this episode, by and large, worth watching.  It may be incredibly daft/poorly thought-out (delete according to preference) at times, but there's such an unwavering conviction at work, that they absolutely know what they're doing and they're not going to let anyone stop them, that's it's hard not to be swept up in everything.  The actors make this work, and the direction and script both trust that we'll be willing to come along for the ride.  And at this point we are.

(But what a cliffhanger!  The Time Lords (led by James Bond!  All right, Timothy Dalton -- but still!) are coming back!)







²¹¹ Fortunately, Steven Moffat will subsequently explain this one away in "The Day of the Doctor".

April 17: "Dreamland"

And here we are, with Doctor Who's second (and to date final) foray into the world of animation: "Dreamland".  This began airing on the BBC's Red Button on 21 November (so the day after The Gift finished) in smaller chunks, similarly to how "The Infinite Quest" was broken up in 2007, before it aired in its entirety on 5 December on BBC Two.  Unlike "The Infinite Quest", we get a look at a completely CG version of Doctor Who.  The result isn't exactly pleasant.

It actually looks decent in stills, as you can see from the DVD cover and the screenshot further down (even if it's kind of ugly), but once it has to start moving it's initially incredibly jarring -- they don't move smoothly, and there aren't many unnecessary pieces of animation.  This means that we get oddly stilted-feeling performances from the characters -- in particular the Doctor, who when robbed of David Tennant's body language feels really strange; you don't realize just how much Tennant puts into his physical performance until it's removed.  Of course, the minute anyone has to start running it looks like animation from a Nintendo 64 game, with slow-moving legs and a sort of sliding motion.  And while you do start to adjust to the style after a few minutes, there are lots of awkward chase sequences to pull you right back out again.

Where the animation excels, though, is when it's called upon to realize things that would be difficult to do in live-action.  The opening moments with the spaceship being chased down to Earth (hey, look, it's the same ship that we saw in Prisoner of the Judoon, just like they said!) are impressive, and all the aliens look great -- the Viperox in particular are a great creation, even if the image of the Viperox queen laying eggs makes it hard not to think about the Slurm Queen from Futurama.  I also like how Doctor Who finally tackles the subject of the "Grey" aliens of popular culture and has them just be misunderstood.  And all the scenes of the barren New Mexican desert are really well done as well.

The Doctor asks Rivesh Mantilax and Saruba Velak for help while
Cassie and Jimmy look on. ("Dreamland") ©BBC

But the main advantage that "Dreamland" has is a good script from Phil Ford.  Although it's somewhat hampered by having to have a cliffhanger every 6 minutes or so, there's a scope to this story that's quite lovely.  We move through several different locations (all well realized) at quite a fast clip, but it never feels rushed or unnecessary -- and the appearance of more and more interested parties doesn't seem cluttered but rather natural.  It makes sense that the Men in Black (OK, the Alliance of Shades) don't want alien involvement to be discovered, and it's a clever move to make them androids.  Jimmy Stalkingwolf's grandfather and his fellow American Indians make a brief appearance, but it makes sense.  There are a lot of Army personnel about, but they fit into the story.  It's all handled really well, and Jimmy Stalkingwolf is a really great character -- I found myself cheering for him quite a bit, even while I could barely remember Cassie's name.  Colonel Stark also gets a chance to not be a close-minded warmonger, as he decides to listen to the Doctor even though Stark thinks he sounds like a Communist.  (Great line about this by the way: "I thought the fifties were supposed to be a time for optimism," the Doctor complains.  "I mean, you think you're going to have flying cars in another ten years."  "Yeah, sure, if the Reds don't nuke us first," Cassie replies pessimistically.  "The Reds?  Manchester United?" the Doctor responds, confused.  "Oh, the Russians," he then realizes.)

If it weren't for the fact that so much of this is unappealing to actually look at, "Dreamland" would stand proudly with its fellow specials.  But because it looks rather primitive and ugly at times (and that it wasn't really promoted as one of David Tennant's specials, but more as a curiosity), it's a story that's been largely forgotten (if you were even aware of it at all).  That's a shame; the story itself is really good.  Maybe you can just close your eyes and experience it as an audio story instead.

April 16: The Gift Parts One & Two (SJA)

(I keep forgetting to mention how inappropriate it seems to have a trailer for Torchwood: Children of Earth (complete with Peter Capaldi saying "shit") on disc 2 of the region 1 release of series 3 -- but then I guess that tells you who BBC Worldwide think the North American audience is...)

The Gift provides us with our final major appearance of the Slitheen in any Doctor Who show to date (they get a small appearance in the series 4 opener of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but that's about it), but they make the most of it.  I like the way we start in media res, with the Slitheen about ready to turn the Earth into a giant diamond that they can sell (although this just makes me think about the ningi from The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where a ningi is "a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side", and thus no one has ever collected enough ningis to own a Triganic Pu).  I also like the fact that the Earth is saved not by Sarah Jane and the gang but by a different family of Raxacoricofallapatorians, the Blathereen -- you can tell they're different because they're orange, not green.  The Blathereen are on the side of justice, and they provide Sarah Jane with a gift to all mankind: a special plant called Rakweed that could be used as food, thus ending famine.

The Rakweed releases its spores. (The Gift Part One) ©BBC

Of course there's a problem with the Rakweed (did you really think there wouldn't be?), in that it reproduces at an incredibly accelerated rate and it puts people into comas.  This part is the primary thrust of the story, but in some ways it feels incidental to the main two storylines: the one where Sarah Jane confronts the Blathereen about the situation, and the one where Rani and Clyde are trapped in the school, unable to avoid the huge amounts of Rakweed outside.  Part of me was kind of hoping that the Blathereen were genuinely misunderstood, and the Rakweed problem was a mistake ("Whoops, didn't realize it was going to start attacking people"), but no, the Blathereen are revealed to actually be Slitheen-Blathereen (married into the family), and thus are as evil as all the other Raxacoricofallapatorians we've seen.  Their being addicted to Rakweed is kind of interesting as well, but other than that there's little to really distinguish their actions from the Slitheen.  The stuff with Clyde and Rani is more compelling, as there's an element of threat involved -- we see other students and teachers succumb to the Rakweed spores -- but it still feels straightforward and thus rather unexciting.  The way they learn how to defeat the Rakweed is pure chance, and thus Sarah Jane's repeated praise of how good they are feels undeserved.  (There's also the matter of the racism displayed toward the Blathereen, but this at least is called out in the story, even if the resolution worryingly seems to reinforce it.)

I dunno, there's not really anything wrong with The Gift; it does what it sets out to do reasonably well, and there are some nice moments along the way.  It just doesn't seem that exciting -- this feels like an older Sarah Jane script from series 2 that they dusted off and used, but the problem is that the show has since moved on.  The Sarah Jane Adventures is now a more sophisticated show, and The Gift is a throwback to a simpler time.  It's not a bad story by any means, but it is somewhat old-fashioned.

But this illustrates how much The Sarah Jane Adventures has evolved this series.  They're comfortable enough to do more unusual stories that rely on characters rather than plots, and when they gel they really gel.  It's telling that the weaker stories have been the more standard runarounds.  The Sarah Jane Adventures have really hit their stride, and it's a genuine pleasure to watch this show.  Keep it up, you guys.

April 15: "The Waters of Mars"

Ergh.  This might be one of the most frustrating episodes of Doctor Who ever.  The first three-quarters are really impressively well done, but the last quarter, where the Doctor essentially loses his mind, are so frustrating to watch that it ends up coloring the whole story for me.

We might as well talk about it now.  The episode ends with the Doctor, unable to listen to the crew of Bowie Base One dying over his communications link, deciding to rescue the survivors even though history says they died and their deaths subsequently inspired others to explore the stars.  He can do this even though the destruction of Bowie Base One is a "fixed point" that cannot be changed, because he's the last Time Lord and "It's taken me all these years to realise the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!"  Captain Adelaide Brooke is (somewhat understandably) horrified by the "Time Lord victorious", and decides to kill herself to put history back on course.  (Never mind that there's a difference between sacrificing yourself on Mars and shooting yourself on Earth.)

The problem is that there's no real reason why the Doctor couldn't save them properly, for real, without any of us this "I'm the winner and what I say goes" nonsense.  We're told that Bowie Base One exploded on 21 November 2059 and that can't be changed, but we also know it exploded in a massive nuclear explosion that almost certainly vaporized everything in the base.  So why can't the Doctor rescue Adelaide, Mia, and Yuri and take them somewhere/when else?  As long as history thinks they died (and it's not like there were bodies to collect), what's the matter?  Why can't they live somewhere else?  (This becomes particularly irksome when the Doctor subsequently wriggles out of his own "fixed point" death in "The Wedding of River Song" in a not-entirely-dissimilar manner.)  But no, this story is building up to a vengeful, cruel Doctor at the end (er...except this aspect won't actually be brought up in The End of Time), and so it has to reach this point, logic be damned.

The Doctor looks out over Bowie Base One. ("The Waters of
Mars") ©BBC

As I said, this is a really frustrating aspect, because everything else is really very good.  As you might expect, Graeme Harper gives us a fabulously well-directed episode, with a really simple yet creepy and effective alien in the form of the Flood.  The makeup on the affected crewmembers is really good, with the cracked skin around the mouth and the altered eyes.  The base itself looks fabulous, a nice extension of modern technology with enough touches (like the keyboards) to suggest a world fifty years along from our own.  And I also really like the way this is treated as an historical event that absolutely 100% happened, no changes -- we haven't had anything like this since The Tenth Planet 43 years earlier.  Plus there's some great dialogue.  The Doctor's response to Adelaide's challenge of "State your name, rank, and intention" -- "The Doctor.  Doctor.  Fun" -- is both genuinely funny and a nice summation of the Doctor, and the picture the Doctor paints of the future of humanity's journey to the stars is lovely.  Plus we get a passing reference to the Ice Warriors!

It's not perfect; I've mentioned the huge problem at the end (and why is the Doctor seeing Ood Sigma of all people?), but there are some minor issues along the way: there are slightly awkward lines like, "Water is patient, Adelaide.  Water just waits", but there's also the weirdness of the Dalek in Adelaide's childhood electing not to kill her because she was involved in a fixed point -- even though the Daleks' plan in that story was to eliminate all life in the universe, which one would think would preclude Adelaide's death in 2059 (and incidentally, the webpage describing her death talks about the Dalek invasion of 2008, not 2009, but we can probably call that a typo and move on).  There are also some curious accent decisions: the Russian sounds Russian, the Australian sounds Australian...but the Americans sound British.  (Thus giving credence to the theory that something happened to the US in the mid-21st century -- although you wouldn't think the accents would change...)

But normally these things wouldn't matter -- they're largely minor niggles, and everything else is done well enough that this should be a classic.  But I just have such a hard time with the resolution of the storyline that it brings everything down as a consequence.  If you don't have this problem, then "The Waters of Mars" should be one of the standouts of the Tennant era (certainly a lot of people thought enough of it to award it the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form²¹⁰) -- I just have a really hard time getting past the resolution; it weakens the entire effort.

It's sweet that they dedicated this to the memory of Barry Letts, though.







²¹⁰ On the other hand, both "The Next Doctor" and "Planet of the Dead" were also on the shortlist for the Hugo that year, so maybe we shouldn't read too much into it.