The Shansheeth really are a great creation, aren't they? Their heads appear to be animatronic, with only limited movement, but because the design is so expressive they get away with it -- and I love how they seem to have a sort of hunched back.
In terms of plot, Death of the Doctor Part Two isn't terribly exciting. The Shansheeth capture Jo and Sarah Jane and force them to remember the TARDIS key so that they can access the TARDIS and head out into the universe and "stop death" -- apparently this branch of the Shansheeth are tired of being the galaxy's undertakers. (And, interestingly, Davies is going to return to this idea of stopping death very soon -- but that's for another day.) And that's about it for evil plans. In terms of story, however, this episode has a lot going for it. We get the UNIT base being locked down, while the Groske tells them to follow him, only to find that's so they can get to his pizza before it gets cold. "What? I thought you had a plan," Clyde exclaims. "Shansheeth too scary," the Groske replies. "We hide." We also get Jo and Sarah Jane accompanying the Doctor back to that red place, the Wasteland of the Crimson Heart, so that the Doctor can properly travel to Earth without swapping with Clyde, where they all have a nice conversation, as Jo wonders why the Doctor never came back, only to learn that the Doctor had been looking in. "Because you're right, I don't look back," he tells her. "I can't. But the last time I was dying, I looked back on all of you. Every single one. And I was so proud." It's a touching moment, and I really like the idea that David Tennant went back and looked in on all of his companions, not just the tenth Doctor ones, at the end of The End of Time. And then there's the quick conversation between the Doctor and Clyde:
CLYDE: Even your eyes are different. It's weird, cos I thought the eyes would stay the same. Can you change colour or are you always white?(Although of course now we know that the Doctor was simply being flippant with his response to Clyde, as "The Time of the Doctor" confirmed.)
DOCTOR: I could be anything.
CLYDE: And is there a limit? How many times can you change?
DOCTOR: Five hundred and seven.
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| The Doctor, Jo, and Sarah Jane in the TARDIS. (Death of the Doctor Part Two) ©BBC |
But then that's sort of the heart of the story. Doctor Who under Russell T Davies was always a show that retained the same basic concept and spirit of the original while constantly looking forward. This, however, feels like his love letter to the old days, a way to reunite old friends and learn about the fates of others. "I do a little search sometimes," Sarah Jane says, when Rani wonders about other past companions of the Doctor. "I can't be sure, but there's a woman called Tegan in Australia, fighting for Aboriginal rights. There's a Ben and Polly, in India, running an orphanage there. There was Harry. Oh, I loved Harry. He was a doctor. He did such good work with vaccines. He saved thousands of lives. And there's a Dorothy something. She runs that company, A Charitable Earth.223 She's raised billions. And this couple in Cambridge, both professors. Ian and Barbara Chesterton. Rumour has it, they've never aged. Not since the sixties. I wonder." Even if all these characters couldn't be there in person, they're still around in spirit. It's a beautiful idea, and the whole story is filled with this sense of love for the old days.
It may not have the most exciting plot, but it's carried off with great style in what proved to be Russell T Davies' only time writing for the eleventh Doctor. That sense of joy and love and adventure means that Death of the Doctor is definitely a winner.
But now it's back to K-9. "Angel of the North" is also by Bob Baker, but this one's not a clip show. No, instead Baker has decided to write a surprisingly interesting episode that plays with much of what the series has established. This is a good thing.
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| Thorne and his CCPCs take Gryffen outside in a special agoraphobia-proof suit. ("Angel of the North") ©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited |
The thing that's most striking about the episode is how seriously it takes things. There's little of the standard children's TV approach that has often characterized K-9 up to this point; instead, characters behave as they would behave as people, instead of as cyphers of some kind. Thus Gryffen's agoraphobia is a plot point, Starkey's bravery is treated as self-evident, with little need for congratulation, and Thorne (and the Department) finally make sense in this context, as they're interested in the alien technology for their own ends, rather than just being behind every plot because that's their plot function. And we get some tantalizing hints for the future: the STM is a Korven ship, with a whole mess of Korven still on board, and (oddly) K-9 seems to be connected in some way, and Thorne is taking orders from his shadowy boss Lomax, who seems far too interested in the STM -- particularly in light of the revelation regarding the Korven... It's also really nice to get into some new sets, as Gryffen, Starkey, and K-9 wander through frozen corridors, pursued by Thorne and by Korven.
It's slightly tempting to say that K-9 has been building up to this point, but that's not really true: K-9 hasn't really been building to anything up to this point, but suddenly they've started to snap some things into focus. By giving us a better-written episode than we've been getting and playing with some of the established pieces, Bob Baker and the production team (led by director James Bogle) turn out a surprisingly engaging episode that starts to hint at the idea that maybe it was a worthwhile endeavour to make this series. Is it too much to hope that this feeling will last?
223 The fact that the acronym for A Charitable Earth is ACE suggests that this is indeed the seventh Doctor companion -- as does the reference to "Dorothy something", a sly joke regarding the question of Ace's surname. The story goes that the original intention was to give her the same last name as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, which would be Gale (and this makes sense in the larger context of the names in Dragonfire), but when Paul Cornell, writing the New Adventure No Future, asked someone what Dorothy's last name in The Wizard of Oz was, that someone misremembered it as "Bucket", so Cornell, in conjunction with Kate Orman -- who was working on the upcoming novel Set Piece -- chose "McShane" instead, as they weren't going to make Ace's last name be Bucket. All fine and good until BBC Books got the novel licence -- at which point they commissioned Mike Tucker and Robert Perry to write a couple books. Tucker and Perry, unaware of the "McShane" name chosen by the Virgin authors, went with the original intention of Gale -- which meant that for a while Ace was running around with two surnames, depending on who you asked. Mark Michalowski eventually resolved this in his novel Relative Dementias by establishing her full name as Dorothy Gale McShane.