An Hour of Who a Day: 01/24/15

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 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.).