January 20: "The Satan Pit"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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







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

January 19: "The Impossible Planet"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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







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

January 18: "The Idiot's Lantern"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 17: "The Age of Steel"

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

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

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

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

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

January 16: "Rise of the Cybermen"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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







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

January 15: "The Girl in the Fireplace"

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

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

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

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

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

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







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

January 14: "School Reunion"

The TARDISode: Mickey does some investigations online into UFO sightings and comes across a large flashing sign saying, "TORCHWOOD ACCESS DENIED", which lets him know he's on the right track.  Nice job keeping secret the top-secret organization that not even the Prime Minister is supposed to know about, guys.

This is an episode where the script seems to be working at cross-purposes with the actual filming and direction.  On paper "School Reunion" is meant to be an examination of how the Doctor enters people's lives and leaves them behind, and why Rose is different from the others -- and if you're coming to this episode as someone who started watching in 2005, you might get that feeling.  But you'd probably notice that something about that feels off, because the story they're actually telling on screen has a different emphasis.  The version we actually see is about the Doctor meeting back up with a friend from long ago -- one Sarah Jane Smith -- and working through some things so that everything is patched up by the end, while it becomes less and less obvious why we should be rooting for his current companion.

The Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and Sarah Jane wait for K-9's analysis.
("School Reunion") ©BBC

It's certainly clear which side David Tennant falls on.  A lifelong Who fan himself (Doctor Who was what made Tennant want to be an actor in the first place), you can see how thrilled he is to be working with Elisabeth Sladen, and the chemistry they have is quite impressive -- Tennant is incredibly enthusiastic, and that translates to the Doctor himself, who seems genuinely pleased as punch to see Sarah again.  Sladen herself is fabulous as Sarah Jane, still full of the same energy and presence that she had in the '70s.  The only real problem is that the script requires her to play her relationship with the Doctor as like that between Rose and the Doctor, with Sarah having been hopelessly in love with the Doctor -- when a quick look at any of her stories would show that that's just about the least likely interpretation of their friendship.  It's frankly a bit insulting to Sarah to reinterpret her relationship that way, but to her credit Elisabeth Sladen pulls it off.  This is a Sarah who's slightly bitter about the Doctor leaving her at the end of The Hand of Fear and has just been spinning her wheels since the Doctor left (another insult, as Sarah seemed just about the most independent companion the Doctor had, with her own life outside the TARDIS and everything, and thus the least likely to be pining after him -- and besides, what about The Five Doctors?¹⁷⁰).

As I said, Sladen manages to make this work, presenting one of the Doctor's former companions in a new light -- but Billie Piper isn't as lucky, as she's been saddled with some frankly petulant and bitchy material.  It's hard to see what they were going for -- clearly they want Rose to be different, to be the one that the Doctor wouldn't leave behind (it even comes up in the dialogue), so why do they try to make her as unlikeable as possible?  She fights with Sarah, she's jealous, she really doesn't seem to want Mickey on board the TARDIS for some reason... and, perhaps most problematically, she doesn't have much to do in this episode; her purpose in this story seems to be to act as a counterpoint to Sarah Jane, but she's the one that ends up looking the worse for the comparison.

And it's really only Rose who fares poorly in this story: Mickey comes across as a dependable and rather fun member of the team, and his realization that he's "the tin dog" makes him step up in a way that causes you to cheer.  And it's a welcome pleasure to see K-9 again after all this time, even if he is the worse for wear here -- and they even got John Leeson back to do the voice.  Meanwhile, Anthony Head is fantastic as the evil leader of the Krillitanes, Mr. Finch -- he underplays everything, which makes him even more menacing, and his confrontation with the Doctor in the school pool is a fabulous dance between the two, beautifully shot by director James Hawes.

In fact, if this story works at all it's largely down to Hawes's direction, with some great visuals and clever shots as the cast interact with each other.  Beyond the reintroduction of Sarah Jane and K-9, the script isn't the most terribly original thing ever (maths will change the universe -- Doctor Who already did that in Logopolis, albeit not with high school kids on computers displaying various permutations of the PC game Quake's logo), and the interesting idea of the Krillitanes is rather squandered.  But Hawes makes these concepts work visually and gives a coherence to everything on screen, giving the impression that this story is better than it probably actually is.

So like "New Earth" and "Tooth and Claw" before it, "School Reunion" is a qualified success.  There are some wasted opportunities here (like the Krillitanes, which to date haven't made a return appearance on screen) and some extremely problematic issues with one of our main identification figures -- as well as a need to grit your teeth and accept the revisionist interpretation of Sarah Jane -- but the confidence of the direction and the happy interplay among the Doctor, Mickey, Sarah Jane, and Rose (at times) makes up for this.  In particular, Tennant and Sladen make this story stand out; their interplay alone makes "School Reunion" worth watching.







¹⁷⁰ So not only does Toby Whithouse get the relationship between the Doctor and Sarah Jane wrong, but the basic premise of the story needs Sarah to have never seen the Doctor since she was dropped off -- even though he sent her K-9 in K-9 and Company and saw her again in The Five Doctors.  K-9 and Company clearly happened, but for a while it looked like maybe The Five Doctors had been removed from the continuity (the suggestions that The Hand of Fear was their last encounter and that the Doctor has regenerated "half a dozen times" since he last saw her, which, if Tennant is the tenth Doctor, would make Tom Baker the last Doctor to have seen her).  Subsequent events have both addressed the "half a dozen" comment (the inclusion of the War Doctor) and definitively shown that The Five Doctors happened (in "The Time of the Doctor", the Doctor still has the seal of the High Council that he took from the Master in the Death Zone -- an event that Sarah was present for) -- so why doesn't Sarah remember that here?  Well, it's remotely possible that, as she was taken out of time by the Time Scoop, those events were erased from her memory once they were over.  Or maybe Sarah didn't realize that Peter Davison was a later Doctor; after all, Tom Baker wasn't around, and she knew Jon Pertwee was the Doctor from her past, so if she never learned that Peter Davison was the fifth Doctor then she might think he's actually a pre-Pertwee incarnation, and that the events in the Death Zone happened in his personal past and thus didn't really count as him seeing her again.  This would require her to have not really talked to any of the other companions while in Rassilon's tomb and for her to not be paying attention when Troughton calls Davison "the latest model" -- a bit of a stretch, but just about plausible enough to be workable.  Either way, this is more thought than Whithouse appears to have put into things.