“Planet of the Spiders” (1974)
Season 11: Production Code ZZZ

Written by: Robert Sloman & (uncredited) Barry Letts
Directed by: Barry Letts
Script Editor: Terrance Dicks

Starring:
THE DOCTOR: Jon Pertwee & (uncredited) Tom Baker
SARAH JANE SMITH: Elisabeth Sladen
BRIGADIER LETHBRIDGE-STEWART: Nicholas Courtney
SGT. BENTON: John Levene
MIKE YATES: Richard Franklin
LUPTON: John Dearth

I once tried to convince Raeli to cosplay this outfit for a party - she had the stripy top but refused to add the spider!

This final story of the Third Doctor’s run is one of my absolute favourites, and has been since… wow. Probably since I was about the age my daughter Raeli is now. It’s a complete love letter to Jon Pertwee and the UNIT Years, with callbacks to previous stories. We even get a letter and a parcel from Jo Grant, a year after she left the show – a very rare example of a companion getting a chance to ‘call in’ after making her farewell, even if we don’t hear Katy Manning’s actual voice. We also get some cute character moments from each of the UNIT regulars, including Benton being adorably domestic, and the Brigadier unexpectedly (against his will!) revealing a snippet of his romantic history with a young lady called Doris.

I’ve been surprised in recent years to hear quite scathing criticisms of this story, especially the indulgent but completely awesome many-vehicles chase sequence, and the not-so-great acting among the Metebelis Three colonists. None of which bothers me at all, because I was raised with an Ignoring the Bad Bits lens through which to view classic Doctor Who stories. If you don’t have one, bet you wish you did. I try never to use this power for evil.

Well, no. There’s an unquestionably legitimate criticism of this story, that the Tibetan characters are played by white actors, and it’s not one I’ve seen mentioned much, which is interesting considering that Talons of Weng Chiang has copped a lot more – perfectly appropriate – flak for the same issue. Maybe I just missed the discussion – or maybe the issue is raised more commonly with Weng-Chiang because it’s considered one of the best evah stories, while Planet of the Spiders has fewer fans who love it enough to get all cranky and defensive. I’m just going to put it out there that it’s very problematic that this happens throughout the history of Doctor Who, and probably worth looking at more deeply. I’ve been fascinated by some of the interviews with Waris Hussain (the first director to work on Doctor Who, who made Marco Polo as well as An Unearthly Child) coming out of Gallifrey One and in the recent DWM, and does discuss the issue, which was a common aspect of TV casting in the 60′s and 70′s.

So yeah, it’s important to acknowledge that when you love old TV shows or movies, there are times when they will make you wince, or feel sad, or embarrassed for the human race. They’re time capsules, and not everything they reveal to us is hilarious and adorable. But if you’re going to nitpick about the bad acting and the chase scenes, I will totally go LALALALALA DID YOU SEE SARAH JANE’S AWESOME JACKET LALALALA. Because I really, really love this story. Even Gareth Hunt’s moustache.

First time I rewatched this as an adult, the revelation that Gambit from the New Avengers was Arak and his moustache BLEW MY MIND.

From a feminist standpoint, there’s a lot to talk about in Planet of the Spiders. It’s one of my favourite Sarah Jane Smith stories, because like The Time Warrior and Robot, it shows her actually getting on with her job as a journalist, and balancing that with her role as the Doctor’s friend.

I say friend rather than companion because while she has flitted to a few alien planets with the Doctor, and engaged in a bit of UNIT action there on Earth, Sarah still very much has her feet on the ground, and a life of her own. She’s not employed by UNIT, and as we see later in Robot, is not above using her connection with them to suit her own needs, rather than always being part of the Doctor’s story. This will change, but it hasn’t yet.

Indeed, we don’t see Sarah and the Doctor interact for the whole first episode. Her adventure is with disgraced former UNIT lieutenant Mike Yates, and if you read this as her being the sidekick to his male action hero, then Sarah Jane would laugh at you. Mike has invited her along to help him investigate a mystery at a monastic retreat in the hopes that she’ll be his unofficial line to UNIT, and maybe he does see her as his sidekick, but he’d never admit that out loud. Sarah takes on the adventure as her own with great gusto, and isn’t above reporting on it for her newspaper at the same time.

Mike is lucky to be allowed to stick around as her sidekick. When he reveals his plan for them to drive away and travel back sneakily on foot, Sarah is either genuinely admiring that he’s capable of such a sophisticated plan after years working for UNIT, or is making fun of him when she shakes her head and says: “The fiendish cunning of the man.”

Possibly both.

It looks very much like a typical old school male-centric Doctor Who story at first, with Sarah as the only active female character among a sea of monks, stressed former businessmen and UNIT soldiers, not to mention the Doctor himself, but then the spiders turn up.

Passing the Bechdel Test? Only the arachnids.

But the spiders steal the show. The voice acting is very effective (I’m annoyed that I can’t find anywhere which actress played which spider, especially as one of them was Kismet Delgado, widow of the recently departed Roger Delgado, the original Master), and I’m personally invested in the props as characters, too. Sure, they mostly sit there and twitch, but they do it with style and witty banter. The entire plot revolves around a matriarchal dictatorship that doesn’t feature glamorous babes in sexy outfits, which is a pretty rare thing in science fiction on screen.

Curiosity sent the journalist to Metebelis Three.

I can’t help thinking how awesome it is that Planet of the Spiders is mostly about female characters successfully manipulate men, without any reference to sex or the female body. Because they’re spiders. This is one of those fantastic things that science fiction CAN do that almost no other genre can, but it hardly ever comes to the feminist party.

It’s rare for a six parter in Doctor Who to actually fill that length of a story without feeling like a four parter and two parter mashed together, but this one works by offering up many twists and turns, and some of the best Pertwee era cliffhangers, the most surprising of which is when Sarah ends up accidentally transported to the alien planet, and the Doctor has to go after her. This leads to one of the many fan-pleasing moments of the show, in which Yates actually calls the Doctor on how unlikely it is that, even if he reaches the planet he’s aiming for in the TARDIS, that he can find Sarah easily. Because, you know. Planets are big. It’s a rare acknowledgement of that element of the show that always seemed like it was hand wavy and lazy (that is, that the Doctor always coincidentally lands on the one spot on the planet where interesting things are happening) all the way up to Neil Gaiman’s recent story “The Doctor’s Wife,” which makes explicit something often hinted at in the show’s history.

In this case, the Doctor does admit that he leaves the landing up to the TARDIS – she knows what she’s doing.

“You speak about her almost as if she’s alive.”
“Yes, I do, don’t I?”

"What do you mean, you have the cutest outfits? My ruffled shirt matches my flying car!"

Later, on Metebelis Three, the Doctor gets to play with all his action fake Venusian karate moves too, and even start a rebellion against the spiders using nothing but a handful of pebbles. But the story isn’t just about his adventuring spirit. Indeed, the male heroic tradition is undercut at least twice when his attempts to rescue Sarah results in immediate disaster, and he spends a good chunk of the story apparently dead or comatose. This gives Sarah a chance to work through a more substantial emotional reaction to what was to happen for real, later on. It’s also kind of nice that they’re letting the Doctor have flaws, rather than building him up in this final story as some kind of paragon. After all, the culmination of the story is, in fact, that he has been pushing his luck.

"Remind me, whose turn is it to do the rescuing?"

For all the vim and vigour of his final story, I think my favourite Third Doctor scenes are the quiet ones: himself wrapped in the spider cocoon in prison, trying to remember the name of Harry Houdini so he can successfully namedrop, and especially the scene in which he talks wistfully about his old teacher and childhood home, an anecdote which seems to be yet another in-character casual reference to all that gorgeous backstory, but turns out to be hugely relevant to the plot and the final reveal.

Meanwhile, Elisabeth Sladen is also showcasing how great her character is, starting out with Sarah Jane’s entertaining Secret Seven Go Spying double act with Mike Yates, her impatience at the Doctor never listening to her properly, her FABULOUS outfits (seriously, cosplayers, so many beautiful clothes in this one story), and her ability to convey genuine fear one minute, snarky humour the next, and then a touch of evil just for the sake of it. She actually shoots the Doctor with her hand!

Of all Sarah Janes’s great moments in the episode, though, my favourite is when is dragged off from the prison to see the spiders. The Doctor asks if she can delay them (!) and she says with great oomph: “Don’t worry, I’ll give them all indigestion!”

"I can keep it, right? Spoils of Doctoring."

“Is that fear I see in your eyes, Doctor? You are not accustomed to feeling frightened, are you?”

The final regeneration (first time the word is used and the concept is properly explained!) scene is touching and sweet. Once again it’s Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane who is carrying the emotional weight of the scene, with the Brigadier there merely to roll his eyes and make the phone calls. The end of an era, and one that’s been sent off in style. Time for the new team to take over…

RAELI’S (Age 7) REVIEW :

I liked the bit where they sang Om Manny Padme Hum.

"Is that a tear, Sarah Jane?"

(and laughed myself into hiccups)

Original fan art by Kathleen Jennings.

Check out Kathleen’s awesome artwork at her blog, particularly her regular Dalek Game pieces! And you might like to know that Kathleen is eligible for Best Fan Artist, if you’re nominating for the Hugos…

TANSY:
This Christmas Special was probably one of the most divisive Doctor Who stories in its time, because it all came down to whether you loved or hated Donna (Catherine Tate). I liked Donna at the time, but came to love her more and more in retrospect, and so I find that I like this story more every time I watch it. Having said that, I’m not in it for the plot!

TEHANI:
I love Donna! She was a bit bumpy in this, her first appearance, but she is so awesome!!

DAVID:
I liked Donna as a character, but in terms of the writing there were a lot of lazy stereotypes about women and about brides in this, and a bit too much fun at her expense, rather than fun with her. She was a great contrast to Rose, though.

TANSY:
I agree about the lazy stereotypes – and by the end of the RTD era I was so over WEDDINGS, I can tell you! But ultimately I think Catherine Tate rescued the character from sliding too far into generic chick lit cliche.

After the sweetness of Ten/Rose in Season 2, it feels like such a relief to have a companion yelling at the Doctor and smacking him around! The whole panic-chase sequence in the first act of the story with the two of them bouncing off each other, arguing and hailing taxis was great fun…

TEHANI:
The car/TARDIS chase was loads of fun, but the melancholy of bringing Rose into it was a nice touch. While Rose wasn’t and won’t ever be my favourite companion, it’s good to see she’s not just immediately dropped from memory.

And the little flashback scene at the reception to me highlighted the fact that the Doctor actually does have some sort of real feelings for Rose. Which is interesting.

TANSY:
Part of me winces at the many references to Rose in this episode, but on the other hand I remember watching so many TV shows from the last century when there was a frustrating lack of acknowledgement of characters who had just left, so I haven’t made up my mind about this one. It’s important to Donna’s story that she knows who Rose is and what he means to the Doctor but oh, did he have to be quite so mournful? Am I a bitch for wishing he would put his big girl panties on and get over it?

I can’t understand anyone who reads their relationship as being platonic after seeing “The Runaway Bride”!

DAVID:
Oh, I didn’t get any more from it than someone mourning for a lost, platonic friend.

TEHANI:
*cough* Liar *cough*

DAVID:
But yes, I think it would be very cold if the Doctor had just moved on and never mentioned Rose again after all she meant to him, especially considering the episode starts literally as he is saying goodbye to her!

Whether we run into Donna again or not (and I have tried avoid spoilers as best I can), I am glad that she didn’t come along with the Doctor at the end of the episode, talk about on the the rebound!

TANSY:
Yes, Donna isn’t the first companion to say no to the Doctor (that was Mickey take one!) but it gives her strength that she makes that decision. After an episode that sets her up as not being all that smart, she’s certainly more aware than Rose was about what travelling with the Doctor might mean.

On the rooftop especially, Donna starts to feel more human (instead of frantic and shouty, though I love her shouty) and we get some genuine emotion going on, quiet moments to balance out the crazy. Yes, I’m definitely in the pro-Donna camp.

TEHANI:
The rooftop really showed that Donna has more depth than shouting and smacking about – a good sign!

The music in this was so ANNOYING the second time around. I didn’t notice it first time, but on the rewatch it irritated me so much! Overloud, overly trumpetish or something, and really not at all suiting the story.

The monster was … hmmm. Over the top? And interesting in that we don’t MEET her until almost halfway through! Although to me, Lance is also a monster – horrible man, saying horrible things and breaking poor Donna’s heart.

DAVID:
The Empress was a good concept, but the performance was way too over the top for me, and the jokes? Egads. That “I do” bit makes all my lame jokes look like masterpieces of comedic improv. The idea of hiding something at the centre of a planet being formed was genius though.

TANSY:
Sarah Parrish is a really good and well-regarded British actress – but sadly she now joins the ranks of the Great British Actors who over egged the pudding when faced with a Doctor Who role … possibly there should be some kind of Graham Crowden Award for this phenomenon?

DAVID:
It may sound overly harsh but when Donna says Lance didn’t deserve his fate, I found it hard to agree. What a terribly cruel thing to do to someone, and what terribly cruel things to say to someone!

TANSY:
Ha well, I think it’s a bit much to say he deserved to die, but I certainly take some satisfaction in the moment, fictionally speaking – he is horrid to her, and I think it’s a measure of how much we’re on her side that we already know (as does the Doctor) that there’s more to Donna than the ordinary-person-brainless-chatter that Lance complains about.

DAVID:
There were some really nice moments with the TARDIS in this episode. Seeing the TARDIS materialise around them was a wonderful visual effect, and the car chase was great fun! And, of course, the usual “it’s bigger on the inside” stuff. It did remind me how much I miss the old white interior, though. I do like the steampunk sensibility but I did suffer a brief wave of nostalgia for some reason.

TANSY:
I love the TARDIS chase down the highway, it’s a fantastic scene – I can’t believe people complained about it! It’s utterly joyous and I enjoy the lines when he’s trying to get her to jump out of the cab and she says she’s in her wedding dress. [DOCTOR: Yes, you look lovely, now jump!] Also, David, you might have spotted this one – I really like the moment when she realises she is being driven by a robot Santa, which feels like a callback to the ‘70s Auton stories.

TEHANI:
You’re talking again about stuff I don’t know! What’s an Auton??

TANSY: You saw them back in Rose – walking plastic shop dummies. They appeared twice in the early Seventies and then disappeared for 35 years!

Structurally speaking, I think this works very well as a Christmas special – ie an episode to be watched with the not-necessarily-all-Doctor-Who-fans family (assuming some people have families like that) while everyone’s overstuffed with food and/or a bit drunk, though it has to be said that there isn’t much Christmas content in it. I don’t mind that, though – the Christmas iconography that we do see in the episode is quite heavy handed and/or repeated from the year before. Really, more robot Santas? Were they that popular? Also I am very much over the fake snow joke already (and not to spoil or anything, David, but this is so not the last of it). The ‘Christmas star’ alien ship is definitely ridiculous, and unnecessary.

TEHANI:
I’m not yet jaded on the shoehorning of Christmas into these specials – I think it gives a nice continuity of a little something extra to the show, and as you say Tansy, lets people who aren’t necessarily fans enjoy the episode without feeling too lost, because it’s not necessarily part of the continuity. Although of course there is a lot in it for the fans as well!

DAVID:
I was more confused than anything to see the robot Santas, thought I was having flashbacks or something, but they at least addressed that with the halfway plausible idea that they had been left lying around. I actually had no issues with the Christmas Star ship looking the way it did, as it was quite weblike in appearance and fit the spider theme.

TANSY:
I did appreciate the fact that Donna’s chase to get back to her wedding was made all the harder by it being Christmas – and there’s a lesson to anyone planning a Christmas wedding, if you get accidentally teleported during the ceremony, getting a cab back to the church will be very tricky!

Oh, I did love her rant about the lack of pockets in a bridal gown, too, but that has nothing to do with Christmas.

DAVID:
Do people really have Christmas weddings? I found that harder to believe than the ship at the centre of the Earth! I am even more disorganised than usual around Christmas time and, considering I locked myself out of my house the morning of my wedding, I didn’t need any more chaos than I actually had.

I do like the concept of a Christmas special, and even though this was only the second occurrence you get the feel that the show is trying to create a tradition. Yes, they can be a little hit and miss but I went into it happy to give a bit of a chance, knowing I was likely to get something a little different than usual.

TANSY:
I love the tradition, don’t get me wrong! I wonder sometimes about the Christmassy elements, but the sentimentality of it is quite appealing, especially on the day itself. Although … worth noting for context that it’s only the last couple of years that we’ve actually been able to watch the Christmas Special at Christmas (well, Boxing Day) on TV in Australia – in these early days we were getting it just before the new series, often in the middle of the year. If you didn’t have the hang of Other Means which I certainly didn’t at this point, then the sense of occasion was a bit lost on us.

The combination of Doctor Who and Christmas is a lovely thing, and it’s funny to think that it wasn’t always this way. But it doesn’t ALWAYS have to snow (or fake sonic screwdriver snow) and I wasn’t keen on the robot Santa repetition. Having said all that, Raeli was rewatching the Christmas Invasion the other day, and the killer Christmas tree did make me grin! It’s so cheesy it goes out the other side and becomes awesome.

DAVID:
I think that’s a very deliberate thing, and big part of the charm of the Christmas episodes (and to a degree, Doctor Who in general) is their ability to not take themselves too seriously. There always has to be a balance, of course, but they got it pretty right. However, I won’t be disappointed if there are no Santas or fake snow in the next one!

=======

Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a seven-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion,” S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

The Doctor – David Tennant
Rose Tyler – Billie Piper
Mickey Smith – Noel Clarke

TEHANI:
I thought the early part of the first episode was notable for Ten’s high school nastiness to Mickey in the beginning of the episode (and really, throughout). Although perhaps there’s some change in his attitude as the two-parter progresses.

David would have been pleased to see the return of Pete!

TANSY:
Yes, I think this is an uneven story in some ways, but it has some great moments in it and the return of Pete (and departure of Mickey) make it worth us paying particular attention, even if it wasn’t Hugoworthy. It’s in many ways Mickey’s story, the one where we see him come into his own, not just as a hero worthy to travel in the TARDIS, but one independent of the Doctor, whose future lies elsewhere. I was sorry to see him go so soon because, as with Jack, it felt like the threesome crew were being given short shrift, but happy to see him find his future.

Pete gets plenty of time too, and it’s so cool to see him return, albeit another version of himself. Goes to show that in Doctor Who, there’s no such thing as never say never again.

DAVID:
It was great to see Pete back, but his role didn’t have the same weight to it as it did in “Father’s Day”. Of course, that was going to be a hard act to follow! Was it just me who found his farewell to Rose a little odd?

TANSY:
Yes, I think Pete of Season One is definitely a different man, and of course the main difference is that he is actually Rose’s father, whereas this one really isn’t. I did like that it made it clear that, whereas old Pete was a bit of a loser in the making money department, that’s not the only measure of a man – otherworld Pete certainly doesn’t seem any happier, for all his wealth and power.

DAVID:
Mickey was brilliant in this episode! I have felt sorry for him on more than one occasion, constantly the third (or even fourth!) wheel and treated pretty nastily by the Doctor. In this episode, though, we get to see a whole other side of him. I thought the part with his grandmother was particularly poignant, and it was great to get more of an insight into his character, rather than him just being the comic relief.

Noel Clarke (and I wish I hadn’t looked up the name online as it has ruined a surprise for me!) deserves major props here, he put in a sterling performance and actually made you believe that it was two different people. I loved seeing a harder, tougher version of Mickey and it is interesting who seeing Rickey seems to inspire Mickey to believe he can be something more than the “tin dog”.

It has been one of the strengths of New Who, how the writers have given the actors a chance to stretch themselves (Billie Piper playing Cassandra is another example), and to their credit they have really seized their opportunities.

TANSY:
Noel Clarke is a brilliant actor, who has quite a mighty career (as a writer and director as well) away from Doctor Who, and I do think he got much better material in this season. This is my favourite of his stories, and the dual Rickey/Mickey role is so cleverly handled, with drama and comedy all bundled together.

TEHANI
I thought Rickey was great too – love seeing more than one aspect of an actor’s ability. Having said that, not at all impressed with the way Jackie is portrayed here, but it’s an interesting “sliding doors” extrapolation. Actually, all the women in this are given a pretty short shrift.

TANSY:
Yes, good point. There are some potentially cool female characters – I have a soft spot for Mickey’s Gran, and I think Mrs Moore was an unusual and compelling figure in her handful of scenes – but Jackie is supremely awful. I don’t think it’s completely unfair to suggest, though, that it’s quite a realistic potential Jackie who has been taking unlimited wealth for granted for decades, a husband who pays her no attention, and no Rose to connect her to reality.

TEHANI:
Fair call – Jackie can be a bit of a cow in the “real” world, so it’s a reasonable projection.

TANSY:
But Other!Jackie’s fate is pretty grim, and it’s disappointing that she’s mostly killed off so we can see how Pete (and Rose) deal with it. But there isn’t much sign that Rose is affected by the end of the episode – she’s so wrapped up in her Dad.

DAVID:
Jackie is very unpleasant in this! I was actually really shocked by that moment (where she blows up to Rose for having the temerity to forget her place as one of the hired help), it was definitely not what I was expecting. But, I do agree that it is a realistic possibility of how she could have turned out, given different circumstances.

Mrs Moore was one of my favourite characters in this storyline. I loved the whole idea of her being just a normal person who finds herself a freedom fighter, rather than being some gung ho type. It was an interesting departure from the usual stereotype, and the scenes they she did have are some of the ones that stuck with me. It was quite sad to see her die!

Mickey’s Gran was wonderful, and I found that scene where he knocks on the door deeply moving, especially when we see the torn carpet and it becomes evident he blames himself for her death. Was great writing, great acting and one of those moments where you have to blink a bit!

TEHANI:
The ordinary people in this double were the best part of it I thought. I thought the villains were a bit rubbish. I find the Cybermen boring as villains, to be honest. Sadly, we see a bit of them in episodes to come. What is interesting is the set up for later in the season (and for later seasons) – not sure how much we can/should say in front of David!

TANSY:
Say nothing about that! I think this isn’t a great outing for the Cybermen, but I’m rather fond of them as a concept. There have been some brilliant classic stories! The thing I found it hard to wrap my head around was this reinvention – the original Cybermen were not from Earth, and of course New Who likes to keep things close to home. I think putting them in this alternate Earth is probably the best compromise, but I miss the old Telos/Mondas continuity.

TEHANI:
But wasn’t Mondas an alternate Earth? (Did some Googling… ) So that sort of fits…

DAVID:
My understanding was that Mondas was the Tenth Planet (hence the title of the first Cyberman adventure, and back when poor old Pluto was a planet!) of the Solar System and virtually identical to Earth. For some reason it broke free of its orbit and ended up drifting through space.

TANSY:
I think I like the clunky stompy new design (there are some gorgeous YouTube vids using music to make them look so impressive) but I agree that the script here is lacking something – the Cybermen should be more chilling and tragic figures than they are. The loss of Jackie is quite a shock but not enough to really make them scary.

TEHANI:
Link please!

TANSY:
I couldn’t find the ones I remembered (damn you, YouTube) but these are pretty good:

I do think it’s good they chose to tell a story about how the Cybermen began, something never seen in TV Doctor Who before, and there are some clever details about how humans are embracing and interacting with technology on a daily basis, but somehow the script doesn’t quite pull together for me. It feels like an over-edited action movie that has missed out too many establishing scenes.

TEHANI:
Which is interesting, because it’s a two-parter. I kind of wish they’d pared it back and made it a single (would have preferred “The Girl in the Fireplace” be two!). Might have had a bit more dramatic tension that way.

DAVID:
I was a little disappointed with the Cybermen. It’s a bit hard to explain, it’s not so much how they were used in this episode, there was actually quite a bit to like and I will get to that in a moment,. It’s more that I would have liked to have seen such a classic Doctor Who monster used in a more traditional manner at some point. As a species of villain the Cybermen would have to be second only to the Daleks in terms of significance in Doctor Who, and it would have been nice to have a new Cyberman story that used the Telos/Mondas version. So, I guess I was excited at the thought of a Cyberman episode and felt a bit let down that they were not the real thing. Though the Doctor did mention that the Cybermen he had met were from a “world like this one” which I assumed meant Mondas?

But, as I said above, I think there was a lot to like about them. I didn’t think that the pod technology was too far fetched (except for people stopping in the middle of the street), we can already see the start of it now with the way technology is becoming an integral part of our life.So, the idea of someone taking the next step into cybernetics made sense in terms of that universe.

The design was great, I liked the look of the Cybermen themselves, but they way they walked was a bit cartoonish to me. I don’t think they were portrayed as formidable as they could have been, they should have been able to rip down a chain link fence or stop a bunch of humans from running past, but they did have an air of menace to them. And the processing machines? Creepy.

TEHANI:
The design didn’t bother me – I think their motivations were what I didn’t buy into.

DAVID:
The scene with the Cyberman that was originally the young bride was touching, and reinforced the point that they were not merely machines, but human beings. I was glad that the Doctor didn’t treat their deaths as inconsequential; he has been a bit to cavalier for my taste in other episodes.

TANSY:
Something I think they went out of their way to do in this story was to show that Cybermen didn’t have to necessarily be men – and it felt like these moments, with the bride and Jackie – really brought home the shocking alteration in a way that maybe, with male characters, wouldn’t have been so strong?

TEHANI:
Because the creatures themselves are very masculine, so it’s probably something that needed to be shown.

DAVID:
Lumic himself was interesting character. The actor playing him didn’t miss any chance to chew on the scenery, but that was kind of fun, and there were more than a few echos of Davros, not just the wheelchair but they way he spoke and the words he used. His offsider was very Michael Caine, wasn’t he? The motivations of Lumic were very believable, you can imagine a visionary like that being confronted with his mortality and bending all his gifts towards finding away to live on, and going insane.

TANSY:
I think Lumic is one of the least successful parts of the story – the wheelchair is ridiculously Davros-like, and it would have been nice if they had gone with a less obvious type of villain. I really didn’t like many of the choices they made with him. The whole point of the Cybermen is not that they need a powerful evil leader, but that once created, they become self-replicating. I would have liked it if there had been more of a sense of them being created out of altruism and it all going horribly wrong, rather than selfish obsession.

TEHANI:
Nice to have Mickey save the day. And totally be the better man.

TANSY:
Mickey is an excellent man, and so much better off without Rose. They were no good for each other.

DAVID:
I agree, completely. It was great to see Mickey changing from a passive character who was largely defined by his relationship with Rose, and really just tagging along like a intergalactic third wheel, to one who was strong enough to make his own choices and, in the end, choose his own destiny. Really, the way that Rose and the Doctor treated Mickey a lot of the time did neither much credit.

TEHANI:
The interactions with those fifth wheel characters are really very interesting throughout New Who. Let’s go watch some more of them!

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Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion,” S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04

DAVID:
One of the advantages the episodic format gives shows like Doctor Who is that the writers get a chance to play around with all sorts of concepts, and experiment a little. It’s one of the reasons I enjoyed the later seasons of Smallville so much, for example, because you never knew what you were going to get. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it is never boring and gives great scope for creativity. I can just imagine the writers sitting around and throwing in ideas for this one. Steampunk and clockwork? Why not? Love story? Sure!

TEHANI:
It’s Steampunk In Space!! Awesomely awesome I like the longer story arcs we get in New Who, but when the individual episodes are done this well, I love them too. This one is a standout.

DAVID:
This episode has so much to talk about! Given the previous episode, the theme of mortality, and how a, if not immortal, long lived being like the Doctor interacts with short lived humans was very timely. I also enjoyed the way her perceptions of the Doctor changed, which mirrors the differences between how we watch the show as children, and then as adults. And, of course, the idea of the Doctor as the hero, quite literally riding to the rescue, was something that resonated with me.

One of the other interesting things about this episode is that you could take someone who has never seen Doctor Who before, and knows nothing more about it than it’s a British sci fi show, and it would stand up completely on its own. It’s so self contained that it works as a stand alone sci fi love story, yet more excellent writing.

TANSY:
This is another of my favourites, and further evidence that Steven Moffat’s (as writer) take on the show was going to be hugely important to New Who. After being supremely cheeky in “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” by addressing the idea of the Doctor flirting and possibly having a sex life (albeit couched in metaphor!) as well as being very relaxed around different sexual orientations, he follows up with this story which unashamedly gives the Doctor a romance.

However you feel about Rose and whether what’s going on between her and the Doctor is romantic or not (it can certainly be read either way at this point), there is no mistaking what is going on with him and Madame De Pompadour in this story. Kissing! Mind-reading! White charger! Doom!

DAVID:
The first thing I though when they kissed was, “Finally a real kiss! Tansy must have been thrilled!”

And, how awesome was it when he rides the horse through the mirror? It doesn’t get much better than that.

TEHANI:
Isn’t Sophia Myles just WONDERFUL in this? I already loved her from the far too short-lived Moonlight, but she is absolutely brilliant here, I thought.

TANSY:
She was also Lady Penelope in the otherwise-forgettable live action Thunderbirds movie… and she and David Tennant dated for a couple of years after filming this episode.

DAVID:
It was an outstanding performance, but what an amazing character she was given to work with! Reading about Madame de Pompadour I was absolutely fascinated, and I just thought it was great to see such a complex character presented so well. We get this woman who is completely unapologetic about who she is and what she wants, and despite the fact she is the “damsel in distress” in some ways, that is not what defines her, she is not a mere cipher.

One of the things that has struck me about New Who is the strength of some of the supporting characters (though her and the Doctor are very much the primary characters in this episode, of course) and the quality of the acting. There have been some show stealing moments so far.

TANSY:
Madame De Pompadour is a fabulous historical character – Nancy Mitford famously wrote a biography of her. Something New Who has done that I enjoy very much is bringing back the importance of historical stories to the show – and bringing a modern sensibility to that history. Aspects like having multi-racial characters back in Europe’s past (because you know, there WERE, it’s just that we’re accustomed to whitewashed versions of history thanks to 20th century cinema and TV), and acknowledging that in fact most eras of history had different sexual or social mores to what we take for granted. Sometimes it’s just touched on, but I appreciate those moments. I very much like that Madame de Pompadour’s relationship with the King doesn’t preclude her from loving anyone else, and at the end (not to jump ahead or anything) the King knows all about the Doctor and what he means to Reinette.

TEHANI:
Mickey and Rose are really falling into the brother/sister role here. Running off to chase the clockwork robots like naughty little kids … it’s very cute.

TANSY:
I like the dynamic of this episode, with Rose demoted (again) to the kids table with Mickey, but it takes some of the tension out of the Rose/Doctor relationship, which is good… apart from it not making sense with some of the more romantic Rose/Doctor episodes. I love the exploration of Mickey’s first space adventure, and he does the physical comedy aspects very well.

DAVID:
Mickey is a great addition, and with him on board it has a much more Classic Who feel. Sometimes more comedic characters can be annoying but I think they get it just right.

TEHANI:
Alright, so I LOVED this episode. But … it is perhaps problematic? The Doctor is somewhat stalkery, no? He identifies it in the spaceship itself – is this intended to be self-referential?

TANSY:
I’m not sure I buy the stalkery aspect – if he is, it’s entirely inadvertent. It’s not like he sets out to seduce her – it’s the problem that fascinates him, and then the romance hits him between the eyes by accident. And it’s still the problem that draws him back to her over and over.

The ship is definitely stalking her, though! I love the whole concept of a spaceship full of windows to the past.

DAVID:
I didn’t see the Doctor as stalkerish, and if there was seduction I thought it went the other way! I may be misremembering, but the moment that things change and the Doctor starts to see her as more than someone to be rescued is when she kisses him. She is not a passive character, which is one of the things I like about her.

The idea of a spaceship cannibalising its crew was both clever and creepy, and the concept of windows being opened along someone’s timeline was done really well. The image of an abandoned spaceship, floating in the middle of deep space, with all these portals looking into 18th century France is one that I won’t forget in a hurry, it was very evocative.

There is a Dean Koontz story (Lightning) which is actually very similar, even down to a mysterious stranger intervening at various stages in a young woman’s life, and her falling in love with this protector that has always been part of her life.

TEHANI:
Ooh, I LOVE that book a lot – read it for the first time when I was about 16 and reread it many times. I still recommend it to people!

And so, when did the Doctor become psychic – I have a mental blank if this is the first time he’s done this reading minds trick?

TANSY:
In Classic Who it happened a few times, the mutual mind sharing, but I think only with other Time Lords. It’s not the last time it will happen, though…

TEHANI:
It’s very interesting how Reinette focuses on one of the elements that is so true about Doctor Who, and the life he leads, when she talks about the monsters and the Doctor: “It seems you can’t have one without the other.” But in all the short time Reinette has spent with him, how does she know that “…the Doctor is worth the monsters”?

TANSY:
Hmm well yes, but it’s a romance, and the rules of romance are pretty much all about falling in love with people before you get to know them. She’s an eighteenth century girl! Also she does get to know a bit more of the inner workings of his head, and he is, after all, David Tennant. I have no problem with her deciding he’s worth the trouble!

TEHANI:
Ha! You’re such a fan girl!

TANSY:
Heh not entirely, I think David Tennant automatically becomes twice as attractive when he’s not the Doctor (plus bonus points for the Scottish accent). Okay, yes, a fangirl, but I was *his* fangirl long before he collided with my Doctor Who fandom.

DAVID:
I think the mind reading part makes the whole falling love thing a lot more believable. It’s not just the time that they spend together, it’s the fact that the get to know one another on such a deep and intimate level that makes their bond so powerful.

TEHANI:
It’s also just a teensy bit future referential to Season Five and Amy! (Sorry David, no spoilers, promise!).

And then he totally chooses her. Over the TARDIS, Rose, and everything he’s ever known. I’m really not sure enough is made of this, not here, not ever. He gives up EVERYTHING for Reinette, even though it doesn’t actually happen, and all we get is a moment of silence at the end of the episode?? He’s a shallow beast sometimes…

TANSY:
It’s obvious that The Time Traveller’s Wife had a bit of an influence on Mr Moffat – this is his first working through of the themes of that novel, which he would later do with greater abandon with River Song AND Amy Pond. I think that it’s interesting that he delves so much into the imbalances of the Doctor’s various relationships, exploring the problematic fact that he is always so much older than everyone he travels with (even his fellow Time Lord Romana in Classic Who, 50-60+ Evelyn in Big Finish and Wilf towards the end of Tennant’s run, are all spring chickens compared to the Doctor, by hundreds and hundreds of years). Somehow that imbalance all becomes a lot starker and more obvious when we see his companions/romantic leads as children, and/or get to see them at different points in their lives.

The best example of this in the Classic series, really, is his ongoing friendship with the Brigadier, where he checked in with him regularly throughout his life, and knew him as a young officer, a military leader, and a retired veteran. And of course there’s the Master, who comes back again and again, and to a lesser extent the Rani, whom we are told has known the Doctor since university days.

TEHANI:
Oh Tansy, that makes the end of Season Six even SADDER, knowing that. (NO SPOILERS, SORRY DAVID! I really need to stop doing that.)

TANSY:
Shhhhhhhhh, Tehani, behave yourself.

I think “The Girl in the Fireplace” shows how romance and even friendship with the Doctor is problematic in all kinds of ways, because of how difficult it is for him to find anyone remotely equal – it’s not that he’s better than everybody, but he’s so alien, even to his own people (and of course the big theme of New Who is that his people are gone anyway). Reinette is one of a whole bunch of great companions-who-never-were (Moffat makes such a habit of creating these) and I think she would have been fascinating to travel with in the TARDIS, but ultimately, she’s no better suited to Ten than is Rose.

The Doctor may be getting younger, but I think the actors chosen for New Who have done a bang up job of portraying the Doctor’s alienness (in different ways) and his age despite their appearances. Of course, all the Doctors have done this to greater or lesser effect, but there’s something very effective about that combination of a modern looking young man who acts like he has the whole universe in his back pocket, and all of time and space jumbling around inside his skull.

DAVID:
I think we have seen more than once now that the Doctor has very short mourning periods. Perhaps it is a sign of how broken he is by the trauma of losing his people, or a defense mechanism against the constant cycle of goodbyes he goes through, but he seems very capable of compartmentalising his grief.

I don’t think that means it is any less real to him, but a mark of how, as Tansy says, ALIEN he is. Because he looks human we do tend to forget that, I think.

TANSY:
Yes and of course it’s a feature of the show’s production choices – we don’t want to see the Doctor constantly moping. The universe (and the TARDIS herself) drag him from adventure to adventure so he doesn’t quite have time to mourn but also so that we don’t have to see the bits where he’s just staring into space, twitching.

TEHANI:
That’s a fair point. I must also keep in mind that it is, after all, a TV SHOW! Things must happen! There must be more ACTION and more LOVEY BITS! Else we’d all get bored

TANSY:
Which of course is why there is so much of the Doctor’s life (and TARDIS) we don’t get to see. It’s just a coincidence that the bits we don’t see are mostly the bits that would be hugely expensive to design and film.

TEHANI:
In all this, we haven’t yet mentioned the fact that this episode actually won the Hugo for the year. What do we think it is that made this one stand above the others nominated? (We haven’t talked about “Army of Ghosts/Doomsday” yet, I know, so perhaps in relation just to “School Reunion”?).

TANSY:
Whatever it was, Moffat was doing a lot of it. I suspect partly the reason that it works so very well is because it’s the kind of story you can single out from the season – it’s a standalone, it has a deep emotional core to it, it is a brilliant showcase for the protagonist of the show. It has certainly become one of those episodes people reach for first when trying to introduce newbies to the show.

After all it has SF, history, intellect, romance, speccy costumes AND some of the best banter in the business. The banter gets the Hugo voters every time…

DAVID:
Well, what Tansy said! It really does have a bit of everything. There are some truly remarkable performances (Myles and Tennant), it is accessible to fans and non-fans alike, the writing is top notch, the dialogue sparkles – there really isn’t anything not to like.

Was this around the time steampunk was REALLY big? Because it does have that feel about it, and perhaps that helped, too.

TANSY:
I think it possibly preceded the Extreme Hotness of Steampunk by a year or so but not much more than that.

TEHANI:
So basically, it’s the broadness of the appeal? It’s an episode that can be enjoyed and embraced by more than just the hardcore fans, and with the steampunk-ish element, grabs a few more votes!

TANSY:
I did want to talk a bit about the design of the episode – this is the first time we get to walk around inside a really real spaceship in New Who (as opposed to the same space station painted three different ways) and I think it’s very nicely realised. But of course it’s the 18th century design that really leaps off the screen – Reinette’s frocks particularly but the clockwork robots in their courtier garb have become an iconic Doctor Who villain, and I think the design has a lot to do with that.

DAVID:
The design is gorgeous, isn’t it? It captures the luxury and decadence of that period perfectly, like a well done period piece. It would make a great theme for a masquerade at a convention!

TANSY:
I agree with you about the Masquerade – it would be lovely to see Madame De Pompadour and Clockwork Robot cosplay (and did anyone spot the cameo appearance of Angel Coulby, Guinevere from Merlin, as Reinette’s gal pal?). Hard on the heels of Anthony Head last episode (Uther).

TEHANI:
I clearly need to watch more Merlin! And we’ll keep that theme in mind for a future convention, shall we Tansy?

TANSY:
Ha! No comment.

======
Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion,” S02E03

TEHANI:
We only skip one episode (the werewolf-ish “Tooth and Claw”) before we get to the first of Season Two’s Hugo nominees, “School Reunion”. I think it’s pretty obvious why this one got the fan nod. Not only does it have Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) of BTVS (My fandoms! They cross over!) but of course, we see here the return of Sarah Jane and K9! Fan heads all over the world must have exploded Tansy!

I do want to say one thing about “Tooth and Claw” – I loved how Tennant’s Scottish was showing in that one – listen hard, you’ll hear it

TANSY:
I don’t think you have to listen too hard, he’s outright doing his own accent for most of the episode! I am a little wistful they wouldn’t let him be Scottish as the Doctor generally. He has a beautiful voice.

DAVID:
Other than the last five minutes, I thought “Tooth and Claw” was an excellent episode, I really enjoyed it. Had a nice nod to Classic Who, some great character acting and an awesome fight scene!

TANSY:
Heh it’s amazing how many stories of this era are brilliant until the last five minutes. But let’s leap ahead to the head-explodey “School Reunion”!

TEHANI:
Rose as dinner lady – she does fit the role… That was mean, wasn’t it? Nice to see Mickey in this though, and being quite cool with the sniffing out of the problem and all (in the beginning at least – and he gets his chance to be a hero near the end, which is nice). I also like that he didn’t play to Rose’s half-flirting.

DAVID:
I thought Rose had some excellent moments in this show. The look of loathing that she shot the Doctor during the canteen scene said it all, and her reaction to Sarah Jane and the Doctor’s history was exactly what I would have expected from her. She needs to decide how she feels about Mickey though, just a few mixed signals there!

TANSY:
I like the awkward reshuffling as Rose and Mickey try to settle in as just friends instead of trying to hang on to the ghost of their old relationship – and instantly Mickey is so much more fun to be around. I love how he teases her, sibling-style, and is actively a part of the adventure. Also the classic double act with K9 – his “I’m the tin dog” reaction, the marvellous “we are in a car” sequence, and so on. I would totally watch an episode which was just Mickey and K9.

DAVID:
Mickey was great in this episode, and yes, I loved the dynamic between him and K9! It was wonderful to see K9 back, as well, he was always a favourite of mine. Who didn’t dream of having a dog like K9 when they were a child (or even now)?

TANSY:
My daughter just built her own K9 out of egg boxes, so I’m going to say yes to that one. I adore K9, always have. John Leeson’s voice has lifted him from gimmick to real character and I love the dry humour that comes through that tinny little voice.

DAVID:
I was really happy at the end when Mickey asks to come along because I think he adds something to the show. I’ve always liked the Doctor-female companion-male companion dynamic, and I cant help but recall the episodes where Harry and Sarah Jane accompanied the Fourth Doctor.

TANSY:
Me too! It’s a nice combination and something we see done several times in New Who. Mickey has grown a lot as a character to feel ready to face his fears and the universe as a whole. I like that he seems to have chosen to come for his own reasons, and not for anything to do with Rose. I also think she’s quite human in her reaction, being so disgruntled at having to share the Doctor, and the TARDIS, instead of being the exotic one who goes swanning off.

TEHANI:
Ten’s reaction to seeing Sarah Jane is fascinating – he’s astounded and delighted, which is very sweet, but a little sad. After all, in all the long years that have passed since Sarah Jane left the show, has he ever visited her? Thought about her? When I first watched this episode, I thought it was lovely, but as the seasons passed and the issue of what happens to companions left behind becomes quite prominent (the examination certainly starts in this episode), I come back to it with a different perspective. I’ll be interested to hear what you two think of it, with a much stronger Classic Who background.

TANSY:
For the most part I love this episode and the return of Sarah Jane (there are a couple of major problems I’ll mention later). The scene where the Doctor sees her for the first time and she has no idea who he is … it has me in pieces every time. The wave of nostalgia and connection, and pride: there she is, doing the same thing she always has, letting her nose for a story drag her into trouble. And the opposite scene where she sees the TARDIS for the first time and the reality that he’s here crashes in over her. Wonderful stuff.

DAVID:
I have spoken a couple of times about how waiting so long to watch New Who has robbed some scenes of a bit of their emotional impact because I know a little of what follows (ie Jack’s “death”). This was a case of the complete reverse, seeing Sarah Jane was quite moving (and K9 too, though obviously not to the same extent). To me Sarah Jane will always be THE companion, just as Tom Baker is THE Doctor so I loved her return in this, because it took me back. And, with Elisabeth Sladen’s sad passing this year there was also a sense of melancholy about it.

TANSY:
Yes, rewatching this so soon after her death was very sad! An emotional rollercoaster all around – but at least the characters are on one too, if that makes sense. And how extraordinary that she got to do this, that they actually brought back a companion 25 years later and brought her into the story.

DAVID:
I found the conversation between the Doctor and Sarah Jane very interesting. Her feelings of abandonment are completely understandable, but I can also understand the Doctor not wanting to watch his companions age, and wanting to remember them as they were. Like I have heard others comment before, I don’t really like the idea that she put her life on hold after the Doctor, though, I much prefer the Sarah Jane who became a top investigative journalist and whose journeys with Doctor spurred her on to greater heights rather than them being something that held her back.

TEHANI:
But I guess we don’t know, in this episode at least, that she HASN’T become a top investigative journalist – she tells the Headmaster that she’s doing a piece for the Sunday Times. That doesn’t have to be a lie, no? We do know she never met a man who could live up to the Doctor, but, well, fair enough really…

TANSY:
Of course it’s not a lie! She’s a real journalist, always has been.

There are two ideas in this episode I hate with a passion: one, the implication that there was a romantic connection between Sarah Jane and the Doctor in the old days, which squicks me out completely (Tom Baker, ew) and is too much of a revisionist attitude for me. Some Doctor-companion combinations, sure. Sarah and Four? Impossible. I have no problem with them being attracted to each other now, because whoa, he got hot, but that chemistry simply wasn’t there in the 70’s (or indeed, 1980). I also hate, hate, hate the lines that suggest she put her life on hold for him, waiting for him to come back. It’s not true to Sarah Jane in any sense.

Rewatching the episode, there are actually only two appalling lines in the final scene which are the worst offenders, and the rest of it is fine as is. And yes, one of them is the bit about not being able to find a partner who could live up to the Doctor. It made me want to kick both of them, but mostly the writers. How hard would it have been to pull that out and have her say ‘no kids, actually, I was too busy.’ Sarah Jane was not just one of the most popular companions of Classic Who, she was a feminist and a career woman. The Doctor ditched her, and it is important she got to have it out with him in this episode, but I think they pushed the analogue to Rose way too far.

DAVID:
I do think that this episode gives the impression that she didn’t achieve much at all after the Doctor left her in Aberdeen. We know different, that she was, in fact, a top investigative journalist, but that is despite this episode, not because of it. So, I’m glad to hear that is treated a bit better in her future appearances, because that was one aspect I found really disappointing.

TEHANI:
Sarah Jane: You can tell you’re getting older, your assistants are getting younger.

HA! Onya Sarah Jane.

She really calls him on his behaviour, how he deserts his companions – is this the first time someone does this? It’s really sad here.

TANSY:
I think it is the first time, as it isn’t really a feature of the classic series. Something that goes hand in hand with David Tennant’s Doctor is definitely an in-narrative meta critique of the Doctor’s behaviour, which I think mitigates his problematic behaviour in a lot of ways. This is by no means the last time that someone is going to kick Ten’s butt for having his head in it.

TEHANI:
Rose gets quite a shock too – so soon after the “honeymoon period” of “New Earth”, it actually hits home that maybe she’s just not all that special to the Doctor…

DAVID:
But. that’s Rose thinking in human terms, surely? That someone else being special to the Doctor means she couldn’t be, like there is a finite amount of him to go around? I do think Rose reads more into her relationship with the Doctor than there is, and I think this is a bit of a wake up call for her.

TANSY:
It is absolutely a wake up call, and it’s a revelation for Mickey too, who enjoys it a little too much. I think it’s one of the episodes where Rose’s immaturity is shown as being a problem for her relationship with the Doctor. As soon as Sarah Jane turns up, he is off with her being grown up investigators, and Rose and Mickey are left at the kid’s table. I have to say it is interesting that as soon as other companions enter the mix, the Doctor and Rose’s relationship looks a lot less romantic and intimate.

DAVID:
This is where maybe I am being a little naive, but I refuse to the see the Doctor’s bond with the companions as anything other than platonic. That’s why the whole acting like exes thing is amusing, rather than just being nasty.

TEHANI:
Hmmm, I best not say too much here, for fear of spoilers! Rose is pretty conflicted in this episode – she’s half flirting with Mickey on one hand (and behaves very badly when he asks to come travelling at the end!), but snarky and jealous over Sarah Jane on the other. Your typical nineteen year old really…

I wasn’t convinced that the Doctor was tempted in this episode, but I loved that Sarah Jane had the rationale to save them – she knew what to say, which buttons to press – perfect!

DAVID:
I can see that this would be one of the few things that could really come close to tempting the Doctor. Even though Ten doesn’t wear it on his sleeve like Nine did, we can see that he is deeply broken by the Time War and a chance to make things right, and rescue those he loves, must be deeply tempting. And, I hate to turn this into a sort of metageek thing, but it is like when Gandalf is offered the Ring, the Doctor would be all the more terrible given that power because he would do it from the best of motives, not for power or glory, but to do the right thing.

And, it’s lovely how it is Sarah Jane who gives that poignant speech about all things having their time. At their best, that is what the Companions always did for the Doctor, just as he gave them something beyond the stars, they humanised him and grounded him, in the best sense of the term.

TANSY:
It’s so strong for her, such a wonderful moment that she turns him down, because of course she does. She has a life. But it’s nice that he does ask her. Especially as her leaving story was one where – she didn’t leave to fall in love, or by choice, he dropped her home to get her out of the way when he went off to do a Thing, and never came back. And he didn’t even drop her in the right place. But it’s worth noting that unlike most of his companions, Sarah was one he hadn’t forgotten – in a doomed pilot for spin off series K9 and Company, he sent her K9, who hadn’t been a part of her travels. And they had also seen each other in the Five Doctors – her (most recent) Doctor wasn’t there, and she couldn’t exactly smack Three around for what Four had done to her, but Five was there and there was none of the emotional resolution that meeting deserved. Then again, he didn’t get to enjoy being reunited with his grand-daughter (whom he also ditched) either – that story was done in such a by the numbers way!

TEHANI:
Huh, there’s quite a lot of “Smiths” in this episode… And I LOVED K9! I do remember him from the olden days

The end is sad – brought a tear even on the second time around. When Sarah Jane says to K9, “He replaced you with a brand new model … he does that,” (*sniff*) it was totally true and a punch to the heart. I gather this is the prelude to “The Sarah Jane Adventures” though?

TANSY:
The story is the reason that “The Sarah Jane Adventures” happened, but no one had thought of it until Elisabeth Sladen came in and did such a bang up job. It’s a brilliant show, with a lot more of the sensibilities of Classic Who than New, and it became such a phenomenon. I mean, a science fiction kids show with a 60+ heroine in the lead. How awesome is that? Not that she ever looked 60… Also she gets a family, and we see her balancing that with active work, not only as a journalist but also cleaning up the alien messes that are too minor or ‘domestic’ for the Doctor to bother with. I can recommend the show, not only as something to watch with your kids, but also because it tidies up the most problematic aspects of this episode.

Heh so we’ve come this far without mentioning the head villain, or the plot, which says a lot, I think about the priorities of this episode. Any thoughts on the actual story?

TEHANI:
Oh yeah, there was a plot! I loved Giles in this (sorry, I know, he’s Mr Finch, the Headmaster, but he’ll ALWAYS be Giles!) – he was predatory and amoral and awesome. The effects of the Krillitane are not as good as those of the cat nuns in “New Earth”, but they were suitably creepy. The idea behind the episode kind of slipped off me both times I watched it though – using Krillitane oil (which just happened to be toxic to themselves? How do they produce it then!) to make kids smarter then networking them into some kind of super computer… Surely that’s why we have the internet?

TANSY:
It was so weird to see him as a villain back when this first screened, but now after three years of King Uther in Merlin, it’s not a problem for me! He does make a brilliant villain. The Krillitane are a lot like the Slitheen in that they’re a monster likely to appeal to the kid viewers rather than the adults – teachers sleeping at school! Less stinky, though.

DAVID:
Well, let’s be honest here. Even if this had been a terrible episode I still would have loved it, simply because of the nostalgia value. But, I think it holds up as an episode really well. Despite the fact that I can’t help but see Anthony Stewart Head as either Giles or the Prime Minister, he was a suitably creepy villain, and I enjoyed the plot. It also gave plenty of room for great performances by Tennant as an insane teacher that we would have loved to have and Billie Piper as a very surly lunchroom lady. It was nice to see Mickey getting a bit of camera time as well, he was the sort of comic relief that you enjoy, not the sort you just want to punch (Looking at YOU, Jar Jar).

TEHANI:
I had to look up which show ASH was Prime Minister in! (It’s Little Britain, for others similarly challenged).

TANSY:
Ha yes, it’s actually a good, solid story with a lot going for it, crunchy thematic issues side by side with some great dialogue and comedy. And a few scares. Sarah Jane is what lifts it into something truly special but there are great moments for all of them, and so many memorable scenes. I really liked that they started the story with the Doctor and Rose already undercover, and unpeeled it from there.

DAVID:
I liked the Krillitane too, the special effects were quite reasonable, and they appealed to that part of us that believes teachers are, in fact, terrible monsters in disguise The idea of using the creative minds of children as a computer is hardly new (in fact one of the Eighth Doctor Adventures has a very similar concept), but it was well executed and managed to drive the episode sufficiently.

But, really, all of that is secondary to the main attraction, and that is the return of Sarah Jane. After everything that has been said I am very keen to watch the spin off. At what point in watching New Who would you recommend that a viewer start watching the Sarah Jane Adventures?

TANSY:
I’d say that you would want to have seen at least a few episodes of SJA before the season finale of Season Four Doctor Who, but I won’t say why! Any time between now and then would be fine. Season 3 of SJA has a proper appearance by the Tenth Doctor, and Season 4 has the Eleventh (I haven’t seen season 4 yet, for some reason it takes a year for them to get the DVDs out!) but there’s no particular obligation to fit those episodes into Doctor Who continuity. Oh, and the Brig appears in Season 2, I think, in Nicholas Courtney’s last filmed appearance as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart!

SJA is a great TV show, with the proviso that it’s firmly aimed at kids – there’s a reason it quickly became the most successful BBC Children’s show, and it’s not just because of the Doctor Who connection. But as well as having a very contemporary tone, there’s much that is reminiscent of Old Who, as well – the format, and a lot of factory-lost-aliens-and-quarry stories. Plus, of course, the wonderful Elisabeth Sladen, in fabulous clothes and an adorable little car.

DAVID:
Aimed at kids or not, it sounds like my sort of show!

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Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special
“New Earth”, S02E01

TEHANI:
Keeping in mind we’re reviewing this episode as the official Season Two opener (rather than because it was a Hugo-nominated ep or any such point of interest!), “New Earth” starts out with Rose and the Doctor leaving Jackie and Mickey behind and heading off on their new journey.

DAVID:
I wasn’t really sure what to think about this episode. It’s very ambitious in that it tries to tackles some complex moral issues (at what point does something become human, do the ends justify the means, medical ethics), which is something I really enjoy in science fiction, but I think that it was a case of great concept and average execution. It’s an odd mix of some very light hearted scenes and some far darker undertones which took a little bit of adjustment.

TANSY:
Yes, whenever I remember this episode I cringe about it and only remember the bad bits, but when I watch it, I mostly enjoy it. Though I hate the opening scene of the ridiculously-happy-honeymooning Doctor and Rose, as it represents the overall smug tone that I think was laid on far too thick this season (rewatching the season, it’s not quite as prevalent as I remembered, but comes in irritating fits and starts). I would have far preferred some hint that she is still uneasy about his transition rather than the whole NINE WHO? attitude.

TEHANI:
Rose: Can I just say, travelling with you, I love it.
Ten: Me too.
Rose, I do not think he means what you think he means there. Self-centred much?

DAVID:
I am glad that we have already been introduced to Ten before this episode, because I don’t think I would have liked him that much had this been my first experience of him. He certainly has certainly has a streak of arrogance about him, with his claims of being the ultimate authority!

TANSY:
Ha, well, come on. He’s the Doctor. Tom Baker did much the same. I do think with Ten we basically get two Doctors – we get the one on the page, who is quite shifty, egotistic and judgemental, and then we get the one that’s basically David Tennant being charismatic. Much as I enjoy David Tennant being charismatic, I do think it means we swallow a lot of behaviour which should make us feel more unsettled than it does.

TEHANI:
That’s an interesting point Tansy – has this been interrogated in fandom? Ooh, is there an article for the next Chicks Dig Time Lords in that?! It’s a little scary when you think about it – we accept bad behaviour because what, the guy is cute and charismatic? Hmm, maybe Alisa is on to something with her concern as she ploughs grumpily through New Who…

TANSY:
Doctor Who is the most over-analysed TV show in history, I think it’s probably fair to say there isn’t much that hasn’t been interrogated! The issue does get clouded of course by the fact that Ten is quite a polarising Doctor – on the one hand the most mainstream popular Doctor since Tom Baker, and on the other hand a Doctor quite despised by several vocal corners of fandom. Then again, let’s face it, there’s a whole lot of nostalgic childhood memories which lead us to remember Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor as being much less of a bastard than he was, in fact, on many occasions.

Though of course, David Tennant is much prettier than Tom Baker, so bonus get-out-of-jail-free points there!

DAVID:

But, it’s no different from Jack, surely? From what I have seen of him so far he gets away with a lot of behaviour that we would normally consider appalling. He is a charming rogue, but still a rogue.

TANSY:
That’s absolutely true, and like Ten, Jack is a polarising character. Those who love or like him and John Barrowman’s performance, tend to be diehard fans, but those who dislike him REALLY dislike him. The same can be said of course of the companions – Rose and Donna in particular have raised a lot of ire as well as fan squee over the years.

Hmm. Basically, Doctor Who fans love and hate stuff. A lot. Loudly.

DAVID:
I get the impression Billie Piper had a lot of fun with the possession scenes, and there were some absolutely hilarious lines, but the ones with the Doctor were pretty clumsy and I didn’t enjoy them half as much. Cassandra was a much more interesting character in this episode, and I thought her death scene was quite moving.

TANSY:
Cassandra is a great villain, and her performance is totally the best thing of this episode, which is amazing considering it’s mostly a voice-only performance. Billie Piper also does very well – it’s rare for her to get to do outright physical comedy, and she rises to the challenge. It’s so WEIRD to think of her being the veteran at this point, and David Tennant the newbie.

TEHANI:
The dialogue has its moments of funny – a lot of almost naughty words cut off by some clever wordplay.

DAVID:
And, Tansy, another kiss that isn’t really a kiss!

TANSY:
Believe me, this is a running theme of RTD’s Doctor Who, along with snow at Christmas that isn’t really snow because they don’t really get snow at Christmas in the UK (except for that time they did) Fake-out kisses to keep the fans wondering, and to liven up previews. I choose to find this funny rather than deeply irritating – it reduces stress!

TEHANI:
There’s a very hand-wavey solution to the problem here – there’s quite a few of those I’ve noticed! I kind of prefer the episodes when there’s a more solid saving of the day. The declaration by the Doctor of the “flesh” as a brand new subspecies is a bit dramatic – although that whole premise is a bit shaky for me – how could they possibly have raised adult humans for so long in that way, especially if they were quite aware and alive? OOOH, TANSY! It just occurred to me that there’s “flesh” central to Season Six. Coincidence?

TANSY:
Huh, interesting, I hadn’t made that connection (about the flesh). This is probably one of the worst ‘wave the sonic screwdriver’ solutions to an episode, though you will see many more in the years to come. Sadly. I have more issue with the general ick of the zombies than with the solution to the problem – and when it comes down to it, I really didn’t care much about anyone in the story apart from Cassandra, the Doctor and Rose. I’d say it’s one of the worst scripts that RTD has personally written – there are others that are more broken, but they have better awesome bits to balance it out.

TEHANI:
I really enjoyed Chip’s performance – both as the “flesh” and when he is Cassandra. A really interesting player! I do like it when the bit parts are strong. And I loved the cat nuns – thought they were very well designed!

TANSY:
Chip is one of the best ‘proper’ aliens that New Who has done as far as his design and personality – too often, they do the quick fix of grabbing a random Earth animal and putting it in an amusing costume, which starts to get wearing after a while. I do like the cat nuns, though. They look extraordinary. The new show shied away from aliens and alien planets in particular far too often, always desperate to get the human angle in somewhere – I don’t think New Earth was a substitute for a real alien planet (one not colonised by humans) but it was the best we were to get for some time.

DAVID:
I found Chip’s storyline quite moving, really. The love he felt for Cassandra was quite undeserved, yet in the end it was what redeemed her. That’s the sort of thing a sentimental sap like me wants to see. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the melodramatically evil characters too, but the idea of redemption is a powerful one when it is done properly and believably, and Classic Doctor Who was littered with it. We see the Doctor as a catalyst, no world is ever the same once he has passed through (for better or worse), and I have always loved when we see his presence changing people for the better.

TANSY:
Doctor Who has always had extraordinary villains, and some wonderful actors over the years to play them. It’s one of the things the show does best – I guess because the Doctor, for all his flaws, is the embodiment of chaotic good, and such a huge character, that he needs huge villains to balance him out.

DAVID:
The actor who played Chip did a wonderful job, and I thought that actress who played Cassandra did well too, especially when she was more than a voice emanating from a piece of skin, which is entirely understandable!

TANSY:
Zoe Wanamaker! One of a long list of really impressive names they got in to play guest roles in season one (before the show proved how popular it was going to be). Something New Who has done very, very well since 2005 is casting, not only getting in really major actors, but also matching them well to characters. I can think of only a small handful of bum choices, and a whole bunch of exceptional ones.

DAVID:
The cat nuns could have been very bad indeed, but they were handled very well and looked extremely convincing. They actually looked like aliens, rather than intergalactic furries. They were also quite chilling in their approach to medical science, you could believe they honestly thought they were justified doing these terrible things for the sake of the greater good and that they regretted the necessity of it. I thought this made them all the more creepier than if they had been doing it because they were…well, evil.

So far, the special effects have been great in this season

TANSY:
I think it’s obvious right from the word go that there is more money going into this season than the last (where there were a few scenes occasionally filmed in cupboards, etc.) and that the production team are actually figuring out how to spend that money effectively. It’s a mostly silly episode that looks great.

TEHANI:
So overall, we’re a bit “meh” about this episode on its own. I will say this though – it’s worth watching because we come back to New Earth, and some of these characters, later

======
Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special

TEHANI:
Quick, go watch the Children in Need special before you read this! (and resist the urge to click through the million other YouTube clips of cool Doctor Who stuff).

Right, you’re back now? I hadn’t seen this until Tansy pointed it out, and while it actually made the end of Season One a little less awesome for me (they KNOWINGLY left Jack to his own devices! After he was such a hero!), it is a great bridge for the new incarnation of the Doctor. Ah, David Tennant. Who I was DETERMINED not to love, because all the fangirls do, but have to admit, he does rock pretty hard.

DAVID:
I am glad I watched the CON special first, it was a great little bridge into the new Doctor and I was immediately impressed, despite the fact he seemed to be channeling Eric Idle for a little bit there! I am not sure what it was, but I warmed to him straight away … sorry, number Nine.

TANSY:
I always forget about how much I like David Tennant’s Doctor. I like the rough edges of Eccleston, and I love what Matt Smith is doing with Eleven, but David Tennant is just plain adorable. I think part of me doesn’t want to like him because he is the most popular Doctor of all time (and for other reasons that will come up in later stories)… and Ten won Raeli’s heart away from Eleven, which is very impressive. But even though I don’t always like the material he has to work with, and the things his Doctor does, I do enjoy his performance.

TEHANI:
Heh, I’m the same, Tansy. I didn’t want to love him, simply because everybody ELSE does!

I really enjoyed this episode – it’s actually fairly Doctor-lite, which I thought was interesting for the beginning of a new Doctor AND Christmas special combined. Rose, Jackie and Mickey do a pretty good job of carrying it though (though Mickey shows he still carries a torch for Rose, albeit in a bit more feisty way).

TANSY:
It is odd how little Doctor we get – whetting our appetite, I suppose and it’s true that all “Doctor-lite” stories do tend to be more about the Doctor than any others, because of the whopping great hole left by his absence. I’m also not convinced that the Doctor we see here is actually the Doctor we’re going to get in the season to come – but that could be because of the pyjamas.

TEHANI:
Maybe it’s just me, but it sort of felt like there were two different stories with the remote controlled Santas and then the Sycorax. I know they gave it a good explanation, but it didn’t really gel for me, even second time around.

DAVID:
I was expecting a pretty fluffy episode, being a Christmas episode, but I actually thought this was very strong. The dialogue was exceptional, lots of great banter and funny bits without becoming farcical, and the special effects were of a extremely high standard. There is something about the subversion of things that are meant to fun or heartwarming that always creeps me out, like clowns, so the Santas and the killer Christmas tree gave me the heebie jeebies. And, the Sycorax were suitably menacing villains, if a little melodramatic at times, and certainly not shy of killing people!

TANSY:
The robot Santas, killer Christmas trees and basically all the Christmas stuff feels very tacked on to me – it’s all lead up to the big dramatic Sycorax scene on the ship and I agree that it could have been anything leading there. It feels to some extent that the Christmas alien bumpf is more for the previews than the episode itself. But there’s enough heart and character story in between the silly bits that I’m prepared to forgive it, even if it’s pretty much filler until we get more bits with the new Doctor in again.

TEHANI:
I was amused when Rose called Nine the “proper Doctor” – I could hear echoes of fans after each regeneration!

DAVID:
Rose’s reaction was very telling, wasn’t it? You could tell that she felt betrayed and abandoned by the Doctor and that she took him changing very personally indeed.

TANSY:
I think it’s important that we saw that reaction – though as we’ll see in the season to come, this is the only time we get that reaction, which I think is a shame really. It would have been nice to see a more complex relationship between them based on her not entirely trusting that “her” Doctor is inside this new charming stranger. I like that aspect of their relationship in this episode very much, but we never see it again.

(Can’t entirely blame her, though, considering that it is David Tennant – shades of Steven Moffat’s The Curse of Fatal Death, really, when Julia Sawahla loses “her” Doctor only for him to be replaced with Richard E. Grant. “RESULT.”)

TEHANI:
Tansy, you keep telling me about more stuff I’d never heard of! Being a Doctor Who fan is really quite time consuming, isn’t it?!

Yay for more Harriet Jones! I thought she was just fabulous in this, even at the end, which gives us a very good taste of where this particular Doctor stands on things like this. And which is interesting, given the end of the last episode, where Rose destroyed the Daleks and that was okay, but Harriet orders the Sycorax shot down and the Doctor destroys her career. I don’t know how I felt about that bit actually, especially the WAY he did it – ironic comment on women in high-powered jobs, or something else?

DAVID:
This was actually very similar to a scene from Classic Who (Doctor Who and the Silurians) where the Doctor is seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict with the Silurians, only for the Brigadier to blow up their base due to his superiors seeing them as too much of a threat to humanity. This is despite the fact that the Doctor has tricked them into going back into hibernation and the immediate threat is ended. The Doctor’s reaction is one of extreme anger, and in fact he is still disgusted with the Brigadier in later episodes.

While some incarnations have been less pacifistic, I think the Doctor has always seen violence as a last resort, when there is no other solution. So, the destruction of the Daleks would be acceptable by that logic, but destroying an enemy that has been defeated and is leaving, not so much.

TEHANI:
Hmmm. We’ll talk more about this at the end of Season Four.

DAVID:
I thought Harriet Jones was excellent in this episode, and I laughed at her ID card wielding ways, but that ending wasn’t my favourite part of the episode. However, it is consistent with the way Doctor feels about humanity, he loves them but is quite often impatient and exasperated, even disgusted, with their (to him) primitive and violent ways.

TANSY:
I don’t like the end at all, and I think it shows that this sweet, funny Doctor has a mean streak to him. It’s a long time before we see it again, but it is there, and it is very interesting. But I resent that he felt the need to take down Harriet Jones (and as we’ll see in season three, it was actually a catastrophic thing to do) and I think it’s worrying that he’s prepared to ditch the “golden age” that he crowed about. Messing with history because of his own ego?

TEHANI:
It’s quite an interesting thing to do in our very first episode with him – like you say, we don’t see it again for a while, but that’s a lasting impression to take with us into Season Two. It bothered me more the second time, because I really LIKE Harriet, and to see her destroyed that way, regardless of the future effects, is really quite horrible.

TANSY:
The thing about Ten is that there are few people who are prepared to call him on it when he’s wrong, and I am sad to see Harriet kicked in this way because she does do that, and it’s terribly brave of her. The fact that he uses that weird sexist psychological thing against her is discomforting, too.

TEHANI:
We really needed some Donna in this episode I think! Oops, sorry David, no spoilers!

Is this the first time we see the sort of thing Torchwood might be?

TANSY:
References to Torchwood are a recurring theme throughout this season and I don’t want to say too much about that yet, but this is the first mention of Torchwood (apart from a quiz question back on the Weakest Link) and the big gun zapping the aliens out of the sky is definitely… one side to what Torchwood is. But by no means the most interesting side!

TEHANI:
Really have to start watching Torchwood soon I guess. Now Season Six is dusted (*sniff*) I guess I need to fill the gap…

TANSY:
Oh I forgot to mention before, I think the Tenth Doctor’s relationship with Jackie and Mickey is worth noting because it’s such a contrast to Nine’s attitude. Nine was rude and abrupt, refused to have anything to do with domesticity, and for the most part was antagonistic towards Rose’s family. But Ten embraces them as his own, and for the most part he has a far more positive attitude towards humanity. It suggests that this Doctor is less emotionally scarred than the previous incarnation (though of course he’s screwed up in whole new ways) and may be a step further away from the horrors of his past.

But there’s also a popular fan theory that the Doctor subconsciously moulds his incarnations based on a perceived lack in the previous version… and that he designed this particular body and personality with Rose in mind. Thoughts? Is that romantic, or icky? Is it even plausible, given the surprise with which he always greets his new body?

TEHANI:
I think some fans have waaaaay too much time on their hands, coming up with theories like that! I’d be surprised if it’s not conscious in the writers though, adding new dimensions and changes to appeal to a slightly difference audience range each time?

DAVID:
I think you’ve mentioned that idea before, Tansy, and I agree to a point. I certainly think that there is a compensation of sorts, which you can see in other Doctors. The sense of childlike wonder of the Second Doctor, after the slightly crotchety old manness of the First. Or the gentleness and quiet restraint of the Fifth Doctor, after the larger than life exuberance and extremely dominant personality of the Fourth. However, I am not sure I even want to think about the idea that he shaped his next regeneration to be more attractive to Rose, even subconsciously! Of course, that could just be my old fashioned nature.

TEHANI:
Heh, or your Classic Who-ness

======
Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10

BAD WOLF/THE PARTING OF THE WAYS – Season one, episodes twelve and thirteen
The Doctor – Christopher Eccleston
Rose Tyler – Billie Piper
Captain Jack Harkness – John Barrowman

TEHANI:
These reviews have come thick and fast for the second half of the season, thanks to the way the Hugo voters nominated, and there’s only one episode between our last chat about “The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances” and this one. “Boom Town” was another Slitheen episode, featuring Jack and Mickey and some interesting conversations, but not much else?

TANSY:
“Boom Town” is one I disliked originally and slowly came to love. It pulls the season together as a whole I think and provides lots of lovely character stuff, but there’s not a whole lot to talk about. Moving on – “Bad Wolf” and “The Parting of the Ways”!

DAVID:
Wow, certainly lots to talk about after the series finale! We have the lot – Daleks, the Time Vortex, the wrapping up of the Bad Wolf arc and, of course, a regeneration!

I found the first episode a bit underwhelming to start with.

TEHANI:
I agree. The dislocation at the beginning was great, but overall, the tone of “Bad Wolf” was very different to that of “Parting of the Ways”, and I’m not sure it entirely worked for me as a two-parter.

DAVID:
I suspect at the time it might have seemed a bit more topical, but it is a little dated now. Obviously, a certain degree of suspension of disbelief is always required when watching a show like Doctor Who, but I think that they would have been much better served by putting it in about the year 2300 and saying that culture was going through a nostalgia phase rather than entertaining the idea that in the year 200,000 people were still speaking in English accents. It’s a bit like how 80′s sci fi movies always show people in the future dressing in glammed up ’80s fashion, it’s not a very ambitious treatment of where humanity might be so far into the future. However, I did like the concept (which was very Running Man) of the various game shows, I don’t think that I am alone in having a vague suspicion that one day reality shows may have a fatal element!

TANSY:
I think “Bad Wolf” – or at least the reality show bits – are the only part of this season where the cultural references don’t entirely translate from British to Australian. We had Big Brother, of course, and the Weakest Link, but not with those particular hosts. I don’t entirely feel it’s dated but that’s mostly I always found a slight disconnect with the obvious TV tie-ins from a different country. Having said that, I really enjoy this episode – especially the way they appear in the odd situation without the transition from the TARDIS scene, and the whole concept of adding death stakes to reality TV – hardly a new idea, but this was before The Hunger Games went viral!

TEHANI:
Even thought I thought it was a bit silly (and it seemed a very convoluted set up to the pay off in the second part), I loved the way the Doctor behaved in the Big Brother house – it was like he was channelling one of those contestants we love to hate, with the flouncing and the lounging and the rule-breaking… And Jack with his “Ladies, your ratings just went up.”

TANSY:
I like the outright comedy because of the sting that follows it, where their jolly romp turns deadly. Also, Eccleston and Barrowman are so much fun to watch when they are enjoying themselves, and you feel the energy crackle in those early scenes!

DAVID:
There were lots of fun little bits, especially Captain Jack and his make over, but compared to the second episode it was a bit lightweight. One thing I thought was done quite well, though, was Rose’s initial reaction of not taking the show seriously, and her dawning horror at the realisation of the stakes. And, while I didn’t think for a moment believe that she was actually killed, the impact her apparent death had on the Doctor and on Jack spoke volumes for the relationships that had developed over the season. Then, things started to get really exciting with the reveal of the Daleks and the Doctor’s awesome little speech, all of which set us up for a wonderful finale in the second episode…

TEHANI:
Tansy, on the first time viewing, did you KNOW Rose wouldn’t be dead? After all, we’ve just met Lynda with a “y”, who has already invited herself along with the Doctor – kill off one blonde, replace her with a ditzy(er) one? The reactions of the Doctor and Jack here were pretty believable – Jack went all macho and the Doctor stone cold – it *could* have been real?

TANSY:
I’m trying to remember – I don’t think I believed she was dead like I did believe Jack was going to die back in “The Doctor Dances”, and I can’t for the life of me remember if that’s because I had been spoiled by anything (ahh the days before Twitter, the blissful easy-to-avoid-spoiler days).

I’ve said before how much I like the TARDIS team of Nine-Rose-Jack, and I think this two parter shows them off to great effect. The emotional reactions by both men to her “death”, and the later scene when Jack figures out she’s not dead, really resonated with me. Despite all the threeway flirting, the overall sense I get here is that they are all very good friends who care a lot about each other, and I liked that emotional dimension.

I do think I was a bit alarmed by the obvious grooming of Lynda with a “y.” Sweet and all, but not overly interesting. I definitely knew by that stage who the next Doctor was going to be, so it is likely I knew Billie Piper was sticking around. So … did anyone else think Lynda was going to be the new companion?

TEHANI:
I guess I knew Rose was still there in Season 2, but even then, I was really hoping Lynda wouldn’t be! She grew on me in the second part though.

DAVID:
I had her pegged as a casualty, I’m afraid. Which was sad, as she was rather sweet. Speaking of casualties, talk about a body count!

TEHANI:
Yeah, we got to know quite a few people only to have them killed off!

TANSY:
One of RTD’s best qualities as a writer is his ability to convey character in one or two lines, and he uses that to devastating effect here as a whole bunch of perfectly nice people get slaughtered.

DAVID:
I loved the portrayal of the Daleks in this episode, even more so than in “Dalek”. For one thing, the visuals of swarms of Daleks were extremely powerful, and gave a sense of there being a lot at stake and there being terrible consequences if the Doctor failed. They were ruthless, and it built on the good work of “Dalek” in presenting them as terrible killing machines, rather than just a joke.

TANSY:
It’s easy to forget now how impossible it seemed back then, the idea of Doctor Who coming back and being good, being equal to American science fiction shows in terms of special effects and how it looks on screen. Now, I don’t really give a damn about special effects as it’s all about the character and dialogue for me (and New Who delivers that in spades) but throughout this season and this final two parter in particular, it’s astounding to see how good they were able to make the huge imaginary universe of Doctor Who. Getting to see Daleks in a literal swarm, to see the deadly force rather than just being told to be scared while looking at blips on a screen or the same 4 Dalek suits … that was huge. Daleks hadn’t looked this effective outside comic books before.

TEHANI:
The Daleks are still the scariest monsters to me – I think it’s the voices. Freaked me out as a kids, and still has that power!

DAVID:
The whole idea of the Dalek Emperor driven insane by the fallout of the Time War was very clever, especially given the way the Doctor’s emotional damage has manifested throughout the season, and I LOVED the concept of a race obsessed with genetic purity and racial supremacy being unable to deal with the measures they were forced to take to survive, and being driven to a religious mania in response. The degree of self loathing would have been incredible!

TEHANI:
I was thinking of Alisa throughout that whole bit though and imagining how triggering something like that could be to people who have cultural history with genocide and genetic purity – which makes it all the more frightening because it’s far too close to our real historical home.

TANSY:
Yes, speaking as someone who knew what a Dalek was long before I knew what a Nazi was, I find it very hard to make that real life/historical connection, and I’ve only learned quite belatedly as an adult that what the show has treated like a clever metaphor since 1963 actually can have deep real-life psychological resonance.

Getting back to the Dalek Emperor, I remain deeply uninterested in him as a villain – he works fine here as a head Dalek or whatever but I don’t really get excited about individual Daleks except maybe in the Peter Cushing movies where they had a lot more personality. I associate his part in this story with a deep sense of disappointment because at the time there was this huge ‘NEXT WEEK’ teaser about who could possibly be the big bad, and to be frank, I was hoping it was Adam.

We sort of skipped over Adam in our reviews, the boy genius who joined the TARDIS crew back in Dalek and was forcibly ejected the following week thanks to Not Being A Good Companion. I really wanted the Doctor to have some consequence for leaving a kid with a head full of alien tech back on Earth, and the idea that he might have grown up to be some kind of Dalek ruler was one of many theories flung around in that week before the finale reveal. Sigh. It would have been awesome.

DAVID:
I did find the Adam thing a little odd, it really shows how different this Doctor is. I’m not sure what you think of the comparison to Turlough, who was guilty of a far more serious transgression and yet got a chance at redemption, but the Doctor didn’t even think twice about sending him back. Perhaps that was because he was a rival for Rose’s attention! But, yes, sending him back with a head full of anachronistic technology (literally) seemed a bit irresponsible, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see consequences from that. I didn’t even link him and the Dalek Emperor, though, my first thought was Davros.

TANSY:
Well, this is a different and less forgiving Doctor! I enjoyed Adam actually, I thought the actor did a great job at portraying a character who is all too human. Two episodes was about enough of him, though. Turlough’s one of my favourites, possibly because he was one of the few companions in the old days who got something of a story arc. But then I tend to like characters who have a bit of moral ambiguity going for them.

TEHANI:
There’s a few things about the ending that bugged me, but more from an approach of knowing what comes down the track, so I’ll save that discussion for the end of Season Four, shall I?

We get a fair bit of Mickey and Jackie in the final episode. Mickey impressed me here – he’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that Rose just isn’t that into him, and even when she’s casually hurting him, completely oblivious to anyone’s feelings but her own, he still supports her and helps her in any way he can. Jackie too, understanding that Rose has bigger things in her life and just can’t settle back to how things were, shows herself as a good mum, even though she wants nothing more than to have Rose stay.

TANSY:
I was disappointed that after giving Mickey some great progression in the “Aliens of London” story, he was back to whining and being needy in “Boom Town”. But I love him in this story, the way that he accepts that Rose has to be with the Doctor, and helps her. Jackie and the yellow truck and the way the two of them support Rose when it would be so much easier for them to let her grieve and move on is a fabulous end of season pay off for both their characters. (I’ve enclosed a favourite old YouTube vid featuring that truck at the end of this post) Also worth noting here that this is the closest Rose actually comes to formally breaking up with Mickey. He got a lot of stick for being clingy or whiny about Rose at the time this first screened, and probably since – he’s certainly one of the least beloved of all the companions of this era (accepting that most people forget about Adam) and yet she did something quite terrible to him in that she never broke up with him, never officially told him it was over.

DAVID:
He is the archetypal “nice guy”. isn’t he? Of course, it’s good that they didn’t go the easy, Hollywood way and let him get the girl in the end. What I really liked was that, while both Jackie and Mickey get portrayed as fairly shallow and self centred at times, when it really mattered they did the right thing at the expense of their own desires and put Rose first. That, to me, sums up how much they truly care.

TANSY:
Mickey’s decision that he’s not actually cut out to be a companion is a very cool and honest one. I like very much where the story takes him, and this one is the beginning of him becoming braver and more central to the action. Hooray for Mickey!

TEHANI
I think there’s some foreshadowing here of what’s to come later, with the exploration of what it means to be a companion to the Doctor, and what it means when you no longer are. But more of that in future eps!

And then we get to the end. No more Nine, *sniff*. Tansy, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the final scene with Rose and Nine.

TANSY:
I think that the whole final section of the story in which the Daleks are basically – well, they could be any monster, it doesn’t matter, all that’s important is that death is coming – we see some great stuff from both Nine and Rose. His choice to trick her into the TARDIS and get rid of her is fabulous. That moment where he’s all energetic and doing his ‘yes I can just save the day if I bzzzt-ching’ act, and then the second she’s safe, he just stops pretending, is amazing. I love that he follows through on his promise to Jackie, and that Jackie actually appreciates it.

Rose’s journey back, quite apart from the fabulous contribution from her Mum and Mickey, is likewise wonderful. Condemned to return to ordinary life and let the TARDIS fall into quiet hibernation, she decides no, screw it, I’m going to do something else. So she rips the TARDIS apart to get back to the Doctor. Hugely symbolic, and shows that she is after all a worthy companion, not just someone along for the ride. I also love how the Bad Wolf revelation is shown through the graffiti, very effective.

But the final FINAL scene, oh yes. I adore it. I don’t care that the Daleks are literally handwavied away – have I mentioned that really the Daleks themselves aren’t intrinsically interesting? – and I think seeing Rose Tyler become effectively a Time Goddess is hugely powerful. Even better is that you can’t do that sort of thing without consequences, and both Rose and the Doctor pay big time. Well, mostly the Doctor.

(heh and in a not-to-spoil David aside, Tehani, I have to say I had a whole different view on this scene after “The Doctor’s Wife” in season 6)

TEHANI:
Yes!! I was thinking that too, second time around!

DAVID:
Rightly or wrongly, I’ve judged Nine against the Doctors I grew up with, and I thought the Doctor sending Rose away was very true to the earlier incarnations. It was a lovely moment that said a lot about his character and sense of responsibility.

TANSY:
I don’t think you can NOT judge him against the other Doctors – I’ll bet even Tehani did that, thanks to watching New Who in the wrong order!

TEHANI:
It’s true. But I’m kind of glad I did fall for Eleven first, because I’m not sure I would have loved Nine in quite the same way otherwise. That’s a bit weird maybe, but Matt Smith helped me enjoy the two who came before! I’ve no idea why.

DAVID
If Rose had simply restored everything, brought everyone back to life and all that, I would have seen it as a massive cop out. But, I found the idea of Rose possessed by the Vortex an extremely potent image, and I liked that there was a price that had to be paid. I think it says a lot about her development that in the end it is Rose’s choices and actions that save the day, she is not just a passive spectator.

TEHANI:
This is a really good point – she took things into her own hands and refused to be a damsel who got rescued and sent away. I really liked her in this episode for that.

DAVID:
The idea of Rose seeding time and space with clues was brilliant, and it was a great way to resolve the “Bad Wolf” arc. I have to say I was very satisfied with the finale and how the writers brought the season to an end.

The Daleks not interesting? lol I’m afraid I have to disagree, vehemently.

TANSY:
When it comes to Daleks … okay, interesting, yes, they’re not boring as such. If you’re going to have a huge army of robots pursuing the Doctor and his friends I’d prefer it to be the Daleks (or, you know, those Other Ones) because of the baggage they bring to the story. But I don’t feel the need for the Daleks to be anything other than a reason for the characters to be terribly afraid, and do interesting things in response. The Daleks are mostly interesting to me because of the way the Doctor responds to them, rather than in and of themselves.

TEHANI:
This Doctor has a really visceral reaction to them. Is it because the Time War was relatively recent for him? Let me get this straight though – the Time War is something that hasn’t actually been shown in the show? It’s something that we’re only seeing the aftermath of?

DAVID:
As far as I am aware, the Time War is a new concept. I can’t remember it from Classic Who, though I may be wrong.

TANSY:
The Time War is definitely something that was created for this season as a backstory buffer between Classic and New Who. It is alluded to many times but we only find out details as we go, and it’s something that works incredibly well because it allows the Doctor’s very complex backstory to be explained with a minimum of words and maximum emotion. Most of what happened before is irrelevant because the Time War pretty much trumps everything else. Gratuitous Unnecessary Backstory Detail is one of the major crimes committed by the TV movie which I’m pretty sure RTD analysed and used as a manual on How Not To Bring Back Doctor Who. Except for the bits to do with kissing.

TEHANI:
That TV movie is one you’re going to make me watch, I just know it! Okay, this is good to know – it *feels* very honest, like it belongs to Doctor Who as a whole, so I’m terribly impressed with the fact it’s unique to New Who. Kudos RTD!

DAVID:
I haven’t seen it either, the impression I got was that it was to be avoided! But, I am sure we will have to go back and cover it … just to be thorough

I agree about the Time War, the have done an excellent job of weaving it into the mythos so far, and I am really looking forward to seeing how it plays out, and desperately trying to avoid spoilers.

TANSY:
The TV Movie is totally worth watching, and the Doctor in it is marvellous, but apart from him it is totally a lesson in what NOT to do. I am really looking forward to watching it with the commentary by Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy together… but yes, that’s for another day.

Let’s get back to the romancey parts, as Raeli would say! It was the kiss that was heard across the world of fandom – though none of the old school fans railed as loudly as they did back in 1996, so thank Eight for taking all the flak about Doctor snoggage – and I have to say that much like snow in a Christmas episode, kisses in this era of Doctor Who are mostly fake-outs rather than actual kisses. As in, we have a pretendy plot reason why they are kissing, but we’re going to totally put it in the previews so people think the Doctor randomly goes around snogging girls, hahaha! (having said that, while there is regular complaint about the Doctor and all that girlkissing, I’m not sure if there was any reaction at all to the fact that he and Jack also share a kiss in this episode, and one that has nothing to do with the vortex).

TEHANI:
Heh, my eight year old reacted to it though! “Mum, the Doctor kissed another boy!” Very cool.

TANSY: Raeli just laughed hysterically. I like to see it as normalising the idea of same sex relationships, or something. She hid and went ‘ew’ when the Doctor kissed Rose. Speaking of which, the Doctor must have been able to remove the time energy from Rose by a good firm handshake if he really wanted to, and the slightly cheesy, ‘You need a Doctor,’ line does rather suggest he’s been Thinking A Lot About Kissing Her Actually. So I’d say it’s one of the rare real kisses in RTD’s Who rather than a Pretendy Fakeout Kiss, myself.

DAVID:
The Doctor/Jack kiss was rather passionless, though, like a European greeting. It didn’t really register for me as anything more than that. I thought him kissing Rose was well within character as presented through the season, the opportunity presented itself so he took it! After all, he was about to do something that might very well kill him.

TANSY:
I think the goodbye kiss meant more to Jack than it did to the Doctor, personally! What I like about it really is that he treats them equally – they’re both his dear friends, both people he fancies a bit, and he kisses them both goodbye. I also like the fact that the Doctor takes the kiss politely – not making a big deal out of it. But, you know. First same sex kiss on Doctor Who. A lovely precedent as well as being something that tells us more about character.

TEHANI:
I love that it’s just something that happens, no big fuss. It makes me feel like we really can be accepting of all sorts of relationships in our society, and Doctor Who is, to me, doing a really good job of making such things normal.

TANSY:
Jack, of course, trots off to his heroic death by Dalek. Which, ONCE AGAIN, I assumed at the time was going to be his, you know, actual death. But – and as Tehani can understand, this is going to be hard to discuss without massively spoiling David for future seasons, so I will tread carefully – he is brought back to life thanks to Rose and the Time Vortex. After which, the Doctor picks up Rose, takes her into the TARDIS and FREAKING FLIES AWAY, leaving Jack in a pretty appalling situation. I was furious about this at the time, and it took the show so VERY LONG to resolve it in any way. OK, I didn’t have to wait as long as Jack, but it still really upset me to see them ditch him. I do think it suggests that both the production team and the Doctor himself are a hell of a lot more cavalier when it comes to the male companions than the female, and it is something that still makes me cranky even when the show (and to some extent the Doctor) acknowledges this fault.

TEHANI:
But they didn’t KNOW he was alive again, did they? My kids were most distressed about it when they watched it: “They left him behind!” But the Doctor knew he’d died, and Rose didn’t remember bringing him back to life, did she?

TANSY:
(and for further discussion on this topic please make sure you watch the Children In Need special scene before The Christmas Invasion!)

TEHANI:
Ooh, didn’t know about that! *goes to watch* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZK8tPwA0Ro&feature=related] Hmm. You know, that works for “The Christmas Invasion” but not so much for the end of “The Parting of the Ways”. Darn.

TANSY:
Most importantly, THE DOCTOR TOTALLY KNEW JACK WAS ALIVE. Which is also confirmed much, much later. It could have been a clever lie, so as to shield Rose from Jack’s death, but a) that would be appalling and infantalising of her and b) he totally knew.

DAVID:
I am afraid that Jack’s death is another moment where I didn’t feel the full impact, which I guess is some sort of punishment for waiting this long to watch the series! I was confident Jack was only mostly dead, as Miracle Max might say, and that something would happen to bring him back. As for the Doctor leaving him behind, I have to admit that I was so caught up in the regeneration and what had just happened with Rose that I didn’t really think to much about that, but now that you mention it, it does seem a little rough. The Doctor is always a little flaky after a regeneration, though.

TEHANI:
Hee! You are such a nerd, giving us a Princess Bride reference! So this was my first regeneration, and I can’t wait to talk about the end of Tennant’s reign in comparison.

DAVID:
Maybe this is covered later (and I have to thank you both for being so considerate about spoilers, btw), but I wish they had given a reason for Rose not bringing some of the others back to life, especially poor Lynda-with-a-y. I am glad that she didn’t, as I would have probably seen that as minimising the impact of the episode and a bit too much hand-waving, but a nod to the fact might have been good.

Oh, and I prefer the term “geek”

TEHANI:
I don’t know. I was glad Jack didn’t stay dead, but it didn’t bother me that the others didn’t. When I say it didn’t bother me, it was more that it MEANT something for them to be dead – it made it more powerful I think, and reminds us that sometimes people do die. Although yes, some dwelling upon this fact would also have helped. Maybe the Doctor’s sadness before Rose returned was the nod?

TANSY:
The Dalek video!

Embed:

TEHANI:
Tansy, that is terrible! It does somewhat take away the scare factor…

DAVID:
That is wrong on so many levels! Just a warning to our readers, turn down your speakers *before* you click that link. I jumped about three feet and I am not very popular with the person it woke up. It didn’t help that I was laughing hysterically, either!

TANSY:
The internet is a wonderful place, this is all I am saying.

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a six-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08

THE EMPTY CHILD/THE DOCTOR DANCES – Season one, episodes nine and ten
The Doctor – Christopher Eccleston
Rose Tyler – Billie Piper
Captain Jack Harkness – John Barrowman

TEHANI:
Okay, so amidst the quite horrifying gasmasks (particularly when we SEE the transformation), the tears at the resolution, and the grins over the dancing doctor, one of my main impressions of this episode is boy howdy, is John Barrowman Tom Cruise’s love child??! I really did NOT like him in this the first time around, but perhaps exposure mellowed me because he didn’t bother me at all this time – I love his completely comfortable pan-sexuality and his innate flirtatiousness. He’s not my pinup, but as a character, he’s a lot of fun, and I think, later, we get to know that he is, as the Doctor says, bigger on the inside.

DAVID:
I feel like I must be missing something here, because I didn’t think this episode was quite as good as “Father’s Day”. It was brilliant in places, but didn’t quite have the sustained excellence of Father’s Day which really only had one problem, the terrible special effects of the Reapers. Speaking of which, the special effects in this episode were great. The standout was the transformations, especially the first one. It was one of the OMG moments, it was absolutely horrifying!

I am not sure what it is, whether it is seeing a child in that monster role, but I found the child in the gas mask incredibly creepy. The looks of terror on the other children’s faces, the way it used the phones and radios, the constant refrain of “Mummy…” – they all combined to create an atmosphere of rising horror. The scene where she is under the table, or when it is at the door and they are sitting around the table and Nancy is warning the Doctor not to go out there, well I can tell you I wouldn’t have opened the door!

TEHANI:
I think I like the two parters because we get more character development and this helps to get emotionally involved with the story. Father’s Day was good, but the longer length, for me, gives this the edge.

DAVID:
Jack is an interesting character. In the novels, the Eighth Doctor gets portrayed as a bit of a ladies man but Jack puts him in the shade. It’s a fine line between charming and sleazy though, so I will be interested to see where they go with him. Obviously, he is a massive fan favourite and even after one episode I can see why that might be, there is a lot of charisma there and I loved the dynamic he introduces. But my first impression was to wonder a little what all the fuss was about.

TANSY:
This is my favourite story of this season and probably in my top 5 of all New Who! (though I have to admit, Season 5 gives it a lot of competition) Yes, I am a Moffat fangirl, more than any other New Who writer. I really enjoy the Doctor in this one, as he seems to be relaxing finally and enjoying his adventures, and the script gives us a great combination of history, horror, comedy and banter. Jack Harkness is a character that appeals to me, and while I enjoy him later and the darker path he takes in the Torchwood series, I do like coming back to the introduction of his character, when he was all young and innocent (well, in a smutty con man kind of way).

TEHANI:
I think I’m a Moffat fangirl too – every episode of the early New Who that I’ve loved turned out to be by him I think! I’m definitely with you on Jack, David. I was quite put off by him, first time around!

TANSY:
I think that the Doctor and Rose on their own were in danger of becoming a bit too – well, for shorthand let’s say a bit too Season 2 – as they overcome their initial prickles with each other, and now that they have resolved the blazing row in Father’s Day, we could have ended up with a soppy honeymoon period. Instead we get Jack, who shakes things up between them and allows for some different character dynamics. Rose gets someone she can flirt with, without ever having to do anything about it, and the Doctor gets a younger male to compete with, something he seems to enjoy. Mickey and Adam showed us that the Doctor is competitive with other males, but neither of them were nearly smart or experienced enough to give him a run for his money – Jack isn’t the Doctor’s equal, but he is at least a challenge, and the banter between the two of them (epecially the sonic sequence) is very pleasing to my ears.

DAVID:
Speaking of banter, I loved the scene with Rose and the Doctor when they are waiting for Jack to teleport them out of the room. Next time I am trying to get out of being forced to dance I may use that “I’m trying to resonate concrete line”! It’s a great little moment amidst all the chaos and danger.

Jack certainly introduces a whole new element to the mix, and I am really looking forward to seeing where that goes. As Tansy says, Jack is on a whole other level to Mickey and Adam, and the Doctor does seem to have a touch of “Captain envy”.

TEHANI:
It’s not quite jealousy, is it? It’s more that he’s got competition for her attention! Quite cute, demonstrating that the Doctor can be fairly socially inept (although not to the extent that Ten is, later on!)

TANSY
Isn’t that jealousy? It doesn’t have to be a romantic or sexual thing, it seems more – CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. He does rather paw the ground when young males are in the vicinity.

TEHANI:
It’s interesting that World War II is a location Doctor Who seems to head back to a bit – is it because it had such an impact on the people of Britain, it lies heavily on their consciousness? As a setting, it has power all of its own I think. It was interesting to note the juxtaposition in these episodes of the grim despair of the Blitz coupled with a heavy dose of humour – the Londoners are almost caricatures, and there’s a lot of poking fun to offset the bleakness.

Nancy was brilliant. What a great character.

DAVID:
I loved the Doctor’s little speech about how they scare the Hell out of him. I was brought up on stories of the Blitz (my grandmother was an ambulance driver and my grandfather was in military intelligence), and as the Doctor says it was an amazing moment in history.

I really enjoyed Nancy as well, she had a mix of vulnerability and strength that moved me deeply. And, the Doctor was right, what little kid wouldn’t tear down the world to find his mummy?

TANSY:
It is noticeable how much World War II we’re getting in New Who – not to spoil David or anything! I know we all felt with the recent “Victory of the Daleks” that the whole episode would have been much improved by adding a tiny Rose hanging from a barrage balloon in the longshot we got over wartorn London. But yes, it is absolutely one of the most important “within living memory” parts of British history, and continues to have resonance. I think also the new domestic focus of Doctor Who means that Blitz stories (rather than, say, trench warfare stories) have a particular significance. It’s another suburban horror story really, it just happens to be a much older suburb that we visit this time.

Nancy and her ‘Broadway musical’ host of children were incredibly touching and funny, though there is a wealth of sadness behind the story we actually see. Not only how she ended up a single Mum in wartime Britain, but all those kids who are living on the streets. The entire backstory of one, summed up in the line “I was evacuated. But there was a man…” The real darkness of this story is hidden in dialogue like that, where the kids wouldn’t be aware of it.

TEHANI:
Got goosebumps each time I watched that bit. I actually have a bit of a bug bear that everyone refers to Doctor Who as being for kids. Really? I mean sure, OUR kids watch it, but with us. Would we let them watch it on their own? And surely the airing time in many places puts it squarely targetting an adult audience? (I read somewhere that new episodes are airing at 9pm in the States?). I used to get scared watching it nearly thirty years ago, and I think it’s scarier now, and there’s more adult themes, yeah? Is the “children’s show” tag just to trick people into getting addicted at a young age?! Sorry, off topic a bit!

TANSY:
People say that as a shorthand, and many people are introduced to it as children – but while it was originally produced with a child audience in mind, it was always intended as a ‘family’ show rather than something just for children – something to be watched with parents who could explain the tricky bits, I guess. It feels more adult now than it used to, discounting a couple of years in the 80′s when it was deliberately quite vicious in its violence. Having said that, my two year old loves it, but there you go!

But let’s talk about the title of the second episode, and the dialogue from which is springs: “the Doctor Dances.” This would have to be the first Doctor Who story that overtly discusses sex, though it does so largely through banter, dialogue and heavy metaphor. We don’t just get the discussion about the Doctor’s moves, and Rose using the existence of Jack to start that particular conversation with the Doctor – but also the comments on the sex life of Mr Roast beef and the butcher down the road, as blackmailed by Nancy, and Nancy’s own situation. Plus Captain Jack Harkness himself, with his chat up lines and the discussion of not only his own sexual orientation, but that of the entire future human race. Trust Steven Moffat to bring the sauce!

DAVID:
I don’t consider myself a prude at all, but I think that the fact that they stick to metaphor and banter is a good thing. It’s not something I see a need to have overly explicit in a show like Doctor Who. Adults know it’s there, but children watching shouldn’t be picking that up until they are ready for it (saying that, while I got the “but there was a man reference”, I pretty much assumed that the butcher comment was to do with the black market. I thought for a second maybe she meant something else, then dismissed it. Shows how naïve I am!). That’s been one of the fascinating things about some of the New Adventures and Eight Doctor Adventures, though, there has been a bit more freedom to explore things like that, with some mixed results (Dodo will never seem the same to me).

TEHANI:
And this is the bit that gets the old school fans uptight, right? Sexing up the Doctor? I think it’s great – it’s assists with that humanising aspect, and makes the whole show more relatable. There’s a lot to love about the Doctor, particularly as his incarnations get, um, younger. And there’s a lot to like about his companions too.

TANSY:
Not all old school fans! There are still a (diminishing) faction who still believe firmly that the Doctor should be asexual, and there’s quite a bit of sneering/rumbling at the large number of female fans who adore to ship the Doctor with Rose or whomever, but all in all I think there’s a lot more acceptance of the various kisses, for example, that crop up over the next six seasons, than might have been expected from the outcry about Eight snogging Grace in the 1996 TV Movie. Not that there’s any kissing in this episode! Let’s not go crazy or anything. Just dancing.

DAVID:
Well, as another old school fan I have to admit that I am a little uncomfortable with sexing up the Doctor too much, which I get the impression I may have to get over! It’s not that I think he has to be asexual, I just would hate to think that all his interactions with his female companions have to have some sort of sexual component. There have been other companions in the past where there has been that sexual tension (Romana springs to mind, but maybe that was just that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were in an off screen relationship) but I’d hate to see the idea of the Doctor as a father/grandfather figure fall completely by the wayside simply to try and give the show more of an edge. Perhaps I am old fashioned after all, but there was a sweetness about his relationship with some of the companions that I valued.

TEHANI:
You might have to squint and look away a bit, David

TANSY:
I don’t think you have to worry too much, while there are definite romantic implications here and there, the show never ignores the fact that he is the age he is, and an alien, and that there are so MANY reasons not to shag his cute young companion, or for him even to want to. The sheer awkwardness of human romantic expectations getting in the way of, well, resonating concrete and other Doctorish activities, is a great source of humour. I personally like the idea that the Doctor is perfectly capable of “dancing” but it’s mostly something he doesn’t think of because, well, he’s terribly old, and you get bored with that sort of thing after the first 150 years.

DAVID:
One thing that I thought was done really well was that Jack’s orientation is not what defines him. I remember when if there was an African-American in a TV show he or she was the “Token Black Guy” with that being their defining characteristic. Now, well in a lot of cases anyway, a character’s race is almost incidental which I think is the point we know when we are starting to show true enlightenment. When they have “Captain Jack who is this and this, oh and also has this orientation”, that seems more progressive to me than him simply being one dimensional. In real life people are more than a race or a gender or an orientation, TV characters should reflect that. So, well done to Steven Moffat.

TEHANI:
Agreed! I made a comment on Twitter at one point during my first watch about the fact that there are a lot of multi-race relationships, presented without comment by the show. It’s great to see, at surface value – I know from reading on the internetz (thoughtful blogs by people far smarter and more socially aware than me) that there’s still problems with both race and sexuality as these are shown in Doctor Who, but it’s a good start.

TANSY:
This is something I really like about all of RTD’s TV – in Casanova, for instance, the series he put out just before Doctor Who, there is a great deal of visible diversity, and I love that he makes a point of doing this with historical pieces in particular. But yes the mixed race relationships without comment are a great, positive element. I guess this does also reflect UK television as a whole, though? It’s come a long way since the Doctor was last on TV in 1989.

I like the way that the whole show is so queer friendly now, and it’s one of the things that’s evident right back in Rose with the Doctor flipping through a celeb mag and saying “that’ll never work, he’s gay and she’s an alien.” Classic Who is very white and very – well, BBC conservative, I guess, and it was only starting to shake that off right before it was cancelled. Casual gay references through the first season of New Who make it feel very modern, and more connected to current culture. Plus it’s what Russell T Davies does in everything he writes, and the BBC knew that when they headhunted him (his price was bringing back Doctor Who). Anything less would have been disappointing.

TEHANI
The Doctor is almost euphoric at the end, “Everybody lives!” It’s actually really sad in itself, because it means that so many times, not everybody does, and I think this shows how it must weigh heavily on him.

DAVID:
When I got about five minutes from the end, I started thinking, “Surely not! A Doctor Who episode where no one dies?!” The universe may not implode when the Doctor dances, but strange things do happen! I think you are spot on, Tehani, you could see the joy the Doctor felt that for once everyone lived, that the world’s salvation was not bought with human life.

TANSY:
A huge turning point for Eccleston’s Doctor, whose journey so far has mostly been about moments of manic energy linking a whole bunch of tragedies together. And I have to say, it takes a very chilling and scary story, and adds a level of family-friendlyness to it. Which, as the mother of a six-year-old Who fan, I really appreciate. Raeli has informed me that the Empty Child is her least favourite Eccleston story ‘because it’s romancey between Rose and Jack and I am not a romancey child, I am an actiony child,’ but The Doctor Dances is her favourite ‘because everyone lives, Mummy.’

Of course, the ‘everybody lives’ line looks like it’s going to be undercut in the final scene with the disappearance of Jack Harkness and the bomb. When I watch this story now, it’s with a kind of nostalgia for the introduction this TARDIS crew, but at the time I first watched it, I honestly thought Jack was going to die. I love the scene where he screams at his computer, then accepts his impending death and implements the ‘emergency procedure’ (a cocktail), only for the camera to pan back into the TARDIS. Such a gorgeous moment!

DAVID:
I’m afraid I didn’t get all of the impact of that scene, because I assumed he had to survive. But, I will admit, part of me was wondering whether the Jack of Torchwood might have been from the missing two years, and this was ultimate fate of Jack, time travel can have some confusing results!

TEHANI:
Ah yes, the problem with already knowing what comes after, watching it years after airing! It still packed a punch for me though, even with the dodgy CGI of the farewell scene! Loved that final bit when he hears the music.

TANSY:
Something New Who has done very well is to reclaim the idea of a male companion, which had been dropped for the last few TV Doctors in the 1980′s. While the male companions are generally given shorter shrift in the show (and far less media attention, as the image of the Doctor travelling with one girl is so iconic) I do generally like TARDIS trios more than duos. Apart from anything else, it means the companions can talk *about* the Doctor which can be excellent and necessary therapy. Jack is the only male companion of New Who who is allowed to be really dashing (David Tennant’s Doctor uses up all the dash so no one else can have any), and the Ninth Doctor is very entertaining when he has someone to snark about. Jack is a far better snark-target than Rose, as it starts to look like bullying when the Doctor does it to her. (likewise it seems like bullying when he does it to Mickey, though I feel that Jackie, oddly, is fair game. Just me?)

DAVID:
When I look back on Classic Who and the dynamics of trios (or quartets) it usually seemed that it created a somewhat hierarchal feel. You would have the companions interacting on a fairly equal level, then the Doctor almost as someone they looked up to as an authority figure. You don’t get that sense with Rose and the Doctor, though.

TANSY:
Two companions definitely makes the Doctor feel older and more alien.

DAVID:
As for the bullying thing, perhaps it is because it seems the Doctor is trying to belittle Mickey out of jealousy, while his banter with Jackie is more verbal jousting, where she is more than happy to try and give as good as she gets?

TANSY:
I think he just doesn’t like Mickey very much! Or humans in general. Rose becomes the exception, and Jack the second (grudging) exception and we see The Doctor dancing around the idea of getting to like them again with occasional interactions, leading all the way up to the finale where he is totally soliciting a new companion from a random acquaintance!

TEHANI:
Jackie is more than equal to the snark I think – Mickey is shooting fish in a barrel That said, Tennant’s Doctor I thought was played more aloof, and thus he’s even more likely to be hurtful in his snark, intentionally or otherwise. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Sorry David!

TANSY:
Oooh I don’t agree with you at all, Tehani, but let’s save that discussion for the Christmas Invasion!