Doctor Who Watch #10

Episode Twelve/Thirteen – The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End by RTD OBE

Well, that was a little bit epic, wasn’t it? Series Four has been such a varied one, with episodes of psychological terror (Midnight), a murder mystery (The Unicorn & The Wasp), an episode tackling head-on the Doctor’s part in death and destruction (The Fires Of Pompeii), episodes using time travel to tell the most poignant love stories (Silence In The Library) and an episode that was complete and utter wank (Oh, you’ve been reading these things long enough to know which one I mean!)... After all that variety, it’s good to see that Doctor Who can still bash out a gloriously fun romp. Two hours of riotous, sci-fi fun, rattling along faster than the speed of light.

But I’m buggered if I have any idea what the hell it was all about!

A lot of the sci-fi was lost on me. The Shadow Proclamation, Extrapolator Shielding, The Medusa Cascade being a second out of sync with everything else, the regeneration/non-regeneration, those twelfty-ninety-seven planets that made ‘an engine’ (for what?!), the Reality Bomb, the pointless (but most-hilarious) disintegration of Gita from EastEnders (what was it a rehearsal for?), the stars going out (but before Davros had started the Reality Bomb?) and the whole human/Time Lord/DoctorDonna thing (barmy, surely?!)

It all seemed a lot to take in, and each time I watch these episodes (LOVE iPlayer!), I understand a little bit more about what the Daleks' main aim was, and exactly what the piss was going on. But then I don’t really watch Doctor Who for that. I watch it for the human element; the heart; the emotions we all face, being played out in amongst all the intergalactic hoo-ha.

And that side of things didn’t disappoint. How sexy was it to see Harriet Jones back?! She’s the former Prime Minister, you know! But how heartbreaking was her inevitable death? You question her actions at the end of The Christmas Invasion, and somehow lose a bit of respect for her. But this episode makes a hero of her, which is what Harriet Jones should have always been. Dame Penelope Wilton was fantastic as ever, and her death – and final words – gave me a most prominent lump in my throat.

The return of Martha – and her ridiculously uptight mother – was a waste of everyone’s time. And the ‘Earth’s Gone’ key (for that is an anagram of Osterhagen) was just plain stupid. Why is it Martha always flounces off on her own to partake in a rather dull sub-plot? It happened in the last season finale, it happened in this one, it happened in *spits* The Doctor’s Shit Daughter... I’m hoping this is the last we see of this once-promising, now-irritating companion.

The one good thing about the whole Martha/Osterhagen Key fiasco was that it allowed RTD OBE to make a great point about the Doctor. With her ready to destroy the Earth, and with Sarah Jane (the ever-brilliant Miss Sladen) and Captain John Barrowman ready to explode the Dalek Crucible, it was actually quite a shocking moment when we're forced to question: How different is he from Davros? Davros’ speech, David Tennant’s ‘haunted’ realisation that this is what he has created, and the flashback to all those that have been ‘turned into weapons’ by The Doctor, sent shivers down my spine. Was an absolute touch of genius, and really thought-provoking – One of the stand-out moments of the series.

Julian Bleach was excellent as Davros, who looked a most pretty sight, and I really hope he makes a return in 2010. Maybe with a plot more focused on him than on the abundance of returning characters – He needs a lot more screen time in future, as I don’t think we spent enough time focusing on this mad genius. And someone give Dalek Caan his own show! LOVED that crazy gelatinous freak!

Nice to see Ianto Jones make his Doctor Who debut. We like Ianto Jones. And the scene where he is watching Paul O’Grady made me do a nice, big laugh. Yes, more Ianto Jones, please.

It just felt too busy; too many characters; too much sci-fi; too many ideas and not enough time to do them justice. I got the feeling that Mickey and Jackie were brought back purely for backstage reasons (RTD OBE’s last series, Phil Collinson’s last episode, etc...) rather than to add to their story. Great fun when Jackie said she’d named her baby Doctor, though.

And as for bringing Rose back... If it had been the same Rose we cried buckets over when she said goodbye in Doomsday, then all would have been good and I would have been more than happy to see her again. Instead, she seemed to be this lisping (Oh, GOD, the LISP!!) posh bitch without the sense of fun that she used to have. It got the headlines, and it got people watching, and the random glimpses throughout the series built towards a fantastic reunion. Yet her part of the story just seemed a bit underwhelming.

But for two scenes.

Rose and The Doctor running towards each other was such a lovely, heartwarming moment. Ruined slightly by The Doctor getting shot by a Dalek and starting to regenerate in, what has to be, the finest cliffhanger moment in anything, ever.

And then, obviously, the scene on Bad Wolf Bay. If you’re going to bring back Rose, you can’t have her saying goodbye to the Doctor again. So she didn’t. She essentially got what she wanted. A relationship with the love of her life, or a version of him at least. A version of him that isn’t afraid to say, on a beach in Norway, ‘Rose Tyler, I love you’. The perfect end to her story.

Which is more than could be said for Donna’s ending. I suppose I got my wish. She didn’t die. Yet, what happened to her seems so much crueller. With her head ready to explode with all her newly-acquired Time Lord knowledge, The Doctor had to wipe her memories. She’s gone back to the gobby temp from Chiswick with absolutely no recollection of the Ood, of Pompeii, of Agatha Christie, of the fact that she was the most important woman in the whole of creation. She will never make anything of her life now, because she has no recollection of just what her full potential is. No recollection of how amazing she can be, or of the man who helped her realise it.

The scene in the TARDIS as her mind is about to be wiped had me in floods of tears. I mean, floods. I’m welling up now just thinking about it. The fear in her eyes as she can’t stop repeating ‘Binary’ got me going, but then the flashback of all the things she’s seen and done, and her heartbreaking:

“I was going to be with you forever. The rest of my life, travelling in the TARDIS”

And his response:

“We had the best of times”

And Murray Gold’s beautiful score. Oh, it was all just too much for me. I blubbed and blubbed. It was the best five minutes of the series, and yet somehow the worst. No more Donna. She’s gone. And it just felt so cruel.

Catherine Tate was outstanding, and deserves every award going for her portrayal of Donna. I have never loved a television character quite so much. I know it’s not real, and I know it’s just a television programme, but I am genuinely heartbroken that her time is over.

“We had the best of times”

Total Score: TEN out of TEN (mainly for Donna’s last moments!)

Doctor Who Watch #9

Episode Eleven: Turn Left by RTD OBE

Last week – or whenever the piss I actually wrote the review of Midnight, it seems like forever ago – I bemoaned the lack of Donna in the episode. Yet here we have an episode with a complete lack of Doctor. Doctor Who without the Doctor. And I loved it!

Maybe this means I secretly want Catherine Tate to be Doctor Number Eleven?!

In terms of previous Doctor-lite episodes, it doesn’t even begin to compare to Blink. But then Blink is in a league of its own. It does, however, shit all over The Long Game (with Bruno Langley brought in purely so the Doctor wouldn’t be on screen as much) and Love & Monsters. For a start, neither of those two starred the wonderous Bernard Cribbins. And neither of them had a particularly throught-provoking plot. Unlike this one.

After all the hints and teasers, this was the episode where we finally discovered what was on Donna’s back. A shoddily made beetle, it turns out. (Probably my only criticism of the episode – surely they could have made something slightly more non-crap!)

Shit Beetle seemed to feast off changing the past; causing people to turn one way instead of the other. So we found Donna living the life she would have led if she had never met the Doctor. The life she would have led if she’d never joined HC Clements and been attacked by the cunt-like Sarah Parish masquerading as a giant red spider with speech and saliva problems.

If Donna had not met the Doctor, he would have died – along with Sarah Jane, Torchwood, Martha and countless millions of other people. Although death and destruction stalks the Doctor wherever he goes (he caused the eruption of Pompeii, lest we forget) this episode reminds you that he brings life as well; this episode shows just how many people would have perished without him there to save them.

“If the Doctor had never come here, on a whim, tell me, would anyone here have died?”

You often wonder, much like that bird from Spaced did in the quote above, whether the Doctor is cause or cure. If he had just sat in the TARDIS reading Slutty Asian Whore-Bags and twisting his balls instead of interfering, would there have been less death; less pain; less devastation? This episode is an answer to that. We need the Doctor, and don’t forget it.

It makes a major point about the Doctor, without him actually appearing. That’s why it works as a Doctor-lite episode in a way that Love & Monsters didn’t; because the Doctor, despite not appearing on screen, still feels ever-present. It still feels like he is the most important character in the episode, rather than – with L&M – being sidelined by the increasingly smug and annoying Peter Kay.

Everyone has their own ‘Turn Left’ moment, which adds a nice dimension to it. What if...?

Always the sort of question a great episode will have you asking. What if I had turned left? What if I had got a different job, met different people, not met the most important man in my life...? What if? Already a little emotional after dwelling (briefly, maybe, during a slow bit) about my own ‘Turn Left’ moment, the episode twatted me round the face with several more emotional punches. Mussolini, as Donna calls him, being carted off to the concentration camps, and Wilf’s reaction to this, was terribly moving.

“It’s happening again.”

And Donna’s utter fear as she stands in The Circle Of Mirrors was equally upsetting. RTD OBE says this is one of his favourite performances from anyone, ever. And I find it hard to disagree. Catherine Tate is just brilliant. But even more heartbreaking is her second time in The Circle, when she is so full of hope, thinking she has worked out what is going on, only to be told that she is still destined to die. I was obviously more than a little teary by this point.

And when she steps out into the path of a moving lorry, I actually stopped breathing for a while. If anyone still thinks Catherine Tate was the wrong choice of companion for this series, they can fuck off and die. She has MADE this series, and this episode is one of my favourites. Ever.

Total Score: TEN out of TEN