Maureen Flynn - Author
Ah, Mark Gatiss. What variable episodes you write. I always like his period piece Who episodes best, and back in the day I loathed The Idiot’s Lantern. Maybe it was just that the previous two-parter was so, so terrible, but this time around I didn’t…
Oh, man. Warning to all: I loved this two-parter as a teen when the show first aired, but oh my how the suck fairy visited this two-parter in Ben’s and my re-watch. I was so disappointed by how much I disliked this. On the plus…
The second Moffat story for New Who! In which all of his later series themes are laid out for us. Plus bonus The Time Traveller’s Wife riff, a great historical fiction revisionist slant on Madame de Pompadour and the chick who played Beth in Spooks. What’s not to love?
Image by Tom Newsom (I think).
The pre-title sequence
Maureen: Wow this episode is visually beautiful. Versailles, France, is wonderfully brought to life and we’re back into horror fairy story territory with Reinette telling us her clock on the mantle is broken as she calls for help from The Doctor.
Ben: This episode really opens with a bang doesn’t it! We get screams, panic, talk of love, duty, and a beautiful woman pleading for The Doctor to come and save the day! You gotta hand it to him, Moffat sure knows how to write an intro.
Maureen: Yes, I’ve always admired Moffat for his combination of rug-pulling against expectation and intriguing hooks to his episode openings.
The Companion/s
Ben: Rose and Mickey are definitely on the backburner this episode, but you can really see the formings of Rory and Amy in their pairing. Or at least, Rose and Mickey gave me strong Amy and Rory vibes.
Maureen: I’ll talk about this again later, but I definitely see The Girl in the Fireplace as Moffat’s thesis for his entire approach to New Who. Having said that, I didn’t get an Amy/Rory vibe from Rose/Mickey so much as I got a Reinette being the precurser to Amy vibe. Reinette waits many times for The Doctor, just as Amy did with, ‘you said five minutes.’ I wonder if anyone has written the Reinette/Amy fan fic. I’m there! There are elements of River Song’s relationship with The Doctor in Reinette too. Both pairings love is doomed to tragedy. And the fairy story visuals are here too. But back to Ben …
Ben: I love Rose’s makeup and hair this episode.
Maureen: I liked Rose and Mickey toting guns around.
Ben: I also loved Mickey’s shock that the TARDIS can even translate French.
Maureen: I love Mickey’s TARDIS joy.
Mickey: I got a spaceship on my first go.
Rose: Mickey Smith. Meet the universe.
Ben: Rose and Mickey are really good together, quietly exploring the ship, even if they do find some pretty horrible facts out. And Rose get’s to do something of substance! Her scene with Reinette was particularly sweet. If anyone can relate to what Reinette is going through, it’s Rose.
Reinette: I’m very afraid, but you and I both know Rose … The Doctor is worth the monsters.
Maureen: I liked that we got a Series One Rose this time around too who knows to ask the pertinent question/s. This time, why the aliens want Reinette in particular.
Ben: Onwards to Reinette who really is at this episode’s heart as a companion who never was. The inquisitive child was a great way to introduce this character, in my opinion. Kids and the Doctor in general do well. They can accept things that shouldn’t be much better than adults can. The child actress playing her did a pretty good job, and was suitably terrified at the monster The Doctor found under her bed.
Maureen: Talk about an The Eleventh Hour parallel. Instead of a crack in a child’s wall, it’s a clockwork creature.
Ben: Yep, next time we meet Reinette she’s an adult.
Maureen: Yep, just like Amy …
Ben: And boy does she know how to sweep a Doctor off her feet. What a brain she has too! You can practically see the sparks flying between the two as she steals a kiss from The Doctor. And then we find out her true identity! Madame de Pompadour, future Mistress to the King of France and all around overachiever. It’s hard to imagine who would be the more formidable in that pairing.
Maureen: I’d love some Big Finish spin-off, but what if Reinette met River Song? Also, I googled Madame de Pompadour after viewing this episode and what an interesting woman in real life!
Ben: We get to see snippets of Reinette’s life like her strolling through some magnificent gardens and such. Then, the clockwork robots made another appearance, and we get some more information: the clockwork robots need her, specifically her 37 year old brain, to repair their ship. The Doctor looks through her memories to try and find the answer, and in doing so opens the door for Reinette to look through The Doctor’s memories.
Reinette: Such a lonely boy. Lonely then and lonely now. Dance with me … Doctor who? It’s more than just a secret.
Maureen: I may have killed this episode a little by re-watching it so very much, but it has some beautiful scenes and quotes and the one you mention Ben, was definitely one of them. The scene also reveals another Moffat interest, the real identity of The Doctor and the metaphor of his name. It became a central theme in Series Six and Seven under Moffat. I also loved the throwback to Series One and The Doctor Dances with:
Ten: What did you see?
Reinette: That there comes a time, Time Lord, when every little boy must learn to dance.
I don’t think she was talking just dancing, either!
Ben: At the final clockwork confrontation, Reinette is as fiery as ever, commanding silence of her audience.
Reinette (to the crowd of panicking noblemen and women): Kindly remember that this is Versailles and we are French.
The Doctor saves the day magnificently, but then Reinette goes and saves The Doctor! What an excellent twist.
Maureen: Yes. There was such quiet beauty in Reinette when she tells Ten:
Reinette: So here you are. My lonely angel. Stuck on the slow path with me.
Even now she knows he has a way out and she loves him too much to stop him from going.
Ben: She really is his equal, which makes me all the sadder that in the end she dies before getting to travel with The Doctor. Her final letter absolutely ripped my heart out. I’m not used to this level of tragedy from Doctor Who!
Maureen: Yes, even having viewed this episode many a time, I still felt emotional. *I’m not crying, it’s raining on my face*. And the Rose/Ten exchange killed me too.
Rose: You all right?
Ten: I’m always all right.
What a terribly sad lie!
The Doctor
Ben: The Doctor really gets into things quickly this episode! General Doctoring is dispensed with in the first few minutes, consoles are poked at and the scene is set on a spaceship AND on Versailles. And then appears our Girl in the Fireplace! I actually looked up the reference about August of 1727 and there’s nothing of significance that happened, that we know of at least. Maybe it really was just awful weather that month. Then we get to the first amazingly creepy scene of the episode, when the Doctor notices the ticking noise that shouldn’t be. This scene really reminded me of a scene or two with Mr Are You My Mummy back in season one and is really scary stuff. I loved the quick exchange he and Reinette had before the end of the scene. She might have nightmares with monsters in them, but monsters have nightmares with him in them. That’s the kind of imaginary friend you want as a 7 year old.
Maureen: I also found The Doctor’s response to the clockwork creature interesting. He acknowledges its alien beauty even as some of Nine’s anger shines through, showing that Moffat at least, hasn’t forgotten about The Doctor’s bitter past.
Ten: You’re beautiful. I mean it. You’re gorgeous. It would be a crime to dissemble you, but that won’t stop me.
And then I just loved the scene after The Doctor and Reinette ‘danced’ where Rose and Mickey are surrounded by clockwork aliens with Rose about to get sliced up and a drunk Doctor turns up going on about inventing banana daiquiris early and defeating the clockwork alien by pouring wine into its parts. This version of Ten is one I can really get behind!
Ben: It’s not often the Doctor encounters someone who can hold their own against him and really sweep him off his feet in that way. The measures The Doctor goes to to save Reinette’s life are, I think, a testament to the feelings The Doctor has for her, even though he’s only known her for half an hour. Plus his smarmy “oh yeah? Well I’m the lord of Time” response when introduced to the King of France said a lot. Anywho, breaking the time window was a hell of a way to defeat the clockwork robots, but it came at a cost – there’s no way back. Plus, Rose and Mickey are stuck on the ship, unable to fly the TARDIS without him. Whoops.
Maureen: I personally found Ten riding a horse through a wall into the royal court of Versailles a bit full on, but having said that, it was a bombastic and brash moment that had probably been earnt by the quality of the rest of the episode. I loved The Doctor’s manic expressions as he realised Reinette’s fireplace could return him to his TARDIS and it’s telling that he’d forgotten all about his relationship with Rose in the presence of Reinette.
Ten: Pick a star. Any star.
Alas, he came back for Reinette too late. Time was the boss of him and he’d just missed her death carriage. Ten’s expression as he read Reinette’s letter was truly sad. All of that guilt and loneliness and love was locked up tight, and not even Rose could get Ten to confide in her of his secret pain.
The Alien of the Week
Ben: Clockwork robots! What an excellent concept. The French costumes just add to their terror, quite frankly. And then we get to the real horror when we discover the ship The Doctor and his crew are on is running on human body parts mixed with machinery! A human eye in a surveillance camera, a human heart in the midst of some circuitry. And then the central mystery: why has this spaceship 3000 years in the future punched so many holes in space and time to follow the life of Madame de Pompadour? The grand reveal? The spaceship was damaged, these clockwork robots are repairbots and they used the crew to repair the ship. And Reinette is the last part!
Maureen: In RTD era Who, Moffat doesn’t do straight evil villains. In his Series One two-parter, the aliens were also repairbots of a kind, albeit little microbes that healed all they came in contact with even if their understanding of what was and wasn’t healthy was impaired. Similarly, the clockwork aliens are just trying to make sure their spaceship continues on. Programmed to repair, when they ran out of parts they had to make do with what materials they had available to them … too bad that was their human crew.
Ben: The clockwork aliens meet something of an ignoble end, separated from their ship with no way to wind up their gears again. Scary as they were, it’s hard not to feel sorry for them in the end. And that final moment of the episode when the camera zooms out and you see the name of the ship? The Madame de Pompadour? Why, that’s the cherry on the top of this episode. In the end, just as the clockwork robots had claimed all along, Reinette and the robots were indeed linked.
Maureen: Yes, that was such a clever touch! The ship was named Madame de Pompadour so for fix-it alien types, it made sense that they thought Reinette’s brain could re-boot the ship.
Final Thoughts
Ben: This episode was both wondrous and wondrously sad by the end. Moffat really is incomparable in writing these standalone episodes. This combination of whimsy and horror with a little dash of steampunk is exactly the kind of episode I love from Doctor Who. It’s about as close to a perfect episode as you can get, in my opinion. I’m giving it a 10/10.
Maureen: I’ve re-watched this episode more times than I can count and as a result, its lustre has worn off a little over time. It’s probably my least favourite Moffat episode of RTD era Who. Which given how good his other episodes are, isn’t saying much. I kept teetering between a 9 and a 10, but if I’m honest, this is a pretty wonderful Who episode and the first time someone saw it, I can really see how they’d be blown away. I’m sitting with 10/10 inky stars for now.
YAY!!! THE SARAH-JANE SMITH MEETS BUFFY GILES EPISODE. IN A SCHOOL. I wonder where Clara and Class got it from? Also, K9. Oh, and Mickey and Rose are somewhere in the episode. Don’t forget them! The Pre-title Sequence Ben: It’s what’s his face from BBC…
Ah yes. The episode where Torchwood begins. Where Rose spends an episode trying to get Queen Victoria to say she is not amused. Where there’s werewolves and it’s 2006 when the Twilight Saga is huge! Bring it, baby! The Pre-Title Sequence Ben: This was a…
Let us launch into the new Doctor’s Series proper with a return of an old foe, an old friend and some ‘interesting’ fan fic style script shenanigans. Again, this is one of those episodes I’ve always remembered from high school. I didn’t like it then and I like it even less now so if you want a love fest review, this post may not be for you. Don’t say I haven’t warned you dear reader choosing to read on…
Can you sense the fan fic yet?
The Pre-Title Sequence
Maureen: Ok, Ok, I may be a softie, but I never get bored of a new Doctor and companions excitement as they navigate the universe. Take this exchange:
Rose: Where are we going?
Ten: Where we’ve never ever been.
Stop right there, RTD. No further hook needed.
Ben: I liked that Mickey and Jackie got a proper goodbye from Rose in this opening! None of this vanishing for a year business again. Although Mickey is back on the loving Rose bandwagon, despite his revelation last season that Rose was bad for him.
Maureen: Ah Mickey. What a wasted companion. I’m so glad Moffat essentially fix it fic’d Mickey through Rory! I found it terribly sad that Jackie walked away from The TARDIS before Mickey did. And I know that this isn’t what RTD intended, but the shot of Ten and Rose in the TARDIS with big grins and The Doctor caressing his console made me more sad rather than exultant.
The Companion
Ben: ‘Cassandra Rose’ is the best incarnation of Rose in my opinion, but only because of Billie’s acting. The Rose at the start of the episode was just horribly sappy and making love heart eyes at the Doctor. Her makeup was full on, and her outfit was pretty booby too, definite fanfic material.
Maureen: I don’t think that the overbearing make-up and the sexy clothing is a problem. I think the issue is that RTD was trying to objectify Rose in this story line. He wanted her to be noticed as an object of lust. I mean, why else have the wet shower scene (which if you are still in doubt about the intention of this scene, also featured bonus wind behind Rose’s billowing hair like she was in a shampoo ad)? But while Rose can be an object of lust, she can’t be overtly sexual, because that detracts from her as the personification of the perfect woman Mary Sue. Perfect women are young virgins, remember? They aren’t allowed to feel sexy and wield that sexuality. Hence why so many people complained about Amy Pond. How dare a companion wear short skirts? (But this is a rant for another post… see my Doctor Who and feminism essays if you’re interested). Anyway, from the episode’s opening where The Doctor and Rose lie in apple grass, I got the impression RTD was trying too hard to force Ten/Rose down the viewer’s throats.
Ben: Really, the whole body-swapping storyline with Cassandra was pretty silly.
Maureen: Come on, it show cased some great acting from both Billie Piper and Zoe Wanamaker, but you have a point. Really the body-swapping was just another excuse to paint Rose for the viewer as someone worthy of earning The Doctor’s love. ‘Cassandra Rose’ even unbuttons Rose’s shirt to showcase Billie’s breasts to the viewer as much as to The Doctor. This actually made me start to feel uncomfortable in terms of the level of male gaze happening on screen.
Ben: Rose was surprisingly mean to Cassandra in their first meeting! I guess considering their prior encounter that makes sense.
Maureen: Yeah, but what is with the trend of Rose being bitchy to any other woman The Doctor comes across? This too is starting to make me uncomfortable. I get Rose is an immature teen, but fuck, she is really needy and jealous and yet the show still paints her as a perfect woman. Just… yuck.
The Doctor
Ben: The Doctor was, I guess, in standard Doctor form this episode? Although I’m not liking how preachy this one is. I know Nine had his moments too, but he was always banging on about how humanity can be so much better than it is. Ten is just holier-than-thou.
Maureen: It’s so weird. Sometimes Ten is great; full of wild zanyness and mad cap schemes (as in most of The Christmas Invasion) and other times he’s this annoying, sanctimonious, mansplainy brat. He was the latter this episode and more’s the pity.
Ben: The scenes with the Duke of Manhattan were pretty funny though, with his overwrought walking disclaimer of an assistant interacting with Ten. And then the foreshadowing with the Face of Boe – that he’ll impart a great secret to The Doctor at the moment of his death was intriguing. But that all ended rather disappointingly too. Boe was literally there to be foreshadow-y. Boo.
But as soon as The Doctor stops having fun wandering around and figures out The Sisters of Plentitude’s plan he gets preachy. This is the same Doctor I hated in The Christmas Invasion, who didn’t like what Harriet Jones did to protect the Earth and punished her for it.
Maureen: I couldn’t agree with you more, Ben! My note on the big reveal scene is ‘ah. Sanctimonious Doctor returns to mansplain to cat lady alien.’ That’s not to say The Sisters of Plentitude were necessarily right to create lab rat humans, but I feel like in reality, the situation was far more nuanced than The Doctor wanted to believe. I felt RTD also copped out badly by scripting that the ‘lab rats’ could understand what had been done to them. Would The Doctor still have been the big hero if they hadn’t understood a thing? Let’s move on…
Ben: Just like with Rose, Cassandra taking over The Doctor’s body was pure fanfic material. Suddenly the Doctor is all slim and foxy and flirting the house down.
Maureen: Ha! I loved the ‘oh baby. I’m beating out a samba,’ line. My note on the line was, ‘how very fifty shades of grey.’
Ben: And then we get to the really, truly awful resolution to the plague-ridden humans. The Doctor soaks himself with intravenous cures for every disease in the galaxy, and somehow through the magic of touch, the lab rat humans manage to spread these cures among themselves without using intravenous methods? At least The Doctor gets to make an emotional speech about saving the day and creating new life and whatnot. Hooray for him.
Maureen: I love the whole intravenous meds thing. I mean how easy would that plot-hole have been to fix? Delete the word intravenous and the episode’s denouement would have been right as rain! Also, I’m going to quote my notes again because they are a bit funny…
Maureen’s notebook: The Doctor disinfects the lab rat humans bathed in a sea of light. The start of Doctor deification? Fuck off! Also, Ten’s speech delivery gets on my tits. He sounds like a mansplaining dick.
Also, re the Face of Boe telling The Doctor that he learnt to look at the universe anew thanks to him, I penned, ‘enough with the deification.’
Ben: The Doctor does do a nice thing by taking Cassandra inhabiting Chip’s dying body back in time to meet the real Cassandra so she can be the last person to tell herself she looks beautiful before dramatically passing away. But to be honest, I though this was just a ploy for Cassandra to take over young Cassandra’s body and live her merry life again. All in all, a very fanfic ending to a fanfic heavy episode.
Maureen: I didn’t mind the ending, but more on that later…
The Alien/s of the Week
Ben: The Sisters of Plentitude started off well; mysterious cat doctors who could treat any illness. And then things took a turn for the worst when The Doctor discovers the Sisters use artificially grown humans as test subjects. I had hoped RTD would go further down the ethics and philosophy road with this story line. Yes, the Sisters have cured the incurable, but at what cost? And these artificial humans, this flesh that they’ve grown, what is it that gives them consciousness? How do they have speech and reasoning if they’ve lived their whole life in isolation? We get a bit of that thanks to Cassandra, when she goes into one of the flesh and realises they just want to be touched, but that’s it.
Maureen: I wonder if this episode would have worked better as a two-parter? That might have given more space to the cat nurses as well as the Cassandra body swap story line? In terms of Cassandra, I’ve always enjoyed Zoe Wanamaker as an actress. She’s great as Ariadne Oliver in Poirot. I especially enjoyed her end scenes, where she got to play a Cassandra with humanity thanks to her Gaimanesque friend, Chip. She is able to tell her younger self she is very beautiful. Also, Zoe can be very funny. I loved her delivery in the below:
Cassandra on Rose: The dirty, blonde assassin!
Final Thoughts
Ben: Look, I hated this episode. It started off strong, if a little fanfic-esque, and then completely went off the rails. The solution was plain bad. For starters, intravenous medication needs to be applied into the veins! It’s not a topical skin cream! Medicine doesn’t work like that! And the fan fic elements were overbearing, Rose didn’t get to do anything of significance, other than act as a vessel for Cassandra, and this new Doctor just isn’t impressing me. It’s a 0/10 for me.
Maureen: Wow, that’s harsher than I’d go. I agree with you, but I think we need to acknowledge how wonderful Billie’s acting was in this. It can’t have been easy playing herself played by someone else played by herself! Zoe Wanamaker is always good value too. Finally, I quite liked the end scene with Cassandra. It’s not enough to salvage the sexist overtones and The Doctor playing the sanctimonious arsehat card though, so it’s a 1/10 inky stars from me.
Ah, the infamous Christmas specials of Doctor Who, loved and loathed in equal measure, but this time was the first time. We were innocent and knew not what was coming that first Tennant Christmas when Santas’ and trees and Sycarax came calling… The Pre-Title Sequence…
Strap on your seat belts! It’s finale time! Given how much I disliked Bad Wolf I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Parting of the Ways. Yes, even with the RTD literal deux ex machina and a host of Daleks playing the big…
Ah, and so we reach the end of Series One of New Who with the first two-parter finale. Again, and I know I keep repeating this, but back in high school I thought this two-parter was the height of high stakes, emotional drama and I always had fond memories of the overall Series as a result. But did it hold up? Rose, The Doctor and Captain Jack find themselves on a familiar space station and find out all is not what it seems with the twist return of an old foe.
Pre-Title Sequence
Ben: And we begin this week’s episode with a good old recap, albeit of one of the worst episodes of the season.
Maureen: I know right? My first response was, ‘oh yes, that recap of the God-awful episode we shall not speak the name of… how interesting… said no one ever.’ For those wanting less vague episode put-downs, Rose and The Doctor find themselves back on Satellite Five, first featured in The Long Game.
Ben: The Long Game recap ends rather ominously, showing The Doctor being told he needs to stay behind to help explain what happened, which is a thing he does not do.
Maureen: That bugged you didn’t it, Ben? Thankfully, this episode addresses The Doctor’s fatal error in The Long Game.
Ben: Yep. More on this later. Anyway, moving on to the episode proper, the Doctor has somehow gone and got himself teleported into a Big Brother house 100 years after the events of Satellite Five. This can’t be good…
The Companion/s
Maureen: Before Ben and I get started on Rose and Captain Jack, I want to just jump in and note that Lynda is the same kind of companion who never was as Suki, except with more naivety. I kind of liked the parallel. She’s a right Doctor fan-girl, maybe even crushing on him. And I love that she asks The Doctor what outside viewers think of her and his invented response is she’s sweet, but sweet doesn’t win reality shows. Damn straight. Too bad The Doctor doesn’t yet know the extent of how messed up these games are…
Ben: In terms of Rose and Jack, I don’t have much to say about them this week, as they didn’t really do much of substance! For me, Rose’s most memorable moment was the excellent pun made about the Anne-droid. Oh, and her bit of foreshadowing ‘Bad Wolf’. Her ‘death’ at the hands of the Anne-droid seriously raises the stakes and gives The Doctor something to ‘Be Sad TM’ about. And when it turns out she’s alive it’s a bit of a good news bad news situation, as she’s found herself on the deck of a Dalek ship. This has come to be a bit of a trope with Rose, as she constantly finds herself in need of rescue by the Doctor. I much prefer the episodes where she gets to be more than a damsel in distress.
Maureen: I’m starting to think that perhaps Rose wasn’t written for people our age, Ben. I know for a fact she was my favourite of RTD’s companions in high school, so maybe she’s relatable for teens, but grows frustrating beyond that? I’ve also had a hard time warming to her this series.
Poor Rose gets the short end of the stick this episode. She gets stuck playing The Weakest Link without understanding the stakes when she votes someone off the game. Her reward? Watching that person disintegrated before her very eyes. And then she loses out and gets disintegrated herself, only to find herself trapped on a Dalek ship. ‘We have your associate.’ Not a good day for Rose.
Ben: Much like Rose, Jack doesn’t do a great deal of substance this episode. He stands around mostly naked, poses in some outfits, then pulls a gun out of his butt. Much like The Doctor he gets to do some good emotional acting once Rose ‘dies’, but other than discovering the secondary transmat system, he mostly just flirts with everyone he comes into contact with.
Maureen: Harsh Ben. He might not do much, but he’s Captain Jack. He can get naked all he likes.
Jack: Ladies, your viewing figures just went up.
Ok, ok, so maybe it was a little gratuitous BUT I DON’T CARE.
Also, I enjoyed Jack coming on to the admin guy at the most inopportune moment. As The Doctor points out, there’s a time and a place!
The Doctor
Ben: The first half of this episode was Doctor heavy, but also pretty meaningless as it’s just him escaping from the Big Brother house and doing some general Doctor investigating. It was nice to see the Doctor facing the consequences of his “save the day then gotta dash” approach, as he discovers he’s responsible for the 100 Years of Hell, as Lynda put it. When all the news stations went down there was nothing to fill the void. Of course, this could have been avoided by having, you know, more than one place broadcasting the news, but what can you do.
Maureen: Maybe RTD just painted our current reality, don’t you think? Media concentration in the hands of one company is a problem in both Australia and the UK. I find that when RTD does dystopian social commentary, he does tend to lay it on a bit thick, and that was definitely the case this episode, but it’s still food for thought in your tea-time television viewing. It is a chilling moment when Lynda tells The Doctor that there are hundreds of violent and deathly games playing at once and that people watch them all day every day.
Nine: And you watch this stuff?
Lynda: Everyone does.
We also see The Doctor get angry multiple times. First, when he finds the station staff:
Female Programmer: If you’re not holding us hostage, then open the door and let us out. The staff are terrified!
The Doctor: That’s the same staff who execute hundreds of contestants every day?
Female Programmer: That’s not our fault. We’re just doing our jobs.
The Doctor: And with that sentence, you just lost the right to even talk to me. Now back off!
And then later, when The Doctor sees Rose’s jacket in the TARDIS and knows The Daleks have her followed by this exchange with The Daleks:
The Doctor: *No*! ‘Cause this is what I’m gonna do – I’m gonna rescue her! I’m gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I’m gonna save the Earth, and *then* – just to finish you off – I’m gonna wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!
Dalek: But you have no weapons, no defences, no *plan*!
The Doctor: Yeah, and doesn’t that scare you to death?
I don’t know about everyone else, but Nine always was a frighteningly angry and unstable Doctor. It’s part of his appeal for me.
Ben: Mmm, I agree. The best Doctor moment for me was his final defiance of the Daleks, refusing to back down, to give up, and declaring he’s coming to rescue Rose. Nothing like a defiant Doctor facing down certain defeat to put the fear in his enemies.
The Alien of the Week
Ben: The Daleks are back! Although they didn’t really do much this episode, the build up to the reveal was pretty well done thanks to the Controller – a Tilda Swinton/Samantha MoretonMinority Report inspired character if ever I saw one. And talk about a long game! From what the nameless Controller was saying the Daleks have had this plan in the works for hundreds of years, biding their time and building their forces. We’ll have to wait until the second episode to see if it was worth it, and perhaps find out what they’re doing with all the humans that have been transmitting to them over the past century or so.
Maureen: That reveal confused me. Maybe I just need a re-watch but I’m not sure if the inference is that the gap The Doctor left behind in the last 100 years was the point The Daleks showed up or if they had been the financiers behind The Jagrafess and Simon Pegg in The Long Game and took The Doctor leaving a vacuum as the excuse to get more blatant with their plans or something else altogether. Please answer in the comments if you know the answer 🙂
Final Thoughts
Ben: I’m really not sure what they were thinking with this episode, I guess the heavy-handed commentary about reality/game shows would have been a bit more relevant when this episode first aired? I mean, the killing of the contestants (or as Lynda with a Y puts it, being evicted from life) is a bit much. But the result is they spend so much time on the game shows all the real plot this episode has is crammed into the final 5 minutes.
Maureen: Yes, I had the same issue as you. At the time I first saw the episode, the reveal was shocking and the games depicted more contemporary. Now that I know the twist, it feels a bit like a one trick pony and the games shown have become obsolete.
Ben: Furthermore, I’m not a fan of two-parter stories like this when the first episode is spent setting up the second episode. And frustratingly, we’ve already had a perfect example of how to do a two parter this season with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, so we know that Doctor Who is capable of so much more as a show. I’m giving this episode a 3/10.
Maureen: Wow Ben, we need to stop scoring so similarly. It’s getting creepy. I hovered between a 2 and a 3 but decided to land on 3/10 inky stars as the twist ending genuinely is amazing the first time around.
Next week I am so, so excited for the grand finale. I know I loved it back in the day.
Now we reach the episodes that Maureen has limited recollections of, which is weird, coz ya know, the episodes I don’t remember include the finale and all… Anyway good old Boom Town continues on The Slitheen storyline, but with more panache and better acting. Too…