The Pre-Titles

Ben: So many two parters this season! This one opened with Rose being funny, ominous ancient writing the TARDIS can’t translate, and then creepy betentacled aliens repeating ‘we must feed’ over and over. Creepy!

Maureen: I found it pretty terrifying when Rose said ‘welcome to hell’ and The Doctor doesn’t laugh. What an odd, yet fascinating two-parter this was.

The Companion/s

Ben: Rose doesn’t do a whole lot in The Impossible Planet, except to be occasionally funny and stand up for the Ood. Oh, and get mysterious messages from an unknown spooky person. She did have some romantic moments with The Doctor though which was nice. The kissing of The Doctor’s helmet before he went down into the pit was a new evolution of their relationship, one the Doctor continues when he asks Ida to pass a message onto Rose before falling into the pit.

Maureen: I did enjoy Rose’s Ood puns! Also, I liked the return of Rose giving a shit about the under-trodden again. When a crew member says Rose should be part of an Ood freedom movement, my response was, HA SHE WOULD.

The Ood: There is nothing.
Rose: Yeah. I used to think that way.

Good old Rose comparing her chip-serving boredom to the Ood serving her slop.

What I liked a lot about this two-parter was the amount of quiet talky scenes that played out. Rose and Ten and Ten and Ida get the lion’s share of them (but more on Ida later). It’s ominously sad when Rose reveals that her phone has no signal and the dialogue below leading into the idea of Rose/Ten living together is one of the only times I’ve bought Ten/Rose.

Ten: Me? Living in a house?
Rose: You’d have to get a mortgage.
Ten: No. Me? Getting a mortgage? Now that’s terrifying.

Ten: I’ll catch ya later.
Rose: Not if I catch you later.

Ben: We at least get more good Rose scenes in The Satan Pit though. For starters, she stands up to Jefferson when he goes to kill Toby, then gets a gutload of foreshadowing – the thing in the pit thinks she’s going to die in battle and soon! She recovers from that pretty quickly though, taking charge of the team and getting them to think through the problems at hand. This is the kind of Rose action that I love: she’s away from The Doctor, thinking on her feet, and trying her very best to save the day. And save the day she does! Not only was she essential in getting the team to stop the Ood, she saves the survivors from The Beast possessed Toby. What a badass! And she gets her Doctor in the end, who she was so determined to wait for. Careful Rose, or you’ll end up waiting for a long time, just like Sarah Jane did. Still, all’s well that ends well, hey?

Maureen: Rose shows her idealism in a big way in The Satan Pit. She says if any crew member is shot, she has to be too. And I too love that she begs her fellow crew members to think for themselves and that she shows real bravery when she enters the Ood complex knowing the air supply is shot. We also got equal opportunity butt jokes! Also the below:

The Devil: I shall never die. Nothing shall ever defeat me.
Rose: Go to hell! (And she shoots).

Ben: I also liked how each of the team members gets a proper introduction and each gets a good chunk of screen time. Plus, good storylines! Toby gets a good horror storyline and is featured in some seriously scary scenes. The ‘don’t turn around’ scene, for starters. It’s typical possession stuff, but done well. The scene at the end of The Impossible Planet reminded me a lot of the séance scene from Penny Dreadful. Being able to spout intensely personal secrets about people is never going to end well, but it sure makes for a tense, dramatic scene. Poor Scooti died early on, but on the bright side it wasn’t because she was a dumb blonde in a horror movie.

Maureen: Yes, and I thought the scene where we see her floating through space was strangely beautiful cinematography. It’s also one of the first times I’ve really noticed just how perfect Murry Gold’s score can be for New Who.

Ben: Ida got the best scenes of the team, but that’s mostly because she spent a lot of time with the Doctor. The actress did an excellent job and I’d love to see her come back for another adventure one day.

Maureen: Yes, I had my fingers crossed for most of the two-parter that Ida wouldn’t die. I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen Ida before, but it turns out she played an older prostitute in Ashes to Ashes in another great part. Ida reminded me a bit of a proto-type River Song and I loved her intelligence, heart and leadership qualities, even in the face of extreme fear.

Ben: The Captain, Zach, was cool, calm, and collected initially, but does fall apart a bit when the going gets tough. The main thing is, he rises to the occasion, working together with the rest of the team to make an escape in The Satan Pit. Plus, it was refreshing to see a capable black man in a position of power.

Maureen: Yay for black representation and the black guy not being hated on by the story! *cough* Mickey *cough*

Ben: Danny, the Ood keeper doesn’t do a great deal except panic, but he does figure out a way to stop the Ood in The Satan Pit. The actor maybe committed a bit of overacting at times, but that could also be seen as the incredible panic he was experiencing. I did find Mr Jefferson to be a bit of a ridiculous character, but that could be because of the weird special effects they used for gunfire. Plus what kind of head of security can only kill one Ood after unloading a whole magazine of bullets? He is stormtrooper levels of bad at shooting.

Maureen: I liked the ambiguity of the Mr Jefferson character. The way The Devil played on his insecurities about his wife was bitterly sad. I cared, really cared, about every single crew member. I’m not sure any other New Who episode involving a big crew has ever managed to make me care for the crew so deeply.

Ben: Yes, overall, every one of the named characters was able to contribute substantially to the episode in one way or another, which was pleasing. I was invested in these characters and their fight to survive.

[about Zack]

The Beast: The captain, so scared of command.

[about Jefferson]

The Beast: The soldier, haunted by the eyes of his wife.

[about Ida]

The Beast: The scientist, still running from Daddy.

[about Danny]

The Beast: The little boy who lied.

[about Toby]

The Beast: The virgin.

The Doctor

Ben: The Doctor takes a while to get down to business in The Impossible Planet, performing general doctoring until discovering the TARDIS is gone in the section collapse. We get a cool tidbit about the TARDIS though. They’re grown not built. Although, in The Doctor’s Wife he does build a franken-tardis, but I guess that was out of old TARDIS bits. The Doctor realising he’ll have to go and live a normal life was kinda cute, plus him and Rose got to be awkwardly romantic for a few seconds. It was a nice scene. But the good stuff doesn’t really start happening until he gets to the centre of the planet, point zero.

Maureen: I’m with Ben on this one too. Ida/Ten is where things are really at. Also, a lot of the speeches and stand-alone lines are gorgeous. In some ways this is a classic horror two-parter. We are afraid because the protagonist, who is normally unflappable, is scared too.

Ida Scott: We should go down. I’d go. What about you?

The Doctor: Oh, oh in a second! But then again… That’s so human. Where angels fear to tread… Even now, standing on the edge, it’s that feeling you get, yea? Right at the back of your head. That impulse… That strange little impulse… That mad little voice saying, “Go on! Go on! Go on!… Go over! Go on!…” Maybe it’s relying on that… For once in my life, Officer Scott, I’m going to say… retreat. Ugh, now I know I’m getting old.

Watching The Doctor descend into an entirely black, silent pit was even scarier!

Ben: The Doctor’s first confrontation with the Beast goes fairly well. After it gets into the minds of Rose and the gang he’s able to bring them back to sanity. The scenes of him discovering the mind games the Beast and his jailers have set up for him were actually kinda funny, to be honest. Him shouting “oh!” repeatedly and giving the same speech from different angles was some unexpected comedic relief.

The Doctor: [the Doctor has realized that, if he releases the Beast and destroys it, both he and Rose will die] So that’s the trap, the great test, the final judgement, I dunno. But if I kill you, I kill her. But that implies, in this big grand scheme of gods and devils, that she’s just a victim. Well, I’ve seen a lot of this universe. I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods. I’ve had the whole pantheon. But if I believe in one thing… just one thing… I believe in her!

And of course the TARDIS had to reappear by means of some form of deus ex machina, meaning the Doctor could rescue Rose and the rest of the team and save the day. Although I was a bit annoyed at him not saving the Ood. Not enough time? You’re in a time machine!

The Alien of the Week

Ben: The Impossible Planet doesn’t feature much of the main baddie, focusing on the Ood being weird and Toby’s possession storyline. It’s horror 101, but it’s done quite well. The foreshadowing set up with the computer system and the Ood delivering ominous lines was unnerving, and while I didn’t know what was going on with the telepathic field getting stronger, I knew it meant Bad Things. Then comes the Beast and tell you what though, that guy sure knows how to give a good baddie speech. Although if he was chained there before time, before this universe was created, did the black hole even exist yet? It’s a big grand gesture to say you’ve been trapped there since before the beginning of, well, everything, but practically I dunno how it holds up.

Maureen: I didn’t think too hard about the how and the why of the Beast. I think the story is meant to be an ambiguous philosophical experiment. Because the Beast exists and has become an idea the devil exists across all of time and space in every culture, the Devil exists.

The Beast: [in the possesed body of Toby Zed] I am the rage and the vile and the voracity. I am the Prince and the Fallen. I am the Enemy, I am the Sin and the fear and darkness. I shall never die. The thought of me is forever; in the bleeding hearts of men, in their vanity and obsecrate and lust.

The Doctor: You get representations of the horned Beast right across the universe in myths and legends of a million worlds. Earth, Draconia, Vel Consadine, Daemos… The Kaled god of war, the same image, over and over again. Maybe, that idea came from somewhere. Bleeding through, a thought of every sentient mind…

Ida Scott: Originating from here?

The Doctor: Could be.

Ida Scott: But if this is the original, does that make it real? Does that make it the actual Devil?

The Doctor: Well, if that’s what you want to believe. Maybe that’s what the Devil is, in the end. An idea.

Ben: Be that as it may, I found the possessed Ood and Toby to be scarier than the Beast as it was unveiled, but that could be because the Beast was almost beyond the scope of human comprehension. The Beast is the truth behind the ultimate evil of every religion ever? And has existed since before things could exist? I prefer my Doctor Who baddies to be a bit smaller scale, but this story did well by having both the small scale and big scale, with Toby and the Ood paired with the Beast to make a formidable horror offering. I did feel like the method of defeat was a bit of a cop out, but I’m not quite sure how else you’re supposed to defeat an enemy that’s basically on the Lovecraftian scale of elder ones.

Maureen: Look Ben, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I loved the Beast as a representation of an idea. It was all very Pratchett. I think the point of this two-parter is that there are some things that are beyond comprehension, some things that we shouldn’t try to understand. Somethings, even for The Doctor, aren’t worth the knowledge or the adventure. Sure, the Beast’s CGI was dodgy, but it was the early 2000s so I can forgive the production team that.

Final Thoughts

Ben: Okay, so I have some issues with the science around the black hole in these episodes. For starters, it’s not impossible to have a planet orbiting a black hole. Sure, it’s unlikely, but if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass Earth would be just fine. Well, we’d all die because of the no sunlight deal, but it’s not getting sucked into the black hole or anything. Yes, everything gets pulled in once you pass the event horizon, but beyond that a stable orbit is achievable. So, unless the planet is orbiting within the event horizon, which they don’t specify, there’s some bad science going on. Plus, the whole gravity field thing? I dunno. I don’t mind sciency technobabble, but when they reference established science is it too much to ask for some research? I dunno how big this black hole is, but to pull in whole solar systems from who knows where and consume them in a matter of seconds. It’s just not realistic. Anywho, other than a few science-based critiques, I actually really enjoyed these two episodes. I did struggle to review it because I found it to be a unique Doctor Who adventure, but that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of these episodes. I’m going to give it an 8/10

Maureen: Science scmience. I am one of those annoying viewers who doesn’t give a shit about science logic if I care about the characters and the themes of a Who episode. I loved this two-parter to bits. I loved the spaceship crew and how they all developed, especially Ida, I loved the cinematography and the score, I loved The Doctor facing off an idea personified, I loved the ambiguity of the ending. Sure, there was some weird plot mcguffins, like the black hole and the TARDIS magically re-materializing and the hand wave for why The Doctor couldn’t save The Ood but he could save Ida, BUT I DIDN’T CARE. These episodes are odd and beautiful with the ephemeral lunacy of a dream. I’m giving this one 10/10 inky stars.

Can you tell I’m an evil, mad villain?

The Opening Titles

Ben: The first episode’s pre-title sequence was hammy. It gave me strong ‘overacting villain from a James Bond movie’ vibes. The John Lumic character was chewing the scenery something awful, and I found the music to be very obtrusive. I know that music is used to help encourage the right emotional reaction out of the audience, but I feel like it was being used like a blunt weapon in this instance. The pre-title sequence for Age of Steel was, as usual for multi episode arcs, a recap. And honestly, a much better telling of the events of the previous episode than the episode itself.

Maureen: I have to agree with you, Ben. My only notebook comment re Lumic beyond how irritatingly over-the-top his voice and acting is, was this is an unfortunate representation of disability. But also, it occurred to me later that the cybermen info dump was kinda stupid. Wouldn’t suspense have been so much better if the audience hadn’t known about cybermen involvement till Jackie Tyler? I feel like all the surprise in the episode was undone by the opening sequence.

The Companion/s

Ben: After liking Rose so much last episode, I was disappointed to see she’s back on the treating Mickey like dirt bandwagon.

Maureen: I give up on Rose. She’s a bloody awful companion. Poor Billie Piper getting stuck with her. The Rose/Ten dynamic completely doesn’t work whenever a third party is involved because the writers use this as an excuse for constant bickering, bitchiness and ugly jealousies. It’s sexist. It’s annoying. Stop it, show. God, I’m glad Mickey got a backbone this episode and walked for real. Rose deserved it.

Ben: In AU Britain, Rose wants to go and see her parents, and the Doctor whinges about that without giving a good explanation for why the hell not (in my opinion, at least).

Maureen: Nope. I’m with you, Ben. The whole time Ten whinged I was like, what? Shut-up.

Ben: I mean, Nine agreed to let Rose go into her past and see her real dad before he died, so what’s the harm in Rose visiting her parents in this alternative universe? She doesn’t exist in this universe, after all. Hell, if getting involved in parallel universes is such a big no-no, why did he let Mickey stay at the end of Age of Steel? But at least Rose got to have another awkward one sided flirty conversation with her dad at the party plus another rather unpleasant one with her mum, right?

Maureen: I was really disappointed in the Rose/Pete interactions. Father’s Day set-up a nice dynamic that felt squicky this time around. We get it. Everyone crushes on Rose. Even her Dad.

Ben: I don’t know if we were supposed to like Jackie in this, but I felt nothing for her. She’s supposed to be some fancy rich lady, but her dress doesn’t even fit properly! And she’s just nasty to everyone! You really see her true colours in the exchange she has with Rose at her party. I get that she’s feeling vulnerable because her and Pete have separated, but that was just nasty. So it wasn’t exactly an emotional blow when we discover she’s been turned into a cyberman in Age of Steel.

Maureen: Yeah, I’m not sure what was going on with Jackie in this either. I mean, generally speaking I’m not mad keen on Jackie Tyler, but at least in the real world she has some redeeming qualities. Unless the idea is that she is a nicer person because she brought up human Rose in the real world? Because, ya know, Rose is perfect and without her everyone on this show is incomplete /sarcasm.

Ben: Rose’s Dad is just as bad, but in different ways. He’s a bit of a wet rag, really. The revelation that he was feeding information to the rebels just fell so flat! I don’t know if it’s the writing or the direction in these episodes, but so many of the scenes just felt off. Then poor Mickey was treated like dirt through the entirety of these two episodes.

Maureen: I know right? From the get go Rose and Ten being arseholes to Mickey set my teeth on edge. I thought the Rose/Ten banter was cute too … till I realised it was at Mickey’s expense. And I hated all the times The Doctor got all worried about Rose, but said outright he didn’t have time to care about Mickey. Jaysus. No wonder Mickey went off to do his own thing!

Ben: Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, but Rose’s description of his grandmother as this amazing woman who used to slap him as a boy was uncomfortable.

Maureen: Yeah, what was with that? Rose laughing about it just made me hate her in this two-parter even more than I’d been hating on her previously. Haha domestic abuse. Haha Mickey deserves it. Fuck off, Rose.

Ben: I guess Grandma’s the only family he has left, but … it definitely explains why Mickey puts up with Rose and The Doctor for so long and is kind of disturbing to boot. In another episode this scene might have been touching, but instead it just felt awkward. The music was loud and emotional, Mickey was getting slapped around, and then his grandma treats us to a trope filled information dump. But hey, at least Mickey has some cool new friends now? Who then immediately treat us to another info dump. And then we get to one of the worst parts of these episodes – Mickey and Rickey. I don’t know what it is, Mickey’s actor usually does a fine job, but as soon as Rickey and Mickey are on the screen together it all goes to crap. I found all the scenes with the two of them just awkward. Ricky was just as badly overacted as the villains, in my opinion. And considering his failed rescue of Rose, Pete and The Doctor he’s just about as useful as Mickey too (the most wanted man in London due to unpaid parking tickets). Happily, Ricky is killed off at the start of Age of Steel and Mickey discovers his courage. Mickey gets a proper redemption with the last half hour of this episode – hacking computers, flying zeppelins and generally being a bad ass who’s saving the day. Onwards and upwards, Mickey!

Maureen: For me, Mickey was the saving grace of this dismal two-parter! I wish Noel Clarke had been given a real chance with this character. I think he was pretty shabbily treated by the show.

The Doctor

Maureen: My opinion of The Doctor in this two-parter is pretty basic. Fuck him. Fuck him and the unicorn he rode in on. Fuck him and his Mickey insults. Fuck him and his obsessive Rose protectionism. Fuck him and his sanctimonious lectures to all and sundry. And especially fuck him in the moment when he makes Mickey hold a TARDIS lever and doesn’t tell him to let go, then laughs at Mickey. What a bully.

Ben: Yeah, right off the bat the Doctor is bullying Mickey again. I thought we’d gotten over this stupidity, but no. And then suddenly the TARDIS is dead. This scene felt really weird, the music was loud, and the acting just felt off. And that was just the beginning. Time and time again I had issues with The Doctor in these episodes; he was bossy to Rose, mean to Mickey, and his use of technobabble was especially egregious. All the explanations around the TARDIS and their getting in and out of this parallel universe were dumb. On the bright side, Rose and the Doctor get to go undercover at Jackie’s party, and The Doctor does look rather fetching in a tux. An episode high point.

Maureen: Well, until the next dick move on The Doctor’s part. The Doctor laughing at dog Rose was just the next dick move in a long line of dick moves.

Ben: I didn’t really understand the point of the scene in the tunnels with Angela Price/Mrs Moore. In retrospect, it feels like the only reason we got a proper introduction to her – family, history, motives – was so that her death would have an impact when she was no longer useful to the story.

Maureen: Urgh yes. She was the only interesting character in the whole damn story so of course she had to die (though maybe I only warmed to her coz her name matches Angela Lansbury’s in Bedknobs and Broomsticks). I can spot the trope a mile off and I predicted she would die as soon as she got a back-story.

Ben: I also thoroughly did not enjoy The Doctor’s encounter with Lumic. His speech was very much holier-than-thou. And speaking of ridiculous technological explain-aways, having this advanced mechanical system compatible with Rose’s old flip phone is a level of ridiculous and dumb I don’t even have the words for …

The Alien of the Week

Ben: I didn’t like Mr Lumic as a villain. He felt like a caricature of every Bond villain ever. Is he completely insane? Check. Does he have a dastardly plan to take over the world? Check. Is he good for a dramatic speech and presentation at the drop of a hat? Check. I even had issues with his motive. Clearly the man is physically unwell, so this is a way to extend his life beyond the failings of mortal flesh. But beyond that we didn’t get any exploration of his motives. Similarly, Mr Crane (the Alfred to his John Wayne) was about as stereotypical a British butler as you can get. Of course, we don’t find out anything about his reasons for aligning with Mr Lumic, he is just The Help after all. The arc involving his whole sudden-but-inevitable betrayal of Mr Lumic was, to me, disappointing. Were we to believe that Mr Crane was fine with picking up transients off the street and turning them into cybermen against their will (that scene was also at least 17 different kinds of bad, and then he seemed to thoroughly enjoy putting the newly subservient men through their paces a few scenes later?), knew the fine details of Mr Lumic’s schemes, and that was the best assassination attempt he could muster? Plus it was a dramatic change of mindset from a man who used a song from The Lion King to drown out the sounds of men being torturously transformed into cybermen earlier on. He didn’t even get to give a speech about what Mr Lumic doing was wrong! And again, I constantly found the music obtrusive and distracting.

Maureen: Damn Ben! You just said everything I was gonna say. I’m just gonna pour a glass, sit back and enjoy the hate watch ride … ps: I agree, The Lion Sleeps Tonight scene was shark jumping of the highest order.

Ben: Moving on, the scene where The Doctor and Rose were in the crowd of people as they got their daily download was pretty creepy – everyone frozen in unison, then laughing in unison was creepy. But that is maybe the one good scene in these two episodes.

Maureen: The darkness of this scene reminded me a little of the hive mind suicide jumpers in The Christmas Invasion. Also, this was the only time I actually woke up and started paying attention.

Ben: Alas, after that it was all downhill when it came to scenes involving Mr Lumic’s technology. The revolving arms of blades and general horror that turned people into cybermen was just incredibly stupid. It’s the kind of thing that would be played for laughs in a Scary Movie or something similar. And I really didn’t find the cybermen scary when they were properly introduced at the end of Rise of the Cybermen, their repeated exclamations of “delete! Delete!” just made me feel like they were budget Daleks.

And, just like a James Bond villain, these cybermen have a fatal weakness. Of course the emotional inhibitor would be easily accessible and easy to disable. And of course disabling the emotional inhibitor will make all the cybermen go insane and kill themselves. That’s not a fatal design flaw at all. Speaking of design flaws, Mr Lumic’s final cyber form is what you see when you look up overkill in the dictionary. Anyways, due to some enraging uses of technology the cybermen met a fiery, self destructive end, and I can pretend it never happened.

Maureen: How noisy was that ending? I wrote, ‘what a fire and brimstone ending.’ I was beginning to want to stab my own eyeballs out. But then the episode ended. Thank God.

Final Thoughts

Ben: Look, I hated it. I hated all of it. There were very few redeeming moments, the music was really distracting, Mickey was being treated like crap, there was an over-reliance on technobabble to explain away plot points, and I wasn’t invested in any of the characters or their arcs. Maybe in an alternative universe this episode would have been received better, but I’m giving this Cyberman story a 0/10.

Maureen: At first I came over all nostalgic and was all well Mickey got out of this cluster fuck so I should award a point, but nope. No, I cannot. Because even Mickey’s exit was over the top and a bit shit. Like I’m glad he left, but gosh this wasn’t a well acted or produced episode in which to go out with a bang. Also, I loathe Ten and Rose and want them to fall into a black hole and stay there. I don’t give a damn about Pete or Jackie Tyler. I certainly didn’t give a damn about the two-dimensional cardboard cut-out big bad of the week and his cybermen, toothless pets. 0/10 inky stars

The Pre-Title Sequence

Ben: This was a bit of a different way to start an episode! Completely unlike any other episode so far in New Who, it actually reminded me a lot of BBC Merlin. I don’t think it’s explained how these identical men in orange came to be but watching them fight was pretty cool. And then we end with a mysterious unseen horror in a cage (cue the screaming, please!) It’s good stuff.

Maureen: It was very Robert Downey Jnr Sherlock Holmes, except the first film in that franchise came out 2009! Remember, Doctor Who did it first! It’s a crazy, monk-fighter-filled, out-there opening, and is the sort that can only happen on a sci-fi show like this one.

The Companion/s

Ben: My favourite episodes of Doctor Who are the ones where the companion gets to do something of importance other than look pretty and get rescued from a state of distress.

Maureen: Superficially interrupting Ben to say that I did enjoy Rose’s hair, make-up and costume this episode. It was so early 2000s, I remember the Dolly and Girlfriend magazine ‘how to’ get bleached blonde beach-scrunched hair articles that tried to teach me to get hair looking pretty similar to stars like Billie Piper in this episode.

Ben: Right, well, this episode goes right to the top because Rose gets shit done! Not only does Rose get to make jokes at the Queen’s expense, she also bonds with one of the Help and begins her own investigations.

Maureen: I swear there is a theme with Rose! She is a better companion and character in episodes where she bonds with the help! True, Rose does get kidnapped with most of the Torchwood Institute household –

Ben: Yeah, but she also questions the werewolf, learns its’ motives, and rallies the people trapped with her in an escape attempt. Her questions were intelligent, and I absolutely loved the Bad Wolf callback. The line about Rose burning like the sun, while the werewolf needs the moon is such excellent Doctor Who.

Maureen: I really liked that quote too. I got chills.

Host: Look, inside your eyes, you’ve seen it too!
Rose: Seen what?
Host: The wolf, there’s something of the wolf about you!
Rose: I don’t know what you mean.
Host: You burnt like the sun, but all I require is the moon!

Rose really showed herself to have a back-bone this episode. She literally saw The Captain ripped to shreds by the wolf in front of her eyes, and didn’t lose her head, even as we saw (curtesy of Billie’s acting chops) that Rose was upset and probably more than a wee bit traumatised.

I also quite enjoyed Rose’s interactions with Queen Victoria and The Doctor in trying to get Queen Vic to say her infamous line. Take this exchange for example:

Rose: [after meeting Queen Victoria] I wanted to hear her say, “We are not amused.” Bet you five quid I can get her to say it.
The Doctor: Taking that bet would be an abuse of my responsibilities as a traveller in time.
Rose: Ten quid?
The Doctor: Done.

Or:

Queen Victoria: And please excuse the naked girl.
Rose: Sorry.
The Doctor: She’s a feral child. I bought her for sixpence in old London Town. It’s was her or the Elephant Man, so…
Rose: Thinks he’s funny but I’m so not amused.

This is one of the few times The Tenth Doctor and Rose dynamic worked for me, and I think it was down to the light-hearted humerous tone of many of their exchanges as well as the way both helped the other to get to the bottom of the episode’s mystery and save The Queen (Rose was wearing a shirt featuring a crown, after all).

Ben: I was most amused by the presence of Queen Victoria in this episode. She had quite a sensible head on her, which is a refreshing change for characters in Doctor Who. RTD portrayed her quite well as a veritable force of nature, unfazed by the circumstances she’s found herself in. I loved the old English, and her manner of speech; the actress did a stellar job. Nothing showed this better than the speech she gives at dinner about missing her husband, and how she finds tales of the supernatural comforting for it gives her the hope of being able to contact her husband.

Maureen: I loved that speech too. I tried to get it down, but missed 90% of it. It’s not on imdb or Planet Clare either which is a real shame.

Ben: I have to say, Queen Vic handles the unexpected intrusion of the supernatural into her world like a champ. Her declaration that this world where werewolves are real is not her world is not one of denial, but defiance: declaring she’d rather die than have the werewolf bite her. Of course, in the end there’s a bit of ambiguity as to whether or not the wolf did bite her before it met its’ end, but what’s the fun in a clean ending? She does have have what I see as the most sensible response to an encounter with the Doctor: she rewards them and then banishes them, wanting nothing to do with them ever again. Her final speech to the two of them was spine tingling, and foreboding as hell! Plus she got to drop some serious truth bombs on Rose and the Doctor about their attitude to dangerous situations. This is a different Queen Victoria to the one we see at the start of the episode who welcomes tales of the supernatural. She’s seen there’s a bigger, scarier world out there, a world that Great Britain needs defending from. So, she establishes Torchwood to do just that! Harriet Jones would be proud.

Maureen: I know right!?! Harriet and Queen Vic actually have a lot in common as characters who lead Britain. Nice comparison. I loved the bit where she pulled out a gun, Sally Lockhart style, and tells her enemies, ‘the correct form of address is Your Majesty.’ It was very last-stand Harriet Jonesy. I also enjoyed her telling Rose and The Doctor off as she banished them. It was about time someone pointed out to those two they were living a suicide wish.

Queen Victoria: You may think on this also: that I am not amused. Not remotely amused. And henceforth, I banish you.
The Doctor: I’m sorry?
Queen Victoria: I have rewarded you, Sir Doctor. And now you’re exiled from this empire, never to return. I don’t know what you are, the two of you, or where you’re from. But I know that you consort with stars and magic and think it fun. But your world is steeped in terror and blasphemy and death. And I will not allow it. You will leave these shores and you will reflect, I hope, on how you came to stray so far from all that is good. And how much longer you may survive this terrible life. Now leave my world. And never return.

The Doctor

Ben: We see again in this episode that The Doctor just cannot drive the TARDIS to save his life, but on the bright side David Tennant gets to use his Scottish accent, which was excellent.

Maureen: He also got to be informed by Rose that he was a big, old punk with a hint of rockabilly which did make me snort-laugh. David Tennant did speak so fast when he spoke to Queen Vic he lost me once or twice, but it’s a minor quibble. This episode, for me, was the first time Ten felt like The Doctor. Aside: it also helped that Tennant looked kind of young and… whispers… hot this episode.

Ben: Hit the decks everyone! Inkashlings just admitted Ten is hot! Anyway, for the first half of the episode he really only does general Doctoring, asking leading questions and generally having a fun time. But once the werewolf appears the fun really starts. I loved the parallel storylines in this episode. As one party (e.g. Rose) is learning about the werewolf and it’s motives by coming face to face with it, so too is the Doctor, but in another scene with Queen Vic. This is repeated in the discovery of the mistletoe. It was a great little trick of storytelling that meant everyone got some great moments of action and reaction. But I digress, back to the story at hand! The Doctor, upon learning the story of the jewel Her Majesty carries, has his Eureka moment of the episode. However, I found his resolution was a bit dumb. Sir Robert’s father and Queen Victoria’s husband, having foreseen this day would come, cut the jewel down to use it as a prism through which to focus moonlight into a weapon to destroy the werewolf? And in the end the jewel doesn’t even fit into the telescope that’s not a telescope, the Doctor just throws it into the moonlight the telescope has beamed onto the floor? And the jewel somehow focuses such a strong beam of moonlight that it physically pushes the werewolf up against the wall? And surely Prince Albert and The Doctor should have filled Queen Victoria in on this little plan of theirs, too. It’s just polite to let the person you’re using as bait in your trap know what’s going on.

Maureen: I wasn’t bothered by the silliness of the plot resolution. It was all very Hound of the Baskervilles atmostpheric and that suited me just fine. I was there for the character drama, not a sensible plot. But also, I’m a bit of a sucker for cursed jewel penny dreadful-esque stories and late night Victorian era hauntings. Finally, the resolution was very Classic era Who with everyone contributing to the werewolf’s defeat. And using books!!!

The Doctor: Books! Best weapons in the world!

The Alien/s of the Week

Ben: I loved this Doctor Who twist on the tale of the werewolf, of an alien life form that inhabits human bodies and moves between them with a bite. The scene between the human form and Rose had great tension, and I particularly enjoyed the scene at dinner of Sir Robert relaying the myth of the wolf that haunts the region. Paired with the head of the religious order doing his Latin chanting in the background it really did remind me of the scene in The Empty Child episodes with the typewriter. It’s a good horror scene, for sure.

RTD really leaned into showing how lethal this werewolf is, with the imperviousness to bullets and the way it cut through Sir Robert and his men like a hot knife through butter, the threat was very real. I did, however, find the scene in the study somewhat redundant; we already knew of the comet and the monastery from the myth Sir Robert relayed at dinner, and of the werewolf’s motives from Rose, so this confirmation felt a bit unnecessary. I had some issues with the special effects used on the werewolf, but I did appreciate they tried to go for a less-is-more approach with it killing people. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the way it was defeated, but honestly the rest was so good I can mostly forgive it. Overall, I really enjoyed what they did with the werewolf, but I would have maybe liked to see a bit more about the religious order that formed up around it. Maybe something for a future episode to explore?

Maureen: I do agree with you there, Ben. I was a bit confused about the role of the monks in the story, why they’d formed and when. Otherwise, I didn’t have a problem with the werewolf SFX. It was 2006 and the less-is-more approach meant you didn’t see much of it. The scene with The Captain eaten was actually rather Penny Dreadful before Penny Dreadful existed.

Final Thoughts

Ben: I thoroughly enjoyed this romp of a Doctor Who episode. It started off strong and kept up the good work right through the episode. I enjoyed the reinvention of the myth of the werewolf, I loved Queen Victoria, and I loved that Rose and the other’s got substantial moments to themselves this episode. I had a few issues with the special effects and such, but nothing I can’t forgive. I’m giving it a 9/10.

Maureen: I loved this episode too. I mean, I am a sucker for period piece Who, but even putting that aside there was a lot to love. It was definitely an ensemble episode with some great performances from David Tennant, Billie Piper and the lady playing Queen Victoria. I’m also giving this 9/10 inky stars.

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.

The Alien of the Week

Ben: The Daleks! Turns out the Emperor of the Daleks ship survived the Time War, falling through space and time. Which is a neat turn of phrase, if not a slightly lazy way to have some Daleks survive. The true horror comes when we find out they’ve been using the contestants of the games to make more Daleks; breaking them down into the building blocks of life to create new life, new Daleks. But as the Doctor correctly surmises, they’re not pure Daleks, and Daleks abhor anything that isn’t Dalek; they hate their own flesh, their own existence, and it’s driven them insane.

Maureen: The Daleks on New Who have become a bit of a joke, re-occuring too often with sillier and sillier plans to deliver much in the thrills and the scares department. This finale is an exception to the New Who Dalek rule. The Dalek Emperors speech about “the refugees… the displaced… all come to us” and “This is perfection. I have created heaven on earth,” as well as the way we see Lynda, Jack and all of the trapped humans exterminated is truly chilling.

Ben: I did like how the Dalek God cast himself as the creator of life, opposing the Doctor (the destroyer and the oncoming storm). Although once the Daleks board the Game Station we see the Dalek’s aren’t exactly the nurturing type, as they go and kill the 100 or so unarmed humans in floor zero. And poor Lynda, Lynda with a Y with her crush on the Doctor gets the worst death of all. For that alone these Daleks deserve their ending, being dissolved into atoms by Rose. It made for a pretty great scene, the Dalek God shrieking that he is immortal, that he cannot die, followed by him dying.

The Companion/s

Maureen: This is such a dark episode, especially for the companions and the humans trapped on Satellite Five. I can see how Torchwood got as dark as it did. Kids show? What kids show?

Ben: Now this is definitely my favourite Rose episode of the season. For the first fifteen minutes she doesn’t do much other than blindly believe the Doctor will save the day, that everyone will live and nobody will die (except the Daleks). And then it all goes wrong and The Doctor sends her back home with one final request, to forget him and live her life. Which is really just unrealistic, Doctor. As we see in the scene in the fish and chips shop, Rose has been shown a better life, and she can’t go back to the monotony of her old life.

Maureen: What I found interesting about the fish and chip shop scene was how phenomenal an actress Billie was in it. She totally sold me on playing a nineteen year old, prone to emotional outbursts and temper tantrums. I might not like Rose much, but her behavior in these scenes at least felt believable.

Ben: In that fish and chip shop Rose mourns returning to a life absent from The Doctor, a life where she doesn’t stand up for what’s right when no one else will.

Maureen: This bit bugged me a little. There’s nothing stopping Rose from getting involved in politics (Harriet Jones style) or charity and living a life The Doctor would be proud of. But nineteen years old…

Rose: Catch the bus, go to work, eat chips… is that all there is? The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life.

Oh, use some imagination and initiative Rose. The Doctor literally told you the below and you still don’t get it:

Nine: Let the TARDIS die. Let it gather dust… if you want to remember me do one thing… have a good life… do that for me… have a fabulous life.

Ben: Yes, what she does instead is tell Mickey there’s nothing on earth left for her. Even the scene between her and Jackie was cruel, telling Jackie she was the one who was there as her father died, that he would want her to keep fighting. This Rose I don’t like, the Rose that will do anything, hurt anyone to get back to The Doctor. I get that she loves him, but that’s just harsh. It was nice that Mickey and Jackie came together to help her in the end, but she really didn’t deserve their help.

Maureen: I agree re Rose, but I like what Mickey’s response showed us about him. For the first time, I felt that Mickey cared about Rose, genuinely cared in a way that went beyond surface level. Take this exchange:

Rose: There’s nothing for me here.
Mickey: Nothing?
Rose: Nothing.
Mickey: Right. If that’s what you think…

And you know what he does? He damn well helps her anyway, and not only that, he stops her from giving up! For once Mickey added to, rather than detracted from, an episode!

Ben: I’ve got more to say about Rose. I mean we need to talk about the fact that Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS and becomes a literal Deus ex Machina! This is peak Doctor Who and I just love it so much. For some reason, “I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself,” is a line that has stuck with me from the first time I watched this episode. BadWolf Rose just has so many iconic lines in this one sequence of genocide. And then we get the cheesiest line of all space and time, as the Doctor says “I think you need a Doctor” before kissing her, pulling the time vortex out of her head and into himself. It’s probably for the best she doesn’t remember any of it, living with committing genocide and also that level of cheesiness can’t be good for you.

Maureen: I agree that this bit was classic Who. It was outrageous. So outrageous it shouldn’t have worked, yet it does and RTD never figures out how to get it right again. Bad Wolf Rose is also my favourite version of Rose (it’s why I could stand her in the 50th anniversary). I agree with Ben that she has some truly astonishing lines.

Bad Wolf Rose: Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies. The Time War ends… I can see everything. All that is. All that could be.

Ben: Jack, on the other hand, had less of a fun time. On one hand, he gets a kiss out of both Rose and The Doctor. On the other hand, he sends a bunch of people to their deaths facing off the Daleks, including himself. It was definitely a dick move to lie to the volunteers, telling them the guns will work on the Daleks, that the forcefield will weaken the Daleks attacks, but someone had to slow the Daleks down while the Doctor worked on the Delta wave.

Maureen: I didn’t think that was a dick move on Jack’s part. I thought it was a way to keep panic at bay. What good would Jack telling humanity the truth about the Daleks have done? They had no way out.

Ben: I guess so. On the bright side, Rose brings Jack back! Yay!

Maureen: Yes! Long may Captain Jack reign. Neither Ben or I remember when Jack next turns up and how and both look forward to a reappearance.

The Doctor

Ben: The Doctor has finally learnt how to drive the TARDIS with some finesse! Apparating the TARDIS around Rose was a nice bit of magic.

Maureen: Yeah, to be honest, that was one of the only parts of the episode that made no sense to me.

Ben: Mmmm, I found the shot of the Doctor with his head to the door of the TARDIS as he hears the Dalek’s futile attempts to exterminate to be incredibly powerful. All this season we’ve been getting drip fed bits of information about the Time War, and the PTSD the Doctor suffers from his involvement in it. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going through the Doctor’s head in that moment.

Maureen: Christopher Eccleston was seriously good this episode, and made me yearn for more Nine. He portrays The Doctor’s sadness, pain and rage, as well as his innate alien nature so well.

Rose: I knew you would come.
Nine: Good. I didn’t.

Nine: Don’t stand around chin-wagging… human beings, always standing around gossiping.

We also see more of why Nine cares for Rose in a romantic sense.

Nine: The TARDIS could leave and let history take its course.
Rose: You couldn’t do that.
Nine: You wouldn’t ask.

I’ve never bought Rose/Nine or even Rose/Ten and always felt that The Doctor would have grown bored of Rose eventually, but I did feel Rose was right for Nine in the situation he was in and where he was placed emotionally.

Ben: And then we get to the good stuff after The Doctor tricks Rose into the TARDIS and sends her back home through the magic of Emergency Program 1. We find out through the Dalek God (formerly known as the Dalek Emperor) that the delta wave can’t be refined, that it will kill Daleks and humans indiscriminately. A complete rehash of the Time War. The Doctor might not be able to bring about an end where everyone lives and nobody dies, but at least he can save Rose. In the end he can’t go through with activating the Delta wave, which is probably for the best. I don’t think the Doctor could live with becoming the Great Exterminator.

Maureen: What I like about Nine though is that there was always a suggestion that it wouldn’t take much to tip him over the edge. RTD also chips away at the perennial who is The Doctor question by having the Dalek Emperor mirror The Doctor. The exchange below reveals a lot about The Doctor:

Dalek Emperor: I want to see you become like me… all hail The Doctor. What are you? Coward or killer?
Nine: Coward any day.

I’ve always hated The Doctor as hero trope, the lonely God figure, so it’s nice to have a grand finale that bucks the trend. And then there’s the first New Who regeneration sequence…

Ben: Yes, the episode ends with this wondrously emotional scene between Rose and The Doctor. I’m not one for quoting the episode in big chunks, but that whole scene is just magic. I will agree with The Doctor when, in his final lines as the Ninth Doctor, he says he was fantastic. He really, really was.

Maureen: God, I still miss Nine. Unlike Ben, I am one for quoting chunks of episode. The Doctor’s regeneration speech is a good one. He says he can’t go to Barcelona and Rose asks why not. This is his wonderful response:

Nine: You can. You will. Maybe I will too. But not like this… Time Lords have a way of cheating death… before I go I just want to tell you you were fantastic. And you know what? So was I.

Ten is one of my least favourite of all The Doctor’s, but his opening lines were also… well… fantastic.

Ten: Where was I? That’s right. Barcelona!

Final Thoughts

Ben: This episode was peak Doctor Who and I loved it from start to end. I don’t really know what else to say. I give it a 10/10 and an “allons-y!”

Maureen: I too, thoroughly enjoyed The Parting of the Ways, literal deux ex machina and all. 10/10 inky stars

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.

Pre-Title Sequence

Ben: Between the little recap of our previous encounter with the Slitheen and the scene with a nuclear expert meeting an unfortunate fate, it’s pretty clear the direction this episode is headed. Bring on Cardiff!

Maureen: Ah Cardiff… I remember back in 2010 at Cardiff Bay, tourist information actually gave you a free sheet of Doctor Who filming locations you could wander around and take pics outside of. Do they still do that? What a great tourist activity that was… but ahem… reviewing the episode… yes. Where was I?

Companion

Ben: Urgh. Rose doesn’t really do anything except treat Mickey badly. It’s like she never remembers he exists until they’re back on modern day earth.

Maureen: Well yeah, Ben. That’s one of the reason’s Rose never works for me. She comes across as superficial and naive at best and as callous and heartless at worst. She is a seriously annoying companion and I say that as someone who LOVES Billie Piper.

Ben: Plus, the bit with her calling Trisha Delaney “a bit big” is pretty gross.

Maureen: Yep. I say no to fat-shaming, RTD! Also, I hate that Mickey is only dating Trisha to try to forget Rose, like Trisha is some kind of second-rate Rose.

Ben: It’s so telling that the only time on Mickey and Rose’s date that Mickey gives any details of his life is when he offers these details himself. Rose is fine to go on about her adventures in space and time, all take and no give. The final insult is that when the real trouble starts she runs off without him, heading straight to The Doctor without a thought for poor Mickey. It isn’t until the crisis is resolved that she remembers she abandoned him.

Maureen: My final note on Rose in this episode is, ‘and Rose says she’s fine to go on without Mickey… well fuck you, Rose.’ In other Rose Tyler news, I liked her cute braids this episode, her strangely similar to Amy Pond outfit and her Mary Poppins-esque joy when she says big alien words. More of this Rose please. Also, final note: I swear at the start of this episode Rose groped the side of the TARDIS. That was some weird tea-time porn Now where’s that fan fic?

Ben: As to Jack, he doesn’t really do anything but look handsome and flirt with everyone. Which is fine by me, really.

Maureen: I got nothing written about Jack except that the Jack/Doctor/Rose chemistry is a bit cute as they bounce off each other telling Mickey about their adventures.

Ben: Ah yes, Mickey. Poor Mickey can’t do anything right. First off, he bungles their plan to corner the Slitheen, then he asks Rose out on a date involving pizza and sex, during which he admits he’s seeing another woman? Classy! At least by the end of the episode he’s realised how bad Rose is for him and has walked away from the whole mess.

Maureen: Yes, Mickey and the guy who’s stuck playing him sure have a raw deal this season. I really hope when he comes back next season he gets more to do and less harshing on by the script. I’ve forgotten most of Season Two to be honest so this shall be unexpected.

The Doctor

Ben: Right off the bat we have the Doctor calling Mickey Rickey (booo!) and flirting with Jack (yay!). The scene with the Doctor and Rose realising Bad Wolf is following them is very emblematic of how this episode ends up playing out: a lot of interesting build up culminating in a fizzer of an ending. The episode is filled with the Doctor doing general Doctor stuff, solving mysteries and kicking butt. We get some good truths about the Doctor and his God-like powers from Blon during the dinner scene, but otherwise this episode is pretty light on good Doctor moments. Having the TARDIS return Blon to egg form felt like more of a cop out than anything, to me. Especially after the dissection of the Doctor Blon gave us during the dinner scene, I felt like there was an opportunity to delve deeper and darker about the dangers of The Doctor by actually having the Doctor take her to her death. But alas, it was not to be…

Maureen: I think that Nine is at his best in his comedic moments and his darkest moments as in Dalek. I love Nine’s face when he hear’s Margaret drop her tea cup and the follow up of ‘she’s climbing out the window, isn’t she?’ Nine also gets dark when he says no one should worship him as a God. Damn straight, Doctor. It’s why the lonely God trope that surfaces from season two onwards never ever works for me. Also, The Doctor describing a planet called ‘women wept?’ Link me to that fan fic stat.

The Alien of the Week

Ben: Ahhh, the last of the Slitheen is up to her old tricks. That is, until she gets soft and can’t follow through with killing the pregnant, soon to be wed Cathy Salt. Being all alone in the world is clearly weighing on her.

Maureen: I love this little scene. I felt sorry for Margaret as she cried in the toilet and said she was cursed. What an actress!

Ben: Her acting is excellent, isn’t it? Margaret’s rightly the focus of this episode. After the Doctor and his companions handily capture her, she beings her mind games to the dinner party (literally) as she torments The Doctor and his companions with the fact that they’re taking her to her death on her home planet. It’s clear she has the full measure of the Doctor with lines about how the Doctor is always the first to leave, and often avoids the full consequences of his actions. Throughout playing these mind games (“dinner in bondage, works for me” Maureen: God, how I snickered at this line) it’s pretty clear that she has every intent of escaping the Doctor. The in depth detailing of the execution she will face, of the pain she will go through, the pleading for one last chance, all have the intent of helping her to escape. It wasn’t until that final speech she made to the Doctor that I really started to feel bad for her, which is unfortunate because immediately after that final emotional plea she showed her true colours.

Maureen: I found Margaret to be a surprisingly funny character too. I loved this exchange:

Margaret: What did I ever do to you?
Nine: Tried to kill me and all of earth?
Margaret: Apart from that…

I also laughed at her ‘I sound Welsh. I’ve gone native,’ comment.

Otherwise, the centrepiece of the episode when The Doctor and Margaret talk at a restaurant was pure gold. As was the TARDIS exchange below:

Rose Tyler: We’ve got a prisoner. The police box is really a police box.

Margaret Blaine: You’re not just police, though. Since you’re taking me to my death, that makes *you* my executioners. Each and every one of you.

Mickey Smith: Well *you* deserve it.

Margaret Blaine: [looks straight at him] You’re very quick to say so. And you’re very quick to soak your hands in my blood. Which makes you better than me how, exactly?

[he says nothing]

Margaret Blaine: Long night ahead.

[walks away & sits down, finally]

Margaret Blaine: Let’s see who can look me in the eye.

[looks piercingly at each person; none hold eye contact for more than a few seconds; & the Doctor barely even looks up from his work]

This episode would have been a ten outta ten if it had stuck to that theme and followed through on its implications for The Doctor as story hero.

Ben: Alas, in hindsight Margaret had a pretty obvious plan, why else would you have the extrapolator as part of the model nuclear power station? Of course it was meant to be discovered. I’m not a fan of her final fate either, reverting to an egg. I would have preferred a (much darker) ending where she is returned to her home planet for execution. That would have lead to a much more interesting dissection of the Doctor, especially as he is very alone in the universe, just as she is.

Maureen: I have to agree with Ben. I noted when Margaret grabs Rose that the story would have been better if it had left Margaret as being actually contrite for her actions. I also wrote that the TARDIS egg sequence is the episode going to shit so…

Final Thoughts

Ben: This episode was 30 minutes of really good Doctor Who followed by 10 minutes of really bad Doctor Who. Margaret/Blon’s acting was truly excellent, but ultimately wasted in a terrible conclusion. I would have much preferred if RTD had followed through to the ultimate bleak ending of the final Slitheen getting her just rewards and being executed. But no, she’s an egg. With a great setup and poor follow through, I’m going to give this episode a 6/10.

Maureen: I’ve sat back and let Ben’s comments dominate this review because he basically says everything I want to say, but better. I agree with his assessment of the episode. I wanted more darkness and less Doctor cop-out resolutions. 6/10 inky stars.

The Doctor and Rose chase some space shrapnel to London, only to find themselves caught up in World War Two and the London blitz. A mysterious child in a gas mask repeats horror movie style, ‘are you my Mummy?’ and threatens the future of humanity. What exactly is going on? It’s up to Rose, The Doctor and the mysterious 51st century rogue, Captain Jark Harkness, to find out…

Pre-Title Sequence

Ben: The Empty Child starts with such excitement from the get go with the Doctor frantically chasing a mysterious mauve object though space and time to the fantastically alien destination of… London.

Maureen: New Who is so earth obsessed, right? Still, this time we have a different time period at least…

Ben: And after the Debbie-downer of an opening last episode, I’m happy for the change of pace. And yes, I’m still longing for the day that River teaches the Doctor how to drive the TARDIS properly.

Maureen: I’d forgotten how badly Nine drives! It’s cropped up in almost every episode of this season. In other news, I was struck in The Empty Child’s opening by how funny the script was. Rose makes a comment about the only time The Doctor careens through space is to get some milk and The Doctor’s reply of ‘all the species in all the universe it has to come out of a cow?’ gave me a grin.

The Companion/s

Maureen: We have a lot of ground to cover in this two-parter so I’m going with companion sub-categories.

Rose

Ben: I love Rose’s obsession with Spock and the scanning of alien tech this episode. Where did her obsession come from? It’s just so random! And of course, Rose decides to wear a union jack shirt during a German air raid.

Maureen: I found it really noticeable that someone different was writing the script with this two-parter. Rose is still naive and on the flirtatious side, but she does more for the plot.

Ben: Yeah, she gets to have some good fun in The Empty Child, almost falling to her death from a barrage balloon, getting rescued by Jack, getting to flirt with Jack (slow dancing in front of Big Ben while the city burns around you is the height of romance), and pretending to be a time agent! I do appreciate these episodes where Rose gets to do stuff other than be a damsel in distress.

Maureen: I’ve found Rose’s propensity for flirtation with anyone of the male persuasion with a pulse irritating in prior episodes, but Captain Jack is so suave and the situation so outlandish, you can’t help but go along with everything. I felt like Rose got to do more in the second part however.

Ben: Yes, in The Doctor Dances, Rose saves herself, The Doctor and Jack from the ’empty’ child with some quick thinking, and then continues nonchalantly flirting with the Doctor.

Rose: The world doesn’t end when the Doctor dances.

Love it. What a line.

Rose also gets a great scene with Nancy, telling her that ultimately everything is going to be all right, that the German’s won’t win. And finally, after the Doctor saves the day she gets her dance! With both the Doctor and Jack! I thought this was a great pair of episodes for Rose, overall.

Maureen: I never warmed to Rose, and though I agree she does more in this two-parter, I still vastly preferred Captain Jack and Nancy to Rose. Rose comes across often as callous, even if I’m not sure that’s what the scriptwriters were going for. For example:

Nancy: I’d believe anything me. I don’t have a future.
Rose: It’s not the end of the world or anything.

Wow Rose. Don’t you know anything about your own country’s history? It very nearly was. The Doctor, at least, gets that.

Nine: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing. Until one tiny, damp little island says “No. No, not here.” A mouse in front of a lion. You’re amazing, the lot of you. I don’t know what you did to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me, go on, do what you’ve got to do, save the world.

Still, her dance in the TARDIS was lovely, as was her scene with Nancy. I also found it interesting that it was Rose who reminded The Doctor that he needed to save Jack for his maxim that just this once everyone lives to ring true. I have no doubt The Doctor would have forgotten all about Jack without her timely reminder. It’s also interesting that it’s Rose asking the pertinent questions in The Doctor Dances. For example, it’s she who asks why the gas-masked people don’t know that The Doctor and co. aren’t their mummy’s.

Jack

Ben: Ahh Jack… the lovable sleazeball. I don’t think any character besides River has had as good an intro as Capn Jack Harkness. From the get go he’s complimenting people’s butts, being dashing and rescuing damsels from certain doom. He practically oozes confidence as he makes Rose an offer for the Chula warship, and openly declares himself an ex-time agent and a criminal! Swoon.

Maureen: Ah Jack. The Jack Sparrow of the Whoniverse. Or the James Bond (come on: as if Jack’s self destruct module complete with a vodka martini didn’t remind everyone of Brosnan Bond). Plus points for fluid sexuality. I wish Moff had made more in later seasons of Jack and River both being from the 51st century. I’d have loved to watch them flirt and argue their way through an episode. There’s a lot of similarities between Jack and River, even this early in. There’s the sonic blaster. There’s the flirt with everything that moves trope. There’s the rogue trope. In The Doctor Dances, the Jack/Doctor tiff over sonic screwdrivers even mirrors a scene in Day of the Moon between River/Doctor. Compare the two quotes;

Nine(The Doctor Dances): Ever had a cabinet to build?

River(Day of the Moon as she sonic blasts The Silence): Go build a cabinet or something.

Ben: Handsome rogue shtick aside, Jack’s in a bit over his head here.

Maureen: After all, it’s him that sets the episodes in motion. He thinks Rose and The Doctor are Time Agents and that he can lure them to London with some old scrap metal. Unfortunately for him, turns out the metal isn’t from a war ship as he thought, but from a medic ship and that the nanogenes from the ship try to cure humanity of death with disastrous results.

Ben: In The Doctor Dances, Jack thoroughly redeems himself, providing some crucial assistance in the form of his ship’s teleporter, and then almost sacrifices himself by taking the soon to explode bomb onto his ship. Luckily Rose and the Doctor maneuver the TARDIS over to his ship and rescue him from his imminent demise.

Maureen: Good thing too. He’s one companion who never was who deserves multiple come backs!

Nancy

Ben: These episodes are packed full of great acting, and Nancy is no exception. From the moment she tells the Doctor not to pick up the ringing TARDIS phone you know she’s got a dark and mysterious past. She holds her own against the Doctor multiple times, berating him for taking more food than is allowed and making fun of his nose and ears. She also coolly blackmails the man she is robbing food from and manages to snag a couple of extra goods without breakin a sweat. With her strong motherly tendencies and her penchant for survival, it’s no surprise the empty child looks to her as his mother.

Maureen: I completely forgot about the Nancy/Jamie plot twist! Moff uses it again in later Smith seasons and doesn’t convince, but this first time around the ‘mother as almost magical strength’ trope works.

Ben: I love that even with the bombs falling on London, and the Doctor investigating the mysterious child, Nancy’s priority remains the well being of her young wards (some of whom have faced child molestation from the very country people whom they were sent to to keep them safe), as she returns to the house she initially broke into in search of food. The Doctor pegs it correctly – she’s lost someone to the raids, so she’s looking after these kids to make up for it.

Maureen: I love Nancy and the actress playing her was on point despite her relatively young age. I was so impressed by Nancy that I immediately looked up the episodes imdb pages to check who played her. Alas for TV lovers, Florence Hoath has retired from acting as far as I can tell, but you can find her living a nice life full of baking on Twitter. Anyway, back to the character. I love Nancy’s dedication to bringing her young wards up right even as she robs from those in bomb shelters by eating their half eaten meals. There is still honour amongst thieves, The Artful Dodger style. Nancy tells the children to eat with their mouths closed and without critiquing the food or the house they steal from. The Doctor says it all really when he says ‘can’t tell if this is Marxism in action or a West End musical.’ Nancy was such a high point, wasn’t she, Ben?

Ben: Yes. She was just such a bad ass. She cares so much about her Oliver Twist-esque gang. She resolves to confront her empty child, Jamie, much as it terrifies her because she knows her wards are in danger as long as that child keeps following her everywhere. It pays off. Nancy gets the best ending of everyone, with her son restored alive to her and armed with the knowledge that the German’s lose the war she gets to face the future with a heart full of hope. She deserves it.

Maureen: What Nancy did next? Has someone written the fan fic?

The Doctor

Maureen: I remember when Season One aired, it wasn’t just the decaying angst The Time War brought to The Doctor’s story line that got the media and the fans talking. It was also the blatant in-story references to a more sexualised Doctor. In Classic Who, sex wasn’t mentioned in relation to The Doctor. In New Who, it’s a given. I’m pretty sure the banana joke in The Doctor Dances is meant to be blatantly phallic (it also echoes Eleven’s ‘bad, bad beans’ food test post regen in The Eleventh Hour, but that’s another story). The Doctor dancing could be see in and of itself as a euphemism for sex. The Doctor is also clearly jealous of Rose flirting with Captain Jack (Rose calls him Captain Envy) and looks put out when Nancy critiques his big ears and nose.

Ben: The Doctor has some really great Doctoring moments in these episodes. From the moment he exits the TARDIS he’s a Doctor on a mission, trying to find this mysterious object that’s landed in London. After a briefly embarrassing moment in a bar (gosh Nine can be slow on the uptake. Also, hello first period piece singer in New Who), he’s introduced to Nancy, and then he’s really off to the races. But for me, it wasn’t until he arrived at the hospital and met up with Dr Constantine that the Doctor got to do any heavy lifting. Before then, Rose and Nancy had really been the focus of The Empty Child. You can see him starting to put the pieces together at the end of this episode when Jack and Rose turn up, though. And this is where the real Doctoring starts. I mean, who else would have thought to yell at the gas-masked children to go to their room! That takes nerve. The Doctor gets some cracking lines as he’s trying to solve the mystery of the child, but to me I found the story much more compelling through the perspectives of Rose, Jack and Nancy. The Doctor moves the story forward, but he doesn’t really get to shine until the very end of the episode when he gets the glorious revelation that everyone gets to live and no one has to die. Considering how the results of the Time War haunt him, this was a truly precious moment. And it shows in the rescue of Jack Harkness when he’s happy and free and able to dance without a care. In 900 years of existence, these kinds of wins can’t be common.

Maureen: I’ve always loved the end of The Doctor Dances. I think it sums up Moff’s Who humanism thesis (well, part of it). Variations of the everybody lives lines are echoed in The Girl in the Fireplace and again in the first River Song two parter (through her diary). Matt Smith’s run also reflected this theme. The speech Nine makes is my favourite Nine quotes and one of the best moment’s in all of New Who for me.

Nine: Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once. Everybody lives.

Plus, Chris delivers a truly perfect ‘fantastic.’

Alien of the Week

Maureen: I don’t know about your thoughts on this, Ben, but shit this two-parter’s alien of the week was real hide-behind-your-sofa-crap-your-pants-scary. Horror tropes are used multiple times to great effect. The repeated childish voice of ‘are you my Mummy’ was scary, but the catch phrase got even creepier at the end of The Empty Child when Dr Constantine morphs into a gas-masked empty person still repeating the catch cry. The Doctor Dances ramps up the horror stakes still further with a recording of ‘are you my Mummy?’ ending with a voice still echoing the lines (in other words Doctor and co., get the hell out of the room you’re currently in) and a typewriter typing of its own volition ‘are you my mummy?’ again and again and again. Poor Nancy trying to sing a lullaby to a recently converted soldier was also the stuff of nightmares. Even though this two-parter is now several years old, there were multiple points where I was genuinely afraid and the special effects still hold up. Ben?

Ben: The aliens this week, being nanogenes were just… perfection. Moffat twists something that should be pure and innocent – a child looking for his mother – into something horrifying. ‘This child is empty,’ Nancy says. ‘If he touches you he’ll make you like him.’ Jesus. We as the audience don’t know what that means initially, but the communicating through anything with a speaker is a faithful horror trope, so we know it means Bad Things. And then at the end of The Empty Child we get the real horrific payoff Moffat’s been building up to, as we are introduced to Dr Constantine and his hundreds of patients with the same injuries. The moment when The Doctor lists the scar on the back of the hand and the camera focus changes to Dr Constantine, who has a scar on the back of his hand? Terrifying. And then Dr Constantine drops the bombshell: none of these hundreds of victims with caved in heads and chests and gas masks fused to their faces are dead! Then comes the hide behind your sofa moment – watching Dr Constantine become a victim before our eyes. Honestly, like Maureen, I couldn’t help but appreciate how good the special effects were, especially after how awful they’d been previously.

Maureen: This is also one of the only times that the alien is completely innocent. The Nanogenes are trying to heal. It’s not their fault their first interaction with humanity is a dead child! Normally, you’d think a solution like this might feel like a let down, but it absolutely isn’t. The plot makes perfect sense.

Final Thoughts

Ben: These episodes were a joy to watch. I don’t know what else to say. Everything was excellently acted, the special effects were top notch, and just this once, everyone lives! Both episodes get a 10/10 from me.

Maureen: It will surprise no one who has followed this blog to read that I agree with Ben 100%. 10/10 inky stars for both episodes.

So what happens? The Doctor, Rose and Adam find themselves in the year 200 000 in the fourth great and bountiful human empire. Technology and the sought after gold-wall lined Floor 500 (where humans after a promotion go) are wrong, says The Doctor, and thus, exploration ensues in a pastiche episode that checks off The Face of Boe pregnant, the Bad Wolf channel and a 1984 style propaganda machine.

Pre-Title Sequence

Ben: The opening to this episode was fun enough. I liked the Doctor giving Rose a chance to show off with Adam. It was a sweet moment. And Rose is 19 years old, so I can understand her needing to get her flirt on every once in a while. Is it enough of a reason to bring Adam with them on an adventure? Not really. But hey, there’s always the chance the writers have an interesting way of using him in this story (spoiler alert: they very much did not). Ultimately, this opening reminds me of the opening to The End of the World, but with less awesome.

Maureen: My favourite part of the pre-title sequence was Rose successfully getting her Doctor on (I love it when companions get to do this without being harshed on). Rose is loving showing off when she says ‘judging by the architecture’ it’s a time far in the future and the surroundings point to ‘definitely a spaceship’ to Adam. She does get her flirt on, as Ben points out, and yes, I get she’s 19, but it makes Rose seem inconsistent. She likes Mickey… no wait The Doctor … no wait Adam … no wait The Doctor again. Make up your mind, woman!

Adam: *Faints*
Nine: He’s your boyfriend.
Rose: Not any more.

The Companion(s)

Ben: As much as I was in support of Rose getting a little action at the start of the episode, I really soured towards her as the episode went on. She was pretty supportive of Adam going through the motions of acclimatizing to time travel, only to immediately abandon him when things got interesting. Because leaving someone you barely know to their own devices in a strange place where bad things are probably happening is an excellent idea *sarcasm*. She doesn’t really do much for the rest of the episode other than follow the Doctor around. They have a nice moment in the elevator to level 500 when they realise Adam isn’t there and agree it’s better when it’s just the two of them, but like, why aren’t The Doctor and Rose concerned for him? He’s alone 198 000 years in the future and the general consensus is that’s fine? It’s no wonder he gets up to absolutely nothing good, especially considering where he was working in the previous episode! The final scene where they drop Adam off at home was pretty nasty really, especially considering they’re at least partly responsible for what happened to him. Really, Rose doesn’t come across as a great person this episode.

Maureen: I agree with Ben on this one and Ben gave Rose some leeway on her Adam flirting in the pre-title credits! I have very little to add except I did like the bit where Rose says she’s ‘missing out on the party upstairs’ re wanting to dash up to the creepy Floor 500. I’m going to leave Rose behind and focus on yet another companion who never was, Suki, as played by the excellent actress Anna Maxwell Martin. Here’s the thing guys: why cast someone as prestigious as ANNA FLIPPING MAXWELL MARTIN and then do nothing with her character till she’s unceremoniously fridged? WHY? I thought Suki didn’t know she was a spy, so it was a neat twist when it turned out she was a double agent all along.

Suki: This whole system is corrupt.

But that’s about all there was to her character. RTD. YOU ARE THE WORST.

Ben: And don’t forget Adam. Poor Adam got the worst of it. After the scene in the food court where he got to call his parents he was basically left to his own devices. It would have been kinder to keep him in the TARDIS for the rest of the episode. Instead we get so many scenes about Adam getting progressively further in over his head, culminating in him having everything he knows about Rose and the Doctor being forcibly yanked out of his brain.

Maureen: I read online somewhere that this was the series first Doctor-lite episode. Maybe it was. But it still sucked. And the Adam screen time is still completely unjustifiable. It was boring, awkward and a distraction from the real plot. I can’t believe Rose and The Doctor leave Adam to his own devices. He was working for the dangerously inquisitive Van Statten in Dalek. Wouldn’t they, you know, want to keep him on a tight leash till they know they can trust him? Scratch that. In logic land, The Doctor would never have brought Adam along at all!

Ben: Of course Adam was going to be interested in futuristic technology!! And then he was consigned to a future of being prodded and probed and reverse engineered. Yes, he got greedy, but he was the equivalent of a kid in a candy store in this episode. His guardians are the ones who should be shouldering the blame here. My final thought is, why even bring Adam into this episode if they didn’t have an interesting idea for how to use him?

Maureen: Rather! Also, the script is just plain predictable. It’s telegraphed a mile off that Adam is up to no good and will try to use his future knowledge for his own capitalist gain. It’s obvious something bad will happen to him (the cute dog whining at the sound of Adam’s voice on the answering machine made that obvious, and it was shown not once, but twice). And anyone who isn’t totally moronic aka Adam would trust Tamsin Greig nurse lady as far as they could throw her. Speaking of Tamsin Greig, her entire performance was off. Was she going for sexy? For funny? For creepy? Who knows? I doubt even she knew. And as to the episode’s ending, the tone is all wrong. Were we meant to feel sorry for Adam? Were we meant to laugh at him? Were we meant to feel vindicated? Who knows RTD.

The Doctor

Ben: I don’t really have much to say about the Doctor in this episode. He was okay. He solved the mystery, saved the day, and then left the mess to be cleaned up by other people. I didn’t mind this so much in World War Three, because Harriet Jones was quite capable of handling things herself. But in this case Cathica is quite right in stating that no one is going to believe what happened here.

Maureen: Nope. She’s a woman AND black. Unless social structures have changed any by the year 200 000. I doubt it.

Ben: I guess the Doctor isn’t really a fan of being there for the long haul. But then to cap things off, he was quite happy to leave Adam to his own devices (which left Adam with a head full of futuristic technology), and then blamed him for ending up over his head in an extremely alien environment! The worst part is that the Doctor and Rose didn’t care they were damning Adam to a fairly miserable life at the end of the episode. Yes, Adam got greedy, but where was the Doctor to keep him in line? At least some acceptance of responsibility would have been appreciated.

Maureen: I can’t disagree with Ben on that either, though two positives to end this section on from me. I did like the emphasis on Nine as a more sexual Doctor (shown when he is cool with Suki hugging him and looks like he kind of enjoys it and also the fan fic hand cuffs scene with him and Rose). And Nine’s lines about being a tourist rocked.

Nine: The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can’t just read the guide book. You’ve got to throw yourself in, eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers – or is that just me?

So true, Doctor!

Alien of the Week

Maureen: Simon Pegg is… adequate… I guess? What a waste of a role for him too. So he’s a banker. That’s nice. Somehow he makes money out of propaganda news and supporting The Jagrafess who wants… who knows? The episode never makes that clear.

Ben: Ahh, the cheap special effects are back this week. I know that this was made in the early 2000s, but you know what else was? Lord of the Rings. Special effects aside, the Jagrafess didn’t really make sense as the big bad. Why is it living on the roof of a space station for 3000 years of its lifespan? How is this preferable to where it normally lives? How does it benefit from this arrangement it has with the Editor and the consortium of banks he represents? Why does controlling the information benefit banks in the long run? And in a slight aside, how does Cathica use the information transfer system they use to package the news to control the space station’s heating systems? There’s a lot of plot holes and poor explanations in this episode.

Maureen: Also, far too much pastiche. It’s 1984! No! Simon Pegg and his frozen people keyed into the space station channels are Minority Report. No! Suki, Cathica and co. are like Scarlet Johanssen and Ewan McGregor in The Island. Wait! It’s kind of like Seven/Ace meta stories like The Happiness Patrol… except far more boring and with far less to say. What a mess!!!

Final Thoughts

Maureen: This is it. Right here. The point where all of RTD’s excesses are truly revealed for the first time. There were elements in Aliens of London, but this here is the real McCoy. We got the kitchen sink. Check. We got The Doctor being an arsehole and getting away with it narratively because… well… he’s the Doctor. Check. We got nonsensical plots. Check. We got humour that isn’t funny. Check. We got inane, empty dialogue that goes nowhere and means nothing. Check. Urgh. The last line in my notebook on this episode is ‘HORRIBLE EPISODE. HORRIBLE.’ It gets worse the more I think about it. 1/10 inky stars.

Ben: Look. This episode was bad. Real bad. It feels like they threw everything at the wall to see what stuck, and decided they really liked the look of the stained mess that was left on the wall. It was convoluted, confusing, the jokes didn’t land, and Adam existed. The world they created was interesting, which makes it all the worst because they could have done a really interesting story about propaganda – the great human empire and it’s one news source. But no. I give it 1/10.

Next week at least we have Father’s Day, which by both my memory and by all accounts is halfway decent. Regular Who programming to resume at InkAshlings next week.

So, how did this one hold up? I originally rated this one pretty high on a re-watch a few years back on livejournal. Alas, this time round the fart jokes, the fat shaming and the strange character beats were not so appealing for this little birdie. On the plus side, we get introduced to Harriet Jones and the second episode has some interesting and funny moments.

Pre-Title Sequence

Maureen: I liked the opening to Aliens of London. It set the tone (perhaps a little misleadingly) for a fun adventure romp on earth with The Doctor and Rose and continued the theme of The Doctor driving the TARDIS poorly. Suddenly, the series 5 River/Doctor about River driving the TARDIS better is a whole lot funnier… the second episode had little original in its opening to commend itself to me.

Ben: For a two-parter that ended up being inconsistent in quality, we had a hell of an opening in this first episode. After a short recap of Rose, Mickey and Jackie’s adventures so far, we land back on Earth so that Rose can visit her mum. The Doctor assures her that it’s only been 12 hours since she first left with the Doctor, however the Doctor can’t drive the TARDIS and it turns out it has in fact been 12 MONTHS. Whoops. Cue title sequence!

The second episode’s pre-title sequence was mostly a recap, but I did appreciate the smooth transition into the episode proper, literally picking up where they left off last episode with the Doctor and the other alien experts being electrocuted. I guess it is a good thing Rose didn’t get in to the meeting, or she’d be toast. Luckily for the Doctor, Time Lords are made of sturdier stuff, so he’s able to pull off the electrocution lanyard and turn it on to the Slitheen. Aaaand, cue title sequence. It’s nothing special…

The Companion/s

Maureen: Now that we’re back on earth, RTD moves beyond Rose as companion to add in a companion who never was (but could have been) in Harriet Jones, as well as the Mickey and Jackie team (I like to imagine that the whole River/Amy/Rory team was a response to how poorly these two were handled by RTD). There’s a lot of people to juggle when you throw in the alien of the week and The Doctor too, but for the first ten minutes of Aliens of London and most of World War Three, RTD pulls it off.

I’m not sold on the actress playing Jackie Tyler, but I sympathized with her concern for Rose, who on earth has essentially become a missing person case with Mickey, the black boyfriend prime suspect. It’s a shame RTD couldn’t leave this story open-ended a little longer, as it would have been an interesting theme to explore over multiple episodes, but as it is, it feels pretty surface level. I did love Jackie stitching The Doctor with a well-aimed slap and that we saw her trauma and sadness over Rose vanishing with a strange man without warning. In World War Three, she is a vehicle to remind us of the dangers of travelling with The Doctor when she asks him if her daughter will be safe. The Doctor never answers…

Mickey fairs less well in the two-parter, but especially in the first episode. I don’t know that it’s the actor’s fault, but Mickey sounds whiny when he says The Doctor ruined his life (probably because we never see how Mickey’s life has changed sans Doctor in the story). At least Mickey found UNIT (even if they seem a little rusty on dealing with alien invasion despite their numerous cases in classic Who) to gain some agency back and shows presence of mind to run away from The Slitheen when he sees they are outnumbered (sometimes being a coward is useful). In World War Three, I found myself more sympathetic towards Mickey mainly because he does more. Despite Jackie’s year of suspicion toward Mickey, it is he that saves her and promises to protect her no matter what (showing he genuinely cares about more than just Rose as someone to bonk), he gets a picture of The Slitheen that attacked Jackie and sends it to The Doctor for identification and formulation of an actual plan and hacks the Royal Navy to destroy Westminster.

Random aside: Moffat is known for riffing stories, especially previous Who stories, and I noticed the way The Doctor said ‘Mickey the idiot. The world is in your hands. Fire’ is reflected in The Eleventh Hour in the below exchange between Eleven and Jeff:

DOCTOR: Listen to me. In ten minutes, you’re going to be a legend. In ten minutes, everyone on that screen is going to be offering you any job you want. But first, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working. This is it, Jeff, right here, right now. This is when you fly. Today’s the day you save the world.
JEFF: Why me?
DOCTOR: It’s your bedroom. Now go, go, go.

Nine tears people down because he is all ego and trauma and pain. Eleven builds people up and gives them agency to fly. God, how I wish Eleven had met Mickey.

In the end, Mickey is offered a space in The TARDIS at least, but he turns it down, claiming coward to the end. I’m not sure I bought this. He has shown himself to be no coward, but maybe he feels responsibility to earth and protecting it from the aliens he knows are now out there (whether through UNIT or someone else) or maybe he knows he needs to let Rose go.

And what of Rose? She doesn’t do much this two-parter, with Harriet Jones getting the best ‘aha’ moments. Still, Rose is the one who figures out how The Doctor, Harriet and her can survive Mickey’s bomb blast. I wasn’t a fan of her violent responses to the alien invasion or flippant weight loss joke (and nor was Harriet) and I hated her false statements to Mickey about missing him and caring for him (come on, Rose. You clearly don’t.)

And at last I get to Harriet Jones. God, how I loved her. I truly felt like she was so fully realised she could have been a companion. I love that she’s a small town MP with brains and heart and the persistence of an old school investigative journalist. I love that she tells Rose where to get off. I love that The Doctor passes his alcohol vial to her before Rose. I love that somehow she finishes the story as PM.

Ben: Okay, there’s a lot to cover here with companions. First Rose, then Mickey, then Jackie, then Harriet Jones. But really, Mickey got all the good bits in these episodes.

Rose is something of an observer for most of these episodes, with everything happening around her. Mostly it’s her mum having a very understandable reaction to her only daughter vanishing for a year and then not telling her where she’s been. She really is caught between a rock and a hard place there, I’m not sure what I would say in her situation at all. But once the alien spaceship crash lands in London she doesn’t really do much other than argue with Jackie and Mickey. World War Three opens with her and Harriet being chased by a Slitheen, only to be quickly reunited with the Doctor. From then on, all she does is emote and react to the events occurring around her.

I was surprised to find myself liking Mickey in these episodes! It’s clear he’s had a rough year, Jackie accusing him of Rose’s disappearance is no easy thing to shake off. Yes he was a bit of a dick to everyone in the first episode, but I think that’s a fair reaction all things considered. Plus the Doctor is still being a dick to him for no good reason. He really comes into things during World War Three, first trying to protect Jackie, and then being the Doctor’s man on the computer. He gets a bad case of the technobabble, but what’s a Doctor Who episode without some nonsense scifi talk. Mass murder aside, he’s become a much better character by the end of the episode, you can see more of the Mickey that joins Unit and less of the whiney boy. Plus, coming to an understanding with the Doctor means hopefully they can move on from the ridiculous name calling.

Similarly, Jackie didn’t do much after the first 15 minutes of Aliens of London. She got to ask some very pointed questions about where Rose has been for the last year, and who in the fresh hell this Doctor is. (YOU HAVE A TIME MACHINE, JUST GO BACK 12 MONTHS AND SAVE YOURSELF THE TROUBLE) Then in World War Three after being saved from a Slitheen in a bit of an odd scene involving pickled foodstuffs, her primary role is to worry about Rose, whether she is safe and whether the Doctor can keep her safe. Which, as Rose’s mum, are very reasonable questions to ask. What is very ominous and foreboding is the Silence (heh) the Doctor responds with. We also get to see how fiercely protective she is of her only daughter when she threatens to stop Mickey launching the missile because there’s the risk Rose will get hurt. By the end of the episode she’s begging her daughter to stay, promising to go back to school and get a job in the hopes of keeping Rose on Earth. Not to be down on Jackie, but I think I’d choose travelling space over every day life on Earth too.

Finally, Harriet Jones. She really was my favourite thing to come from these episodes. She didn’t do a great deal besides observe proceedings along with Rose, but her no-nonsense attitude, intelligence and charisma were great on screen. Also of note, Harriet had one of my favourite lines of the episode in “you pass to the left first” when the Doctor goes to pass her a decanter of alcohol so she could have her last drink. I look forward to seeing more of her in episodes to come! She truly was the sanest companion of the lot!

The Doctor

Maureen: Aside from the first ten minutes of Aliens of London where The Doctor was funny and adventure-filled (shown in the ‘did you know this was gonna happen? Nope’ exchange, the joy on The Doctor’s face as he steered alone in the TARDIS and the ‘never put a man in front of a lift’ quote), I spent a lot of time disliking him. He emotionally blackmailed Rose constantly to continue journeying with him, insisted on calling Mickey Ricky for no good reason, continued to call Mickey an idiot and demean him in front of others, especially Rose, and generally was a bit of a dick.

Another Moffat riff I noticed comes from this episode. In the Series 10 finale, Twelve makes this speech to The Master:

Twelve: I’m not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone, because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right! Because it’s decent! And above all, it’s kind!

Compare to Nine speaking to Rose and Harriet as a dreadful decision must be made…

Nine: It’s not fun. It’s not smart. It’s just standing up and making a decision.

Final note on The Doctor: Thank God he finally lays off mocking Mickey by two-parter’s end! I get the sense he has learnt to respect Mickey, even if he’ll never like him.

Ben: I oscillated a lot between like and dislike over these episodes when it came to the Doctor. For starters, he constantly treats Mickey with disdain until he has a use for him. I’m not sure if it’s because of Rose related jealousy, but this behaviour just isn’t cute. At least by the end of the episode they reach something of an understanding, but that involved turning Mickey into a mass murderer by having him launch a missile into 10 Downing Street.

We get a lot of scenes of the Doctor investigating and problem solving and just generally being the Doctor, which were fine, but not particularly inspiring. The investigating the alien body which turns out to be a transformed pig only seems to happen as an excuse to get The Doctor to leave without Rose, furthering the conflict between Rose, Mickey, and Jackie. Things pick up in the second episode when he locks himself, Rose, and Harriet in the Cabinet Room, and we get some good banter, great emotional moments, and some excellent Doctoring moments. The part where he admits he can’t keep Rose safe was a really But do the good Doctor moments of World War Three balance out the mostly bad Doctor moments from Aliens in London? What really sealed it as a no from me is when, right at the end of the episode when Jackie is begging Rose to stay, he pulls some cheap emotional manipulation to make sure she comes along with him.

Alien of the Week

Maureen: I noticed a couple of things about the aliens of the week to comment on. The less said about the fat shaming and the fart jokes the better…

1. Their ultimate plan is quite similar to Cassandra, also a villain from an RTD penned episode. The Slitheen want to destroy earth to sell it for fuel. Ingenious. What this says about RTD’s neuroses I’m not sure.
2. It’s interesting that The Slitheen take over key positions in UK society (PM, head of MI6, head of the military etc.) The PM, especially, is flippant and into bodily fluids and earthy feelings. He says he had a wife, a mistress and a farmer and that he wants to escape his body and get naked. Again, not sure what RTD was saying about politics or about sexuality here.
3. The Slitheen were much scarier in the second episode, as they stalked Rose and Harriet especially. The pig/human hybrid alien was just weird in episode one and I wasn’t keen on the electrocution scene.

Ben: The Slitheen really were a mixed bag, there’s not much else to say. They had a pretty good plan overall, turning the Earth into a nuclear slag to sell off as fuel. I feel like as an advanced alien species there would have been much easier ways to go about it though. If Mickey can hack into and launch a nuke (buffalo as a password, really?), I feel like the Slitheen could probably manage that too. What really weighed down the performances were the bad fart jokes, and over use of special effects. Less is more, BBC! They did have some moments of being truly intimidating, such as when one of them was hunting Rose and Harriet Jones in World War Three. But overall, they ended up being a bit more silly than scary. They had all this amazing technology, and the first part of Aliens of London really set them up well as being a real threat, this was an enemy who was able to set up significant diversions. But when it came to actually meeting the Slitheen… the follow through was disappointing. And in the end, no one actually checked to see if there were any Slitheen survivors before declaring the missile strike a success? Who knows, maybe they’ll make a return later on…

Final Thoughts

Maureen: I thought this was a kitchen sink mess for the most part, with many series regulars doing unlikable things and displaying unlikable attitudes, especially in Aliens of London which got a measly 2 stars from me. The second episode lifted its game, but not enough to salvage the truly awful first act with a solid 7/10 stars. Aliens of London/World War Three: 5/10 inky stars.

Ben: Look, it wasn’t a great two-parter, I really think they could have done better with the idea. I’m imagining a spy thriller of some form where they go back 12 months to correct the Doctor’s driving mistake and come across the Slitheen when they’ve just landed on Earth and are scoping it out/in the initial planning stages. Something more Animorphs-esque, perhaps. Anyways, I should quit before I write that whole thing out. At least we got another Bad Wolf reference? I give Aliens of London a 4/10, and World War Three a 7/10. Overall, 6/10 inky stars.