Maureen Flynn - Author
Ah, Mark Gatiss. What variable episodes you write. I always like his period piece Who episodes best, and back in the day I loathed The Idiot’s Lantern. Maybe it was just that the previous two-parter was so, so terrible, but this time around I didn’t…
Oh, man. Warning to all: I loved this two-parter as a teen when the show first aired, but oh my how the suck fairy visited this two-parter in Ben’s and my re-watch. I was so disappointed by how much I disliked this. On the plus…
YAY!!! THE SARAH-JANE SMITH MEETS BUFFY GILES EPISODE. IN A SCHOOL. I wonder where Clara and Class got it from? Also, K9. Oh, and Mickey and Rose are somewhere in the episode. Don’t forget them!
The Pre-title Sequence
Ben: It’s what’s his face from BBC Merlin! Oh, and Buffy too, I guess. I found this title sequence to be pretty standard fare. It gives you a good idea of what to expect from the episode – a school setting, an evil principal, and The Doctor as a teacher!
Ten: Good morning, class. Are we sitting comfortably?
Maureen: A third wall audience shout-out if ever I heard one! I quite enjoyed The Doctor wearing glasses and teaching kids in suitable frenetic style. I wonder if Clara teaching Jane Austin in the Capaldi era was influenced by this episode?
Giles was seriously ominous.
Mr Finch (upon discovering the student outside his office was an orphan): No one to miss you. You poor child… thing… child.
The Companion/s
Ben: Miserable lunch lady Rose amused me greatly, particularly considering how poorly she treats Sarah-Jane later on in the episode. It’s like karma in advance. Although I do appreciate she got to do some investigating of her own.
Maureen: I thought it was also ironic that Rose escaped a life of chip eating and shitty retail jobs to travel with The Doctor, but in this adventure mundanity still catches her up. At least, Rose figures out something is suss with the chips… especially after a lunch lady is doused in it and an ambulance isn’t called as she screams and screams behind closed blinds! This whole episode reminded me very much of the TV show, Goosebumps, in terms of the ‘horror that’s relatable to young people’ fare. Young, nerdy Miles blowing up the school and the aliens to cheers from his classmates is one such example.
Anyway, Rose was fine to start with this episode, but her jealous swipes at Sarah-Jane over her past relationship with The Doctor can go die in a deep vat of spitting hot oil. Now I’m no longer a teen, Rose’s behavior isn’t relatable. It’s bitchy, needy and shows she defines herself through her romantic and sexual relationships with men. Her digs at other women can fuck right on off. Give it a rest already, RTD!
Ben: Yes, I agree. I understand there’s going to be some turbulence in having an old companion meet a current companion, but this whole ex-girlfriend meeting the new girlfriend-esque bickering is just immature.
Maureen: It’s sexist, thoughtless writing and it can go die in a hole. I suspect the only reason such scenes were includes in School Reunion were to reinforce to the viewer how important and special Rose is and how her and Ten have twu-love to move mountains or some such shit. I was relieved when Sarah-Jane and Rose finally bonded towards the end of the episode, even if their bonding was still in relation to The Doctor.
Ben: Onwards! Poor Mickey is still far too attached to Rose. His realisation that he’s basically the K9 of the Ten/Rose/Mickey trio was apt, considering he ends up being about as useful as K9. And K9 doesn’t make snide remarks about how Rose should lay off the chips if she wants to keep The Doctor…
Maureen: Yeah, that was a low moment from Mickey. Every time he redeems himself, he does or says something petty and jealous to try and win Rose back. Unappealing! Ten and Mickey arguing about Mickey being afraid of dead rats echoed the bickering of Sarah-Jane and Rose and was just as irritating. Stop trying to one-up each other, folks! It’s turning into Doctor Who Eastenders!
Ben: Now, having not watched any of Classic Who I’m not at all familiar with the character of Sarah-Jane Smith, but from the moment she laid eyes on the TARDIS I was invested. The emotional journey she goes through this episode is compelling, to say the least.
Maureen: I’d seen bits of Baker/Sarah-Jane here and there. Sarah-Jane reminded me in this episode of Harriet Jones in how she goes undercover as a journalist to dig up an alien plot. I enjoyed her spunk. When she realises Ten is a Doctor you feel her unresolved trauma and pain.
Sarah-Jane: I waited for you and I thought you’d died. You didn’t come back… did I do something wrong coz you just dumped me? You were my life.
Aside: echoes of Amy Pond? But this speech serves to remind the viewer of the alien danger of The Doctor. He’s alluring, yes, but time marches on and so must he. He ditches Sarah-Jane for Aberdeen, Scotland and doesn’t mention her again (or at least he hasn’t to Rose).
Ben: This reunion has re-opened some old and deep wounds. And this is something we’ve seen before, with The Doctor leaving mess after mess behind after he’s done saving the day. The Doctor really isn’t that great at follow ups. At least Sarah Jane gets the ending she deserves from the start – finally she can move on with her life. She is offered the chance to travel with The Doctor, but instead she’s going to start living for herself.
Maureen: I wasn’t a fan of the ending’s implication that Sarah-Jane is this sexless, love-lorn Doctor fan-girl, but I liked that she said no to further TARDIS travel and like Martha and later Amy decided to stop waiting.
The Doctor
Ben: My first impression of this episode is that if I hear The Doctor say the word ‘physics’ again it’ll be too soon. The second impression I got was how creepy kids who know things they shouldn’t are. Answering physics questions in a deadpan voice is not quite ‘twins playing in a hotel corridor’ levels of creepy, but it’s up there. And then Sarah-Jane Smith comes along and sweeps The Doctor off his feet! It’s not often we get to see The Doctor dumbfounded, but it was well worth it. Their second meeting was just as emotionally charged, but this time they’re on equal footing; this John Smith really is /her/ John smith.
Maureen: This episode showed the beginning of Ten’s real descent into the last of the Time Lord’s lonely God damage. Take this conversation between him and Rose:
Rose Tyler: I’ve been to the year five million, but this, this is really seeing the future- you just leave us behind! Is that what you’re going to do to me?
The Doctor: No. Not you.
Rose Tyler: But, Sarah Jane- you were that close to her once, and now… you never even mention her. Why not?
The Doctor: I don’t age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone you…
Rose Tyler: What, Doctor?
The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone. That’s the curse of the Timelords.
It makes one wonder what The Doctor would have done with Rose had the Series Two finale not happened!
Ben: The Doctor’s confrontation with the leader of the Krillitane, Mr Finch, was quite charged, and then he gives The Doctor the chance to join with him! I guess with the power of this God Maker plus a Time Lord they’ll be able to rule the universe or something.
Maureen: Yeah, I was pretty confused at Mr Finch’s motivations at this point too. My notebook simply says, ‘huh? O.K.’ On the plus side, Anthony Head was great as Mr Finch and delivered his lines so beautifully I didn’t care I couldn’t figure his character out.
Mr Finch: Your people were peaceful to the point of indolence.
Ten: I used to have so much mercy.
Ben: Luckily Sarah-Jane has wise words of wisdom to say about how everything has to move on, and that pain and suffering is part of existing, and The Doctor snaps out of his daydream and smashes a tv screen.
Sarah-Jane: No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it’s a world, or a relationship… Everything has its time. And everything ends.
It’s all very dramatic and doesn’t make much sense. I’m not entirely sure what this episode was trying to focus on? I definitely think it was a case of biting off more than they can chew. Why not focus on The Doctor struggling with the idea of being in control of this God Maker code? Now that would have been an interesting episode. Anyways this episode ends with the Doctor finally saying a proper goodbye to Sarah Jane Smith and presenting her with a new and improved K9. Shame he didn’t change the voice too. To say K9’s voice grates on the ears is an understatement.
The Alien of the Week
Ben: Even though you know the principal is up to No Good, we’re left with more questions than answers for the first chunk of School Reunion. E.g. Surely you’d find a more secure way to transport a mysterious dangerous substance than a rickety old trolley; why the obsession with the chips? And finally, why are kids frantically mashing keyboards whilst staring blankly at creepy green screens while dramatic music plays in the background? Oh, and why are the kids freakishly smart, I guess.
Maureen: I thought the freakishly smart thing was explained! It was because of what was in the lunch chips! And the kids were mashing keyboards to break the Skasis Paradigm. Because aliens had reasons?
Ben: After some creepy night-time investigating the gang discovers that these mysterious aliens are in fact Krillitanes – an alien race that takes on traits of races they conquer. And they’re doing something to the children in the school! Other than eating them, as we saw in the intro. I had a couple of issues with the evil plot these Krillitane have come up with, particularly how well integrated the Principal is after being on Earth for all of three months? He knows about orphanages and the Sunday Times, and how to successfully make small talk with a journalist. Their nefarious scheme to crack the Skasis Paradigm – the God Maker – didn’t really make sense to me. How exactly are these schoolkids cracking it? All it looks like they’re doing is mashing their keyboards while a weird green screen of technobabble flashes in front of them. Plus, I take issue with the fact that they need kids to do it because they need their imagination. Plenty of adults have great imaginations and pure souls, or whatever else the Doctor thinks they need. And if it was such an easy thing to crack, this code to the universe, surely the Time Lords would have done it ages ago.
Maureen: The Skasis Paradigm thing was so much what?!? A mcguffin if ever I watched one!
Ben: Anyways, the way they’re defeated is very Superman and kryptonite – the aliens have changed their own physiology so much that oil native to their planet is now toxic to them. Sure. And for some reason they explode so violently upon contact with this oil the schoolkids think the school has been blown up and celebrate. It’s a very strange ending.
Maureen: It was a very noisy ending that doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, that’s for sure!
Final Thoughts
Ben: Overall, this was a very average episode of Doctor Who. I loved Sarah Jane Smith’s arc, I hated the frenetic keyboard smashing the kids did when they were hacking the universe. But overall it was just a bit too… vague for me. It felt like they came up with the idea of wanting a Sarah Jane episode and then shoehorned the rest to fit. I dunno, maybe the script needed another round of refinement. And less K9. I liked a lot of individual ideas in this episode, but the coming together left a lot to be desired. I’m giving it a 5/10.
Maureen: The overall episode tone reminded me of another RTD penned script in a crime show called Touching Evil. The elements just didn’t come together and whether intentional or otherwise, hints of nastiness bled in the script to make the episode mean. I feel like the same thing happened with School Reunion. Bringing Sarah Jane back was a great idea, but RTD ran into trouble with the Ten/Rose ship and explaining Sarah Jane’s meaning to The Doctor which led to un-neccessary female to female nastiness. And I agree Mr Finch’s plan made little sense. 6/10 inky stars
Ah yes. The episode where Torchwood begins. Where Rose spends an episode trying to get Queen Victoria to say she is not amused. Where there’s werewolves and it’s 2006 when the Twilight Saga is huge! Bring it, baby! The Pre-Title Sequence Ben: This was a…
Let us launch into the new Doctor’s Series proper with a return of an old foe, an old friend and some ‘interesting’ fan fic style script shenanigans. Again, this is one of those episodes I’ve always remembered from high school. I didn’t like it then…
Ah, the infamous Christmas specials of Doctor Who, loved and loathed in equal measure, but this time was the first time. We were innocent and knew not what was coming that first Tennant Christmas when Santas’ and trees and Sycarax came calling…
The Pre-Title Sequence
Ben: Is it bad the main thing I took from this episode is that the Tenth Doctor is just as bad a driver as the Ninth?
Maureen: Dude, you’re fixated!
Ben: Also, I’m a sucker for a scene where they reference the name of the show.
Maureen: Me too, actually. It got a bit much in the Moff years, but in this episode I admit I grinned.
Ben: Jackie ends up providing great comedic moments in this episode (anything else he’s got two of?), and boy does she start off strong! Also, the Doctor and Rose made it back to London in time for Christmas!
Maureen: God, I love the opening for a new Doctor. The long shot of earth, then we dive in close as Murray Gold’s bombastic score plays, the world spinning. Interesting note: both Mickey and Jackie come running the second they hear the TARDIS, like perhaps they’ve held out for its sound…
The Companion/s
Ben: Rose is firing all cylinders from the get go this episode, although to be honest things like checking the Doctor’s heartbeat might have been impressive to Mickey and Jackie, but she really has no idea what she’s doing. A similar moment happened when she was suspicious of the creepy Santas’ at the shops. Clearly, she’s picked some stuff up as the Doctor’s companion, but without him she can only react to events.
Maureen: I’ve reviewed my notes and I’ve penned and underlined the following: I want Rose’s jacket. But in all seriousness, Rose didn’t do much this episode except whine that The Doctor wasn’t her Doctor. To be fair, this fits with her teen character profile, and RTD probably needed to play this up to make sure the New Who audience accepted Tennant as the new Doctor. More irritating was Rose’s ongoing insistence that she and others were worth nothing without The Doctor:
Mickey: What do we do?
Rose: Nothing. There’s no one to save us.
I get that RTD needed to sell us the enormity of The Doctor saving the day in record time, but it sucked that he chose to do that by making the companions agentless. I mean, has Rose seriously learnt so little from The Doctor she can’t think of anything to do but run away as the apocalypse falls (compare Rose in this episode to Martha in Season Three when she walks around the earth resisting The Master with nothing but a story damn it!).
Ben: She’s had the carpet pulled out from under her fairly dramatically. She goes through a few of the stages of mourning The Doctor; anger, sadness, before finally accepting that he’s gone. The scene where Rose finally broke down paired with the alien ship arriving felt profoundly apocalyptic. And of course, without the Doctor, hiding in the TARDIS makes excellent sense. (Maureen interjection: speak for yourself, Ben)Although you’d need a lot of food to be able to wait out the apocalypse. Unfortunately, for Rose, Mickey, and the Doctor, this is the moment the TARDIS gets taken aboard the Sycorax ship.It is only when The Doctor is behind Rose that she feels she can make her speech to The Sycarax. I did adore Rose’s last ditch attempt to emulate the Doctor and send the Sycorax on their way, it’s a shame it was played as a comedic moment…
Maureen: Yes, she makes her pretty speech, but it’s still The Doctor who saves the day. I know I sound like a whiny brat, but The Doctor as savior trope REALLY annoys me.
Ben: Jackie was one of my favourite characters this episode, taking on the role of comic relief like a champion. Her panicked exchange with the Doctor as she’s trying to figure out what he needs without letting him talk had me giggling something awful. I’m not always a fan of Jackie, but this episode would have been much grimmer without her.
Maureen: I loved that scene too! Who doesn’t enjoy Jackie being told to shut-up by The Doctor. There was Jackie’s proof Ten hadn’t changed all that much from Nine.
Ben: But Harriet Jones was by far my favourite character this episode. From flirting with her right-hand man to dealing with an imminent alien invasion with a no-nonsense, practical approach, Harriet represents some of my favourite elements of Doctor Who. I loved her shutdown of the American President, and that she didn’t place all her hope in The Doctor coming to save the day. As we saw last season with the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, he has a tendency to swan off once he thinks the day has been saved. In short, Harriet is a badass who stands up to terrifying aliens without breaking a sweat.
Maureen: I love Harriet Jones too. I thought she stuck around for way longer and got this sinking feeling in my stomach when I realised where The Christmas Invasion leaves her. She’s wound up leading Britain’s Golden Age, and is calm and professional in the face of alien invasion. I loved the caustic humour in some of her lines:
Harriet Jones: It’s hardly the Queen’s Speech. I’m afraid that’s been cancelled.
Then she finds out the Royal Family are mind-controlled, about to jump off a roof… and Harriet is teleported onto the Sycarax spaceship. She begs them for understanding, yet they show none.
Harriet Jones: Children who need help. Children who need compassion.
What choice does this alien race give her? Surrender and be sold into slavery or die. Let’s be real now… who wouldn’t have made the choice she made at episode’s end?
Ben: Yes, she’s the defender of the human race we deserve, not The Doctor. Yes, she does end up making a public plea for The Doctor to help, but only as an absolute last resort. But then, after that emotional plea she’s immediately back to business, calmly recognising she was being teleported while everyone else was panicking. I also LOVED the “yes, we know who you are” exchange with the Sycorax. What an sublime joke. Unfortunately, things come to a rather enraging end with Harriet. Authorising Torchwood to destroy the Sycorax ship was definitely an aggressive step to take, but it was well reasoned by Harriet. The way the Doctor punished her for this, taking away her Prime Ministership was so ugly, and not at all justified in my opinion.
Maureen: I completely agree. It annoyed me as a teen. It has annoyed me on every subsequent re-watch. It’s the same bullshit that was pulled in Season Eight in Kill The Moon when the story hated on Hermione Norris’ character for choosing killing the moon, despite the fact it was a perfectly reasonable choice to make. Based on the duplicitous and violent way The Sycarax dealt not just with humanity, but with The Doctor and based on The Doctor’s flippant remarks that ‘you’re getting noticed more and more. You better get used to it,’ and that he can’t promise he’ll always be around to protect earth, why on earth shouldn’t Harriet have destroyed the space ship of murderous nut job alients? Or is it just that RTD has an issue with women in power going against the whim of The Doctor?
The Doctor
Ben: Talk about a rough regeneration! All this talk of neural implosions and brain collapse was very dramatic, and all remedied with a cup of tea! (You know, I think I had the same thing a couple of times when I wanted the day off school.) It isn’t until the last twenty minutes of the episode that he actually has his moment. I wonder if it were a scheduling issue?
Maureen: I’m not sure it was. I think it was a way to build up to The Doctor in action reveal and give the audience time to mourn the loss of Nine alongside Rose. Moffat pulls a similar conceit with The Eleventh Hour (albeit more successfully in my opinion).
Ben: Anyways, I did like the scenes of the Doctor discovering who he his in this new body, up to a point. Beyond that it just became silly. I’m perhaps comparing this regeneration to Eleven’s a bit too much, but these scenes of self discovery became a bit much.
Maureen: I was pleasantly surprised actually. It’s no secret that Ten is without a doubt one of my least favourite Doctor’s (and I include Classic Who in that assessment), but I found him quite funny for most of the episode. AND HE QUOTED THE LION KING. AND MENTIONED MEETING ARTHUR DENT. What’s not to love?
Ben: I didn’t at all like the sword fight, and while I did like Ten’s speech about the earth being protected, I think Eleven did it better in his debut episode.
Maureen: Oh yes, me too. Eleven had such a lovely debut though.
Ben: And then we get to the bit I hated about this episode, as The Doctor, enraged at the measures Harriet Jones took to defend the Earth, engineers a petty revenge, setting up Harriet to lose the Prime Ministership. I hated it, especially when it’s been established in earlier episodes that The Doctor can be something of an unreliable protector. For me, this end really brought down what had been an excellent episode of Doctor Who, and really left a sour taste in my mouth.
Maureen: God I hate this ending so very fucking much. From the sword fight on I was reminded of all the reasons why I loathe Ten. He’s an action hero who has a compulsion to save everyone his way or the highway, and the story rewards him for it even when it’s completely unmerited. His dismissal of Harriet is mean and petty and God-like and sanctimonious and white man ego and the only good thing to come out of it is The Master getting the Prime Ministership later because of The Doctor’s shitty decision. Moving on…
The Alien of the Week
Maureen: YOU WANT CHRISTMAS SPECIAL? I’LL GIVE YOU CHRISTMAS SPECIAL, said RTD. That’s not a bad thing this first time round in my opinion. It was a bit silly, I guess, but overall I found the spinning Christmas tree and the Santa reconnaissance aliens and the Christmas dark apocalypse stuff fun and grim AT THE SAME TIME.
Ben: Look, for me, the creepy Santa’s and killer Christmas Tree were a bit much, but once we got past the pilot fish and met the metaphorical shark, the Sycorax, things got much more exciting. Their demands were pretty standard, all your base belong to us material, but what was particularly terrifying was their blood magic. I am curious to see what would have happened if one of the humans being controlled was physically blocked, because all they did was show distraught humans pleading with them to stop. It’s a great way to engineer a hostage situation, and what terrifying visuals it leads to. And their ship! Monstrous. Although it clearly marks them as being on the primitive side when it comes to aliens capable of interstellar travel and teleportation, as does their warlike behaviour and the restrictions of blood control. Despite that, they’re definitely more than humanity can handle. They came to something of a dishonourable end, being shot out of the sky as they’re leaving Earth, but considering their champion tried to cheat in the dual they don’t exactly come across as an honourable species. It is a bit morbid that the final shot of the episode was the people of Earth celebrating Christmas in the falling ash of a destroyed alien ship.
Maureen: I know right. Happy Christmas kids. HUMANITY IS GONNA JUMP OFF BUILDINGS IN A MASS SUICIDE ON CHRISTMAS DAY. BUT DON’T WORRY COZ EARTH IS SAVED BUT THE DOCTOR AND HIS COMPANIONS ARE PLAYING IN MURDERED ALIEN ASH. I’VE GOT THIS KIDDIES. TEN HAS FOUND HIS PINSTRIPE SUIT AND HIS CRACKER HAT. I’m seeing how Torchwood came out of RTD given this alien plan and the one in The Parting of the Ways.
Final Thoughts
Ben: Look, this is a really hard one to rate. Russell T Davies is just so inconsistent with his writing! The first forty minutes were really great, but once The Doctor arrived on the scene things started heading downhill at a fairly rapid pace. The final scenes with the demise of Harriet Jones really reminded me of how they treated Adam at the end of his storyline. Disappointing. I found it really hard to rate this episode, but I think I’m going to give it a 6.
Maureen: I’m with you Ben. I might have ranked this an 8 or 9 for sheer outrageous Whovian fun until Ten turned up for his sword fight and his crappy Harriet (doesn’t she look tired?) takedown. I’m going to go with a 6 too.
Strap on your seat belts! It’s finale time! Given how much I disliked Bad Wolf I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Parting of the Ways. Yes, even with the RTD literal deux ex machina and a host of Daleks playing the big…