TMC
07-07-2015, 04:02 AM
http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/publish/Peter_Dawson/When_Bad_Shows_Go_Good_The_9th_Doctor_Who.shtml
The History:
After Doctor Who was unofficially cancelled in 1989 (production was suspended and the show was effectively listed as being 'on hiatus') there were many that hoped the show would one day return. Attempts at a quasi-revival were made in both 1993 and 1996 with Dimensions in Time (a charity special that also featured the cast of EastEnders and was a mess) and The Enemy Within (AKA The TV Movie AKA the pilot movie that aired on Fox opposite the episode of Roseanne where Dan had a heart attack), but to no success. Ultimately it would be the Head of Drama for BBC Wales Julie Gardner ( Me and Mrs. Jones, Casanova) and a successful Welsh writer-producer named Russell T Davies ( Queer As Folk, Casanova) that revived the series, it being one of Julie Gardner's first assignments in 2003 when she got her job. The rights issues with the program were sorted out (the Fox pilot/movie from 1996 could be an arguable reason the current show couldn't have started development until 2003 thanks to licensing and such) and a talented pool of writers, directors and producers were gathered, including future important person Stephen Moffat. The first episode of the new series began airing March 26th, 2005. The first episode of the series received over 10 million viewers, the rest of the first series averaging roughly 7 million and it was nominated for several BAFTA awards, even winning Best Drama. That first series of New Who (or Series 1, since remember as a UK show its 'series' not 'season') is the subject today.
The Show:
Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) is a relatively normal eighteen year old girl: she lives with her single mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) in London, working at a shop and generally spending her days there or hanging out with her boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke). Then one day Rose discovers some of the mannequins in the building she works at have come to life, which is how she first met The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston). The Doctor is in fact an alien known as a Time Lord, a species that looks human (or maybe humans look Time Lord?) and have the ability to change their appearance when near death. Rose soon learns the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, his people having died in the Last Great Time War while fighting the Daleks. Still in mourning and full of anger, The Doctor travels through time and space using his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) to right wrongs, Rose joining him to see the wonders of the universe and help the Doctor's endless journey perhaps not be so lonely.
The Breakdown:
Right from the get-go Christopher Eccleston nails the character of The Doctor, and it's quite nice that his first line is simply, “Run!” Given Doctor Who is less about gunfights and more about people running around trying to outsmart threats it was clear that, no matter how modern the show had become, at least some elements of the program were relatively intact. Eccleston likewise does a good job being able to be both angry and child-like, possessing the energy needed to properly bring The Doctor to life. While capable of talking so fast you want to slap him, Eccleston was also able to convey all he needed with a single look or expression. While most Doctors end up constantly on the move the Ninth Doctor is arguably the most docile, only ever energetic when he chooses to be and otherwise the silent strategist, able to captivate rooms of people just by being there. The slow transformation the Doctor undergoes, with seemingly easy-going, to revealing his tragic history, to reveling in genuinely being able to be happy and save as many lives as he can. A major moment comes in the final episode of the series when The Doctor must choose if he'll essentially do what he considers the biggest regret of his life all over again, and the character journey we've seen, highlighted by the performance, feels very much satisfying when he refuses to act again, despite being pretty much screwed. The Ninth Doctor's role demanded a lot, and his actor was up to the task.
While The Doctor's a pretty good character Rose Tyler, not so much. Okay, I'm being a bit unfair. Rose does have a few qualities that are pretty solid, including being a solid everyman/everywoman as she tends to ask the right questions and, as we'll get to later, does help us see what can happen when one tries to over-exploit the TARDIS. Rose is basically at her best when she's an audience surrogate, asking the right questions, making solid enough quips and more than happy to interfere when it means helping people. We even see Rose does pick up a few things while hanging around The Doctor, which may not sound like much but considering there's a lot of shows I could name where a main character never learns a damn thing (and I don't mean the ones where that's by design) it's always nice to see. On the flipside, Rose has three qualities that are pretty damn annoying: she constantly ditches her loved ones without a word, is insanely selfish in general and when it comes to romance is a bit of a tool. In the pilot episode alone Rose ditches Mickey while he's trying to figure out what's going on to travel with The Doctor (this does bite her in the ass a few episodes later). We later learn a major reason Rose is on the journey with The Doctor is trying to save her father from his senseless death, and soon after Rose seems more or less comfortable just popping in an out of her mom's life with no real reaction to how its affecting her either. As for the romance thing, to sum up just Series 1: Rose is dating Mickey, ditches him to run around with the Doctor, meets a guy named Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley) from the not too distant future and messes around with him, dumps Adam after he tries to use time travel for personal profit (arguably the same reason Rose joined with The Doctor in the first place), started to fall for The Doctor, happily let Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) do his thing regardless of her blossoming feelings for The Doctor, then got jealous when Mickey mentioned he was seeing someone else. Now, time travel can certainly make a consistent relationship hard and I'm a firm believer in sexual liberation, but having a guy at home you want to constantly be there when you come home while overly more or less trying to get it on with all the guys you travel with is damn selfish.
So the first episode, Rose, is kind of a mixed bag. While the main threat would be a good sign of the great monsters to come (mannequins coming to life I'm sure is a nightmare many people have had), in general bits like Mickey getting replaced with a living plastic duplicate were quite goofy. The episode also establishes The Doctor had only recently regenerated from his previous incarnation (more on that in a couple of weeks), which is a weird continuity problem that took years to clear up, and even subtly. The recent regeneration seems odd since in the episode we meet a guy who has pictures and such of a guy who looks like The Doctor we see in the episode, but at different points in Earth's history. Yet it seems like those events happened before The Doctor showed up in the episode, in which he appears to see his reflection for the first time. The implication now is that the previous incarnation was 800 years old, and after Rose The Doctor mentions he's 900, implying that at the end of the episode, when Rose first rejects joining him on his adventures, he spent 100 years doing his thing before realizing, “I never told her this was a time machine, did I?” So that snarl covered, the episode does also do a good job showing that Doctor Who isn't above some dark humour (the conspiracy theorist dies right as he learns he was right) and that The Doctor won't willingly destroy, at least not without giving what he's facing a chance for a peaceful alternative. While striving to be a man of peace, The Doctor is certainly capable of being a man of pieces.
Moving right along, the first few episodes of the Ninth Doctor's single series kind of suck, though they are by no means unwatchable. The End of the World does do a good job showing just how weird time travel can be and establishes The Doctor's ability to upgrade cell phones, not to mention his psychic paper gadget and the fact that the TARDIS psychically translates spoken and written words for the travellers. On the other hand, the aliens featured were fairly goofy and some of the horrific deaths featured just didn't have the impact desired. Main villain Lady Cassandra (a human reduced to essentially skin thanks to her various operations to keep her 'healthy') was relatively lame too, and her death at the end was just gross. The Unquiet Dead did a decent job bringing in the idea of ghosts as explained in a universe that is ideally just science-fiction, plus it kicked off the ideas of The Doctor meeting historical figures and the concept of there being a rift in space-time under Cardiff (which is a key point in the plot of Torchwood as well as this show). Unfortunately the episode also has some pretty goofy moments, most blatantly when a clairvoyant named Gwyneth (played by future Torchwood cast member Eve Myles) utters the series's recurring arc words 'big bad wolf.' While 'bad wolf' eventually become to be significantly scary for people watching the show its first actual utterance here is pretty silly. Finally the two-parter Aliens of London/World War Three introduced the goofy alien family The Slitheen, who bafflingly managed to nearly destroy the world while constantly farting (I am NOT making that up). UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce or Unified Intelligence Taskforce) made its first appearance in New Who, only to casually have its representatives die, and Rose's reunion with Mickey ended up making him relatively annoying (it took a while for us to get why he's so clingy) and Rose's relatively nonplussed reaction to be unintentionally missing for a year did not help. These episodes are basically required viewing but they're hard to look back on fondly ( The Unquiet Dead's probably the best of the five).
Thankfully episode six of the series, Dalek, knocked it out of the part. Not only did the episode feature a familiar and extremely popular villain's return it firmly established just what had happened in the Last Great Time War (Time Lords versus Daleks with The Doctor destroying them all) but it offered the Ninth Doctor's best performance yet. The sometimes serious but still relatively comedic Doctor goes completely primal, practically foaming at the mouth when he taunts the apparent last surviving Dalek of the war. Rose does end up accidentally setting the Dalek free (which does result in a lot of people dying), but I'm more than willing to give her a pass on this since the Dalek was chained up by some rich megalomaniac American guy and, when told to destroy the creature by The Doctor, instead chains the Doc up. Additionally Rose's kindness stops The Doctor from killing the Dalek more or less in cold blood, healing the man who ideally is making the universe better through his adventures. A classic returning threat, seeing The Doctor at his worst and reminding us why Rose is actually useful make Dalek a must watch.
Next, after an encounter with Simon Pegg in The Long Game (a relatively bland episode but again required viewing since no episode in this series is truly a good idea to skip), we got Father's Day. Rose puts her plan to save her dad from his senseless death into action, resulting in probably the second-best episode of the series as Rose's dad Pete (Shaun Dingwall) ends up nearly destroying the world by living. Rose saves Pete from being hit by a car, resulting in a paradox that causes giant alien bat creatures (yeah a bit unnecessary but the BBC demanded monsters in every episode) trying their best to 'cauterize the wound caused to time itself.' Rose and The Doctor come into genuine conflict and he questions if the woman who, just a couple of episodes ago, saved him from his own darkness was really so great. Rose meanwhile is desperate to save her dad, and not only learns that Jackie had lied quite a bit to her as a kid about how great Pete was (he was a bit of a deadbeat), but comes to realize she just can't save him. The Doctor ends up giving his life to try and fix things, horrifying Rose (I'm sure she'll never be this selfish again, right?), and then, in the end, Pete nobly sacrifices himself to undo the damage and ensure time is no longer wounded. While all the deaths are undone we get an episode where events weren't simply reset, and we learned that despite being a deadbeat Pete Tyler was arguably one of the bravest men of all.
The last few episodes form a tight arc that are also excellent, with the incredibly terrifying The Empty Child-The Doctor Dances two-parter also introducing Captain Jack Harkness (before he was insufferable) and looking at ideas like other time travelers and how even innocent creations are capable of great evil if unchecked. Boom Town is a pretty solid follow-up to the Slitheen episodes in that we see The Doctor stuck with potentially being the equivalent of an executioner, even if he won't be the one dropping the blade, and we see Jack, Rose and The Doctor working well as a team (though Mickey is really kind of pathetic in this one). Bad Wolf-The Parting of Ways then offer some pretty insane mood whiplash as what starts as a parody of reality television (only with DEATH) ends up being the finale of the Ninth Doctor's lone series, with the Daleks returning in force and The Doctor faced with the same no-win scenario he encountered ending the Last Great Time War. Rose is arguably at her greatest in the episodes too as while her selfish streak is a bit on display (I get that Mickey got pathetic but she was pretty mean to him and her mom here) she does arguably her best act in the show. An effective Deus Ex Machina is employed (how the Daleks are defeated is pretty much by someone obtaining temporary godhood from the content of a machine), though this act does end up forcing the Ninth Doctor to regenerate. In the end however we got our hero going out with a smile as the Tenth Doctor made his first appearance.
The Wrap-Up:
So can I recommend it? Absolutely! The Ninth Doctor era is of course very important for New Who, since it is the foundation, and like I said there are some pretty solid episodes in there. Unfortunately some important episodes do have issues with the actual plot, even if they do a good job building the world up for both old audiences and new ones.
Next week, shall we look at David TENnant?
- See more at: http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/publish/Peter_Dawson/When_Bad_Shows_Go_Good_The_9th_Doctor_Who.shtml#sthash.vZ7UU7i8.dpuf
The History:
After Doctor Who was unofficially cancelled in 1989 (production was suspended and the show was effectively listed as being 'on hiatus') there were many that hoped the show would one day return. Attempts at a quasi-revival were made in both 1993 and 1996 with Dimensions in Time (a charity special that also featured the cast of EastEnders and was a mess) and The Enemy Within (AKA The TV Movie AKA the pilot movie that aired on Fox opposite the episode of Roseanne where Dan had a heart attack), but to no success. Ultimately it would be the Head of Drama for BBC Wales Julie Gardner ( Me and Mrs. Jones, Casanova) and a successful Welsh writer-producer named Russell T Davies ( Queer As Folk, Casanova) that revived the series, it being one of Julie Gardner's first assignments in 2003 when she got her job. The rights issues with the program were sorted out (the Fox pilot/movie from 1996 could be an arguable reason the current show couldn't have started development until 2003 thanks to licensing and such) and a talented pool of writers, directors and producers were gathered, including future important person Stephen Moffat. The first episode of the new series began airing March 26th, 2005. The first episode of the series received over 10 million viewers, the rest of the first series averaging roughly 7 million and it was nominated for several BAFTA awards, even winning Best Drama. That first series of New Who (or Series 1, since remember as a UK show its 'series' not 'season') is the subject today.
The Show:
Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) is a relatively normal eighteen year old girl: she lives with her single mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) in London, working at a shop and generally spending her days there or hanging out with her boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke). Then one day Rose discovers some of the mannequins in the building she works at have come to life, which is how she first met The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston). The Doctor is in fact an alien known as a Time Lord, a species that looks human (or maybe humans look Time Lord?) and have the ability to change their appearance when near death. Rose soon learns the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, his people having died in the Last Great Time War while fighting the Daleks. Still in mourning and full of anger, The Doctor travels through time and space using his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) to right wrongs, Rose joining him to see the wonders of the universe and help the Doctor's endless journey perhaps not be so lonely.
The Breakdown:
Right from the get-go Christopher Eccleston nails the character of The Doctor, and it's quite nice that his first line is simply, “Run!” Given Doctor Who is less about gunfights and more about people running around trying to outsmart threats it was clear that, no matter how modern the show had become, at least some elements of the program were relatively intact. Eccleston likewise does a good job being able to be both angry and child-like, possessing the energy needed to properly bring The Doctor to life. While capable of talking so fast you want to slap him, Eccleston was also able to convey all he needed with a single look or expression. While most Doctors end up constantly on the move the Ninth Doctor is arguably the most docile, only ever energetic when he chooses to be and otherwise the silent strategist, able to captivate rooms of people just by being there. The slow transformation the Doctor undergoes, with seemingly easy-going, to revealing his tragic history, to reveling in genuinely being able to be happy and save as many lives as he can. A major moment comes in the final episode of the series when The Doctor must choose if he'll essentially do what he considers the biggest regret of his life all over again, and the character journey we've seen, highlighted by the performance, feels very much satisfying when he refuses to act again, despite being pretty much screwed. The Ninth Doctor's role demanded a lot, and his actor was up to the task.
While The Doctor's a pretty good character Rose Tyler, not so much. Okay, I'm being a bit unfair. Rose does have a few qualities that are pretty solid, including being a solid everyman/everywoman as she tends to ask the right questions and, as we'll get to later, does help us see what can happen when one tries to over-exploit the TARDIS. Rose is basically at her best when she's an audience surrogate, asking the right questions, making solid enough quips and more than happy to interfere when it means helping people. We even see Rose does pick up a few things while hanging around The Doctor, which may not sound like much but considering there's a lot of shows I could name where a main character never learns a damn thing (and I don't mean the ones where that's by design) it's always nice to see. On the flipside, Rose has three qualities that are pretty damn annoying: she constantly ditches her loved ones without a word, is insanely selfish in general and when it comes to romance is a bit of a tool. In the pilot episode alone Rose ditches Mickey while he's trying to figure out what's going on to travel with The Doctor (this does bite her in the ass a few episodes later). We later learn a major reason Rose is on the journey with The Doctor is trying to save her father from his senseless death, and soon after Rose seems more or less comfortable just popping in an out of her mom's life with no real reaction to how its affecting her either. As for the romance thing, to sum up just Series 1: Rose is dating Mickey, ditches him to run around with the Doctor, meets a guy named Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley) from the not too distant future and messes around with him, dumps Adam after he tries to use time travel for personal profit (arguably the same reason Rose joined with The Doctor in the first place), started to fall for The Doctor, happily let Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) do his thing regardless of her blossoming feelings for The Doctor, then got jealous when Mickey mentioned he was seeing someone else. Now, time travel can certainly make a consistent relationship hard and I'm a firm believer in sexual liberation, but having a guy at home you want to constantly be there when you come home while overly more or less trying to get it on with all the guys you travel with is damn selfish.
So the first episode, Rose, is kind of a mixed bag. While the main threat would be a good sign of the great monsters to come (mannequins coming to life I'm sure is a nightmare many people have had), in general bits like Mickey getting replaced with a living plastic duplicate were quite goofy. The episode also establishes The Doctor had only recently regenerated from his previous incarnation (more on that in a couple of weeks), which is a weird continuity problem that took years to clear up, and even subtly. The recent regeneration seems odd since in the episode we meet a guy who has pictures and such of a guy who looks like The Doctor we see in the episode, but at different points in Earth's history. Yet it seems like those events happened before The Doctor showed up in the episode, in which he appears to see his reflection for the first time. The implication now is that the previous incarnation was 800 years old, and after Rose The Doctor mentions he's 900, implying that at the end of the episode, when Rose first rejects joining him on his adventures, he spent 100 years doing his thing before realizing, “I never told her this was a time machine, did I?” So that snarl covered, the episode does also do a good job showing that Doctor Who isn't above some dark humour (the conspiracy theorist dies right as he learns he was right) and that The Doctor won't willingly destroy, at least not without giving what he's facing a chance for a peaceful alternative. While striving to be a man of peace, The Doctor is certainly capable of being a man of pieces.
Moving right along, the first few episodes of the Ninth Doctor's single series kind of suck, though they are by no means unwatchable. The End of the World does do a good job showing just how weird time travel can be and establishes The Doctor's ability to upgrade cell phones, not to mention his psychic paper gadget and the fact that the TARDIS psychically translates spoken and written words for the travellers. On the other hand, the aliens featured were fairly goofy and some of the horrific deaths featured just didn't have the impact desired. Main villain Lady Cassandra (a human reduced to essentially skin thanks to her various operations to keep her 'healthy') was relatively lame too, and her death at the end was just gross. The Unquiet Dead did a decent job bringing in the idea of ghosts as explained in a universe that is ideally just science-fiction, plus it kicked off the ideas of The Doctor meeting historical figures and the concept of there being a rift in space-time under Cardiff (which is a key point in the plot of Torchwood as well as this show). Unfortunately the episode also has some pretty goofy moments, most blatantly when a clairvoyant named Gwyneth (played by future Torchwood cast member Eve Myles) utters the series's recurring arc words 'big bad wolf.' While 'bad wolf' eventually become to be significantly scary for people watching the show its first actual utterance here is pretty silly. Finally the two-parter Aliens of London/World War Three introduced the goofy alien family The Slitheen, who bafflingly managed to nearly destroy the world while constantly farting (I am NOT making that up). UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce or Unified Intelligence Taskforce) made its first appearance in New Who, only to casually have its representatives die, and Rose's reunion with Mickey ended up making him relatively annoying (it took a while for us to get why he's so clingy) and Rose's relatively nonplussed reaction to be unintentionally missing for a year did not help. These episodes are basically required viewing but they're hard to look back on fondly ( The Unquiet Dead's probably the best of the five).
Thankfully episode six of the series, Dalek, knocked it out of the part. Not only did the episode feature a familiar and extremely popular villain's return it firmly established just what had happened in the Last Great Time War (Time Lords versus Daleks with The Doctor destroying them all) but it offered the Ninth Doctor's best performance yet. The sometimes serious but still relatively comedic Doctor goes completely primal, practically foaming at the mouth when he taunts the apparent last surviving Dalek of the war. Rose does end up accidentally setting the Dalek free (which does result in a lot of people dying), but I'm more than willing to give her a pass on this since the Dalek was chained up by some rich megalomaniac American guy and, when told to destroy the creature by The Doctor, instead chains the Doc up. Additionally Rose's kindness stops The Doctor from killing the Dalek more or less in cold blood, healing the man who ideally is making the universe better through his adventures. A classic returning threat, seeing The Doctor at his worst and reminding us why Rose is actually useful make Dalek a must watch.
Next, after an encounter with Simon Pegg in The Long Game (a relatively bland episode but again required viewing since no episode in this series is truly a good idea to skip), we got Father's Day. Rose puts her plan to save her dad from his senseless death into action, resulting in probably the second-best episode of the series as Rose's dad Pete (Shaun Dingwall) ends up nearly destroying the world by living. Rose saves Pete from being hit by a car, resulting in a paradox that causes giant alien bat creatures (yeah a bit unnecessary but the BBC demanded monsters in every episode) trying their best to 'cauterize the wound caused to time itself.' Rose and The Doctor come into genuine conflict and he questions if the woman who, just a couple of episodes ago, saved him from his own darkness was really so great. Rose meanwhile is desperate to save her dad, and not only learns that Jackie had lied quite a bit to her as a kid about how great Pete was (he was a bit of a deadbeat), but comes to realize she just can't save him. The Doctor ends up giving his life to try and fix things, horrifying Rose (I'm sure she'll never be this selfish again, right?), and then, in the end, Pete nobly sacrifices himself to undo the damage and ensure time is no longer wounded. While all the deaths are undone we get an episode where events weren't simply reset, and we learned that despite being a deadbeat Pete Tyler was arguably one of the bravest men of all.
The last few episodes form a tight arc that are also excellent, with the incredibly terrifying The Empty Child-The Doctor Dances two-parter also introducing Captain Jack Harkness (before he was insufferable) and looking at ideas like other time travelers and how even innocent creations are capable of great evil if unchecked. Boom Town is a pretty solid follow-up to the Slitheen episodes in that we see The Doctor stuck with potentially being the equivalent of an executioner, even if he won't be the one dropping the blade, and we see Jack, Rose and The Doctor working well as a team (though Mickey is really kind of pathetic in this one). Bad Wolf-The Parting of Ways then offer some pretty insane mood whiplash as what starts as a parody of reality television (only with DEATH) ends up being the finale of the Ninth Doctor's lone series, with the Daleks returning in force and The Doctor faced with the same no-win scenario he encountered ending the Last Great Time War. Rose is arguably at her greatest in the episodes too as while her selfish streak is a bit on display (I get that Mickey got pathetic but she was pretty mean to him and her mom here) she does arguably her best act in the show. An effective Deus Ex Machina is employed (how the Daleks are defeated is pretty much by someone obtaining temporary godhood from the content of a machine), though this act does end up forcing the Ninth Doctor to regenerate. In the end however we got our hero going out with a smile as the Tenth Doctor made his first appearance.
The Wrap-Up:
So can I recommend it? Absolutely! The Ninth Doctor era is of course very important for New Who, since it is the foundation, and like I said there are some pretty solid episodes in there. Unfortunately some important episodes do have issues with the actual plot, even if they do a good job building the world up for both old audiences and new ones.
Next week, shall we look at David TENnant?
- See more at: http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/publish/Peter_Dawson/When_Bad_Shows_Go_Good_The_9th_Doctor_Who.shtml#sthash.vZ7UU7i8.dpuf