Doctor Who Throwback: 1-8 “Father’s Day”

We all have things we want to go back in time to fix. I know I have a list about as long as a massive tapeworm. We really don’t think about the consequences of changing these choices, we just assume it will make the moments we hate in our current existence better.  We all have people we want to reconnect with and a parent we wish we can be better to. We all want something in our life to go differently.

“Father’s Day” teaches us all a valuable lesson about time, and the impact of changing what we perceive as one tiny detail.

Rose lost her father in a hit and run when she was a baby, and she asks the Doctor to go back in time to be with him at the end. The Doctor agrees, and when Rose freezes in the moment, she asks for a do over. The Doctor reluctantly agrees to this, making clear the rules of conduct. Rose ignores these rules and saves her father’s life, while the previous Rose and Doctor look on. This creates a wound in time,  and the bat like Reapers come out to clean up the mess that is left in the wake. Trapped in an old church, the Doctor appears powerless without a TARDIS to aid him. He knows what needs to be done, but his affection for Rose keeps him from telling her the truth. In the end, Pete Tyler comes to this realization himself, and gives Rose a true lesson in self-sacrifice for the betterment of the universe.

Rose’s youth and inexperience as a time traveller plays a huge role in this episode, as does the Doctor’s increasing love for her. The Doctor allows his emotions to get the best of him and indulges Rose’s desire to see her father alive. Her actions leave him feeling betrayed, as he has to save the world again due to the actions of “another stupid ape”. He does forgive her, and spends the entire episode trying to avoid telling her that the only way to fix the problem is for Pete to die like he was supposed to. Rose, on the other hand, witnesses the real state of her parents marriage, and is disappointed by what she sees of their lives.

While we get a relatively happy ending, I left this episode with a feeling of sadness. Because there are consequences to our choices, even when we believe it will make everything better. What we learn here plays a role in upcoming seasons. The world could be very different from what we experience now. It’s not always better that way.

Random thoughts:

Yes, yes, Baby Rose has blue eyes, adult Rose has brown eyes, and why do we still care?

This is an excellent episode in how it explains messing with time. The Doctor even gets to tell Rose that she’s clueless about the ramifications, and she still comes off as a spoilt child being told “No” for the first time. By the end of the episode, she actually learns something. Go figure.

The Doctor: The past is another country. 1987′s just the Isle of Wight.

We All Depend On The Beast Below- Doctor Who Episode 5-2 “The Beast Below”

Doctor Who often tries to explain the human condition. Whether it’s our inability to ask questions in the face of authority (The Long Game), or creating our own downfall with our desire for cheap thrills (Gridlocked), or our desire for immortality against all rhyme and reason (The End Of Time, The Lazarus Experiment), the show uses an alien to tells us what we do right and what we do wrong. It sometimes gets heavy-handed with its message, but mostly, it gets it right.

“The Beast Below”, oddly enough,is both of these.

Amy and the Doctor end up on the Starship UK, the spaceship that carries what is left of the United Kingdom that fled earth.  The Doctor sees that the society is the wrong shape, and both he and Amy set off to discover why that is. What they find is both frightening and tragic. My heart breaks just thinking about it.

It leads to an interesting question about human nature. It’s heavy-handed, to be certain- the Starship staff use a section of the Star Whale’s exposed brain to propel the vessel  through the universe.  They torture the Star Whale under the impression that it is needed to fly the ship instead of realizing it was there to help of its own free will.  Things that are different are always feared. But surprisingly, the solution is not thought up by the benevolent Doctor. Appalled by the violence, the Doctor gets angry with the Human Race, the people he has saved time and again. “Nobody human has anything to say to me today,” he shouts angrily as he prepares to eliminate the whale’s ability to think and feel. Amy, though, sees the truth in the actions of the whale itself. The Star Whale saves the people of the UK on earth because it couldn’t stand to see children cry. Amy uses this observation to set in motion the events that free the Star Whale from a life of pain and the people on the Starship from a life lived in fear.

It’s still too early in the season to see the overall arch and where this episode falls in the story, although we see a matching crack like the one in Amy’s bedroom wall, and the episode ends with a bit of a thrill as we see the shadow of a Dalek against Winston Churchill’s wall during the phone call. The episode was surprisingly dark so early in the season, with some difficult questions asked amidst the thrills and spills, and certainly it’s very early in the season for the Doctor to show the cracks in his psyche like that. He often has been exasperated by humans, but he rarely loses his temper like that. Matt Smith’s Doctor is a very different Doctor indeed.

Random thoughts:

It always comes down to children, don’t it?

Magpie still has a shop. I hope that there is no Wire still involved.

The Doctor: Every five years everyone chooses to forget what they’ve learned… democracy in action.

Doctor Who Throwback: Episode 1-1 “Rose”

Yes, I’m going back as well. I’ve watched every episode of the reboot numerous times over the past five months. I think it is totally fair to go back to the start.

Not being obsessed with the Doctor as a child but aware of the series, its history, and its fervent fandom made me reluctant to even start watching it when the reboot came along in 2005. It took a couple of online friendships with devoted NuWho fans to even convince me to give it a go.

I love my online friends to death for it.

“Rose” has a lot of ground to cover. The new series was set up to honor the canon already developed in the previous 26 year run of the show, plus the truly terrible 1996 movie ( I feel so sorry for Paul McGann, who gives a great performance in that piece of crap as the eighth Doctor). But Russell T Davies also had to create a reset button of sorts, to explain a) why we have a new face ( although never specified, it is assumed in canon that Eight regenerated after creating the Time Lock that ends the Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords, becoming Christopher Eccleston at his grumpy, funny, sexy best) and b) a new attitude. Eccleston’s Doctor is lonely and miserable when he stumbles back to earth to save the human race from the Autons, and an accidental meeting with Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler in the shop she works at throws them together in a way neither of them expected.

Rose lives on a council estate with her mother, Jackie, who reminds me of a more family friendly version of Edina from AbFab, with a less caustic tongue and a genuine love and concern for her daughter. Rose’s life is typical for a nineteen year old girl not in college- she works a menial sales job, has a boyfriend, and basically has few cares in the world. After being chased by living plastic and meeting the Doctor who blows up the shop she works at, she begins to take a good long look at her world and realize it’s not all it seems. She does the modern thing and searches for references to the strange man with a blue box online, leading her to meet Clive ( a one-off character that leaves an impression- I’m sure we all know a conspiracy Nutter like that). Clive has traced the Doctor through history, and is convinced he is an alien from another planet. As wacky as the Doctor is to Rose, she’s unable to believe that. It’s not till later, after escaping a plastic version of her boyfriend Mickey with the Doctor into the TARDIS ( “It’s bigger on the inside. It’s Alien. You’re alien”) that she begins to accept all the wierd stuff that’s going on as real.

Truth be told, as far as thrills and spills go, it’s pretty standard stuff. The Autons and their controller, the Nestene Conciousness, aren’t particularly creepy or thrilling. The climax is actually kind of silly. But that’s not why I love this episode. The tension created between Eccleston and Piper is palpable. I’m not talking romantic tension, I’m talking about an intellectual tension. Rose is more clever than her life allows her to be, and her humanity is actually what draws the Doctor to her. She has a strong moral sense and an empathy that makes her superior to most of the people the Doctor meets. He invites her to go long with him in his TARDIS, and she initially turns him down. It’s when he informs her it’s not just a spaceship but a time machine that she joins him. This is an important plot point. She senses his loneliness, and he senses her need to escape a life that is beneath her. She gives him comfort. He gives her purpose. 

Random thoughts:

• I saw the David Tennant series four episodes before the Eccleston episodes. Tennant is my Doctor, but Eccleston is easily a close second. I adore them both.
• Rose: Hold on, if you’re an alien, why do you sound like you’re from the North?
• Doctor: Lots of planets have a north!
• Rose is actually a bit of a spitfire. The relationship between her and Nine starts off purely as friendship. But it does change as the series goes on.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Whimey:Doctor Who 5-01 “The Eleventh Hour”

I know there is a portion of the Who fan base that hates him and everything he did, but I am a devoted fan of Russell T Davies and David Tennant is my Doctor. You can tell me everything wrong with the RTD era and I can agree on some of it, but since I wasn’t a fan as a child, I really don’t find the new elements of Who to be a distraction.

Still, the news of Tennant and Davies leaving for other opportunities and the hiring of barely old enough to drink Matt Smith and the promotion of genius writer Steven Moffat made me think that this new incarnation had some life in it. I trust Moffat’s judgment. And Matt Smith does not disappoint in his debut as the Doctor.

On the contrary, I think “The Eleventh Hour” is the strongest series opener since 2005′s “Rose”. It has some of the humor I love about the RTD era ( frankly, I could have spent the entire hour watching Smith’s Doctor eating and rejecting food). Moffat is also much better at building tension that Davies ever was ( I was really thrilled with Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi).

I also see the potential of Karen Gillan’s Amelia “Amy” Pong as a companion. Moffat was careful to build a real back story and a pre-existing relationship with the Doctor, heightening our involvement with her before she even stepped foot into the TARDIS. We care because this little girl appears to be abandoned by everyone and is scared of the crack in her wall, and after meeting the Doctor, she becomes obsessed with him to the point therapy is required, and when we come to her as an adult, she is both scared and awed by the man she was convinced could not possibly exist. Amy has had a troubled childhood, leading to a dubious career ( kiss-o-gram? Is that a family friendly way of saying “stag party stripper”?) and a whole lot of people who seem to think her childhood meeting with the Doctor was just a symptom of deeper issues. No one, including quasi-boyfriend Rory, seems to believe that the Doctor is real, standing in front of them.

Left with only twenty minutes to save the earth with no TARDIS and no sonic screwdriver to aid him, the Doctor uses his wits to outsmart the mysterious shapeshifting Patient Zero, and then brings the Atraxi to task for threatening to incinerate a level five planet that had done nothing at all to deserve such a threat. Smith plays this scene with a quiet authority, all the while trying to build the look of his Doctor, coming out of the projections of his previous incarnations in tweed and a bow tie, looking like the aged professor with an appealing baby-faced quality and floppy hair.  I believed him to be the same Doctor I have grown to love these last several months of Doctor Who fanaticism. I now regret having any doubts.

I will probably always be at odds with certain factions of the Who fandom who dislike so much of the past five years, as I can’t quite seem to understand the hate and disappointment they feel, and the first episode without RTD at the helm felt to me to be a continuation of his themes and style while being fresh at the same time. Having already watched the two following episodes,  can tell you that I am not nearly as happy with one of those two episodes as I am with this, but Moffat seems to be doing exactly what I wanted him to do- he’s writing witty, scary scripts and making me love the Doctor. And ultimately, isn’t that what we all want?

Random thoughts:

• Fish custard?
• The crack in the walls are the obvious Bad Wolf theme, right? Or is it red herring?
• Is there a significance to the fact Jeff uses a MYTH lap top?
• A lot of online conjecture about the date on Rory’s ID badge. THis feeds into a future episode’s conspiracy theory I’ve been reading the last 24 hours.
• I love love LOVE the little girl who played young Amelia. What a find.
• The Doctor: I’m the Doctor; I’m worse than everyone’s aunt. [catches himself] And that is not how I’m introducing myself.
• The Doctor: Who da man?! [Everyone looks at him unimpressed; petulantly] Okay, that’s… I’m never saying that again. Fine.
• My favorite episodes are always one with more humor than thrills, but that’s because I’m naturally drawn to humor. Moffat is a comedy writer by trade, creating the rip-roaring hilarious Coupling.   I worry that his humor may be too adult for a show paraded about as the optimal family show. Not every parent is me, and not every child is mine, as my girls all think Coupling is hilarious. That being said, this hour had masturbation jokes, possible stripper references, and Amy staring at the Doctor wide-eyed as he changes.