(708) Bad Wolf

It was perhaps inevitable that when I was watching this season that it was going to be over too quickly and as a result the Eccleston era would be over too quickly. There is a nice reprise from what happened in the god awful The Long Game. When the reprise is over there is a mad opening with the Doctor entering the Big Brother house with the theme tune and Davina McCall being a voice on Channel 44000. The Doctor is on Big Brother and Rose is on The Weakest Link with the Anne Droid (nice gag) and it’s the most interesting game of The Weakest Link ever. Whilst Captain Jack is with the robotic versions of Trinny and Susannah who at the time were famous for What Not To Wear (I had to look that up). When he is naked and says to them that their viewing figures just went up it made me wonder whether I was watching a Carry On sketch. I found this part of the episode to be rather boring. The actions on the Big Brother and Weakest Link sets are the more interesting.

Back in 2005 all the shows and personalities that appear in this story all seemed current but in 2015 apart from Big Brother (which has now moved channels) and Anne Robinson still on TV. Anyone watching the show now would wonder who on earth these people are. Anne Robinson is on TV although she is starting to look more like Cassandra from The End of the World and Davina McCall appears on The Million Pound Drop and some random ITV show but neither of them are now appearing on the show they were appearing on in 2005. As for Trinny and Susannah, I haven’t the foggiest what they are doing.

Torchwood gets its first mention in this episode.

This episode is called Bad Wolf and this is where Bad Wolf gets explained because of the countless references in the series. Ten years on and I still don’t understand what Bad Wolf is. People have tried to explain it to me but I still don’t get. The events of The Long Game have caused everything that we see in Bad Wolf. On this occasion, the Doctor has made things much worse than normal. The set used in The Long Game is the same one in this story and it’s a clever way of saving some money cause there is very little redressing required. The title of that episode is also used when describing what the people running the Bad Wolf Corporation have been doing. Russell T Davies might have some flaws but at this time of the show he seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

The Weakest Link bit was quite fun as it led to Rose (for a short time) being killed. The build-up in the final round between her and Rodrick is very dramatic. Something struck me and that is it doesn’t seem like the Anne Droid has much of manoeuvring and Rose could have ducked behind her platform and she would have been safe. It takes a while for Captain Jack to reveal that Rose is in fact alive. When Rose makes her appearance she isn’t quite to keen to befriend them. Rose has been left out of the action in this episode which makes a change really and a refreshing one because it means that the Doctor and Captain Jack can work as a team without Rose trying to flirt with him. Speaking of flirting, the Doctor has to tell Jack not to flirt with anyone who talks to him with the word hello being flirting by Jack standards.

When the story moves to Floor 500 we meet the controller who is a Dalek slave but until the very end of the episode it’s not clear that she’s a Dalek slave. For most of the episode she seems to be just a poor sole but she doesn’t have long in the episode as she’s exterminated in ruthless fashion. I found the two people that were keeping an eye on the TV shows to be rather bland and boring and a bit stupid really but they aren’t that important to the grand scheme of things so it doesn’t bother me too much.

The Dalek ships revelation that appears at the end of the episode is a fantastic sight as is the bigger number of Daleks that appear. This is where some of the siphoned money from Boom Town ended up and it was worth every penny. In Dalek there was just the one Dalek and so it’s nice to see more.

The defiant speech that the Doctor gives is a wonderful speech and another reason why Christopher Eccleston is such a good Doctor.  This was a an episode that managed to let Eccleston to have some comedy moments let do the serious stuff that he managed to show us his serious side.

Sadly this two parter suffers the same problem that Aliens of London and that is it has its cliffhanger before the credits roll. This is a shame because the whole episode has been a nice slow burner. On a more positive note, it didn’t ruin the story quite like Aliens of London did. Most people knew when it aired that this was his final story so they try and play with that by filling the trailer with other stuff and seeing if the viewer can spot if there are any clues about his exit. It has been a good set up episode with enough to keep my attention until the cliffhanger. I just hope that the next episode manages to give me the send off I think that Eccleston deserves. I think he does but as JNT said “The Memory Cheats”.