(709) The Parting of the Ways

So this is the end for Christopher Eccleston. After just thirteen episodes, I have reached the end of the ninth chapter of my marathon. I think that this is an important episode for two reasons, it has to end the season off in the right way and it also has to give Eccleston the ending that he deserves. With the Daleks not appearing until the end of the previous episode it means that they hit the ground (or air) running from the very beginning and its great to watch.

The Rose I’m coming to get you line from the previous episode is rather cheesy in my opinion. It’s the only thing that Christopher Eccleston does wrong in the two episodes.

The effect of the rockets hurtling towards the TARDIS in a game of chicken is a great moment and shows that this wasn’t a cheap episode. The Dalek being exterminated inside the TARDIS isn’t something that gets the credit it deserves. People might moan on about the temporal grace thing but that’s nonsense anyway and it’s a great moment. A funny moment comes when the Anne Droid destroys a Dalek. It’s quite impressive that RTD managed to find time to put a gag in.

There isn’t a moment when the visual effects disappoint. The shots of the fleet surrounding the Gamestation and the millions of Daleks approaching it are some of the finest in Doctor Who history. This is the sort of thing that they would have killed for during the 60’s and 70’s but thanks to technology being cheaper its now achievable.

The Daleks are quite interesting in this story because they aren’t pure Daleks because they have human genes in them. They start talking about god of all Daleks and blasphemy which isn’t something that I would have expected the Daleks to go on about. The Oncoming Storm is the Doctor’s name on Skaro and it’s a great name and it fits the current Doctor. The Doctor shows no fear in front of the Daleks but has a harder time of doing this in front of the Dalek Emperor. This is the same Dalek Emperor (supposedly) that was seen way back in the 1967 story Evil of the Daleks. The Daleks are unstoppable and its difficult to see how they could be defeated. It’s the first time for an awfully long that they have come across like this. There’s a great scene where some Daleks pop up into Lynda’s view of space and with a chilling silence they smash the window and as a result kill her. It’s another impressive visual.

Rose has gone back to being annoying again. The jealous looks that she gives when Lynda is showing some signs of friendship towards the Doctor. It’s all about her and to show how annoying she has become I actually found Jackie to be perfectly normal. The scene with her, Jackie and Mickey show is one that is saved by Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri and almost ruined by Piper. Rose admits to Mickey that there is nothing on earth for her right in front of him. I think I have joined the Anti-Rose group because that was a horrible thing to say.

The Doctor does his best to try and protect Rose by fooling her into the TARDIS and sending it back to her time. It is perhaps the most selfless act that the Doctor has done ever. The hologram scene with the Doctor is a great scene because it’s the first goodbye really and it’s quite sad. Even a cynical person like me found it slightly moving. It’s when the Doctor changes which way he is looking which makes the scene work.

This episode sees the Doctor and Jack kiss in what would be Jack’s final scene with the Doctor and Rose. It’s interesting in 1996 when the Doctor kissed a woman and the furore it kicked up and in 2005 there didn’t seem to be much drama which is a good thing really. This was probably the case because its wasn’t sexual but just friendly. It’s typical that just when Jack stops being annoying that he leaves the series. Obviously going off to be in his own series but it would have been nice for him to travel with the Doctor a bit more.

Rose ends being the one that causes the Doctor to regenerate which is probably another reason why people dislike her. I think that it was a clever way to get into the regeneration scene and shows that the Doctor is willing to sacrifice his life for his companion. I haven’t gone soft again on Rose but to be fair to her it is perhaps the only good thing that she does in the whole two episodes. She has seen into the heart of the TARDIS which is a great idea and its achieved rather well.

The regeneration scene is rather good and quite sad. I think that I know when the show has worked when the regeneration has a moving effect on me. In just thirteen days, Christopher Eccleston has done what William Hartnell did back in 1963 and set the benchmark for what the Doctor should be like. In a recent interview, Eccleston says that he is in David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi and I understand that because without his superb performances there wouldn’t have been future series. David Tennant’s first scene seems quite tame in comparison to other post regeneration debut scenes but we would have to wait until the Children in Need special to get a glimpse at what the Tenth Doctor would be like. For the record I am going to skip that and I will explain why in tomorrows entry.

One final thing about Bad Wolf. Why Bad Wolf? Why those two words, they could have been something far less subtle and as a result it would have made a bit more sense. Oh well, now I have finished the Eccleston era, I don’t have to worry about it. It’s weird to think that I am at the tenth Doctor era and at the beginning of April I was watching the Seventh Doctor and I will be ending it watching the Tenth Doctor. The Eccleston era has been a triumph and it shows that Doctor Who was ready for a 21^st Century audience

(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”.

(707) Boom Town

Russell T Davies made a critical and important decision. He realised that a good portion of the budget for the show should be spent on the final two episodes and so sacrificed any special effects money from a single episode and sent it to the series finale. So this is the cheap episode. I use the term cheap loosely because no episode of Doctor Who is cheap and an argument could be made that there were less visual effects in the previous two parter but that’s for another blog.

There is a reminder of what happened in Aliens of London and World War Three which leads us into a nice pre-title scene showing that Annette Badland’s Slitheen somehow survived the blast on Downing Street. With this being a ‘cheap’ episode it means that it’s more of a character piece. What makes it different is that the character in question is the Slitheen. She starts the episode by killing someone and then just as she’s about to kill a nosey journalist she has a change of heart.

The Doctor plans to take Margaret Slitheen back home but she is going to be executed when she gets back and so it then becomes a question as to whether the Doctor can basically send someone to their death and it tests the Doctor’s morality. There is a great scene with all of them in the TARDIS about who is actually the monster and there is a great stare down between Margaret and the regulars and Margaret wins each time. When Margaret and the Doctor go out for a meal it’s a wonderfully tense part of the episode because Margaret thinks that just because she let one person live that means she is able to change. It’s a great performance from Badland and it’s a shame that she didn’t get more of the screen time in the Slitheen two-parter because she really is a very good actress and she more than holds her own against Christopher Eccleston.

Mickey joins the team which is making this seem like the Scooby gang. Mickey does seem to be more of a comedic Mickey. The relationship between Mickey and Rose is still boring and when they were having there scene by the bay I just wanted to be back with the Doctor and Margaret. I was so fed up with it they made ME hate Trisha Delaney. Mickey moans that Rose will always pick the Doctor over him and to be honest, with the amount of whinging he does, it’s not hard to see why she would make that decision. It’s a shame that Noel Clarke seems to have been reduced to this because he deserves better.

There is a lovely amount of comedy and there are too many to mention but for some reason the comedy works to the stories advantage and its one of the things that I like about it. However when it needs to stop, when things a bit bombastic then the comedy makes way for the drama and  the shift in tone happens in quite a seamless way.

Margaret is defeated by looking into the heart of the TARDIS and going back to being an egg and she gets have a second chance at life which is quite a clever way to get the Doctor out of a particular problem because he doesn’t let Margaret go and he doesn’t take her to her death and so the episode is ended in a satisfactory way. It’s been a fun episode an a largely unappreciated episode of the new series that lives within the constricts that has been imposed by the executive producer and writer of this very episode rather well. Now the finale has arrived and this is when things start to get ramped up and more importantly the beginning of the end of the Eccleston era.

(704) Fathers Day

The Doctor takes Rose to November 7, 1987 where Rose’s dad was killed and this is an episode which builds up the Tyler backstory in a way which yesterday I thought was going to be a problem. There have been episodes that I have feared in some shape or form and this is one of them.  Using a hit and run in primetime is quite a brave thing to do and to do it repeatedly is even braver.

The Doctor is the one that goes over his own timeline when Rose batters her eyelashes and jumps out in front of the other Rose and Doctor to stop her dad from being killed. Everything that happens in this episode is down to what he does. You would have thought that after all this time he would have known better but I guess everyone can be wrong. Pete Tyler is basically a Del Boy type person. To be honest a first I didn’t think the Doctor Who world really needs Rose’s dad but as the episode progresses he becomes more interesting and despite Rose’s best efforts, I quite like the character and I even found myself liking Jackie.

There is a running gag where Pete is trying to hit on his daughter and only Rose (and the viewers) know why this is a terrible idea. They do a good job of trying to skirt around the issue but it’s not long before Pete knows the truth and so does Jackie which makes for a rather amusing face-off between the three. Pete ends up knowing that he needs to die in order to save the day. It’s not so much an alien threat episode but it’s more of a family bonding episode with the Doctor as the guest character.

After about 10 minutes of doing very little it seemed like this episode was going to be worse than I had feared but thankfully things do start to pick up. The episode only gets going when the reapers start to appear. On a visual note, the reapers are really good and the VFX team work wonders making them look as natural as they can. They appear when there are damages in the timeline and they ‘sterilise the wound’. It’s a great idea from Paul Cornell and helps save the episode.

There is a bit where the Doctor is taken by the reaper and this means that he is out of sight and this gives the Tyler’s the centre stage and I have to admit it that I found the final few minutes to be engaging TV. I might be a bit of a heartless sod but I just couldn’t get emotional about what was happening but even I am not that heartless to think that it was a good piece of drama.

This is an episode which has a lot that I could do without but the performances from Shaun Dingwall and Camille Coduri along with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper help make this at worst an average episode. From my original memory of this series, this was the weakest story so in effect this should be the end of the weak episode and the quality should start going up until the finale. Tomorrow’s episode sees the first story from the Grand Moff and also what I think (and hope) will be the best of the two parters in this series. The NEXT TIME trailer made me wish I could just watch the next episode now even with the knowledge that Captain Jack is about to enter the show.

(702) Dalek

Today’s episode sees the return of the Daleks who in episode terms appeared 33 episodes ago but in time terms it was 17 years since Remembrance of the Daleks. This is also the first Dalek story (remarkably) since Death to the Daleks that doesn’t feature Davros. I remember back in 2004 when there was talk about the Daleks not featuring in the new series and there was something in the Sun paper about them appearing in Times Square. Of course this nowadays seems like publicity for the show. I don’t know how real it was that there weren’t going to be in the show but the thought of them not being in the new series seemed horrible. This story was written by Robert Shearman who wrote the 2003 Big Finish play Jubilee and it’s clear that some of the elements from that story have made it into this episode.

A Cyberman’s head make an appearance in the pre-title scene and it’s almost a nostalgic moment. It’s a nice pre-title scene as it’s the only quiet scene in the entire episode. This is an episode that doesn’t have any scenes outside. There is one shot of a helicopter but apart from that there is nothing.

Despite the episode being called Dalek the build up to its first appearance is quite good. The first thing it does is scream as its being tortured. It’s first encounter with the Doctor is one of the best scenes of the series. The Doctor in a dark room with just the eyes glowing when it talks. It’s quite impressive how one Dalek causes so much mayhem and gets to the Doctor.

Henry Van Statten is some who has all the money you could want but doesn’t really have much intelligence. Corey Johnson is very effective as a villain and he is utterly unlikeable. When he realises that he is out of his depth then he loses all of his power and menace. Christopher Eccleston is superb in this episode. It’s episodes like this one that shows why he is such a good actor. The scene where the Doctor is talking to the Dalek just after its killed all the soldiers is a great one because the Doctor is telling the Dalek that it should die and its replies by saying that he would have made a good Dalek. The flirting between Rose and Adam is just annoying. They have a scene together and its excruciatingly bad and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. In fact Rose is the biggest problem with this episode. She decides to befriend the Dalek because she feels sorry for it. If she had not put her hand on its casing then everyone that gets exterminated by it wouldn’t have died. The look on their faces when the Dalek rises into the air is fantastic because they were so smug and I have found them so irritating that I wanted the Dalek to exterminate them. For me this is the first time that Rose has put a foot wrong this series. When she points out to the Doctor that he is pointing a gun at her and seems to think that he is worse than the Dalek at the moment is a frustrating scene.

The death of Simmons is quite horrific. The sucker arm has never been useful until now and its used in quite a clever way. The effect of the Dalek coming back to life is quite good and I love the design of the Dalek. My favourite livery is the white and gold design but this is a good version as well. Nicholas Briggs is so fixed in my mind as the voice of the Daleks that it has always seemed odd when I have heard the stories before this one which weren’t voiced by him. There is a technical bit about the Daleks which is new as well and it’s the noise that it makes when its moving or its head is moving. This effect has made its way into the Big Finish audio. The effect of its middle section swivelling to shoot on both sides of it looks a little bit ropey by todays standards and the shot of the bullets stopping in front of the Daleks does seem very much borrowed from The Matrix (1999) film.

The episode doesn’t end on a particularly good note because for some reason. Adam ends up boarding the TARDIS. Just what the show needs is an annoying buerk in the TARDIS. To be honest its been a frustrating 45 minutes. Its good to have a Dalek back but I just found the whole Adam/Rose dynamic so boring and sadly there is going to be more of this. In rating terms, this is the lowest rated episode but it’s purely because of Rose and Adam. The rest of the episode is rather entertaining and Joe Ahearne directs the episode superbly and Robert Shearman’s only contribution is just as good as anything that appears in this season.