Dream Theatre

The Next Doctor

 

Its taken me a few days to get round to writing this one. Was it the overdose of Turkey and stuffing or was it the forgettable nature of the latest Xmas Who episode penned by Russell T Davies?

Good question. Lets get down to details.

The story takes Tennant’s Doctor, now officially into his last furlong of his run, to 1851; where apparently nothing much happened, guess the Great Exhibition was just another example of underwhelming town planning by the city of London, eh? Anyway The Doctor hears his name being screamed and gives chase to the source. On arrival he meets a girl called Rosita (get it?) and to his surprise and delight another man calling himself the Doctor played by David Morrissey. They’re immediately caught up in a chase with something called a Cybershade with Tennant quite taken by this possible future version of himself. He soon discovers that some Cybermen who escaped the void are hatching a dastardly plan to create something called the Cyber King with the aid of the devious and heartless Mr Hartigan played by Dervla Kewan.

The plot is paper-thin as usual and has all the pantomime absurdity one would expect from a Crimbo helping of Davies Who. That’s in itself is not a bad thing as I imagine that after a double dose of soap misery courtesy of East Enders no one needs a dark  and morbid Doctor crying over lost roses and forget-me-not nobles.

The problem is this - the title is called The Next Doctor, but this isn’t what we get. For the first twenty five minutes or so we get to unravel an intriguing mystery  with some fun possibilities of Tennant meeting his future self. As you’d expect this is served with all the humor and pathos you could squeeze out of such a delightful paradox – essentially Time Crash in reverse. But then Davies fudges it with a disappointing revelation made all too early when Tennant works out that Morrissey’s Doctor is just a human who has been the victim of a memory pod back firing. Doesn’t make sense, does it? That’s not bad writing, just Whovian logic.

Why couldn’t Morrissey have been the real thing? That’s what I want to know. It would have strengthened the drama, with the stakes being raised as Tennant struggles to ensure the safety of his future self, knowing he won’t have the luxury of remembering how he did it because of the amnesia. There is of course the downside of Morrissey being locked in to a future incarnation, but that could be so easily explained away with a Timey Wimey thing, you know what I’m saying?

Grips aside, this is nowhere as bad as last year’s special. In fact, the last ten minutes where the Cyber King is revealed in his full majestic Godzilla / Ultraman glory is a fabulously absurd bit of spectacle, with kudos to The Mill for creating a decently realized set-piece.

All in all it's an average episode of Who that had potential for something a little bit extra, quite frankly not as filling as  the Turkey and stuffing.   

Doctor Who Season 4 : Journey's End

My head is hurting from the finale of Season 4. I feel like I’ve a hangover from too many bottles of cheap red wine. Seriously this finale feels the same. As a writer you need to make choices about what to include and what not. Throwing everything in and seeing what sticks isn’t the way writers are taught, unless of course your name is Russell T Davis. His season finales are typically overwrought affairs, high on spectacle and emotion, low on structure and plot logic. In fact looking at the plot of this one, you’ll quickly realize its like looking at the outline for a story written by a twelve year old with lots of ‘ then he did this, and she did that and that happened because of this . . .’ You know what I’m saying?

I’m not going to summarize the story, I’ll just assumed you’ve already watched the thing. Apart from anything else, I’m not sure its possible to explain the dizzying paradoxes of logic and story that inhabit this one.

The resolution of the Donna arc was somewhat underwhelming. I’ve never enjoyed memory wipes for characters, especially central ones as good as Donna. For me Tate had been the huge strength of this season and had allowed writers to explore a totally different dynamic in the Tardis, evolving Tennant’s Doctor beyond a romantic love interest for every companion who gazed in to his watery blue eyes. She’d been allowed to grow and mature through her experiences in some brilliantly written stories. Yet here we are at the end of the season and she’s back to square one. Tragic I’m sure, cheating most definitely. This story should have had the balls to kill her, and give Donna a proper character send off. Characters die, that’s a fact and sometimes its necessary for the drama of the story.  Either that or she should have been revealed to be Romana or some other character from the original series, rather than just a sloppy cocktail of the Doctor, so that Tate could be allowed to play up to her worst excesses in a few cringe worthy scenes around the Dalek version of the Tardis console.

Rose was shortchanged too. After so much build up in regard to her return, somehow she was reduced to bit part player. The Doctor’s double providing a neat, twee resolution to her love for him. I’m still in two minds if it works or not. Doomsday had been such a perfect ending to her character, now she gets to play house with a human version of The Doctor who can grow old with her. IS that closure, dramatic irony or lazy story telling?

On a positive note I’m relieved that Tennant didn’t regenerate and that he will be back for future stories. He’s really made the character his own in so many ways and is often able to elevate mediocre scripts with the strengths of his performance.

That’s not to say there wasn’t fun to be had in the story, Davros was great. In fact the Daleks were the best they’ve been since Season 1 really, and well it’s always great to see Captain Jack and Sarah Jane Smith. I really didn’t need Martha in this one though; she was so extraneous to the central story that some judicious editing of the script would have saved time that could have been better utilized with the central conflict.

This was Davis’s last regular Who story. I’ve been a lot more critical than I’ve normally been in the past, but seriously this story could have been so much stronger had he made a few more choices and not decided to cram everything in and fill the plot with more tech babble than an episode of Star Trek Voyager. I wanted more scenes between The Doctor and Davros, scenes that echoed Baker and Wisher in Genesis that gave greater weight to their conflict, and added pathos to both their losses as leaders of armies and warriors.

It’s a shame that there is such a desire for bombast all the time in a finale in the never-ending pursuit of news headlines and ratings. Surely Who is strong enough now to find this unnecessary. Hopefully with Moffat taking over we’ll see a more restrained and inventive show that will never sacrifice intelligent dialogue with cheap marketing and gags for the sake of audience figures.

Doctor Who Season 4: The Stolen Earth

The Doctor and Donna arrive back on Earth following the Bad Wolf cliffhanger of last week’s story to find the ground literally vanishing from beneath them as an unknown force steals the Earth.  Thus setting in motion the return of The Daleks and their creator, Davros, for one of the most action packed fan pleaser episodes of Nu Who. This one is up there with Utopia for fanwanky moments. I’m actually impressed at how Davies has somehow managed to squeeze it all in and make it work so well.

Daleks lots of Daleks, there are so many pepper pots in this episode and they’re back to their full strength nastiness screaming EXTERMINATE at every given opportunity. Having stolen the Earth, the invasion force arrives on mass as we’re treated to some serious sc- fi mayhem goodness. The story works like an old school Marvel Team Up with Torchwood, Sarah Jane, Martha Jones and of course Rose becoming embroiled in the global threat. At times the pace is dizzying and breakneck as reactions to the coming Daleks take us from London, to NYC to Cardiff. After four years of world building Russell T Davies allows himself to enjoy the fruits of his modernization of the Dr Who universe. It's a grand thing to see with few duff moments. Sure there are some melodramatic bits that don’t quite echo right, but you’ll forgive them simply because of the audacity of the story unfolding.

The Doctor and Donna go to the Shadow Proclamation for help and to get more information about what’s happened to Earth. Sadly considering the mystery that’s been built up around this organization they’re depressingly generic with some uninspired set design and motivation. Turns out the Rhinos from season 3 are the foot soldiers for women with really bad peroxide hair who consider themselves the guardians of the galaxy. Nonetheless we are treated to a portentous Donna moment when she starts hearing the drums that the Master had been hearing last season. What does it all mean? Well, we’ll find that out hopefully next week.

Back on Earth the main thrust of the plot is about trying to get in contact with the Doctor, amidst the death and destruction, the return of Penelope Wilton’s  Harriet Jones provides the key to this. It’s a great return for a character who I’d felt had been treated unjustly by the Doctor, and I was impressed that Davies allowed her to stay consistent with her actions from the first Xmas special. Her redemption was not twee or ham fisted and propelled the story along in a natural way – well, as natural as it can in a Who story by Davies.

The Daleks, man its great to see them back in action (did I already mention that?) and this time they’ve brought the kitchen sink with them. The Dalek Supreme, dressed in red and gold plating, Dalek Caan gone all doolally, and the return of Davros. Yup, it’s all fabulously nostalgic and yet at the same time doesn’t feel the slightest bit archaic. Davros is played pitch perfect by Julian Bleach who recaptures the menacing voice and chill of Genesis’s Michael Wisher. The prosthetics are exceedingly well realized here, and there’s a really icky moment that will have kids scurrying behind the sofas, and no doubt having nightmares all week. The only sad part is that when the Doctor finally meets Davros its over a video screen, I don’t know if that was such a great choice for the reveal, nonetheless we get more snippets of what happened in the Time War, and how Caan somehow managed to break the Time lock and save Davros.

Got all that? No? Well best get watching it then, it’s impossible to do those lines justice on a blog. Lets just say that phrases such as The Gates of Elysium and the Medusa Cascade bring colour, depth and a lyrical quality to the whole set up elevating the Who saga to new levels of sqweeness.

Without going into too much detail, the ending is unbelievably brilliant with two star crossed lovers finally reuniting, only to have their joy ripped apart by the blast of a dalek deathray, leading to the mother of all cliffhangers. Has Davies done one of the best plot twists of all time in Who? Somehow defying all odds and keeping it a secret? Or will there be some Timey Whimey explanation for it all in the second part? Man, it’s going to be a long week.

Doctor Who Season 4: Turn Left

This year’s Doctor Lite episode is penned by soon to be departing show runner Russell T Davis and begins the countdown towards the finale.

Davis is capable of great works of Dr Who genius or utter throwaway tosh. How many of you can actually watch the Slitheen episodes of season one any longer? Without Tennant to prop up dodgy scripts with questionable plot contrivances will Davis hold it together to create something watchable or will his multiple agendas get the better of him? You know what I mean, the gay agenda, the lesbian agenda, the anti common sense and logical plot agenda, the bestiality agenda, the lets bring Who back, make it good then make it really naff again agenda. Sorry been spending too much time on the message boards.
The answer is, with a huge sigh of relief – yes. A qualified Yes but a Yes nonetheless. Its fortunate that Tate has proven such a strength to the show this season, once again she pulls out all of the stops for which may turn out to be our last Tate centric story, at least judging by the character overcrowding that appears to inflict final episodes. We’re also treated to the return of Rose to Dr Who in an inventive and mysterious manner.

The story goes like this; The Doctor and Donna are in an alien China Town. Donna is seduced by a fortune teller with a really bad fake, fake English accent and is caught by a giant scarab beetle that looks like it escaped from the prop shop from  a Hartnell era production studio. The beetle changes her past by making her choose right instead of left at a road junction just before she started working in the city. This all means that Donna never met The Doctor in the risible Runaway Bride. Unfortunately this is fiction so we still haven’t forgotten how Davies raped our Christmas with that nonsense about giant spiders and pantomime villains.

We’re then treated to an alternate universe story with Donna as our lens in order to explore a world without The Doctor and what the consequences of that would have been. It's a well worn sci-fi cliché, and it works bloody brilliantly here, as Britain descends into xenophobic hysteria after the Titanic, from the other excretable Xmas special, actually does crash into Buckingham Palace causing the nuclear devastation of London and much of the South. Davies tries hard to evoke a World War Two mood and spirit to the episode, and there are nice comedic moments thrown in to balance against the grimness that pervades much of the story. Kudos to Tate for some well delivered one-liners as only she can.

Interspersed with the What If story are appearances by Rose as Piper gets to play all enigmatic and portentous as she spirit guides Donna to her destiny involving a time traveling anorak. Nice touch there I must say.

Its good to see Piper back, and I’m really happy she isn’t the doe eyed mess of Doomsday. Once of that sentimentality is enough,  Dr Who is supposed to be British not Spielbergian American. Some have said that she wasn’t chavvish enough. Personally I think that is a good thing. Rose is back as a helper not as the companion. It suits the character that she’s moved on from her more naïve wide eyed days. In fact she has something rather Doctorish about her going on. I’m sure whatever he fate will be this season it will be compelling stuff.

The end of the episode is an absolute fanwanky corker and will no doubt delight geeks and Whovians the world over with a brilliant reprise of the season one finale.

Next week –Daleks and Davros and the kitchen sink. This one looks like it has it all.

Doctor Who Season 4: Silence in the Library / Forest of The Dead

This is the one where the Doctor and Donna land on an artificial planet that happens to be the largest library in the universe. They discover that it has been abandoned and there are shadows that move.

Creepy stuff, well, what else would you expect from the master of Doctor Who story telling – The Grand Moff himself. The man who will inherit the hallowed role of show runner from season five. This story gives us a healthy appetizer of what we can expect from the future of Who.

This takes up Moffat’s tally now to six Nu-Who stories. So far then six home runs not one dud. The man has undeniable talent and a knowledge and vision for Who which IMHO outstrips all others bar say Paul Cornell who shares similar story telling aesthetics.

Why is this two parter so great? Again performance wise its faultless. Everyone plays to their strengths here. Tennant and Tate perform fantastically as they continue to foil each other brilliantly. The supporting cast are all top notch, with special mention for Alex Kingston from E.R. fame who takes on Tennant’s often self righteous, emotional Doctor with the ease of someone who has known him for years. Oh that’s right she has. Confused? Let me explain.

Kingston plays River Song the head of an Archaeological team who have been commissioned to find out what happened to the library. In fact she is the reason the Doctor is here, having sent him an SMS via the psychic paper.  We learn that she has known the Doctor for years and that they have had many adventures together. She even has his Sonic screwdriver. There is just one problem, the Doctor hasn’t met her yet, the message was sent to the wrong Doctor! Moffat shows an extremely deft hand when it comes to inventive time travel related stories. He borrows a bit here from The Time Traveller’s Wife, but that's all good. As Who always works great when it borrows from the best. Tennant and Kingston display fantastic chemistry together, really convincing the audience that they have or will have a special bond with each other.

In fact this particular story telling device is a great example of how Moffat is great at forging interesting forward continuity. What do I mean by that? Let me explain. If you’ve ever bothered to waste countless minutes on Who message boards, you’ll quickly realize that many fans are obsessive about continuity from the original series. For example, apparently in 1976 there is a line about how Time Lords can only regenerate 12 times, how are they going to continue Who after his twelfth regeneration without contradicting this extremely important plot point from over thirty years ago? I wish I was joking here but I’m not. Anyhow, Moffat, often nods to backward continuity with lines like –Don’t wander off  a tip of the hat to that overused Old Who story device of a companion wandering off and getting themselves into trouble. Yet despite these examples he has expressed no desire to get bogged down in deeper continuity from the past. However that doesn’t mean that he won’t bog himself down with future continuity. Somehow within the space of ten minutes of screen time he creates a future history and an electric synergy between River and The Doctor. Its fabulous material, opening whole new realms of possibilities about where Moffat will take the Doctor under his tenure. You get the sense that he wants the Doctor to evolve beyond the tortured lone survivor of Davies’s run into someone who is powerful, confident and with the swagger to snap his fingers to open the doors of the Tardis. It also opens up new areas of speculation of how River will tie into The Doctor’s future adventures. What exactly is his relationship with her? There are hints of her even being his wife. I for one can’t wait to see if this is developed in the future, or whether it's a simply a clever story device exploiting the fact that the Doctor is forever and River could well be from several regenerations into his future.

Moving back to the central story. Moffat introduces us to several wonderful sci-fi inventions. The first one is of course the Vasthta Nerada, the piranhas of the air. They are the dust motes in the beams of sunlight, they live in the shadows and their appetite is forever. Beautiful stuff, will send kids to their bedrooms screaming for a few months that's for sure. They move the story on a treat, insuring plenty of running around as The Doctor tries to evade and eventually reason with them.

The second invention is the data ghost. This is exquisite; our first encounter with the concept is with the first character death. We find ourselves shivering as the afterimage on the data voice chip still retains the consciousness of the recently departed. We’re chillingly informed that this phenomena can often last a whole day as the disembodied voice loses more and more of its memory repeating the same line over and over again. Simple but brilliant, and no CGI needed.

Tate’s Donna is not short changed in this either, and while playing backseat in part one, in part two she is given some great dramatic material to work with and is able to explore deeper levels of Donna’s desire to have a family and children. I won’t say how this is achieved but Colin Salmon’s turn at playing a Morpheus like character here is rather nicely done. Everything segues into a fast paced satisfying ending that doesn’t short change the viewer plot wise and achieves fantastic emotional payoff between all of the principles. Oh yeah and for once there isn’t an evil corporation at work.

Any weak points? Well not really, only that Moffat didn’t write more episodes this season. With all respect to Davies who has written some brilliant epics over the last four years, Moffat you know will bring about a second renaissence for The Doctor, something that I think will be on a par with Gaiman’s Sandman. What we saw in this story was merely a taster.

Doctor Who season 4 Review part 1

Well, we’re well in to Season 4 of the Doctor Who, Tennant has made the part his own in a way that, in my opinion, hasn’t happened since Peter Davison, who I rate as the last decent Doctor, and we have a new companion in the loud brash form of Catherine Tate.

 Let me deal with Tate first. When I first heard the news that they were going to use her as the new companion for the whole of series 4, well, I kind of grit my teeth a little. I’m not the greatest fan of her sketch show, and she was poorly written in The Runaway Bride – honestly I hadn’t had such a bad feeling about a companion since bloody Bonnie Langford. Was the good Doctor about to jump the shark with his Tardis?
Well, no, and thank the bloody dead and gone Time Lords that the creative team haven’t taken a huge creative misstep. In my humble view for what its worth, I think Tate was exactly what the show needed. A quality, talented character foil, who can do both comedy and drama effortlessly within seconds of dialogue.

In the past I’d always hated it when the stories tried to do comedy, quite frankly it always looked naff and forced. The last time anyone got any comedy right in Who was back in the seventies when the immortal Douglas Adams was penning the stories – if you don’t believe me check out City of Death from the Tom Baker years which was one of the finest comedy Who stories ever, its worth the price alone for the John Cleese cameo with his modern art critique.

Tenant and Tate have chemistry, they obviously love working with each other and had done a great Comic relief skit together, and quite clearly Russell Davies (show runner) clearly saw the potential of mining that special relationship for all he could.

Episode 1        Partners in Crime

The openers are usually pretty lame in Doctor Who, if I’m being brutally honest. They’re usually light romps designed to introduce companions or a new Doctor and rarely become dramatic in the way that stories like Father’s Day or Human Nature do.

 This one had all the makings of an all time bucket of swill of an opener. I mean come on - Raquel from bloody Corrie? You half expect her to start whining for Curly or something? A sonic pen? It may as well have been sonic eye liner. And Aliens made from fat? What more fart gags?  I know the show is supposed to be for kids as much as adults – but the word really juvenile springs to mind.

Somehow though it worked – the humor out of the Doctor and Donna missing each other worked pretty well. There was less shouty stuff from Donna than before, and with the help of Bernard Cribbins as her grandfather, Davies managed to add some nuance to her character, something that seemed impossible back in the special.

The aliens were kind of cute and worked well with in the context of the story and mood he was aiming for.
The plot though was throwaway material really, and was merely a prologue for Donna’s story and the beautiful set up for the main story arc of the series  - the return of Rose.

Best moment – Dr: I just want a mate.
           Donna: Well you’re not mating with me sunshine!
Clearly these two together are going to have fun and the next episode doesn’t disappoint.

Episode 2    The Fires of Pompeii
Its become a bit of a pattern now that we get a historical episode in the second outing of a series. This one though is possibly one of my favorite stories of new Who. Seriously, they made this thing look like a million dollars. Its epic, ballsey and adds tonnes of story arc development.

The Doctor and Donna are supposed to go to Ancient Rome, but end up in Pompeii instead. To make matters worse it's the day before Vesuvius erupts. They decide that a quick exit would be the best idea, only to find the Tardis has been sold to a lover of modern art. As the plot unfurls we get Soothsayers, Volcanic rock monsters and a healthy dose of moral dilemmas about saving lives and not interfering with the time stream.

Donna’s role as companion here sees some great development. First off she experiments with the language translation that the Tardis gives its crew; what would Latin sound like when its translated? Well apparently it sounds Welsh.

Donna of course wants to warn the inhabitants about the impending disaster. Naturally the Doctor says they can’t, as it's a fixed point in history. Donna’s age and experience here shows she’s not willing to accept everything he says and is much less doe eyed in acceptance of his explanations unlike Rose and Martha on occasion. This plays through the whole episode and for the first time we get a rational argument for why the Doctor can change some things and not others. It all leads in to decent climax that is well, erm - explosive.

It all works brilliantly quite frankly aided by a great supporting cast. I’ve always been a big fan of Phil Davis, and he scowls and spits as good as always as the villain.

The dialogue is sharp, and there is some beautiful word play early on between the Doctor and the psychics, which illuminate key arc words for the rest of the series.  I won’t ruin it for you but the bit about the Medusa Cascade is sweet as.

Anything bad about it? Well not really, some of the Roman family stuff is a bit on the cringe worthy side, with some redundant scenes that could have been exorcised with some judicious editing, but basically a brilliant second episode.

Episode 3 The Planet of The Ood or We want to save money so lets reuse some old prosthetics from season 2 before they go moldy and lets use another refinery for an alien base – yawn.

Here we end up on the Ood Sphere where the Doctor gets all sanctimonious about using slaves and is on the whole pretty useless throughout the whole episode, as it appears the rebellion of the Ood against the humans has been well planned out and executed without any Time Lord interference.

That’s about it really. There’s a bit of running about and shouting. Some lame action sequences, Donna cries again, and Tim Mckinnery loses his hair and head.

I’m probably being a bit too hard on this one, but seriously it doesn’t really stretch the characters very much, and we’ve been and here and seen this a dozen times before. Seriously we get it – humans are bad and some aliens are good.

Episode 4 and 5        The Sonataran Stratagem and The Poison Sky
Well this is much better. Martha’s back, UNIT’s back sans the Brigadier, and more importantly we get Sonatarans – the potato head bunch of stomping clone warriors are back.

This could have been two episodes of more swill, after all Helen Raynor wrote them and she is responsible for the excretable Daleks in Manhattan and the even more diahorretic Evolution of The Daleks. Apparently the reason they were the remains of Dehli Belly wasn’t her fault, but well her name is on the titles so take it like a woman Raynor that's what I say.

Anyhow, the first two parter of the series is much better than in season 3. They’re action packed, filled with interesting soft sci-fi concepts and some decent characters to boot.

The plot is simple; the Sonotarans want the Earth as a new cloning world for their war effort against the Rutans. They use seriously annoying boy Genius Rattcliffe to fix 400 million cars with ATMOS which is supposed to convert CO2 emissions into harmless gas, but is in fact got a cunning temporal trick switch which will release a poisonous gas which is suitable for the nourishing billions of Sonotaran clones. Phew, that’s a lot of story. I think I just blew the cover off the Sonotaran’s secret plan, but honestly speaking it will make very little difference with enjoying this essentially big and loud action story.

Along the way Martha gets cloned and covered in gooey stuff. Donna shows that working for a temping agency can help solve world threatening mysteries, and the Doctor gets all sanctimonious about guns.
This is actually rather irritating as obviously he’s starting to develop dementia in his old age, as he never had a problem with them in Attack of the Cybermen, and even more recently Dalek, not to mention the Time War where he must have used quite a few of them. Actually this was a huge bugbear for me. I understand the Doctor wants to solve things without violence and guns, that’s part of his genius – but seriously we’ve been here before and well guns can be quite useful when you’re dealing with daleks and such like really, so I’m at a loss to see why he makes such a sing and dance about this time. Bad writing if you ask me.

Episode 6 The Doctor’s daughter

Well, the title says it all really. We get to meet quite literally the daughter of our Doctor, who also happens to be played by the real life daughter of Peter Davison, which is a nice casting coup for the production team, don’t you think? She’s rather tasty too. Certainly David Tennant thinks so as he’s now dating her. Don’t even start to work out the incestuous nature of that relationship – think about it, Tenth Doctor shagging Fifth Doctor’s real daughter – go on make all the jokes you can I’m sure they are. LOL.

Sorry, beyond the tabloid fun, the story itself is surprisingly old school seventies fair – reminded me a bit of Underworld and other lost Earth Colony stories from the seventies. So so denouement, and mercifully they don’t waste a fine addition to the Who Mythos by killing Jenny (the daughter) in the final scenes. Apparently new show runner Moffat ordered a rewrite of the ending so that he can use her in the future.

Martha and Donna are kind of second stringers in this one. Martha gets thrown around a lot, captured by giant fish who blow bubbles, dunked in alien quick sand and basically has really rough time of it. Donna on the other hand shows that being a temp isn’t a colossal waste of time after all, and does her usual bit as the Doctor’s conscience.

Essentially its Jenny’s show, a great introduction to a character who I hope we see a lot more of. A lot of people had been hoping that there would be continuity links with Susan, the Doctor’s long gone dgranddaughter, but quite frankly it would have been uber fanwanky and this strategy of creating a new mythology for the Doctor is far smarter move on the production team’s part IMHO.

 

Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride

Doctor Who: The Runnaway Bride, aka, The one with Catherine “Am I bovvered” Tate, aka - The one where the Doctor flushes spiders down a plug hole, aka - The one where the Doctor tells someone the name of his planet, aka - The one without Billy Piper.

This is the first story with out Billie Piper’s Rose who had been until her departure an intergral part of the series. In some ways she’s a bigger loss than Eccleston, we all know Doctors come and go, but Rose was different, the series had been built around her; not as a supporting actor but as one of its main stars, she literally carried the first Xmas special with her strength and star power. How will the series continue with out her? Well Russell Davies (series show runner) has opted for a breakneck action packed Xmas extravaganza where he throws so much at you that you wonder why he didn’t throw in the kitchen sink as well, then you watch it again and realized he threw in the biggest one of the lot, the Thames river!

The story concerns Donna (the title’s runaway bride) appearing mysteriously and impossibly in the TARDIS screaming at Tennant’s bereaved and confused Doctor, accusing him kidnapping him. After some frenetic exchanges she realizes the impossible has happened to her and starts to calm down, well, slightly. She demands the Doctor to take her back to London, which he is more than happy to oblige. Well, she’s no Rose, and that voice, Christ, when you’re trying to recover from a huge loss the last thing you need is that piece of work deafening you. Typically the Tardis lands in the wrong part of London. They try to get a cab, prompting the Doctor to use his sonic screw driver to steal money from an ATM. Donna eventually grabs a cab and gets kidnapped by a robot Santa ensuing an amazing chase along the motorway with the Tardis skidding across tarmac and bouncing off cars, all done with some surprisingly outstanding production values. The mystery unravels with the frantic pace of a five year old ripping open their Christmas presents. Turns out that the Donna is saturated in particles of an ancient energy source which hasn’t been seen since the Dark Time, that is, before the creation of planet Earth. What follows is a rollercoaster, mystery, action and adventure story, that is rapidly become the show’s 21st century hallmark. Without going into anymore of the story I’ll just say that in the sixty minutes we have with the Doctor for Christmas, we get to meet the ancient Spider Empress of Racnoss, and a trip back to the formation of planet Earth, superbly realized by SFX team, The Mill. It’s worth mentioning that this is the first time we hear the word – Gallifrey in the new series, possibly hinting at later things to come in the third series.