110: The Parting of the Ways
1: GamesWorld 2: Survivor
by RTD
Roots: War of the Worlds, 12 Monkeys, Star Trek: Generations and Robert of Sherwood (two consecutive heroes teaming up), The Truman Show, Press Gang episode Monday-Tuesday (cause and effect out of synch), Blakes' 7 finals, especially Star One. The scene where the Ninth Doctor mumbles about Grace might be a cheeky reference to The Others.
Fluffs: Paul McGann seemed resigned to his fate in this story.
"No-one answered my question! No-one tells me anything around here!"
"There's a reason for that, Mickey."
"What is it then?"
"Sorry, can't tell you."
Goofs: The Moxx of Balhoon's dying scream happens twice [there are wierd accoustics in the Dalek generation tunnel]
If these Daleks are the Ultimate Generation, why do they have such obvious design flaws? And can The Long Game space station REALLY hold an entire Dalek invasion force?
There is no explanation as to how the Moxx got (brief) control of the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS as he appears to die here before ever getting a chance to use it. Speaking of TARDISes, it is presumably damage to the Eighth Doctor's that causes the spectacular redesign from the "Gothic nightmare", as the dialogue confirms. But they used the same set for both control rooms...
Fashion Victims: The Eighth Doctor's updated costume isn't a patch on the original. Sadly.
Double Entendres:
"Spacecraft are of little value when made of polystyrene."
The events of this story put Doctor Who off the screen for 14 years.
The old 999 monsters in the corridor joke gets referenced:
"Step outside, Doctor! I don't care how many you've brought with you, you haven't got a chance!"
"I'm not surprised that you don't care how many we've brought. There's only three thousand of us and twelve of you. In your shoes I wouldn't be too bothered either."
"I count only five of you, Doctor."
"Damn, I can see there's no fooling you."
Dialogue Disasters:
The Eighth Doctor's non-sequiters including "UNCLEAN!!" and "BEWARE THE WRATH OF THE HAMSTER!" are made even funnier by the Daleks' reactions.
As the Sixth Doctor so nearly said, brevity is the soul of wit: "Ah, is this the part where you mock my concern for humanity and reveal is that love is just a horrid, icky, disgusting thing that happens between a man and a woman and forces them to get married, have kids, two cats and a fat, over-fed budgerigar named Gerald in a holiday home in the South of France?"
Dialogue Triumphs:
"Come in, have a drink! Just toasting the departed." "The bottle's empty." "There's a lot of them to toast."
Captain Jack and the Eighth Doctor: "Sir, are you drunk by any chance?"
"No, fella. I do not drink and drive!"
"Phew.."
"...I smoke and FLY!"
Dalek: "Luck is an illogical and unreliable concept."
Ninth Doctor: "You only say that because you don't have any."
"What do we do now, Doctor?"
"We wait."
"For what, Armageddon?!"
"Possibly. Depends on how long we've just delayed it."
"Life is a joke. It's just not a very good one, that's all."
Adam's speech to Rose upon her seeing the Doctor's "death":
"Do you feel any better, Rose? Do you feel revived? Do you feel refreshed? Do you feel like justice has been visited upon you? No. And you never will with pointless gestures. Take it from me, Rose, you need your anger. You need your pain. They're what let you know what you want and need. How can you know you must eat without hunger? How can you know you need rest without exhaustion? You put all your heart and all your pain and all your anger into that, but when the fury ebbs and the blood stops pounding, you're still where you were, and nothing has changed, except that you're exhausted. The Doctor is still dead, you are still alone, the Daleks still threaten a thousand worlds. You were able to put all that power and passion into a display of total violence... and it has got you nowhere. You are left feeling even more powerless and helpless than before. This is not the way, Rose."
Links: Events from the last seven episodes are mentioned as well as the TV movie ("Zat you, Grace?").
Untelevised Adventures: The long awaited finale to the Eighth Doctor at lasts gets televised. Well, bits of it... The Ninth Doctor always meant to return anti-grav belt to King Ghaebalakon (Old Ghebbers) of Tyrix.
Intertextuality: From the moment REG was announced as the Doctor, fans had been suggesting a Two Doctor story to write out the Eighth once the Ninth had been established. Here it is, guys. And no references to Whitnail & I whatsoever!
Continuity:
The Eighth Doctor was travelling alone when he arrived in 1986 and met Adam, who used the Vanisher crisis to worm his way up to companion status. Sabotaging the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS in what he hoped would be a final piece of sabotage, Adam returned to Geocomtex, but the Doctor's words convinced him that the Daleks would ultimately turn on him. The Eighth Doctor escaped the disintegrating TARDIS and arrived in post-WW2 London where he met Captain Jack. Using Jack's time-travel unit, he traveled on to The Long Game station, only to be caught by a phalanx of Daleks and shot multiple times.
Determined for a rematch, the Moxx of Balhoon has re-fitted The Long Game station (now named GamesWorld) and started a new show devoted entirely to the Doctor and Rose being put in deadly situations. It was he who teleported the Ninth Doctor off Earth in Boomtown.
The Doctor uses the teleport to transport the entire Dalek army off Earth and into the station, then escaped with Jack, Mickey, Adam and the Tylers in his previous self's damaged TARDIS. Dropping them off on Earth, the Doctor returned to the asteroid base and discovered the Dalek factory asorbs energy from everything around it to instantly create more Daleks and was a threat to the universe. Despite the efforts of another Dalek (which was created when the Moxx of Balhoon fell into the works and provided more energy), the Doctor linked the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS to the device and trigger a self-destruct. The TARDIS, demonstrably, survives the explosion but spends 14 years repairing itself.
Using the Ninth Doctor's TARDIS, Adam gave Rose the choice of returning to Earth or finding out what happened to the Doctor. Rose finally chose the Doctor and was beamed via Jack's machine back to the GamesWorld station, now refitted as a war-wheel. Hunted by Daleks, she eventually found her way to a cell - where the Eighth Doctor is still very much alive...
Location: London 1986/2006; Wales 1945; the Long Game space station; and the Dalek factory hidden in the asteroid belt.
The Bottom Line: "Rose, it may surprise you to learn that I have always believed in what is right. But I've never believed it was possible. I'm sorry to disillusion you, but you've been following a phantom."
A devastating and witty two-parter with hints of Logopolis and The Dalek Invasion of Earth thrown in, as the Eighth and Ninth Doctors struggle to save the universe AND defeat the Daleks. The apparent climax half way through the final episode, to the twist-upon-twist nature of the last few minutes ends this new series of Doctor Who on a soprano note. How has the Eighth Doctor survived? Is the Ninth Doctor as lucky? What is the Daleks' back-up plan? What will happen to Rose?
See you in 2006...
Showing posts with label Second Sight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second Sight. Show all posts
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
My Incredibly Inaccurate Predictions: Father's Day to Boomtown!
107: D-Day
by Paul Cornell
Roots: The Stranglers' Golden Brown, Blackadder: Bells ("It's short for... Bob"), Back to the Future I, The X-Files (in particular Mulder's sister episodes), Buffy: Restless ("I know you... I knew you"), Red Dwarf's Tikka to Ride (the alternate history is recited almost verbatim).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a little preoccupied in this story.
"Don't you see, Rose? It is bad! Very bad! Really, really, really bad. It's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY bad. It's really, really, really..."
"Regret is part of being alive. So, er... suicide's an option, I suppose."
Goofs: One of the church-goers bumps into a gravestone and visibly bites down a cry of pain.
The shadows caused by the Vanishers' ship change between shots.
Surely, Rose's own father would have noted her resemblance to his wife, at least!
The early scenes suggest Jackie is pregnant with Rose, but its made quite clear that Rose herself is three years old by this time! [The loan sharks don't keep up with Simon's family affairs and he can't be bothered to correct them].
Fashion Victims: As it's set in 1986, its presumably ironic.
Double Entendres: After Season 26, the Doctor's memory of events is very blurred - just the sort of thing Big Finish, Doctor Who Magazine and BBC Books want.
"Golden Brown
finer temptress
through the ages
she's heading west
goes far away
stays for a day
never a frown
with golden brown..." seems to suit this old TV show suspiciously well.
Dialogue Disasters:
"I'm the Doctor! I just don't DO that sort of thing!" The self-referentialism strikes again.
"That's why I came here! We can change it all for the better!" And so does the tedious moralizing.
"Does my bum look big in this?" And the awful pop culture references.
Dialogue Triumphs:
"Who is she?" "My mum." "Oh, that explains it." "What?" "Well, beauty does skip a generation, doesn't it?" "Are you saying my mum's ugly?" "No."
"The Vanishers vanish- er, disappeared."
"This is getting far too complicated." Not so much a triumph, more the fact that Paul McGann appears as the Eighth Doctor to say it!!
Links: Some time has passed since The Long Game, as returning Jack to his own time have run aground. Rose, Aliens of London, Museum Piece and the TV Movie are referenced. The Doctor admits the last thing he can clearly remember doing before meeting Rose was wandering around Perivale on a boring Sunday afternoon.
Untelevised Adventures: The Eighth Doctor encountered Adam at some point in 2005, not long before his regeneration - an encounter triggered by the events in this story. The Doctor once encountered the Vanishers during a 1000-year war, where they "vanished" a man who had developed a weapon that would win the war a decade early. He has seen an alternative Earth ruined by nuclear war as an end result of JFK surviving that trip to Dallas.
Intertextuality: "I tried being human once. I didn't like it" presumably refers to the author's own Human Nature, as do references to the Singapore Hilton (Seasons of Fear), the Scourge (Shadow of the Scourge) and the Shalka [though how that is supposed to fit in, I have no idea.] The opening scene has the Doctor relating the Mary Shelly/Lord Byron story the Eighth Doctor can't seem to shut up about (Shada/Storm Warning/Neverland/Zagreus).
Continuity:
Roselyn Tyler was born to Jacqueline and Simon Tyler on June 13, 1980. It is implied there was something of a shotgun wedding. She was christened in Saint Christopher's church on Pepys Avenue. Her third birthday fell on Friday 13, the day her father disappeared and later presumed dead. Instead, Simon was kidnapped by Adam using Dalek technology. Jackie pretended he died in a car crash, and his unsavory loan shark acquaintence acted as a witness.
The Ninth Doctor erroneously believes the Vanishers (a race of temporal assassins who remove 'abberants' from the established timeline) were after Simon, but were in fact drawn here in order to kill the Eighth Doctor.
The regeneration between Eighth and Ninth was physically smooth but triggered a surprising amount of amnesia, with the Ninth Doctor barely remembering anything post-Survival.
Simon's favorite song was the Stranglers' Golden Brown, and Rose feels very depressed whenever she hears it. Oddly enough, despite clearly not coming from the 20th century, Jack knows the words and has no trouble singing the song.
Location: Thornhill, near Southhampton, June 1986.
The Bottom Line: "We can't see the final pattern. But then again, who said we were supposed to?"
Like The Long Game, the subplot of missing adventures and unanswered questions drawns the fans in more than the casual audience. However, the main plot with Rose meeting her father is enough to tug at the heartstrings, and there is a nice spiky relationship developing with Captain Jack. A certain Stranglers' song is now indelibly etched into Who mythos. Replacing the ending theme with it may have been a step too far, but PAUL BLOODY McGANN IS IN IT!
108: The Empty Child
1: The Empty Child2: The Doctor Dances
by Stephen Moffat
Roots: Zombie flicks, including Shaun of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Foyles War, Goodnight Sweetheard ("Doctor Sparrow. Garry Sparrow").
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit wartorn in this story.
"You can wait for inspiration till the cows come home. Just what is it about procrastination that attracts beef, anyway?"
Not sure if the head zombie is supposed to sound like that or is just a crap actor.
"Oh, dear god that is DISGUSTING!" screams Jack. I guess they left it in for the passion.
Goofs: One of the zombie can be seen smoking a cigarette during the mass exodus of the hospital.
If the TARDIS is full of nanites that can repair body tissue perfectly... how come the Doctor ever regenerates? How come people die inside it?? [The Doctor finally got round to fixing that TARDIS circuit. It'll break down any episode, mark my words]
We're supposed to believe that the 1000-year old Time Lord has never learnt how to dance? [Another side-effect of the Doctor's regeneration, but he's simplifying things]
Technobabble: Polarities reversed, zectronic beams controlled, and the Empty Virus is ultimately defined as a self-replicating inert program of genetic re-engineering.
Fashion Victims: "Oh, Rose? Like the shirt." Good, because I doubt anyone else does.
Double Entendres: "Doctor - Who... am I to argue with history?" Yes, yes, very clever.
Dialogue Disasters:
"Twenty years to pop music - you're gonna love it!!!" He means "rock", surely?
Dialogue Triumphs: Most of the story, really.
"Right you lot, lots to do - beat the Germans, save the world and dont forget the welfare state!"
"You sold us out to the Nazis??" "I can explain this - yes I did."
Jack on Rose: "She has a brighter side. Unfortunately, this is it."
"We shall have to act quickly to save the universe!" "Of course we will. It's Tuesday lunchtime."
"He's completely ruthless!" "Impossible, he must have SOME ruth left in him!"
"Geocomtex Ltd. Extremely Ltd."
"There's never a policeman when you need one." "A policeman can't help us!" "No, but I'm sure he could sacrifice himself nobly while we run for our miserable lives."
Oh, sod it. Just watch the damn thing.
Links: Jack and Adam's actions link up this story to The Long Game and D-Day quite a bit.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor once got caught on the front lines of WW1 and discovered an alien force was feeding on the death and destruction - and was mightily depressed when he found out that the alien had nothing to do with the kamikaze tactics of the Big Push.
He also encountered a primitive teleport that 'destroyed the souls' of those who used it, and the homicidal maniacs thus created were dubbed "Empty Men" by the locals.
Intertextuality:
"Don't tell me, my certain death is now certain?" is a cunning reference to The Curse of Fatal Death. If only we could make it canon. The Doctor mentions Nazi fetishes for Cyber-technology, linking up with the unmade story/BBC book Illegal Alien. There are also a few nods to time-traveling comedy Goodnight Sweetheart. Timewyrm: Exodus seems to be mentioned.
Continuity:
The last survivor of the Dalek duplicate program, Adam used a time machine and fled back to the start of the 20th century to begin the xeno-tech business German Elite Order Technologies (or Geotech, later adding "com" during the creation of the internet). His plan was to have an organization strong enough to locate the suriving Dalek unit and reactivate the asteroid belt Dalek factory. One of his workers, Jack Hackness, stole Adam's time machine, only to be captured by the Moxx of Balhoon. Adam managed to follow him [perhaps hiding inside the capsule??] and, realizing that the Doctor would probably screw things up, went to 2005 and met up with the Eighth Doctor and presumably killed him.
During WW2, Geotech was bought out by the Third Riech and used an alien nano-virus to convert the infected dead into possible storm troopers. Adam managed to keep the alien side of things quiet by holding mock satanic rituals to summon the forces of darkness. It is not clear if the Adam in this story is the version we met in 1986 or a 'younger' model, but he recognizes the TARDIS for what it is right away. He knows how to break in, but the TARDIS not only has a force-field to repel unwanted visitors, it can reduce itself to an ordinary police box apparently at will.
The Doctor doesn't like dancing, as mainly it seems to involve his human companions trading him for someone who KNOWS how to dance, then falling in love with them and staying behind (although he jokes about this, he is clearly anxious that Rose might follow the same course). His "leather" jacket is in fact a synthesized "dragon cloak" he picked up somewhere [stay tuned].
Location: In and around Albion Hospital, England, 1930.
The Bottom Line: "Everybody lives Rose, everybody lives - just this once."
A fantastic and very scary story, the mulitple story-strands of The Empty Child dovetail together beautifully. The ongoing Geocomtex arc is explained, and Captain Jack departs temporarily, leaving the option open for a fully-fledged Dalek war... in 2006. A set text of the Ninth Doctor and 21st century Doctor Who in general.
109: Boomtown
by Russell T Davies
Roots: Jonathon Creek (The Gorgon's Wood), various serial killer stories, in particular Jack the Ripper, the works of Tanith Lee, Sapphire & Steel (the Railway Station), the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Nightmares, the TV series Boomtown (in which several views of the same incident are related), the fable of the Dog with Two Bones, the Doctor mentions crossing the Rubicon.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed to think he was in Roshamon for this story.
"Yes, I knew Silver Chair before they were big. They were known as Magician's Nephew originally. Something of a C.S. Lewis fetish, apparently."
Goofs: The Doctor's blind insistence that Adam's time capsule was heading for 2006 is a bit suspect, especially when the alternative reasons (the half-desire to return Rose home and Rose's own desire to see her family) would have done.
A Dalek can be spotted in the replication generator BEFORE Adam activates it.
A certain fan (naming no names) can be spotted taking a photo via a mobile phone in the background.
Surely the Daleks wouldn't have been able to recreate an entire battle fleet complete with flagships in the day the story takes place? [There is more than one factory in the asteroid belt, but Adam is concerned with the one that controls all the others]
Technobabble: The destruction of Geocomtex triggers a pre-programmed subspace disturbance on both Earth and the Dalek factory, creating a hyperspatial vortex in real time. Or, for Mickey, it opens a door to hell and lets the worst thing imaginable out again.
Fashion Victims: Adam's choice of demonic-cloak covered in Dalek pictagrams. WHAT?!?
Double Entendres:
"We're running out of time to make a good impression, Rose."
"I'm saving the Daleks for a big finale."
Mickey's innuendo-laden inquisition about just what the Doctor and Rose do in between saving the world. How vulgar. He'll be asking what Holmes and Watson did on their days off next.
Dialogue Disasters:
Mickey ain't so fine: "It's him again, isn't it? It's the Doctor. It's always about the Doctor, isn't it? It's never about me!" Jesus, I thought Adric whining was bad enough...
"Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, the Master... I'm running out of old foes to annoy."
Dialogue Triumphs:
Rose and Mickey discuss the threat they face - "What are Daleks?" "What's the worst thing you can imagine?" "Autons? Slythereen? Your mum hungover..." "No, Mickey. The Daleks ARE the worst thing you can imagine..."
"What have I got to worry about, Doctor? You'll look after me." "Others have made that mistake, Rose. No need for you to join their ranks."
"Mickey, your distrust of my intentions bites me like an old cynic." "Is that bad?" "No. Old cynics rarely have any teeth."
Links: Pretty much every story of the season gets referenced.
Untelevised References: The Doctor and Rose were diverted to a nameless planet run by vampires en route to London. Rose's prejudice towards vampires got them into a lot of trouble - and the Doctor is curiously anxious to avoid discussing their adventure.
Intertextuality: Doctor Who Versus Scratchman is obliquely referenced, and the Doctor's "We haven't met before, have we?" might refer to the Time Lord/Scarecrows that executed the Second Doctor in the TV Comic "The Night Walkers".
Continuity:
When Adam returned to the Dalek factory in the asteroid belt, he immediately sent the time capsule back to Earth, leading the Doctor a false trail. While he began building the Dalek army, he activated a battalian of Cybermen drones Geocomtex had converted into scarecrows [presumably to sell to rich farmers?]. These versions are immune to gold, but are vulnerable to ultra-random frequencies because of their Geocomtex adaptations. These Cybermen are very ghoulish and can increase their strength by draining blood and nueral matter from their victims.
The England Geocomtex offices are destroyed in this story when the Doctor sabotages a Cyber-drone and uses its self-destruct capability. However, its destruction caused a pre-programmed wormhole to link the remains of the building with the Dalek factory.
The re-designed Daleks are emerald green, without eye-stalks or manipulator arms but instead hidden hatches contain a multitude of electrified cables. They float around and are lead by a larger golden Dalek. Their bodies glow when they talk. The Daleks are prepared for combat and swarm through London in approximately five minutes.
At the end of the story, a field of energy consumes the Doctor, Rose, Jackie, Mickey and Adam before the Daleks can execute them.
Location: London, 2006.
The Bottom Line: "Prepare for extermination!"
A stunning cliffhanger into the finale of the season, and the briefest glimpse of the long awaited Dalek/Cyberman conflict not to mention the unvieling of the Ultimate Generation of Daleks make this compulsary viewing. For those who know of The Dalek Invasion Earth, it makes the apparent devastation of humanity all the more chilling. Coupled with the multiple viewpoints of the invasion and starting in media res, this is the most explosive and experimental story since Ghost Light. Essential viewing.
by Paul Cornell
Roots: The Stranglers' Golden Brown, Blackadder: Bells ("It's short for... Bob"), Back to the Future I, The X-Files (in particular Mulder's sister episodes), Buffy: Restless ("I know you... I knew you"), Red Dwarf's Tikka to Ride (the alternate history is recited almost verbatim).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a little preoccupied in this story.
"Don't you see, Rose? It is bad! Very bad! Really, really, really bad. It's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY bad. It's really, really, really..."
"Regret is part of being alive. So, er... suicide's an option, I suppose."
Goofs: One of the church-goers bumps into a gravestone and visibly bites down a cry of pain.
The shadows caused by the Vanishers' ship change between shots.
Surely, Rose's own father would have noted her resemblance to his wife, at least!
The early scenes suggest Jackie is pregnant with Rose, but its made quite clear that Rose herself is three years old by this time! [The loan sharks don't keep up with Simon's family affairs and he can't be bothered to correct them].
Fashion Victims: As it's set in 1986, its presumably ironic.
Double Entendres: After Season 26, the Doctor's memory of events is very blurred - just the sort of thing Big Finish, Doctor Who Magazine and BBC Books want.
"Golden Brown
finer temptress
through the ages
she's heading west
goes far away
stays for a day
never a frown
with golden brown..." seems to suit this old TV show suspiciously well.
Dialogue Disasters:
"I'm the Doctor! I just don't DO that sort of thing!" The self-referentialism strikes again.
"That's why I came here! We can change it all for the better!" And so does the tedious moralizing.
"Does my bum look big in this?" And the awful pop culture references.
Dialogue Triumphs:
"Who is she?" "My mum." "Oh, that explains it." "What?" "Well, beauty does skip a generation, doesn't it?" "Are you saying my mum's ugly?" "No."
"The Vanishers vanish- er, disappeared."
"This is getting far too complicated." Not so much a triumph, more the fact that Paul McGann appears as the Eighth Doctor to say it!!
Links: Some time has passed since The Long Game, as returning Jack to his own time have run aground. Rose, Aliens of London, Museum Piece and the TV Movie are referenced. The Doctor admits the last thing he can clearly remember doing before meeting Rose was wandering around Perivale on a boring Sunday afternoon.
Untelevised Adventures: The Eighth Doctor encountered Adam at some point in 2005, not long before his regeneration - an encounter triggered by the events in this story. The Doctor once encountered the Vanishers during a 1000-year war, where they "vanished" a man who had developed a weapon that would win the war a decade early. He has seen an alternative Earth ruined by nuclear war as an end result of JFK surviving that trip to Dallas.
Intertextuality: "I tried being human once. I didn't like it" presumably refers to the author's own Human Nature, as do references to the Singapore Hilton (Seasons of Fear), the Scourge (Shadow of the Scourge) and the Shalka [though how that is supposed to fit in, I have no idea.] The opening scene has the Doctor relating the Mary Shelly/Lord Byron story the Eighth Doctor can't seem to shut up about (Shada/Storm Warning/Neverland/Zagreus).
Continuity:
Roselyn Tyler was born to Jacqueline and Simon Tyler on June 13, 1980. It is implied there was something of a shotgun wedding. She was christened in Saint Christopher's church on Pepys Avenue. Her third birthday fell on Friday 13, the day her father disappeared and later presumed dead. Instead, Simon was kidnapped by Adam using Dalek technology. Jackie pretended he died in a car crash, and his unsavory loan shark acquaintence acted as a witness.
The Ninth Doctor erroneously believes the Vanishers (a race of temporal assassins who remove 'abberants' from the established timeline) were after Simon, but were in fact drawn here in order to kill the Eighth Doctor.
The regeneration between Eighth and Ninth was physically smooth but triggered a surprising amount of amnesia, with the Ninth Doctor barely remembering anything post-Survival.
Simon's favorite song was the Stranglers' Golden Brown, and Rose feels very depressed whenever she hears it. Oddly enough, despite clearly not coming from the 20th century, Jack knows the words and has no trouble singing the song.
Location: Thornhill, near Southhampton, June 1986.
The Bottom Line: "We can't see the final pattern. But then again, who said we were supposed to?"
Like The Long Game, the subplot of missing adventures and unanswered questions drawns the fans in more than the casual audience. However, the main plot with Rose meeting her father is enough to tug at the heartstrings, and there is a nice spiky relationship developing with Captain Jack. A certain Stranglers' song is now indelibly etched into Who mythos. Replacing the ending theme with it may have been a step too far, but PAUL BLOODY McGANN IS IN IT!
108: The Empty Child
1: The Empty Child2: The Doctor Dances
by Stephen Moffat
Roots: Zombie flicks, including Shaun of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Foyles War, Goodnight Sweetheard ("Doctor Sparrow. Garry Sparrow").
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit wartorn in this story.
"You can wait for inspiration till the cows come home. Just what is it about procrastination that attracts beef, anyway?"
Not sure if the head zombie is supposed to sound like that or is just a crap actor.
"Oh, dear god that is DISGUSTING!" screams Jack. I guess they left it in for the passion.
Goofs: One of the zombie can be seen smoking a cigarette during the mass exodus of the hospital.
If the TARDIS is full of nanites that can repair body tissue perfectly... how come the Doctor ever regenerates? How come people die inside it?? [The Doctor finally got round to fixing that TARDIS circuit. It'll break down any episode, mark my words]
We're supposed to believe that the 1000-year old Time Lord has never learnt how to dance? [Another side-effect of the Doctor's regeneration, but he's simplifying things]
Technobabble: Polarities reversed, zectronic beams controlled, and the Empty Virus is ultimately defined as a self-replicating inert program of genetic re-engineering.
Fashion Victims: "Oh, Rose? Like the shirt." Good, because I doubt anyone else does.
Double Entendres: "Doctor - Who... am I to argue with history?" Yes, yes, very clever.
Dialogue Disasters:
"Twenty years to pop music - you're gonna love it!!!" He means "rock", surely?
Dialogue Triumphs: Most of the story, really.
"Right you lot, lots to do - beat the Germans, save the world and dont forget the welfare state!"
"You sold us out to the Nazis??" "I can explain this - yes I did."
Jack on Rose: "She has a brighter side. Unfortunately, this is it."
"We shall have to act quickly to save the universe!" "Of course we will. It's Tuesday lunchtime."
"He's completely ruthless!" "Impossible, he must have SOME ruth left in him!"
"Geocomtex Ltd. Extremely Ltd."
"There's never a policeman when you need one." "A policeman can't help us!" "No, but I'm sure he could sacrifice himself nobly while we run for our miserable lives."
Oh, sod it. Just watch the damn thing.
Links: Jack and Adam's actions link up this story to The Long Game and D-Day quite a bit.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor once got caught on the front lines of WW1 and discovered an alien force was feeding on the death and destruction - and was mightily depressed when he found out that the alien had nothing to do with the kamikaze tactics of the Big Push.
He also encountered a primitive teleport that 'destroyed the souls' of those who used it, and the homicidal maniacs thus created were dubbed "Empty Men" by the locals.
Intertextuality:
"Don't tell me, my certain death is now certain?" is a cunning reference to The Curse of Fatal Death. If only we could make it canon. The Doctor mentions Nazi fetishes for Cyber-technology, linking up with the unmade story/BBC book Illegal Alien. There are also a few nods to time-traveling comedy Goodnight Sweetheart. Timewyrm: Exodus seems to be mentioned.
Continuity:
The last survivor of the Dalek duplicate program, Adam used a time machine and fled back to the start of the 20th century to begin the xeno-tech business German Elite Order Technologies (or Geotech, later adding "com" during the creation of the internet). His plan was to have an organization strong enough to locate the suriving Dalek unit and reactivate the asteroid belt Dalek factory. One of his workers, Jack Hackness, stole Adam's time machine, only to be captured by the Moxx of Balhoon. Adam managed to follow him [perhaps hiding inside the capsule??] and, realizing that the Doctor would probably screw things up, went to 2005 and met up with the Eighth Doctor and presumably killed him.
During WW2, Geotech was bought out by the Third Riech and used an alien nano-virus to convert the infected dead into possible storm troopers. Adam managed to keep the alien side of things quiet by holding mock satanic rituals to summon the forces of darkness. It is not clear if the Adam in this story is the version we met in 1986 or a 'younger' model, but he recognizes the TARDIS for what it is right away. He knows how to break in, but the TARDIS not only has a force-field to repel unwanted visitors, it can reduce itself to an ordinary police box apparently at will.
The Doctor doesn't like dancing, as mainly it seems to involve his human companions trading him for someone who KNOWS how to dance, then falling in love with them and staying behind (although he jokes about this, he is clearly anxious that Rose might follow the same course). His "leather" jacket is in fact a synthesized "dragon cloak" he picked up somewhere [stay tuned].
Location: In and around Albion Hospital, England, 1930.
The Bottom Line: "Everybody lives Rose, everybody lives - just this once."
A fantastic and very scary story, the mulitple story-strands of The Empty Child dovetail together beautifully. The ongoing Geocomtex arc is explained, and Captain Jack departs temporarily, leaving the option open for a fully-fledged Dalek war... in 2006. A set text of the Ninth Doctor and 21st century Doctor Who in general.
109: Boomtown
by Russell T Davies
Roots: Jonathon Creek (The Gorgon's Wood), various serial killer stories, in particular Jack the Ripper, the works of Tanith Lee, Sapphire & Steel (the Railway Station), the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Nightmares, the TV series Boomtown (in which several views of the same incident are related), the fable of the Dog with Two Bones, the Doctor mentions crossing the Rubicon.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed to think he was in Roshamon for this story.
"Yes, I knew Silver Chair before they were big. They were known as Magician's Nephew originally. Something of a C.S. Lewis fetish, apparently."
Goofs: The Doctor's blind insistence that Adam's time capsule was heading for 2006 is a bit suspect, especially when the alternative reasons (the half-desire to return Rose home and Rose's own desire to see her family) would have done.
A Dalek can be spotted in the replication generator BEFORE Adam activates it.
A certain fan (naming no names) can be spotted taking a photo via a mobile phone in the background.
Surely the Daleks wouldn't have been able to recreate an entire battle fleet complete with flagships in the day the story takes place? [There is more than one factory in the asteroid belt, but Adam is concerned with the one that controls all the others]
Technobabble: The destruction of Geocomtex triggers a pre-programmed subspace disturbance on both Earth and the Dalek factory, creating a hyperspatial vortex in real time. Or, for Mickey, it opens a door to hell and lets the worst thing imaginable out again.
Fashion Victims: Adam's choice of demonic-cloak covered in Dalek pictagrams. WHAT?!?
Double Entendres:
"We're running out of time to make a good impression, Rose."
"I'm saving the Daleks for a big finale."
Mickey's innuendo-laden inquisition about just what the Doctor and Rose do in between saving the world. How vulgar. He'll be asking what Holmes and Watson did on their days off next.
Dialogue Disasters:
Mickey ain't so fine: "It's him again, isn't it? It's the Doctor. It's always about the Doctor, isn't it? It's never about me!" Jesus, I thought Adric whining was bad enough...
"Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, the Master... I'm running out of old foes to annoy."
Dialogue Triumphs:
Rose and Mickey discuss the threat they face - "What are Daleks?" "What's the worst thing you can imagine?" "Autons? Slythereen? Your mum hungover..." "No, Mickey. The Daleks ARE the worst thing you can imagine..."
"What have I got to worry about, Doctor? You'll look after me." "Others have made that mistake, Rose. No need for you to join their ranks."
"Mickey, your distrust of my intentions bites me like an old cynic." "Is that bad?" "No. Old cynics rarely have any teeth."
Links: Pretty much every story of the season gets referenced.
Untelevised References: The Doctor and Rose were diverted to a nameless planet run by vampires en route to London. Rose's prejudice towards vampires got them into a lot of trouble - and the Doctor is curiously anxious to avoid discussing their adventure.
Intertextuality: Doctor Who Versus Scratchman is obliquely referenced, and the Doctor's "We haven't met before, have we?" might refer to the Time Lord/Scarecrows that executed the Second Doctor in the TV Comic "The Night Walkers".
Continuity:
When Adam returned to the Dalek factory in the asteroid belt, he immediately sent the time capsule back to Earth, leading the Doctor a false trail. While he began building the Dalek army, he activated a battalian of Cybermen drones Geocomtex had converted into scarecrows [presumably to sell to rich farmers?]. These versions are immune to gold, but are vulnerable to ultra-random frequencies because of their Geocomtex adaptations. These Cybermen are very ghoulish and can increase their strength by draining blood and nueral matter from their victims.
The England Geocomtex offices are destroyed in this story when the Doctor sabotages a Cyber-drone and uses its self-destruct capability. However, its destruction caused a pre-programmed wormhole to link the remains of the building with the Dalek factory.
The re-designed Daleks are emerald green, without eye-stalks or manipulator arms but instead hidden hatches contain a multitude of electrified cables. They float around and are lead by a larger golden Dalek. Their bodies glow when they talk. The Daleks are prepared for combat and swarm through London in approximately five minutes.
At the end of the story, a field of energy consumes the Doctor, Rose, Jackie, Mickey and Adam before the Daleks can execute them.
Location: London, 2006.
The Bottom Line: "Prepare for extermination!"
A stunning cliffhanger into the finale of the season, and the briefest glimpse of the long awaited Dalek/Cyberman conflict not to mention the unvieling of the Ultimate Generation of Daleks make this compulsary viewing. For those who know of The Dalek Invasion Earth, it makes the apparent devastation of humanity all the more chilling. Coupled with the multiple viewpoints of the invasion and starting in media res, this is the most explosive and experimental story since Ghost Light. Essential viewing.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
My Incredibly Inaccurate Predictions: Aliens of London - The Long Game!
104: Aliens of London
1: Aliens of London 2: 10 Downing Street
by Russel T Davies
Roots: The X-Files, Yes Minister, James Bond, The Secret World of Alex Mack (people reducing themselves to puddles and back again), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Harry Potter Books.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit... ALIEN... in this story.
Asquith snaps "I said, "Good day, sir!"" despite the fact he didn't.
"You're a stool, a fad and a cimpleton!"
Goofs: The cameraman can be seen reflected in the puddle.
Several of the cast (no need to name names) can be seen smirking around the Slithereens. Who came up with a name like that, anyway?
The sonic screwdriver mysteriously swaps hands during the boat chase.
The Master's explanation of the TV Movie doesn't quite square with what we've seen [The Master's memories are clearly degrading from the expulsionof the Eye of Harmony].
Fashion Victims: Mickey. Enough said.
Technobabble: The Master had become a "chronon-charged bio-matrix". The Slithereen star cruiser works on "blind-headed energy refraction". The Doctor... sigh... reverses the polarity of the neutron flow.
Double Entendres: "He's got to come out!" "And if he doesn't come out?" "Then he'll die. And so will Sato."
"This never happened to the other fellow," mutters the Doctor when arrestedoutside the MI5 building.
The rumors of David Jason appearing in Doctor Who were finally justified when Jackie watches the Custard episode of Danger Mouse, the cartoon that all TV characters watch on BBC TV at one time or another - and, oddly enough, it has a Doctor Who reference in it as well!
Dialogue Disasters: Andrew Marr.
Old Chinese Lady: "There's something evil going on in these 'ere parts."
"Finally! A dishy young man who travels through time and space in a policebox... and he prefers my daughter!"
"He'll be smashed to Slithereens!"
Dialogue Triumphs: The vicious Doctor/Master confrontation... "What is it you want? I mean, really? Why are we here? Is it forgiveness you want? Is it absolution? Or do you want to end this now - to kill me? Finish what you started so long ago, what you almost succeeded in doing on many occasions? No more fighting for survival, it's all down to just finishing the job now, isn't it? Doing what you've wanted to do all this time. It must be tiring, shooting after the same goal all your life." "You think you know." "Of course I do! But why do you do it? Why do you have to murder me? Would it really make that much of a difference to your life if you were to letthis job go unfinished?"
Links: The events of Rose, The End of the World and The Unquiet Dead arereferred to. The Master still laughs about nearly wiping out creation in Logopolis, and mentions Castrovalva and the events of the TV Movie. Asquith mentions UNIT.
Untelevised Adventures: "Perhaps it's time we put our differences aside. I'd like to think that things could go back to the way they once were." "You know that can never happen! Not after what you've said, what you'ved one... Not after who you've killed." "You couldn't be more specific? I've killed a lot of people and a number of them good friends of yours, and I have intended to kill many more if it weren't for your interference - so to whom, in particular, are you referring?" "You know damn well who I'm talking about. You went too far on that occasion!" "Only on that occasion?"
Continuity: The Earth's solar system is under a heritage protection list by the Slythereen empire who travel to Earth in response to the Auton incursions. Slythereens are lumpy pink aliens but can disconnect their heads in high-gravity environments. Their flesh can change colour and cause intense nausea in most humanoid life forms. They have a symbiotic relationship with the "Chuckacubras", who are driven near insane by human air pollution.
The Master was expelled into the Time Vortex after the movie and eventually managed to hide in mind of Dr. Sato. At the end of the adventure the Doctor downloads him into a pneumonic crystal but it is unknown if he destroys it or not [probably the latter]. According to the Master, the Doctor was a political figurehead on Gallifreyand turned a blind eye to the corruption of his own side. The Master triggered a civil war, sacrificing his own family for "the greater good". It is implied the Doctor did something similar, but more out of personal vengeance. When the Doctor fled his home planet, the Master followed - using the Doctor's chaotic adventures as a smokescreen to hide his own activities. When he found out what he needed to know, the Master began a campaign of idiotic, ludicrous schemes in the hope the Doctor would capture him and return him to Gallifrey [presumably, he sidestepped his plan during The Trial of a Time Lord to adapt the Valeyard's] but it was in vain.
Anette Badland postulated the first suggestion of the time vortex, but was eventually talked out of the whole thing when a "man in a hat with an umbrella" suggested she concentrate on more tangible areas of science.
Location: London, 2006.
The Bottom Line: "You want to make amends? Forget it!"
The first two-parter, and it's epic. The return of the Master (especially in a female body) was a dangerous gamble, but it's more than made up for by theAuton/Slythereen fight to the death. Its nice to see Rose have to re-evaluate her relationship with the Doctor, but the revelation that the crap Master stories of the 1980s were just a trick smacks of John Peel style revisionism. But we'll let RTD off. This time.
105: Museum Piece
by Robert Shearman
Roots: A lot of Shearman's previous work in particular his Dalek audio Jubilee, the Aliens saga, Independance Day (Area 51 amongst others), Babylon5 (the Dalek mutant resembles a Drakh keeper - especially when its eye snaps open).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit decietful in this story.
"Rose, I am here to save planets and eat jelly babies and I just ran out of planets!"
There is mention of "Skaros" and "Jallifree".
Goofs: The SFX man can sometimes be spotted amongst the crates during the battle sequence.
A "stiff neck" makes the Dalek look like its doing a double take on more than one occasion.
The toilets are marked XX and XY.
Double Entendres: Rose hanging around a gold Dalek in a tight white sweater... Brings back good memories, eh, Jo?
"I was expecting something a little more... Gothic." Were Geocomtex expecting the REG Doctor?
The Doctor, trying to prove his identity, shines a torch under his face and hums the theme tune.
Dialogue Disasters: Self-justifying claptrap from the Dalek: "We must work together against the evils that surround us!" and awkward retconning from the Doctor: "I wasn'tquite myself [when I blew up Skaro with the Hand of Omega and hoped for thebest]"
"We should get the Doc and Dalek on Jerry Springer. Bet you anything theaudience will side with the Dalek."
Dialogue Triumphs: "Help me." "I'm sorry, couldn't make that out! Enunciate!ENUNCIATE!"
"Statistically speaking..." "37% of all statistics are useless!"
"You're nothing and nobody!" "Yes, but I have perfect pitch."
"It's just a heap of junk! Something you'd hide behind the sofa out of social embarassment."
"...and so, the Rabbi says to the Dalek, 'All Hail the Big Talking Bird!'and the Dalek says..."
The Doctor: "Tell me, Dalek - has it ever occured to you that you might be wrong?"
And many many more.
Links: Rememberance of the Daleks gets a mention, as does Aliens of London and Rose. Glass Daleks are also discussed.
Untelevised Misadventures: We never do find out if the Dalek is telling the truth, but maybe - just maybe - Gallifrey got destroyed sometime between the TV Movie and now.
Intertextuality: The possible destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords may link the series to the Eighth Doctor Adventures published by BBC Books. Or maybe not. Geocomtex have also developed Pylene-50, the pacification drugused in the last series of Blake's 7.
Continuity: Following the destruction of Skaro, the roving bands of Dalek unified into a Galactic Alliance and decided to trigger a third world war in the 1980s. Geocomtex, in a way unspecified, wiped out the whole movement, leaving only one survivor. This was not a single battle as both the Dalekand Geocomtex refer to "wars". However, a Dalek factory unit exists somewhere in the solar system awaiting the final reactivation signal - with"new and improved models care of Kaiser Davros" instead of the golden, tank-like version here.
The Dalek is insane, but clearly knows a lot about the Doctor and considers itself the last of its race, like the Doctor. [The Doctor appears to agree on a philosophical point; he is the last Time Lord willing to do what is right rather than sit and observe]. A Dalek mutant can survive up to two hours outside a casing when detached properly. The Doctor comments that the mutant in this story is "one of the more attractive ones" and Rose should be grateful she hasn't seen one of the "naturist Daleks made of glass".
Several less-scrupulous aliens stranded on Earth have joined up with Geocomtex and there is a Non-Terrestrial Sector with special locks and atmosphere - to which the Doctor can adapt 'like a chameleon'. He has had at least one adventure with UNIT in his present body and he is quite dismissive of his eighth self: "Not long ago, I probably would have blubbed looking into that eye-stick and let you go on the promise you'd be nice. But then, time changes people."
Location: A secret bunker, probably on Earth; 2006.
The Bottom Line: "Of course they can climb stairs - what a stupid bloody question!"
There's only one real flaw in this story, and that is it's only one episode. Pretty much anyone who's heard Jubilee probably was hoping for a bit more "myth-busting" about the Doctor and the Daleks, but Museum Piece is a worthy successor to Remembrance in making the Daleks a terrifying force, with even one damaged unit using enough brute strength and sheer cunning to make the Nation Estate proud. A slap in the face to critics, Museum Piece balances between old and new and reaches for greatness.
106: The Long Game
by Russell T Davies
Roots: Big Brother, The Mole, Room 101 and other such reality TV shows; Jean-Paul Satre's observation "Hell is other people - and both of them areyou", Pirates of the Carribean (Captain Jack), Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and the Red Dwarf episode Meltdown (the famous historical figures fighting). Parental Advisory Lyrics is also mentioned.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed doupleplusgood in this story.
The Moxx of Balhoon's lisp is murder on the ears after a while.
"Big Brother? Pah! If you want to be frightening, 'Older Sister' would be abetter name!"
"Oh, Doctor, never again I thought you'd see!" Er, yes, Rose. That's nice.
Goofs: Einstein moves to punch a wall, then changes his mind and punches a table. Clearly, RTD wasn't on hand to hold up the set walls. The 'Big Brother'-style Doctor Who music at the end makes K9 and Company sound good, and even worse it fades out half-way through the credits before starting up again. There's a bit of CGI breakdown towards the end of the episode.
Technobabble: The space station works on a "random dispersion fold" meaning it manages to be half-way across the galaxy from wherever anyone else happens to be. Like the Zygons, The Long Game uses organic crystallography instead of, say, the national grid.
Fashion-Victims: Those silver jumpsuits and bright orange Long Game logos are bad for the eyes and worse for the soul.
Double Entendres: "Why would anyone watch this?" "Have you seen what's onthe other side?"
"Hah! Missed BOTH my legs!"
Subtext rapidly becoming text: "An eighteen minute... hiatus. Why should I let my life be dictated to by television ratings? Have you never heard ofVCRs!?"
"I was in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, once." "What happened?" "Didn't score too well with the demographic and got taken off the air a season later..."
Dialogue Disasters: Captain Jack: "Space is in my blood." Rose: "You should see a Doctor, mate."
Dialogue Triumphs:
Einstein: "Have we met before?" Doctor: "Oh, nothing worth remembering, Albert..."
When Jack breaks the fourth wall - "The trouble is, most audiences arevaccuous wasters who don't appreciate what they're viewing. No offence."
"We've been voted off!" "Well, you were the one who wanted democracy..."
Rose: "Who the hell is Eric Blair?"
Links: The script goes out of its way not to mention Time and the Rani.You've got to admire it for that.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor pleaded with Eric Blair/George Orwell toreconsider writing, as countless reality TV shows would be spawned from his work - Big Brother, Room 101, Animal Farm...
Continuity: During the major schisms of the twenty-seventh century, several [Geocomtex] industries were looted. Such techonology eventually lead to the Moxx of Balhoon, the Droge of six star systems, creating a new entertainment industry to distract the workers of his slave mines. He hijacked the Adherants (alien parasites in the time vortex) and got them to 'adhere' tothe minds of popular historical figures, and then download them into "unsophisticated" androids for a Big Brother-type show. At the end of this story, there is a popular revolt against Balhoon and he flees into the vortex aboard a second-hand time machine that seems to be the Doctor's TARDIS [More info in Season 2].
The Doctor's mind can reject an Adherant transplant, and he (jokingly?) suggests his mind is bigger on the inside. The Doctor considered building a Sonic Hairdryer but no longer needed its default setting [presumably because he has shorter hair when he regenerated].
Rose hates kelp pudding, lost a tooth during her first kiss and thinks a lot about Mickey. She is quite up on temporal theory and deduces on her own that an individual can change the course of history...
Captain Jack is an "entreprenour" and, it appears, a genuine time traveler. He is "as human as [the Doctor is]" and has a good line in extra-terrestrial insults, including "Meherevvia" (someone with a head full of sky) and "Gahlagamuschus" (which the Doctor refuses to translate on the ground there might be children watching). He also implies that the Doctor's Venusian Lullaby is the equivalent of Parental Advisory Lyrics. At the end of this story, the Doctor agrees to drop him off "home", but we do not know wherethis is.
Location: Balhoon's The Long Game space station, in the depths of the timevortex.
The Bottom Line: "Is anyone really watching this?"
The first real failure of "Season 1", The Long Game goes out of its way to show what utter trash reality TV is - but the trouble is, we know that already! The famous figures don't do much in the way of interest, and we ultimately find out none of them were real in the first place. Background details seem more interesting in this story, including the big question marks over the Eighth Doctor's fate, Captain Jack's origin and Balhoon's angle. The implication that Geocomtex were ultimately responsible for this story drags it down a bit, like the Master in Season 8. On the bright side, John Barrowman makes a surprisingly effective debut. Pity he didn't do a Kieth Richards-style swagger. That would have been worth watching.
1: Aliens of London 2: 10 Downing Street
by Russel T Davies
Roots: The X-Files, Yes Minister, James Bond, The Secret World of Alex Mack (people reducing themselves to puddles and back again), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Harry Potter Books.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit... ALIEN... in this story.
Asquith snaps "I said, "Good day, sir!"" despite the fact he didn't.
"You're a stool, a fad and a cimpleton!"
Goofs: The cameraman can be seen reflected in the puddle.
Several of the cast (no need to name names) can be seen smirking around the Slithereens. Who came up with a name like that, anyway?
The sonic screwdriver mysteriously swaps hands during the boat chase.
The Master's explanation of the TV Movie doesn't quite square with what we've seen [The Master's memories are clearly degrading from the expulsionof the Eye of Harmony].
Fashion Victims: Mickey. Enough said.
Technobabble: The Master had become a "chronon-charged bio-matrix". The Slithereen star cruiser works on "blind-headed energy refraction". The Doctor... sigh... reverses the polarity of the neutron flow.
Double Entendres: "He's got to come out!" "And if he doesn't come out?" "Then he'll die. And so will Sato."
"This never happened to the other fellow," mutters the Doctor when arrestedoutside the MI5 building.
The rumors of David Jason appearing in Doctor Who were finally justified when Jackie watches the Custard episode of Danger Mouse, the cartoon that all TV characters watch on BBC TV at one time or another - and, oddly enough, it has a Doctor Who reference in it as well!
Dialogue Disasters: Andrew Marr.
Old Chinese Lady: "There's something evil going on in these 'ere parts."
"Finally! A dishy young man who travels through time and space in a policebox... and he prefers my daughter!"
"He'll be smashed to Slithereens!"
Dialogue Triumphs: The vicious Doctor/Master confrontation... "What is it you want? I mean, really? Why are we here? Is it forgiveness you want? Is it absolution? Or do you want to end this now - to kill me? Finish what you started so long ago, what you almost succeeded in doing on many occasions? No more fighting for survival, it's all down to just finishing the job now, isn't it? Doing what you've wanted to do all this time. It must be tiring, shooting after the same goal all your life." "You think you know." "Of course I do! But why do you do it? Why do you have to murder me? Would it really make that much of a difference to your life if you were to letthis job go unfinished?"
Links: The events of Rose, The End of the World and The Unquiet Dead arereferred to. The Master still laughs about nearly wiping out creation in Logopolis, and mentions Castrovalva and the events of the TV Movie. Asquith mentions UNIT.
Untelevised Adventures: "Perhaps it's time we put our differences aside. I'd like to think that things could go back to the way they once were." "You know that can never happen! Not after what you've said, what you'ved one... Not after who you've killed." "You couldn't be more specific? I've killed a lot of people and a number of them good friends of yours, and I have intended to kill many more if it weren't for your interference - so to whom, in particular, are you referring?" "You know damn well who I'm talking about. You went too far on that occasion!" "Only on that occasion?"
Continuity: The Earth's solar system is under a heritage protection list by the Slythereen empire who travel to Earth in response to the Auton incursions. Slythereens are lumpy pink aliens but can disconnect their heads in high-gravity environments. Their flesh can change colour and cause intense nausea in most humanoid life forms. They have a symbiotic relationship with the "Chuckacubras", who are driven near insane by human air pollution.
The Master was expelled into the Time Vortex after the movie and eventually managed to hide in mind of Dr. Sato. At the end of the adventure the Doctor downloads him into a pneumonic crystal but it is unknown if he destroys it or not [probably the latter]. According to the Master, the Doctor was a political figurehead on Gallifreyand turned a blind eye to the corruption of his own side. The Master triggered a civil war, sacrificing his own family for "the greater good". It is implied the Doctor did something similar, but more out of personal vengeance. When the Doctor fled his home planet, the Master followed - using the Doctor's chaotic adventures as a smokescreen to hide his own activities. When he found out what he needed to know, the Master began a campaign of idiotic, ludicrous schemes in the hope the Doctor would capture him and return him to Gallifrey [presumably, he sidestepped his plan during The Trial of a Time Lord to adapt the Valeyard's] but it was in vain.
Anette Badland postulated the first suggestion of the time vortex, but was eventually talked out of the whole thing when a "man in a hat with an umbrella" suggested she concentrate on more tangible areas of science.
Location: London, 2006.
The Bottom Line: "You want to make amends? Forget it!"
The first two-parter, and it's epic. The return of the Master (especially in a female body) was a dangerous gamble, but it's more than made up for by theAuton/Slythereen fight to the death. Its nice to see Rose have to re-evaluate her relationship with the Doctor, but the revelation that the crap Master stories of the 1980s were just a trick smacks of John Peel style revisionism. But we'll let RTD off. This time.
105: Museum Piece
by Robert Shearman
Roots: A lot of Shearman's previous work in particular his Dalek audio Jubilee, the Aliens saga, Independance Day (Area 51 amongst others), Babylon5 (the Dalek mutant resembles a Drakh keeper - especially when its eye snaps open).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit decietful in this story.
"Rose, I am here to save planets and eat jelly babies and I just ran out of planets!"
There is mention of "Skaros" and "Jallifree".
Goofs: The SFX man can sometimes be spotted amongst the crates during the battle sequence.
A "stiff neck" makes the Dalek look like its doing a double take on more than one occasion.
The toilets are marked XX and XY.
Double Entendres: Rose hanging around a gold Dalek in a tight white sweater... Brings back good memories, eh, Jo?
"I was expecting something a little more... Gothic." Were Geocomtex expecting the REG Doctor?
The Doctor, trying to prove his identity, shines a torch under his face and hums the theme tune.
Dialogue Disasters: Self-justifying claptrap from the Dalek: "We must work together against the evils that surround us!" and awkward retconning from the Doctor: "I wasn'tquite myself [when I blew up Skaro with the Hand of Omega and hoped for thebest]"
"We should get the Doc and Dalek on Jerry Springer. Bet you anything theaudience will side with the Dalek."
Dialogue Triumphs: "Help me." "I'm sorry, couldn't make that out! Enunciate!ENUNCIATE!"
"Statistically speaking..." "37% of all statistics are useless!"
"You're nothing and nobody!" "Yes, but I have perfect pitch."
"It's just a heap of junk! Something you'd hide behind the sofa out of social embarassment."
"...and so, the Rabbi says to the Dalek, 'All Hail the Big Talking Bird!'and the Dalek says..."
The Doctor: "Tell me, Dalek - has it ever occured to you that you might be wrong?"
And many many more.
Links: Rememberance of the Daleks gets a mention, as does Aliens of London and Rose. Glass Daleks are also discussed.
Untelevised Misadventures: We never do find out if the Dalek is telling the truth, but maybe - just maybe - Gallifrey got destroyed sometime between the TV Movie and now.
Intertextuality: The possible destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords may link the series to the Eighth Doctor Adventures published by BBC Books. Or maybe not. Geocomtex have also developed Pylene-50, the pacification drugused in the last series of Blake's 7.
Continuity: Following the destruction of Skaro, the roving bands of Dalek unified into a Galactic Alliance and decided to trigger a third world war in the 1980s. Geocomtex, in a way unspecified, wiped out the whole movement, leaving only one survivor. This was not a single battle as both the Dalekand Geocomtex refer to "wars". However, a Dalek factory unit exists somewhere in the solar system awaiting the final reactivation signal - with"new and improved models care of Kaiser Davros" instead of the golden, tank-like version here.
The Dalek is insane, but clearly knows a lot about the Doctor and considers itself the last of its race, like the Doctor. [The Doctor appears to agree on a philosophical point; he is the last Time Lord willing to do what is right rather than sit and observe]. A Dalek mutant can survive up to two hours outside a casing when detached properly. The Doctor comments that the mutant in this story is "one of the more attractive ones" and Rose should be grateful she hasn't seen one of the "naturist Daleks made of glass".
Several less-scrupulous aliens stranded on Earth have joined up with Geocomtex and there is a Non-Terrestrial Sector with special locks and atmosphere - to which the Doctor can adapt 'like a chameleon'. He has had at least one adventure with UNIT in his present body and he is quite dismissive of his eighth self: "Not long ago, I probably would have blubbed looking into that eye-stick and let you go on the promise you'd be nice. But then, time changes people."
Location: A secret bunker, probably on Earth; 2006.
The Bottom Line: "Of course they can climb stairs - what a stupid bloody question!"
There's only one real flaw in this story, and that is it's only one episode. Pretty much anyone who's heard Jubilee probably was hoping for a bit more "myth-busting" about the Doctor and the Daleks, but Museum Piece is a worthy successor to Remembrance in making the Daleks a terrifying force, with even one damaged unit using enough brute strength and sheer cunning to make the Nation Estate proud. A slap in the face to critics, Museum Piece balances between old and new and reaches for greatness.
106: The Long Game
by Russell T Davies
Roots: Big Brother, The Mole, Room 101 and other such reality TV shows; Jean-Paul Satre's observation "Hell is other people - and both of them areyou", Pirates of the Carribean (Captain Jack), Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and the Red Dwarf episode Meltdown (the famous historical figures fighting). Parental Advisory Lyrics is also mentioned.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed doupleplusgood in this story.
The Moxx of Balhoon's lisp is murder on the ears after a while.
"Big Brother? Pah! If you want to be frightening, 'Older Sister' would be abetter name!"
"Oh, Doctor, never again I thought you'd see!" Er, yes, Rose. That's nice.
Goofs: Einstein moves to punch a wall, then changes his mind and punches a table. Clearly, RTD wasn't on hand to hold up the set walls. The 'Big Brother'-style Doctor Who music at the end makes K9 and Company sound good, and even worse it fades out half-way through the credits before starting up again. There's a bit of CGI breakdown towards the end of the episode.
Technobabble: The space station works on a "random dispersion fold" meaning it manages to be half-way across the galaxy from wherever anyone else happens to be. Like the Zygons, The Long Game uses organic crystallography instead of, say, the national grid.
Fashion-Victims: Those silver jumpsuits and bright orange Long Game logos are bad for the eyes and worse for the soul.
Double Entendres: "Why would anyone watch this?" "Have you seen what's onthe other side?"
"Hah! Missed BOTH my legs!"
Subtext rapidly becoming text: "An eighteen minute... hiatus. Why should I let my life be dictated to by television ratings? Have you never heard ofVCRs!?"
"I was in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, once." "What happened?" "Didn't score too well with the demographic and got taken off the air a season later..."
Dialogue Disasters: Captain Jack: "Space is in my blood." Rose: "You should see a Doctor, mate."
Dialogue Triumphs:
Einstein: "Have we met before?" Doctor: "Oh, nothing worth remembering, Albert..."
When Jack breaks the fourth wall - "The trouble is, most audiences arevaccuous wasters who don't appreciate what they're viewing. No offence."
"We've been voted off!" "Well, you were the one who wanted democracy..."
Rose: "Who the hell is Eric Blair?"
Links: The script goes out of its way not to mention Time and the Rani.You've got to admire it for that.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor pleaded with Eric Blair/George Orwell toreconsider writing, as countless reality TV shows would be spawned from his work - Big Brother, Room 101, Animal Farm...
Continuity: During the major schisms of the twenty-seventh century, several [Geocomtex] industries were looted. Such techonology eventually lead to the Moxx of Balhoon, the Droge of six star systems, creating a new entertainment industry to distract the workers of his slave mines. He hijacked the Adherants (alien parasites in the time vortex) and got them to 'adhere' tothe minds of popular historical figures, and then download them into "unsophisticated" androids for a Big Brother-type show. At the end of this story, there is a popular revolt against Balhoon and he flees into the vortex aboard a second-hand time machine that seems to be the Doctor's TARDIS [More info in Season 2].
The Doctor's mind can reject an Adherant transplant, and he (jokingly?) suggests his mind is bigger on the inside. The Doctor considered building a Sonic Hairdryer but no longer needed its default setting [presumably because he has shorter hair when he regenerated].
Rose hates kelp pudding, lost a tooth during her first kiss and thinks a lot about Mickey. She is quite up on temporal theory and deduces on her own that an individual can change the course of history...
Captain Jack is an "entreprenour" and, it appears, a genuine time traveler. He is "as human as [the Doctor is]" and has a good line in extra-terrestrial insults, including "Meherevvia" (someone with a head full of sky) and "Gahlagamuschus" (which the Doctor refuses to translate on the ground there might be children watching). He also implies that the Doctor's Venusian Lullaby is the equivalent of Parental Advisory Lyrics. At the end of this story, the Doctor agrees to drop him off "home", but we do not know wherethis is.
Location: Balhoon's The Long Game space station, in the depths of the timevortex.
The Bottom Line: "Is anyone really watching this?"
The first real failure of "Season 1", The Long Game goes out of its way to show what utter trash reality TV is - but the trouble is, we know that already! The famous figures don't do much in the way of interest, and we ultimately find out none of them were real in the first place. Background details seem more interesting in this story, including the big question marks over the Eighth Doctor's fate, Captain Jack's origin and Balhoon's angle. The implication that Geocomtex were ultimately responsible for this story drags it down a bit, like the Master in Season 8. On the bright side, John Barrowman makes a surprisingly effective debut. Pity he didn't do a Kieth Richards-style swagger. That would have been worth watching.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
My Incredibly Inaccurate Predictions: Rose - The Unquiet Dead!
101: Rose
by Russell T Davies
Roots: Bob & Rose, First Wave (the insane conspiracy nut who knows the truth), The Beast With Five Fingers (the severed Auton arm), the Doctor'sentrance obliquely references the Angel episode "War Zone" ("And just who were you expecting?"), Animorphs (mobile phones being used by alieninvaders).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed slightly confused in this story.
"My dear Jackie, this is not the time for seriousness! This is very levity!"
"I never make stupid mistakes - and clever ones, either. I should say so,yes. Hmm."
Mickey mispronounces "Nestene" twice on location but never in studio.
Goofs: The Doctor is clearly taken aback when Rose hurls the arm at him and nearly drops it.
Clive suffocates in under a second when the bubble wrap attacks. Bit unlikely.
Considering the number of times UNIT has defeated the Autons (six times bythe end of this episode) you wonder why they didn't notice the sudden surgeof mannequins and mobile phones?
When Jackie switches on the washing machine, she is clearly miming it whilethe noise is dubbed on.
If Clive is the world's expert on the Doctor's exploits, why can't heremember which monster is which?
Fashion Victims: The Autons suffer almost as much as Clive's "winking smiley face" T-shirt.
Technobbable: The Nestene Consciousness works on an inverse frequency wavelength and thus, with modified equipment ratio, can be heard over mobilephones and radio waves. The sonic screwdriver has a 'neutrino dispersion matrix' and can accidentally erase computer disks.
Double Entendres: The look Rose gives the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor's delight at its appearance speaks volumes.
"Can I come inside this time, Doctor?" "Perhaps, Rose. If you're good."
Clive speaks for fandom: "What happened to you, Doctor! You used to be cooland now you look like an extra in the Matrix!" though the Doctor's retort is slightly more kinky.
Dialogue Disasters: "Why do you have a Nothern accent?" "Every planet has a North." and "How didthe Nestenes conquer Polymos?" "Every planet has a flourishing plasticsindustry."
"I'm the Doctor." "Oh. Doctor what?" "Near enough."
The Autons struggle to avoid cliche: "Do not resist. It's completelyuseless."
Dialogue Triumphs: "Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!"
Jackie on the Auton invasion: "Bit melodrammatic, wouldn't you say?"
"Bugger! Autons! I thought it would be the Cybermen! Rose, I owe you atenner."
Rose on the TARDIS: "It's..."
The Doctor: "I know. The decor really givesthat impression of space, doesn't it."
Links: Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, Ambassadors of Death (Jackie complains when The Goodies were taken off by the captive alien fiasco), Survival (Clive mentions the Doctor hasn't been seen since Perivale), The TV Movie (the Doctor finds his eighth self's cravat in hispockets).
The revelation Geocomtek funded the migration will be investigatedin Museum Piece.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor's regeneration, and there are several unseen Auton invasions including the "one where the almost succeeded by pretending to be traffic cones" and one where they used ventilation duct insulation to create a nerve gas that drove people insane.
Intertexuality: The Doctor refers to the Quadrant in Davies' own Damaged Goods and meeting another Tyler family. The Doctor's leather jacket wassuggested "by a friend" which seems to refer to Destrii in DWM's The Flood,and reacts to the name 'Charley' quite dramattically. The Auton spin offs,the aborted Season 23 Singapore story are referenced, as is Business Unusual.
Continuity: There are "a dozen" Doctors, but this is the first time Clive has encounted the Eccleston version. The Doctor claims to have recently gone "through something of an identity crisis" suggesting he is fresh from his regeneration. He is travelling alone but expects that to change.
Rose Tyler is a shop assistant, lives in a flat with her boyfriend Micky Webb (who is thinking of calling off the relationship when his friend "Psycho" suggests Rose's mother is making moves on him). It is her eighteenth birthday sometime in late November. Jackie Tyler "hasn't been thesame" since something nasty happened to her husband, but this is a taboo subject and we are not told what it was. She can remember what she was doingwhen Kennedy was assasinated, men landed on the moon and the Berlin wallcollapsed, but doesn't reveal what in case she embarasses Rose.
The Nestenes discovered a time-active spaceship in the year 2089 and havebeen trying to re-write their invasion attempts to be a complete success.
The [Ninth] Doctor has been on hand each time to stop them and in the lastencounter destroyed their time machine. At the end of this story the NesteneConsciousness is fragmented forever when the Doctor gives them "the exorcism equivalent of a Liverpool kiss."
Location: Earth, Cardiff, 2005.
The Bottom Line: "Who are you?" "Me? I'm back!"
A slick opening episode mixing the best from the opening stories for the first and third Doctors. Eccleston and Piper make great debuts, but the sudden jarring end as Rose enters the TARDIS isn't quite the best cliffhanger moment. The Auton invasion is fantastic until the final minuteswhen we learn they have tried to conquer the Earth a hundred times alreadyand seem insanely optimistic. A reasonable start.
102: The End of the World
by Russel T Davies
Roots: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Titan AE, Babylon 5, andinfluences from Uppenhiemer and Einstein over the development of nuclearweapons. The Damnation of Harvey McCue (in particular the end of the world episode, not to mention the brain conspiracy), Shockjock (the stock exchangecrash saves the day).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit befuddled in this story.
"This is a monstrous exercise! Monstrous! Completely monstrous! What is it, Rose? I'll tell you, it's monstrous!"
Zoe Wanamaker stumbles on the pronounciation of "Pangalactic Gargle Blaster" and finally settles on "Oh, just drink this, will you?!"
Goofs: The Earth's continents do not seem to have changed after fifteenbillion years, although it is upside down in one scene.
Although the dispersion shield is destroyed by Raquets, no one seems worriedabout being killed when the detonation is carried out. [The Doctor managesto restore the field and doesn't bother panicking anyone]
One of the delegates trips and falls during the opening scene.
Fashion Victims: Jana's tinfoil dressing gown.
Technobabble: The Thanotoid Device works on a principal of "induced molecular instability projection" and has "a decay rate potentional" unlike anything on the "Oates-Rumpole scale".
Double Entendres: "You're not really up to this sort of activity." "The question is, are you?"
The Doctor on the originality in the script: "This sort of thing hashappened before."
Dialogue Disasters: "You think this far in the future, people would know just how to get along!"
"Profit is far more important than some blue-green planetoid!"
And three cheers for, "And, before you ask, we're not spies, we're travellers!"
Dialogue Triumphs: The Doctor's speech on all times being equal.
"I'm an indigenous inhabitant of Earth and I say you can't destroy it!"
"Yes, but it's out of your hands. You invalidated the guarantee long ago."
"I'm not vain, just trying to please everyone else aesthetically!"
"That's the trouble with dissolute Time Lords, they get five-dimensionalhangovers into the bargain."
Links: Lots of references to Rose. The Doctor's cryptic comments about the future of humanity clearly refer to Frontios and The Ark.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor doesn't like visiting the ends of time,but has been around long enough to learn of the galactic stock exchangecrash that ultimately rendered currency obsolete.
Intertexuality: The Doctor mentions getting drunk and accidentallywitnessing the start of the universe, presumably in Slipback. There is alsomention of the Kirith from Timewyrm: Apocalypse.
Continuity: A series of ecological disasters during the twentieth centuryforced humanity begin its colonization of the solar system. By the beginningof the Thirtieth century, Earth's civilization collapsed and split up intovarious nomad groups. By the time of the story, pure-blood humans areconsidered legendary.
IMIP (induced molecular instability projection) was originally used as aweapon during "the Final Wars" some three centuries previous. When used inseries it create a wave of pure primal energy that cancels out entropy and the Theocracy of Planets planned to use it to stave off the ultimate destruction of the universe. It can also create near-immortality in a living subject.
Rose became quite environmentally friendly when she was younger when she began learning that pollution could end her world. She eventually lost a lot of zeal and blames it on her discovering boys. She doubts Mickey is beingfaithful to her. The Doctor can drink a whole pan-galactic gargle blaster in one go, suspending the after-effects for up to two days. The sonic screwdriver canmix cocktails.
Location: Space Station Kerrilon, the far future.
The Bottom Line: "They're destroying Earth for a science project?" "Thereare worse fates out there."
Surprisingly jovial for such grim subject matter, it seems not even 2005 Doctor Who can escape from trying to recreate the Star Wars cantina scenes. Zoe Wanamaker steals every scene she is in, but the Doctor's drunkenessmanages to put up a good fight. However, the whole thing (especially theairlock sequence) seems a bit to close to Douglas Adams to be truly enjoyable.
103: The Unquiet Dead
by Mark Gattis
Roots: The works of Charles Dickens, Chance in a Million (when panicking, Callow reverts to this odd method of speech), Red Dwarf (the Doctor mishears'Gelth' as 'GELF'), The League of Gentlemen, Dr. Bell & Mr. Doyle, Strange.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed taken aback in this story.
"I'd rather not discuss it as it's the same to all of you."
Goofs: Dickens clearly has to hold the door closed after he's locked it.
The snow storm stops inexplicably during the Doctor's return to the TARDIS.
Rose refers to the effect the Gelth have on human eyes BEFORE she sees itoccur.
Double Entendres: "Not so much Ghost Light as Gas Light..."
"What you do to those defenseless corpses is not what I wish to discuss!"
Dialogue Disasters: "Duck!" "Oh, where?"
"Pea-soupers are generally defined by the way they DON'T try to hunt onedown and kill one in the street like a dog!"
"Doctor, what's going on?" (and the delivery!)
Dialogue Triumphs: The Doctor's Dickens-related puns.
An ominous foreshadowing of Dickens' real-life fate: "In an ideal world the trains run on time." "Yes. And there are no crashes..."
"That's human egotism for you. Invade their planet, conquer their people,pervert their course of technological development and most of them won't notice. But if their latest celebrity has an affair out of wedlock, woe betide anyone trying to change the subject.""Here's my latest discovery. I call it 'fire'. Catchy title, no?"Intertextuality: The Doctor refers to encountering 'sentient smells' and'gastic emissions' "once or twice" (The English Way of Death and The Curseof Fatal Death).
Continuity: The Gelth and their ancient enemies the Geith have been fightingfor "as long as the Doctor can remember" which suggests a very long time indeed. Their combined homeworld was reduced to a stunning asteroid belt in thirteen seconds by the Geith's latest armed weaponry. The gas beings canlive in most organic creatures with an olfactory system, but in beings suchas humans all brain-function must have ceased for full control. Rose compares their scent to that of rain evaporating off the pavement on a sunny day.
The Doctor and Dickens have not met before, but have heard of each other through 'mutual acquaintences'. The Doctor has been a firm believer in themoral of A Christmas Carol, that we make our own futures by our own choices. He used to sum this belief up by quoting "And Tiny Tim, who did not die..." but after having to explain the whole reference on fifteen separateoccasions (and twice to a particularly thick sky-jellyfish who wasn't paying attention) finally settled on "I'll explain later."
The TARDIS' internal compensators can be effected by cold weather, despite the Doctor claiming this is impossible. Snow slides off the exterior,although the surface is not particularly warm.
Location: London, Christmas, 1885.
The Bottom Line: "And who the Dickens are you?"
The first bona fide classic of the Ninth Doctor's era, this refeshinglychilling blend of alien zombies and Victorian Christmases owes more than alittle to the author's own League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, as well as giving Simon Callow some flowery dialogue that the real Charles Dickens would have been proud.
by Russell T Davies
Roots: Bob & Rose, First Wave (the insane conspiracy nut who knows the truth), The Beast With Five Fingers (the severed Auton arm), the Doctor'sentrance obliquely references the Angel episode "War Zone" ("And just who were you expecting?"), Animorphs (mobile phones being used by alieninvaders).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed slightly confused in this story.
"My dear Jackie, this is not the time for seriousness! This is very levity!"
"I never make stupid mistakes - and clever ones, either. I should say so,yes. Hmm."
Mickey mispronounces "Nestene" twice on location but never in studio.
Goofs: The Doctor is clearly taken aback when Rose hurls the arm at him and nearly drops it.
Clive suffocates in under a second when the bubble wrap attacks. Bit unlikely.
Considering the number of times UNIT has defeated the Autons (six times bythe end of this episode) you wonder why they didn't notice the sudden surgeof mannequins and mobile phones?
When Jackie switches on the washing machine, she is clearly miming it whilethe noise is dubbed on.
If Clive is the world's expert on the Doctor's exploits, why can't heremember which monster is which?
Fashion Victims: The Autons suffer almost as much as Clive's "winking smiley face" T-shirt.
Technobbable: The Nestene Consciousness works on an inverse frequency wavelength and thus, with modified equipment ratio, can be heard over mobilephones and radio waves. The sonic screwdriver has a 'neutrino dispersion matrix' and can accidentally erase computer disks.
Double Entendres: The look Rose gives the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor's delight at its appearance speaks volumes.
"Can I come inside this time, Doctor?" "Perhaps, Rose. If you're good."
Clive speaks for fandom: "What happened to you, Doctor! You used to be cooland now you look like an extra in the Matrix!" though the Doctor's retort is slightly more kinky.
Dialogue Disasters: "Why do you have a Nothern accent?" "Every planet has a North." and "How didthe Nestenes conquer Polymos?" "Every planet has a flourishing plasticsindustry."
"I'm the Doctor." "Oh. Doctor what?" "Near enough."
The Autons struggle to avoid cliche: "Do not resist. It's completelyuseless."
Dialogue Triumphs: "Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!"
Jackie on the Auton invasion: "Bit melodrammatic, wouldn't you say?"
"Bugger! Autons! I thought it would be the Cybermen! Rose, I owe you atenner."
Rose on the TARDIS: "It's..."
The Doctor: "I know. The decor really givesthat impression of space, doesn't it."
Links: Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, Ambassadors of Death (Jackie complains when The Goodies were taken off by the captive alien fiasco), Survival (Clive mentions the Doctor hasn't been seen since Perivale), The TV Movie (the Doctor finds his eighth self's cravat in hispockets).
The revelation Geocomtek funded the migration will be investigatedin Museum Piece.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor's regeneration, and there are several unseen Auton invasions including the "one where the almost succeeded by pretending to be traffic cones" and one where they used ventilation duct insulation to create a nerve gas that drove people insane.
Intertexuality: The Doctor refers to the Quadrant in Davies' own Damaged Goods and meeting another Tyler family. The Doctor's leather jacket wassuggested "by a friend" which seems to refer to Destrii in DWM's The Flood,and reacts to the name 'Charley' quite dramattically. The Auton spin offs,the aborted Season 23 Singapore story are referenced, as is Business Unusual.
Continuity: There are "a dozen" Doctors, but this is the first time Clive has encounted the Eccleston version. The Doctor claims to have recently gone "through something of an identity crisis" suggesting he is fresh from his regeneration. He is travelling alone but expects that to change.
Rose Tyler is a shop assistant, lives in a flat with her boyfriend Micky Webb (who is thinking of calling off the relationship when his friend "Psycho" suggests Rose's mother is making moves on him). It is her eighteenth birthday sometime in late November. Jackie Tyler "hasn't been thesame" since something nasty happened to her husband, but this is a taboo subject and we are not told what it was. She can remember what she was doingwhen Kennedy was assasinated, men landed on the moon and the Berlin wallcollapsed, but doesn't reveal what in case she embarasses Rose.
The Nestenes discovered a time-active spaceship in the year 2089 and havebeen trying to re-write their invasion attempts to be a complete success.
The [Ninth] Doctor has been on hand each time to stop them and in the lastencounter destroyed their time machine. At the end of this story the NesteneConsciousness is fragmented forever when the Doctor gives them "the exorcism equivalent of a Liverpool kiss."
Location: Earth, Cardiff, 2005.
The Bottom Line: "Who are you?" "Me? I'm back!"
A slick opening episode mixing the best from the opening stories for the first and third Doctors. Eccleston and Piper make great debuts, but the sudden jarring end as Rose enters the TARDIS isn't quite the best cliffhanger moment. The Auton invasion is fantastic until the final minuteswhen we learn they have tried to conquer the Earth a hundred times alreadyand seem insanely optimistic. A reasonable start.
102: The End of the World
by Russel T Davies
Roots: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Titan AE, Babylon 5, andinfluences from Uppenhiemer and Einstein over the development of nuclearweapons. The Damnation of Harvey McCue (in particular the end of the world episode, not to mention the brain conspiracy), Shockjock (the stock exchangecrash saves the day).
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed a bit befuddled in this story.
"This is a monstrous exercise! Monstrous! Completely monstrous! What is it, Rose? I'll tell you, it's monstrous!"
Zoe Wanamaker stumbles on the pronounciation of "Pangalactic Gargle Blaster" and finally settles on "Oh, just drink this, will you?!"
Goofs: The Earth's continents do not seem to have changed after fifteenbillion years, although it is upside down in one scene.
Although the dispersion shield is destroyed by Raquets, no one seems worriedabout being killed when the detonation is carried out. [The Doctor managesto restore the field and doesn't bother panicking anyone]
One of the delegates trips and falls during the opening scene.
Fashion Victims: Jana's tinfoil dressing gown.
Technobabble: The Thanotoid Device works on a principal of "induced molecular instability projection" and has "a decay rate potentional" unlike anything on the "Oates-Rumpole scale".
Double Entendres: "You're not really up to this sort of activity." "The question is, are you?"
The Doctor on the originality in the script: "This sort of thing hashappened before."
Dialogue Disasters: "You think this far in the future, people would know just how to get along!"
"Profit is far more important than some blue-green planetoid!"
And three cheers for, "And, before you ask, we're not spies, we're travellers!"
Dialogue Triumphs: The Doctor's speech on all times being equal.
"I'm an indigenous inhabitant of Earth and I say you can't destroy it!"
"Yes, but it's out of your hands. You invalidated the guarantee long ago."
"I'm not vain, just trying to please everyone else aesthetically!"
"That's the trouble with dissolute Time Lords, they get five-dimensionalhangovers into the bargain."
Links: Lots of references to Rose. The Doctor's cryptic comments about the future of humanity clearly refer to Frontios and The Ark.
Untelevised Adventures: The Doctor doesn't like visiting the ends of time,but has been around long enough to learn of the galactic stock exchangecrash that ultimately rendered currency obsolete.
Intertexuality: The Doctor mentions getting drunk and accidentallywitnessing the start of the universe, presumably in Slipback. There is alsomention of the Kirith from Timewyrm: Apocalypse.
Continuity: A series of ecological disasters during the twentieth centuryforced humanity begin its colonization of the solar system. By the beginningof the Thirtieth century, Earth's civilization collapsed and split up intovarious nomad groups. By the time of the story, pure-blood humans areconsidered legendary.
IMIP (induced molecular instability projection) was originally used as aweapon during "the Final Wars" some three centuries previous. When used inseries it create a wave of pure primal energy that cancels out entropy and the Theocracy of Planets planned to use it to stave off the ultimate destruction of the universe. It can also create near-immortality in a living subject.
Rose became quite environmentally friendly when she was younger when she began learning that pollution could end her world. She eventually lost a lot of zeal and blames it on her discovering boys. She doubts Mickey is beingfaithful to her. The Doctor can drink a whole pan-galactic gargle blaster in one go, suspending the after-effects for up to two days. The sonic screwdriver canmix cocktails.
Location: Space Station Kerrilon, the far future.
The Bottom Line: "They're destroying Earth for a science project?" "Thereare worse fates out there."
Surprisingly jovial for such grim subject matter, it seems not even 2005 Doctor Who can escape from trying to recreate the Star Wars cantina scenes. Zoe Wanamaker steals every scene she is in, but the Doctor's drunkenessmanages to put up a good fight. However, the whole thing (especially theairlock sequence) seems a bit to close to Douglas Adams to be truly enjoyable.
103: The Unquiet Dead
by Mark Gattis
Roots: The works of Charles Dickens, Chance in a Million (when panicking, Callow reverts to this odd method of speech), Red Dwarf (the Doctor mishears'Gelth' as 'GELF'), The League of Gentlemen, Dr. Bell & Mr. Doyle, Strange.
Fluffs: Christopher Eccleston seemed taken aback in this story.
"I'd rather not discuss it as it's the same to all of you."
Goofs: Dickens clearly has to hold the door closed after he's locked it.
The snow storm stops inexplicably during the Doctor's return to the TARDIS.
Rose refers to the effect the Gelth have on human eyes BEFORE she sees itoccur.
Double Entendres: "Not so much Ghost Light as Gas Light..."
"What you do to those defenseless corpses is not what I wish to discuss!"
Dialogue Disasters: "Duck!" "Oh, where?"
"Pea-soupers are generally defined by the way they DON'T try to hunt onedown and kill one in the street like a dog!"
"Doctor, what's going on?" (and the delivery!)
Dialogue Triumphs: The Doctor's Dickens-related puns.
An ominous foreshadowing of Dickens' real-life fate: "In an ideal world the trains run on time." "Yes. And there are no crashes..."
"That's human egotism for you. Invade their planet, conquer their people,pervert their course of technological development and most of them won't notice. But if their latest celebrity has an affair out of wedlock, woe betide anyone trying to change the subject.""Here's my latest discovery. I call it 'fire'. Catchy title, no?"Intertextuality: The Doctor refers to encountering 'sentient smells' and'gastic emissions' "once or twice" (The English Way of Death and The Curseof Fatal Death).
Continuity: The Gelth and their ancient enemies the Geith have been fightingfor "as long as the Doctor can remember" which suggests a very long time indeed. Their combined homeworld was reduced to a stunning asteroid belt in thirteen seconds by the Geith's latest armed weaponry. The gas beings canlive in most organic creatures with an olfactory system, but in beings suchas humans all brain-function must have ceased for full control. Rose compares their scent to that of rain evaporating off the pavement on a sunny day.
The Doctor and Dickens have not met before, but have heard of each other through 'mutual acquaintences'. The Doctor has been a firm believer in themoral of A Christmas Carol, that we make our own futures by our own choices. He used to sum this belief up by quoting "And Tiny Tim, who did not die..." but after having to explain the whole reference on fifteen separateoccasions (and twice to a particularly thick sky-jellyfish who wasn't paying attention) finally settled on "I'll explain later."
The TARDIS' internal compensators can be effected by cold weather, despite the Doctor claiming this is impossible. Snow slides off the exterior,although the surface is not particularly warm.
Location: London, Christmas, 1885.
The Bottom Line: "And who the Dickens are you?"
The first bona fide classic of the Ninth Doctor's era, this refeshinglychilling blend of alien zombies and Victorian Christmases owes more than alittle to the author's own League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, as well as giving Simon Callow some flowery dialogue that the real Charles Dickens would have been proud.
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