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Category: doctor who recaps

August 22, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Episode Four & Five: Aliens of London/World War Three

Welcome back to another merry week of Doctor Who-less than a month till the new series! Are you excited? I’m profoundly not, partly because Moffat (I’ll have him yet) has announced that there will be a good number of two-parters in season nine, which would have been great news, oh, about four years ago. Ever since the terrible Living Flesh or whatever episodes from a couple of seasons ago, two-parters in New Who have increasingly seemed more like space-fillers than space adventures (it’s okay, I’ve already killed myself over that attempt at wordplay). Which is a tenuos enough link to get us into our next recap, which covers the first ever two-parter of the rebooted show- Aliens of London, and World War Three (we’re doing double-handers in one review, because these recaps are already stretching out in front of us like that neverending corridor in Time Bandits). And you know what that means, don’t you? We’ll be spending a couple of episodes with the inhabitants of Raxacoricofallapatorius (and yes, I knew that one off the top of my head, or at least you can’t prove otherwise)- better known as the Slitheen. As ever, check out another take on these episodes over at Red Whine.

Look, I know that these episodes are…divisive, at best. Even I can concede that they’re probably the weakest episodes of season one. But Christ almighty, at least when this season was bad, it was still fun (see: the arduously pretentious season 8 shocker Kill the Moon). The Doctor brings Rose back to her own time again, only to find that she’s actually been gone for a year- and as Rose reconciles with her distraught, badass mother, Jackie (who, in this episode, becomes thw first mther to slap the Doctor in the face), and her boyfriend, Mickey, something somewhat surprising happens.

Aliens! Or, at least, alien. In one of the best red herrings I’ve seen before or since, an alien spacecraft carrying a pig-like creature-

Ugh, this thing really freaked the fuck out of me on re-watching. Is that a real pig’s head? Ugh ugh ugh.

-smashes through London. As the authorities hustle to figure out what’s going on, the Doctor deduces that the spaceship was actually launched from earth, and that the creature is just a pig-albeit it one modified with alien technology. UNIT (appearing in the new series for the first time, hurrah!) recruits the Doctor to help them figure out what’s going on, as the mysteriously missing Prime Minister is replaced by an MP who isn’t quite what he seems.

Let’s be clear here: this episode is mainly just a collection of moments that I find amusing. Matt Baker, from my generation of Blue Peter (if you’re not British and you don’t know what that is, this clip should pretty much sum it up for you) appearing briefly baking his “very own edible spaceship” as the Doctor flips through channels, Jackie laying the smackdown on the Doctor for stealing away her daughter, and, of course, the introduction of Harriet Jones (MP Flydale North), one of the most gloriously well-realized supporting characters of Davies’ run.

The actual substance of the episode- farting aliens crammed into human body suits trying to take over parliament- is pretty awful when you actually think about it, but hinges on whether or not you find this-

-on any level intimidating, amusing, or even watchable. I think they’re pretty far from actually scary (I mean, look at those fuckers- they look like some nightmare version of a Baby Born doll), but fuck it, I’m a big fan of using real effects over CGI and I like the fact that for the most part, these things actually exist for the characters to interact with. Some effort went into the design, and even if having them fart away while wearing the skin of their human conquests diminishes their fear-factor somewhat, the show was still finding it’s feet as family viewing and I’m not going to begrudge it some toilet humour. And anyway, Doctor Who has a long and glorious tradition of cramming hapless actors into pretty shit rubber suits in the name of a story, so why should we start getting snobby about it now? Case in point:

If we can consider a show with the green bubblewrap monster a classic, then I’m sorry, but we have no right to be deriding the Slitheen, who are Michael Myers, Golden Freddy, and the notion of death itself rolled into one compared to this.

And I also dig this episode because it’s set on Earth, and we get to spend some more time with Rose’s friends and family. Whenever these episodes roll about with any of the assistants, all it serves to underline is that otherness the Doctor has from the rest of their lives, and how impossible it is to integrate those two things entirely. It’s also nice to see Rose interacting with other humans, for a change, and particularly with Harriet Jones, with their conversations existing apparently only as proof that Moffat cannot write women anywhere near as well as Davies can (seriously, give me five words to describe Clara off the top of your head. No disrespect to Jenna Coleman, who’s great, but Rose actually has, you know, a fully-formed character as opposed to a thousand lines about her short skirts) and to annoy me with the knowledge that we have to deal with Stephen Moffat’s bullcrappery for another two years at least.

But, my non-sequitor ranting aside, I like this episode, despite it’s faults. It’s a good, silly romp that underlines all the things I enjoy about Doctor Who at it’s most silly- an inherent recognition of it’s daftest, the enthusiasm real-life serious people-

(for those not acquainted with him, this is Andrew Marr, a well-respected political journalist and broadcaster, starring in a brief cameo in this episode)

-in getting involved with a story this dumb, and a cast of warm, well-rounded supporting characters joining the Doctor and his assistant in saving the world. And, since there was no room for it anywhere else, I’ll round of the episode by pointing out that this is the second episode is as many weeks to introduce a main cast member of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, in the form of Tosh, the doctor who examines the alien pig-man at the start of the first episode (in fact, canonically, she’s a computer expert and is covering for her hungover doctor colleague Owen, but basically what I’m saying is go watch Torchwood because it’s more fun that you think, okay?).

A prize for the best caption for this picture.

Join us next week so I can masturbate furiously over the utter, unparalleled glory of Dalek, the very first episode of New Who to introduce one of the Doctor’s most notorious villains.

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August 16, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Season One, Episode Three: The Unquiet Dead

When this episode first aired, I was straight-up banned from watching it. As a child with a dangerously vivid imagination, driven to weeks of sleepless horror by episodes of Grisly Tales for Gruesome Kids, I totally, in retrospect, understand why my mother didn’t let me watch it when it first came out. At the time, however, I was furious, and vividly remember acquiring the scariest, most lurid details of The Unquiet Dead from my classmates in the playground, piecing together the story and filling in the blanks in my head until it became an untinkably horrible bastion of nightmares far worse than anything the episode actually produces. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I actually saw the third episode of season one, and even now it holds a special kind of midnight-movie horror to it-I still feel slightly nefarious, like I did reading Goosebumps under my covers by torchlight after I was meant to be in bed, watching this episode that I was so totally banned from seeing at the time.Well, that, and the fact that this is the first bonafide classic episode of New Who.

This episode is one of the best ghost stories Doctor Who ever pulled off, because they’re usually so intent on going “IT’S NOT GHOSTS, BUT A SPACE EXPLORER MOVING IN SLOW MOTION/ALIENS/INSERT MOFFAT-IAN PLOT TWIST HERE” in later episodes. But this episode, revolving around a mysterious series of re-animations taking place in a Welsh funeral home, is just a straight, Dickensian ghost story- which is appropriate, because Mr Dickens himself crops up to join Rose and the Doctor for the first of many a Victorian adventure (Look, they have to get as much wear as they can out of those costumes, alright? That’s why they shot a whole episode on the abandoned BBC Robin Hood set).

Ugh, I’m OBSESSED with Rose’s costume in this episode. Billie Piper is a goddess. Speaking of which, have you been watching her in Penny Dreadful? She’s cracking, and the show is a great high-camp rollick through sexual deviance, Eva Green, re-interpreted literary characters, and Timothy Dalton’s muscular ‘tache.

This episode, for those counting, is the first appearance of Gwen, who would later (well, an ancestor of Gwen’s, whatever, Russel T Davies don’t need no continuity and wanted to wring a bit more from Eva Myles’ contract) take on a lead role in Torchwood, television’s B-movie. And she’s a pleasure in this episode, playing a maid at the funeral home who’s psychic skills are exploited by her employers to find the corpses who’ve wandered off through the city, fulfilling the last engagements they had arranged in life. One of these corpses winds up turning up at a Charles Dickens’ (played by a genuinely brilliant Simon Callow) reading, and Rose gets snatched by the proprietors of the home after she sees too much, and the story launches into a rollicking, scary, good-humoured romp that revealed just how well New Who dealt with it’s history.

I had the serious hots for this version of Dickens back in the day. By which I mean, when I watched this episode two days ago.

As someone with a degree in history (an accidental one, but who’s counting), these episodes are usually my favourite Whoscapades (Stop trying to make Whoscapades happen, Lou). You can take these episodes on purely a surface level and enjoy the zombie-ghost action, but there’s plenty in there for those who happen know a bit more about the time period, with clever and affecting nods to things like Dickens’ tumultuous personal life and his disdain towards the occult. But either way, it’s great fun to see the Doctor turning into a swooning fanboy when he ends up in Dickens’ carriage, trying to remember the name of that scary short story he once read (side note: here’s a really good adaptation of that short story on Youtube, if you’re looking to scare yourself shitless later tonight, because it’s Sunday and that’s what you should be doing). There’s a fun earnestness to this episode, which is written by God-amongst-men Mark Gatiss, which is packed full of excellent puns (“I do love a happy medium”) and sassy Rose quips.

The zombie exhibit is one of the most popular at Cardiff’s Zoo.

This is also the first episode where we meet the truly fallible Doctor. Without giving too much away, he fucks it; despite Rose’s protests, explaining it away as a different morality, he encourages Gwen to sacrifice herself to allow the ghosts into our reality. And it turns out that their motivations were not as pure as he had thought. The Doctor here is desperately trying to fulfill the role of the hero he had been unable to during the Time War, but instead ends up killing an innocent woman in the process in an ending that makes someone other than the Doctor the hero. Things turn out as well as they could, but the Doctor wasn’t the one who made it happen, and that’s an interesting concept to throw into the mix at this early stage of the series. He admits he can’t save Rose, when the two of them are cornered by Welsh zombies (the WORST kind of zombies. Don’t ask me how I know) in a slightly shocking scene that underlines the lack of control the Doctor really has. The episode ends on a melancholy third act, as Dickens leaves the Doctor and Rose, suddenly full of new ideas for his writing and set on reconciling with his estranged family, only for the Doctor to reveal that he dies only weeks later. It’s a bittersweet ending to a lively, fun episode, and one that leaves a very different taste in the mouth that the bad-guys-get-their-due of the first two outings. If you haven’t seen New Who, or believe you have no reason to, this is the place to start to convince yourself- it’s far more than the kid-centric sci-fi ramblings than the show often gets characterised as, especially in it’s earlier seasons, and if you’ve got any fondness for horror, alt-history, or Christopher Eccleston getting compared to a navvie, then this is for you.

CHEEKY SEANCE BANTZ

Join us next week for the first Slitheen two-parter, and my desperate attempts to justify why I’m apparently the only person who doesn’t think it’s utter shite. As ever, enjoy a different take on this episode over at Red Whine.

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August 9, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Season One, Episode Two: The End of the World

So, hello, and welcome to the second week of our cross-blog Doctor Who extravaganza as we take a look at the second episode of the season, The End of the World. Read a whole different take on the episode-by a strident Tennant fan- over at Red Whine. As before, if you want to join us on this ill-advised adventure through recapping (and also time and space), drop me an email an the Contact Me tab above.

Let me dive right in and start by saying that part of what I dig so much about this episode- aside from the fact it stars the once and future King of Doctors- is that we jump from saving the world in last week’s episode to watching it burn in the background all the way through this week. As a child (and, to an extent, an adult) who was petrified by the thought of the earth being destroyed in some catastrophic event (all those scaremongering Discovery Channel “documentaries” about asteroids and ice ages? Aimed directly at the kind of child I was), this episode scared the fucking bejeesus out of me, and still makes me feel kind of weird to this day. Something about seeing Earth burning out of existence- and having that basically forming the scenery of the episode- is really unsettling, and I can get on board with Rose’s assertion that this might not be the best way to make your second date go with a bang (A big one. PUNS).

“Oh, but he’s not in this episode!” I hear you cry. And I lift a finger to your lips, and shake my head sadly for your lack of pathetic insider DW knowledge.

The plot of this episode revolves around some space dignitaries-in the form of some living trees, the Face of Boe, and Lady Cassandra, the last human alive, who also happens to be, well, a giant piece of skin stretched out between two poles:

Whenever I lose weight, it’s this line that pops into my head and I immediately eat twelve donuts and a croissant because I’m fancy.

Yeah, if you thought “Terry Gilliam’s Brazil” when you saw this, you get twenty points too, because the Doctor Who props department like searing horrifying images into the memories of innocent children. After it’s revealed that a nefarious plot to bump off the guests is afoot, it’s up to Rose and the Doctor (and some living trees, but we’ll get there) to figure out what to do next. I like the simplicity of the plot, mainly because it allows for this episode to become mostly scene-setting, filling out the universe that we’ll be travelling through with this Doctor and providing a good bit of genuinely science-fictiony relief from the Earth-bound episodes on either side of it. One of the best things about this series of Who from a writer’s perspective must have been introducing this universe to whole bunch of new viewers (like me) who had no idea what to expect, and it shows, with real effort put in to making this as casually out-there as possible. Just some sentient trees wandering about, confusing me with how attractive they are. No biggie.

Insert “getting wood” joke here

I tell you what, too- I love this episode for the fact that it sets the vaguely sinister tone for the whole of season one. Now, it might be because I watched them when I was a terminally impressionable child, but I still think the most frightening episodes ever all belong to the first two seasons of New Who, and The End of the World is no exception. As the radiation given off by the dying earth threatens to burn our heroes alive, the whole spaceship set-up moves from dazzlingly inventive and quirky to claustrophobic and deadly, with a handful of guest-stars meeting grisly ends-whether burning alive, exploding in the heat, or being irradiated to death, it’s not just the bad guys who wind up dead.

Not just the bad guys, but the ENTIRE WORLD.

And the Doctor’s callous reaction to the villain of the piece-allowing them to burn in their own trap- marks out Eccleston’s ability to bring something a bit unsettling to his Doctor. From this episode onwards, you don’t want to end up on his bad side, and that’s an important part of the characterisation for the Doctor which is still being explored in Capaldi’s episodes today (by the way, is anyone else feeling less than enthused about the return of the series in just over a month? Until something changes- preferably finding a new showrunner, at fucking last- I’m just expecting a re-run of the off-puttingly patchy season eight, and, terrifyingly, a two-parter written by the creator of the painful Kill the Moon). If the first episode is about filling out Rose’s character, this is about giving us a look into the Doctor. The episode might end with them waltzing off to get chips, but we’ve had a glimpse into the effects of the Time War on our hero (Gallifrey and it’s fate are referenced for the first time in this episode, as is the excellent Bad Wolf season plot, for those keeping score at home).

Unf dat smile tho

The End of the World isn’t the best episode this season had to offer, not by a long shot. But it’s a gratifyingly simple story, filled with plenty of genuinely memorable characters (so good, in fact, that the villain who be brought back for the season two opener) and a pretty dark tone that keeps it from landing in “forgettable” territory. But honestly, who cares, because next week we’ve got the first bonafide New Who classic, in the form of the only episode of TV I was ever outrightly banned from watching, The Unquiet Dead. Stay tuned!

Yeah, insider jokes are the name of the game this week.

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July 28, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Series 1, Episode 1: Rose

Doctor Who has been part of my life for ten years now. It started with the rebooted series, watched over dinner on a Sunday night, before Scrapheap Challenge and Time Team. It was my introduction to pop culture, in a lot of ways- the first show that I followed which had long-running, over-arching plots and real character development, it sparked a love affair with television that I still can’t see an end to. I started reviewing Doctor Who from season seven onward on this blog, I met my current boyfriend when he was dressed as Doctor Who (it as Halloween, to be clear, but it is basically his daily attire), and I still have handfuls of Doctor Who annuals tucked away at the back of my bookcase. So when it came time to pick something else to recap, there was only really one choice.

So I’m recapping New Who, from Ecclestone to Capaldi, right here, starting right now. My boyfriend/also a freelance writer will be blogging his recaps of the same episodes over at his blog, Red Whine (because he’s ginger and also a nightmarish whinge- I had a hand in the name), so you can compare and contrast our two very different attitudes to our favourite show-here’s a link to his review of this episode. It might cause us to break up, because we usually have to avoid talking about Doctor Who lest in cause another genuine row, but that’s the sacrifice I’m willing to make. For you. Faithful blog-readers. Oh, and if any of you have your own blogs and would like to join in with our recaps, please do-just drop me an email/tweet so I can link your reviews and let you know what the rough schedule is.

Whether you’ve watched the series before, or want to start watching it now, I’ll be trying to keep these posts spoiler-free (ish) and welcoming to those who don’t know the mythology of the show as well as I do. Which is maybe the nerdiest thing I’ve ever felt smug about. Seriously though, if you haven’t watched it, please come join me on watching at least the first series, because it’s awesome and you can spare forty minutes a week to awesome, can’t you?

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at season one, episode one- Rose.

Let’s get one thing straight: this is the best iteration of the theme song.

Right? Awesome. I’m glad we agree. Murray Gold wrote some incredible music for Who, but he didn’t beat this, and never will. Especially not with the bastardisation of the opening credits we’re subject to now (I’ll have you yet, Moffat). But let’s now think of how badly this show was going to let me down- let’s focus on how utterly bloody brilliant everything about the first series was.

I make no secret of the fact that Christopher Eccleston is my Doctor. Sometimes I get quite irrationally angry about the fact that he only had one season, and stomp around and curse things and bargain with the Gods to sacrifice the first half of season seven for another few episodes of Chris. And I think a huge part of it is his introduction in this episode- how could you NOT find him fascinating? The plot is a throwaway piece of nonsense, as the Doctor attempts to stop Autons (living plastic dummies) destroying the human race, used as a framing device to introduce the Doctor and fill in his backstory for viewers who don’t know who he is. I’m really fond of the way the show introduces him- leaning through a door, grabbing Billie Piper’s hand, and declaring “Run!”- but I’d forgotten just how good the detail was in this episode. Take, for example, the Doctor’s speech to Rose when she asks who he is:

” Do you know like we were saying, about the earth revolving? It’s like when you’re a kid, the first time they tell you that the world is turning and you just can’t quite believe it ’cause everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it…the turn of the earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And, if we let go… That’s who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.”

I WISH I COULD FORGET YOU

That’s some pretty heavy shit for kid’s TV. It’s a genuinely brilliant speech, and is filled out by an entertaining turn by Mark Benton as Clive, the conspiracy theorist obsessed with the Doctor who Rose contacts for more information. Though she writes him off as insane, he manages to explain his constant appearences through history, his apparent immortality, and his changing face, not to mention squeezing in the immortal line about the Doctor’s only constant companion being death, and I’m a little surprised my parents let me watch this considering what a terrifyingly hyperactive imagination I had (vis: When I was nine and first watching this episode, I had to get my Dad to turn it off before the Doctor even arrived because I found the Autons so scary. Now I just sit around watching The Human Centipede over dinner. Funny how things change). He’s equal parts witty (that “it’ll never work- he’s gay and she’s an alien” line is generally how I describe my relationship), cutting, compassionate and hard-edged (and bloody handsome to boot- just me?), and I love how sharp his scripting makes him. We’re given just enough of the Doctor to tantalise us, but when it comes down to it, this episode isn’t about him. It’s about Rose.

Never without twenty layers of mascara. Seriously, even in the scenes where she’s waking up.

Ah, Rose Tyler: England’s Rose, played by Billie Piper, a tween pop starlet who stars as the nineteen-year-old chav and best assistant ever (she’s since proved herself over again in stuff like Penny Dreadful, which you should have seen by now). The episode’s named after her, for Christ’s sake- this outing, and to an extent the whole series, is about her emotional journey. And the show really takes it’s time setting up her life, and the characters therein. I always really liked that Rose’s life wasn’t awful, just that average kind of dreary, because it would have been so easy to give her an awful boyfriend or an annoying family to escape from. But here, Noel Clarke (who’s BAFTA speech is one of the things that inspired me to take up writing, so thanks for that, mate) as Mickey and Camille Coduri as my MILF-Goddess Jackie are just people, people that you know, people that you work with. They’re played with amazing warmth by both the actors (Camille Coduri’s delivery of “There’s a strange man in my bedroom…anything could happen” is up there in my top ten moments of the series, and Noel Clarke and Billie Piper have a really believable chemistry). Their normality isn’t bad, necessarily, but, when offered the chance to escape, Rose takes it. Because we all would.

Camille Coduri: making nine-year-old girls feel funny feelings since 2005.

And there’s the best part about this episode. The assistant has always been an audience surrogate, but she’s never been more relatable than Rose. Because Rose is living a completely unremarkable life, a moderately satisfying existence that doesn’t really lead to anything of note, as many of us are (or secretly believe we are). So when she’s offered the chance to change everything and travel through time and space in a blue box, of course she says yes. By inviting her along on this adventure, the Doctor (and by extension the show) is inviting the audience, too. And by God, I defy anyone to turn down a trip in the Tardis after this belter of an opening. Join us next week (maybe) for episode two, The End of the World, and maybe a bit less pretension, if I’m feeling generous.

Oh shit, Rose is younger than I am now in this episode. I want to kill myself. I’ll have you yet, Davies.

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