Let me just lead this by simply saying that Series Four is a very mixed bag. It starts out quite strongly but then dips a bit. Then climbs back up. Then absolutely plummets.
By no means do I consider it an absolute flop like Series Two was. There are some definite high points to the fourth season of New Who. Whereas, aside from Girl in the Fireplace, there's little I can genuinely like about Series Two. Four, at least, has several episodes that I have a lot of respect for. I'd estimate that I enjoy about half the season.
Which means, of course, that I consider the other half of Series Four to be poor in quality. Which is not the sort of impact a show wants to have on its audience. In an ideal world, everything that goes out is loved by everyone. But if even 80% of a season's content is well-appreciated, you can probably still say it was a successful run. Much below that, however, and we have to start passing harsher judgement.
With only half the season seeming all that good, I think I have to make the very vicious statement that Series Four, in general, is low in quality. It doesn't quite make it into the ranks of Seasons Seventeen or Twenty-Four. Or, as I already said, Series Two. But it's not that far above them, either!
SPECIAL NOTE ("SPECIAL"! SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!): I will be handling the Series Four Specials in much the same fashion as I did Time Crash and Voyage of the Damned in my last Review. Basically, they will get their own section at the end of the entry.
A PROMISING START
Partners in Crime is a very pleasant surprise. Clearly, it's meant to be a more humorous episode. Comedy doesn't tend to play out too well in the RTD Era. We either get something like Love and Monsters which tries too hard for the laughs and just comes across as overly silly. Or it does like The Runaway Bride and actually fails to be all that really funny at all (but, boy, can it play farty trumpet music in the background!).
But the comedy in Partners is pitched just right. There's a proper measure of it that doesn't go too far and the jokes are legitimately funny. Donna and the Doctor always missing each other for a good chunk of the episode is quite cute. It's utterly hilarious when they do finally meet through their respective windows. I also like that, like Smith and Jones, this is a Contemporary Earth story that isn't just another straight invasion attempt. Once more, humanity is caught in the middle of something bigger that's going on in intergalactic politics. The well-executed comedy and interesting core premise make it a solid start for the season. I even like the fact that Murray Gold gives us some fun background music that doesn't have to depend on farty-sounding trumpet music too much!
Fires of Pompeii tends to receive a lot of respect. And it totally deserves it. The plot is extremely clever. The moment where the Doctor realizes he has to unleash one of the hugest disasters in history to save us from an alien invasion is absolutely brilliant (and also quite brutal!). The whole lead-up to this Revelation is magnificently-constructed. As are the events that transpire afterwards. The whole episode is beautiful from beginning to end. This is how you write a great Doctor Who story that only has 46 minutes to be told in.
Donna does a lot to establish herself as a strong companion in this story. Her constant appeals to the Doctor to try to evacuate the city shows us this beautiful determination that makes her very endearing. When she reaches that fateful moment with him, though, where he has to activate the volcano, we admire the courage she shows as she instantly chooses to share the responsibility with him.. All the strength of character that she has throughout the story makes it totally believable when she is able to persuade the Doctor to save just one family from the disaster. Donna really shines, here. I can totally understand why fandom adores her so much.
On top of all that, Pompeii does a great job of featuring actors who have much bigger roles to play in the future! I'm even quite impressed with how diverse they are. The characters they play here don't resemble their future parts at all!
And then there's Planet of the Ood. I always felt this one deserves more love from the fans than it gets. The Ood were one of the few things I found all that interesting in The Long Boring Satan Debacle from Series Two. It was nice to actually see their backstory. Like the Judoon, they're another interesting species that have deserved the various appearances they receive throughout New Who. Although, I do get the impression that we're only seeing them return, sometimes, because Production wanted a scene with a lot of aliens in it and there's always a few Ood costumes lying around in Wardrobe! Still, they're fascinating creatures and I love the way their whole civilization is structured. It was some very imaginative world-building on the part of the author .
I do like it when Humanity turns out to be the Bad Guy. As they do, here. It makes total sense. We have a long history of being really big jerks to each other so it stands to reason that, when we go out into space, we're going to keep being jerks. It's just one more factor that gets me to prefer Doctor Who over Star Trek. Trek makes us seem like we're just going to become this absolutely perfect utopia in the future. And I find that hard to believe.
In the end, I absolutely love Planet of the Ood. Another excellently-constructed story that I just might do an Unsung Classic entry about, someday.
Finally, we get to The Sontaran Stratagem. The first episode of The Great Return of the Potato Heads actually does really well. The right balance is struck between the military buffoonery of the Sontarans and making them seem legitimately vicious. I even like that they have a war chant, now. Kevin Lindsay did a great job of bringing this particular monster to life in the first few Sontaran tales That portrayal is being honored whilst, at the same time, interesting new things are being added to it.
The Doctor being able to outwit the Atmos device is about the only thing that doesn't sit that well with me in this episode. Theoretically, it works. But it's one of those things that you can't help but think that the device would have some sort of in-built defense against. A subroutine in it's programming that, basically, says: "If someone is telling you to go in the direction you've been programmed to go in, just keep going..." Or something to that effect!
Otherwise, though, this episode looks really great. I'm not just happy with how the Sontarans are represented, the plot also seems quite interesting. I love when baddies form secret alliances with treacherous humans. You just know good 'ole Luke Rattigan will get a knife in his back once he's served his purpose. And you can't wait to see it! As we get that great shot of a Sontaran flying around in the traditional geodesic-dome-shaped spaceship, I'm excited to see what will come next.
What a disappoint I will have!
THE NEXT HIGH POINT
You thought I was just going to go through the season chronologically story-to-story, didn't you? Just goes to show: I'm full of surprises!
There's a series of painfully mediocre or even awful episodes that we will skip, for now. I want to cover all the positives in one lump. Then we will go back and discuss the not-so-good or even genuinely crappy stuff.
Midnight is, without a doubt, absolutely brilliant. I love it when Doctor Who does this sort of thing. I'm so happy that, even in its new form, it continues to produce weird, experimental material like this. We need to be reminded, from time-to-time, that television is a genuine art form and not just something that works to a formula that's designed to keep us entertained. Producing an episode like Midnight does exactly that.
Aside from the intro and outro and a brief scene in the cockpit of the Crusader, everything takes place on just one set. Which makes this more of a play than a TV episode. Just to make it feel even more cultural, however, many fans like to compare this story to the works of Franz Kafka. In a time when Doctor Who seemed to be drawing far too much from Pop Culture, it was nice to see it suddenly taking on a much more Classical tone. This is, in fact, another thing I really appreciate about the show. I love that it's not afraid to draw from something older and more high-browed. Even something as awful as Horns of Nimon redeems itself slightly by being based on an old Greek myth!
The pacing of Midnight is absolutely gorgeous. We are given a set of characters that all seem very likeable in many ways. They have their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but that's part of what draws us to them. We spend several minutes watching them form a bond but none of it feels the slightest bit like padding. It's important character development that is genuinely interesting to watch. There's not a line of dialogue that feels useless, here. Even little details like the son mouthing the words of his father as he says: "The pool is abstract" is absolutely perfect. It shows just how cynical he's become with his parents. All of this is written and played to perfection.
And then, of course, things start taking a darker turn. Slowly but surely, tensions builds as events on the Crusader become more and more sinister. A mob mentality grows strong and the Doctor, for once, seems incapable of stemming it. All of this is executed to absolute perfection. So that, even though it's all restricted to one location, we are totally captivated by what we're watching. This is some truly outstanding stuff. I'm delighted that the season suddenly went in such an unusual direction.
During the Tennant Era, RTD has been, for the most part, putting in some fairly solid contributions. But this is the first time since Series One that I've really felt like he's written something truly remarkable. It's nice to see that he can still produce great material. He just has to be willing to take some risks and try something different
I should probably not like Turn Left as much as I do. It's part of another boring, repetitious pattern that RTD brings into his era. The "We have to re-cap everything that's happened on modern-day Earth in the last two years" trope. He did it first in Love and Monsters and he's brought it back, here.
Oddly enough, though, I really love Turn Left. Midnight, of course, is still the better story. But this one is quite good, too. If it's done well, I can really enjoy an "alternative timeline" story. A lifetime ago, I collected comic books for a while. Marvel's What If? series was one of my favorites!
There are two things that Turn Left does that sets it apart from the average tale of this nature. Firstly, it does a very good job of making a historical allusion that shows Britain is turning into a fascist state. It's absolutely heartbreaking when Wilf proclaims: "It's happening again." as the Italian family is hauled off to "a labor camp". Secondly, it has a damned clever ending. Donna's sacrifice to restore our reality is quite touching. I especially love how we see the truck that would have hit her driving past her and her mom in the pre-titles. In this universe, the driver of the truck doesn't have to deal with the guilt of accidentally running someone over!
After having endured a run of episodes in the mid-section of the season that I wasn't too thrilled about, I'm thankful for these two episodes. Both seem to be holding to a very high standard. My faith that Series Four will turn out all right has been renewed. I'm hopeful, again.
Sadly, all those hopes are about to be dashed against the rocks.
A LOW POINT - PART ONE
And with the Good Stuff now out of the way, let's jump all the way back to the fifth episode and talk about the first phase of Things That Went Wrong.
After a promising first episode, The Great Sontaran Debacle goes to absolute crap! There are a lot of problems with Poison Sky. Enough to make it a singularly bad episode.
The actor playing Luke Rattigan goes just a little OTT in Sontaran Stratagem. But, overall, his performance works. In the second half of the adventure, however, he definitely wanders off into Professor Zaroff Land. His various hissy fits and mental breakdowns are way too exaggerated and become quite unbearable to watch. How Rattigan is used in the final few minutes is quite clever. But, for most of the episode, he's largely annoying.
The Doctor setting the sky on fire to save the world seems just a bit ludicrous. Especially since it seems like absolutely no one is harmed from it. The flames seem to erupt a safe distance away from everything. Even The Valiant has placed itself conveniently. And it's only the clone feed that gets burnt. The fire doesn't continue consuming our atmosphere once it's eaten the gas. It's just a bit too neat of a solution for what seems like a very chaotic and uncontrollable course of action.
I'm not sure what other kind of plot could have been devised, but turning Earth into a clone planet for the Sontarans doesn't really work well. I would even say that there's a bit of an Android Invasion vibe going on, here. A super-contrived way of polluting our atmosphere is put into place over what probably took an endless amount of time and effort (installing ATMOS into 4 million cars certainly didn't happen overnight!). Couldn't the Sontaran Battle Cruiser just release the gas into our atmosphere like it was crop-dusting? Or it could have dropped a couple of super-intense gas bombs onto the surface and exploded them. Or something like that. These all seem like something the Sontarans are far more likely to do than the long, tedious gesture of covertly creating a company that turns a bunch of our vehicles into gas emitters.
Speaking of the way the Sontarans are portrayed, I do like how they were presented in the first half of the story but they tend to get them totally wrong in Part Two. I've already pointed out how their actual plans to make the Earth a clone planet doesn't really suit their usual methodology. But there's other stuff, too.
In an effort to make the Sontarans look as numerous as possible, there are several shots of extras being packed into too tight of a space. This causes them to seem much more stiff and clunky than they usually are. Sontarans in Classic Who could often be quite nimble. Even agile. Their movements in this episode make them seem more like they're just another version of Cybermen.
And then there's the fact that bullets can kill them. Sontarans always struck me as being far more invulnerable than that. They're wearing a sort of space armor. Shouldn't that, at least, be as effective as Kevlar? I would even assume that the Sontaran constitution, in general, could withstand bullets. Sure, Jamie's knife hurts a Sontaran's leg during The Two Doctors. But the wound seems to heal up shortly thereafter. To me, bullets would work in a similar fashion. Perhaps if you really pump a Sontaran full of lead, he'll go down. But several of them die from just one shot.
These various problems bog the story down far too much. Poison Sky is legitimately bad. I do feel sorry for Helen Raynor. I still think she could have done some great stuff if RTD had not thrown her into the ocean without a lifejacket (twice)!
Up Next is The Doctor's Daughter. A better story than Poison Sky. But only so much.
It's one of those adventures that tends to zig when it should have zagged. It tries to have several contemplative moments but they all seem to happen in the wrong place. Alternatively, the action sequences don't seem to be in the proper spot, either. It's like the writer is almost counter-intuitive. Arranging the plot elements in the exact opposite way that they should be.
Also, a lot of the debates during those moments of reflection are quite flimsy. Is Jenny really the Doctor's daughter? Well, no. She's a sort of weird clone that was foisted upon him. Is she an independent being? Not really. She's had a lot of pre-programming that she has the potential to break free of. Is the Doctor the warrior that Jenny is claiming him to be? He's more like a guy who's just phoning Martha to make sure she's okay! All these great questions can be answered quite easily in a sentence or two. But they really love to dive into some lively debate using points that don't really hold much water.
Oddly enough, I find the Hath to be a bit too campy for my liking (and this is coming from a guy who was okay with farting Slitheen!). Yes, they talk through blowing bubbles - but shouldn't the TARDIS translator still be able to do something about that? And I still can't figure out why a species that doesn't need to breathe air should be all that bothered by quicksand! Yes, we hear the glass that holds the liquid they breathe shatter. And maybe they need that liquid to stay alive. But I'm not sure why it suddenly shatters so easily. That same Hath was too close to an explosion earlier in the story that dislocated his shoulder. Surely, the glass should have shattered then. If the quicksand is dense enough to break blast-resistant glass, it probably would have done some serious harm to Martha. But she climbs out of it without a scratch .
The final few minutes of the story don't make much sense. How the TARDIS is diverted to Messaline is not that well-explained. I'm still not sure how Jenny creates an "endless paradox". Jenny's sudden resurrection is just as irrational. Did being part-Time Lord save her, after all? Or did it have something to do with the planet's terraforming? Can't say for sure since no explanation is offered in the slightest.
I still wouldn't call The Doctor's Daughter a complete failure. It's passable. But barely passable.
The Unicorn and the Wasp contains a couple of RTD-Era tropes that I'm getting really tired of.
Firstly, we get our latest "Historical Celebrity" storyline. Where someone famous from our civilization's past is, somehow, woven into the plot and made an integral part of it. Sometimes, this is done in a clever way. Like how the Carrionites needed Shakespeare's deftness with words to liberate them. Other times, it's done quite clumsily. Like having a giant alien wasp suddenly become influenced by the works of Agatha Christie and then she just happens to show up at a party he's at a week later.
We also get another one of those stories where the subplot seems to be getting more attention than the main one. Unfortunately, the only thing going on in the subplot is telling Agatha Christie every few minutes how brilliant she is. So, basically, both plots are fairly insubstantial. Which results, of course, in a tale of little or no consequence. It doesn't even really do the best job of explaining how exactly Christie disappeared for ten days. Which seemed to be one of its main points.
The climax of the whole adventure also came across as somewhat silly. A chase scene in vintage cars that can barely go faster than 2 km/hr is hardly a thrilling visual. And a giant sentient Wasp lacking the common sense to not plunge into the water seems like a pretty weak way to end the whole conflict.
Having lodged all those complaints, I will add that Unicorn and Wasp does have some fun moments. Like the story before it, I wouldn't call it an absolute dud. But it barely qualifies as being legitimately good, either.
Both Daughter and Wasp also do this exceptionally bizarre thing. Each story has a subplot that seems completely arbitrary. Like that Poacher in Pyramids of Mars who's really just there to help pad out the run-time.
Discovering that the war between humans and Hath has only been going on for a matter of days has no real relevance to anything else in the story. It just gave Donna something to do while they ran around in tunnels for a bit.
Even sillier, though, is the actual inclusion of the Unicorn in Unicorn and Wasp. Admittedly, she's a fun little twist. But, otherwise, she serves no real purpose to the plot. The pendant that she steals could've very easily been introduced into the plot without her. In fact, it seems a bit silly that she surrenders it so easily once she's been called out. So, if anything, she works to the detriment of the story rather than its benefit. As it features a thief who doesn't really seem all that convincing.
After a very promising start of four really solid episodes, the next three totally remove the wind from my sails. I really thought we were getting another Series Three. Perhaps even something better. But I'm rapidly losing my enthusiasm for this season. The mistakes of Series Two are returning to haunt us.
NOT ENTIRELY A HIGH OR LOW POINT - MAYBE A MID-POINT?
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead sits in an odd place for me. This, as far as I'm concerned, is the first time Moffat misses the mark. Not by much, mind you. There's still some stuff that he does really well in here. River Song is particularly fascinating as a character. Given how Doctor Who works, we can't be sure we'll ever see her again. But I'm glad that we do. Alex Kingston was also a brilliant casting choice. She plays the role perfectly.
Certain plot elements concerning the Library are well-conceived. I think the whole story behind CAL and Doctor Moon is quite brilliant. How everyone was "saved" was another great idea that shows off just how great of a grasp Moff has on wordplay. I also love how the Doctor gets the Vashta Nerada to stand down by just being really menacing. It's an ultra-cool moment.
But there are problems with this story, too. In some ways, they might seem minor. But they're enough to get under my skin.
Last season, I thoroughly enjoyed how Moffat took something common like angel statues and made us terrified of them. It was, very much, in keeping with what Classic Who liked to do. But with all the paint-by-numbers writing that's been going on in this era, I really didn't like how he repeated himself so quickly by now trying to make us afraid of the dark. Thus far, he had shown himself to be very diverse in his scripts. We would, eventually, see him sometimes going back to the Well with creatures that had some similarities to each other. Like the Weeping Angels, the Silence and the Monks. But, if we're not seeing the repetition too frequently, I'm fine with that. Authors will sometimes re-package an idea they've used before. Even the Great Robert Holmes did that from time-to-time. It's about how often they do it that determines how truly unoriginal they are. Two stories in a row by Steven Moffat that use the same sort of horror device felt a bit stale. Particularly in a season where everything feels like it's being re-used over and over!
My other big objection is almost a bit obscure. Silence/Forest feels like a desperate attempt to re-create Human Nature/Family of Blood. The similarities between the two are, oftentimes, quite subtle. But some are more obvious. The last few minutes of the story having voice-over is probably the most blatant example. There's not really anywhere else in the show where such a device was being used except in the second two-parter from Serie Three. It does genuinely feel like they're trying to re-do the ending to Nature/Blood when they employ a voice-over again.
Intentionally trying to get lightning to strike twice always comes across as awkward. Which becomes a genuine tone for the whole story as I watch it. Moff's two-parter should have been doing its own thing rather than trying to have the same sort of vibe Paul Cornell had generated the season previously.
Again, I will admit: my objections may seem a bit trite. But, somehow, they're big enough to give me a certain degree of disdain for this story. It's still very good in many ways. It's not that I hate it. But I do feel that it's substantially weaker than anything else Moffat has created, thus far. After three episodes that were difficult to sit through, Moff not delivering as well as he usually does adds to the dislike I'm feeling for this season.
THAT AWFUL FINALE
"Sadly, all those hopes are about to be dashed against the rocks" was something I said earlier in this entry. But, because I want to be all cool and artsy and take a non-linear approach to the Review, you probably forgot that I wrote that.
At last, we've reached the point in the season that I'm referring to in that statement.
I don't think there will ever be a worse season finale than the end of Series Four. To me, it's just a gigantic mess. Only to be followed a short while later by a series of Specials that are an equally-large gigantic mess. Basically, aside from Waters of Mars, it's all downhill from here...
There's been this weird comparison that fans have been making over the last few years. They like to see Stolen Earth as Doctor Who's version of the MCU Movie: The Infinity War. I, however, see one huge difference between the two. Infinity War tells a compelling story that is affecting the lives of a vast array of characters. The plot of the story moves along by touching base regularly with all of these different beings who are making a concerted effort at trying to stop Thanos from completing his Quest. Stolen Earth, on the other hand, is a story that has little or no plot. The Daleks are invading Earth again. A silly contrivance that was the "catchphrase of the year" is stopping the Doctor from getting there to help. In order to pad out the episode, we spend endless minutes watching the reactions of various characters as they discover the Daleks are attacking their planet.
We do get to meet the Shadow Proclamation. That's a bit cool. Also, Harriet Jones makes a surprise return appearance. But it's still just a bunch of stalling. All that's really going on is that the Daleks are invading the Earth and the Doctor can't get in to the Medusa Cascade to help. That's, more-or-less, the whole 46-minute episode. Anything else they've thrown in is mere window-dressing
I get it, of course. RTD is trying to celebrate his era by bringing back some of his most beloved characters. But I really think this level of commemoration after only four years of showrunning is a little unwarranted. Also, it seems a whole lot less vain to have others pay tribute to you rather than do it yourself!
For me, Stolen Earth just doesn't work.
The regeneration cliffhanger creates a strange reaction in me. I'm of two minds about it. One side of me thinks it was an interesting and even creative device. Particularly with the way it used the Doctor's spare hand that's been sitting around since the end of Series Three.
Another side of me thinks it was a really stupid way to use up a regeneration. It might have almost been better if Tennant had just turned into Matt Smith right there and he had taken over for the second half of the story. Coming up with some really goofy pseudoscience explanation just so Ten could keep the same face after a regeneration seemed really over-contrived.
Journey's End doesn't do much better than its predecessor. It still uses the extended cast to pad things out a bit. I am glad that several groups are starting to come together, at least, so that less of this "filling time by checking in regularly with a large cast" nonsense is happening.
Most of these gangs are enabling various plot strands that will help the humans to defeat the Daleks. But then all those big plans are nipped in the bud by the Daleks doing one quick teleport. As this occurs, we can't help but see those subplots for what they really are: yet more padding. Even in the 2000s we're getting Doctor Who stories where there's barely enough material to fill up half the run-time. I had a hard enough time sitting through stories like this that were made way back in the 70s. This shouldn't still be happening.
Davros is back. That's kinda cool. But he does that thing I complained about way back in my Series One Review when I was talking about Boomtown. A character who's clearly morally depraved can't run around trying to judge the Doctor. It just looks stupid. Especially the way Tennant seems to take it so quietly. Just bowing his head in shame at Davros' accusations. One would think he would actually be laughing at him.
"I make people into weapons?!" he should be saying with a sneer, "There's the pot calling the kettle black!"
As if there weren't enough problems with this two-parter, the story then goes and does one of the most absolutely ridiculous and cringy things in the whole history of the show: The TARDIS tugs the Earth back to it's proper place in the cosmos. The cutaway shots to various supporting characters clinging to things in their livingrooms while papers and props get thrown at them by off-camera technical staff are just downright silly. Are we really meant to believe these people are going for the ride of their lives as their planet hurtles across the Universe?! It's just so awful!
Is it just me or does the actual Ultimate Plan of the Daleks not actually make a whole lot of sense? I mean, I can - sort of - understand it. The Daleks hate all other races and might wish to wipe them out. But you'd think they'd still want a few lesser species around to conquer and enslave. Even if they did want to wipe out all other life, the Reality Bomb destroys everything in all of time and space. Wouldn't the Daleks still want the stars and planets around to draw resources from? Is their empire completely self-sufficient? They can just tick away eternity without need of any supplemental energy? Probably not! In the end, what the whole story's about seems a tad illogical. Like RTD didn't think things through too hard but just wanted his last Season Finale to be as big a threat as possible.
Are there any redeeming qualities to any of this? There are some elements that I felt worked quite well. The insane Dalek Caan was quite fun. The meta-crisis Doctor was also a bit cool .I enjoyed most of what they ended up doing with Donna. Getting her memory erased was quite gutting to watch. But this was also another of those "false prophecies of a companion dying" scenarios that RTD keeps creating. This really mars the quality of Donna's departure. The Head Writer should have either not tried to trick us again by leading us to believe that she was going to perish or he should have just killed her. Repeating with her what he did with Rose was just annoying.
Still, I wouldn't call Stolen Earth/Journey's End completely awful. There's enough in there that I enjoyed. It's not one of those tales that's so bad that I just want to pretend it never happened (WARNING: We are about to get one of those stories!). But I wouldn't call it all that good, either. It tried to be so grandiose and epic but just ended up coming across as poorly-constructed and ill-conceived.
THE SPECIALS
The dust of Series Four is settling. Moffat and Smith are waiting in the wings. I, for one, would just like them to step in and take over as quickly as possible. But Tennant remains at the helm of the TARDIS at the conclusion of Journey's End. We still have to sit through five Specials before we can truly move on from this era.
From a purely structural standpoint, the Specials are shooting the whole Tenth Doctor Era in the foot. While I didn't enjoy the finale to Series Four, it was clearly supposed to be the ultimate climax of the whole period. What everything was meant to be leading up to. This really should have been where Ten took his bow and left the show.
Instead, we now have to watch a set of Specials that will try, once more, to reach some sort of zenith and then write this latest incarnation out. It's not the best method to build an arc. In fact, I'd call it a very awkward way to finish off the tenth Doctor's reign.
It doesn't help that the whole run begins with The Next Doctor. This is, without a doubt, the worst story in the New Series. It's just so bad.
Once more, RTD is using Tabloid Headline Tactics to lure us in. "Oh my God!" we're meant to think, "Could this be a Doctor from the future?! I've got to tune in and find out!"
Except that, by this point, RTD has cried wolf way too often. He tried to make us believe Rose was going to die. She didn't. Then he did the same with Donna. And she also lived. Clearly, this "next Doctor" is going to be anything but a future incarnation of our beloved Time Lord.
And, of course, he's not. The reason that he does think he is the Doctor is super-contrived. Those info-stamps also seem ridiculously convenient. A quick and easy way to take out a Cyberman. And it's a good thing the Cybermen left their transport equipment in such an easy place for the Doctor to take it. You'd think the one thing that could send the evil cyborgs back home would be moved to a more defendable place. Or, at least, placed under a heavier guard. But it isn't. Thank goodness for that!
This is also yet another classic case of the B Plot being given stronger emphasis than the A. The whole nonsense with the Cybermen feels almost grafted on to the narrative. The real focus is on whether or not David Morrissey will be playing the Doctor in Series Five. Which he won't, of course .And the fact that the whole adventure is hanging its hat on this premise makes it become largely uninteresting once we've learnt the truth of things. Especially since the Cybermen have received so little genuine attention.
So much of this tale just feels completely ludicrous. Like the Daleks in the last story, the ultimate plan of the Cybermen seems a bit dumb. Rather than use the invasion methods they've employed countless times before (essentially: go out, grab a few humans, make them into Cybermen...lather, rinse, repeat), they build a huge Dreadnought that they will then use to convert the population of Earth. Which makes little or no tactical sense. People will see that thing from miles away and run for their lives. Not sure how it's going to catch anyone and turn them into Cybermen!
Yet again, RTD just wants to create a huge spectacle and doesn't really think things through much. "Let's have a giant steampunky robot traipsing through 18th-Century London with Cybermen inside it." he decides, "That'll be cool!"
There's way more I could complain about (you can see a few more potshots that I take here: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2019/11/book-of-lists-christmas-specials-from.html), but I'll stop. This Review must move on.
Thanks to The Next Doctor, however, the Specials are off to a horrible start.
Planet of the Dead is a fairly passable romp. It does what it says on its tin. It gives us something cute and light-hearted before we have to get into the heavy stuff. We've got some fun characters on a dangerous adventure that isn't too terrifying. Overall, it's a good time.
The last few minutes of the story always bother me, though. Firstly, the timing of it all is quite clumsy. That portal to our planet stays open for quite a bit. The bus makes it through and so do a few alien manatee creatures. But only three. They fly around incessantly with the portal still open as UNIT tries to take them down. In the time that the gateway was still open between worlds, another thousand or so of the manatees should have slipped through. They were right behind the bus as it escaped. But, conveniently enough, we only get three. Did the others get lost?!
The other thing that really bothers me is how, even in the adventure that's meant to be light, Ten still needs to get angsty. "I travel alone." he tells Lady de Souza with a big serious frown on his face that is meant to show the weight of the Universe on his shoulders. But, instead, just feels a bit cringy. Just once during the Specials, can we get a story where the Doctor doesn't have to let everyone know how much it sucks to be him?
I guess not...
Planet of the Dead is, at least, okay. Painfully mediocre, at best. Which is ironic since it's called a "Special". To me, that indicates it should be more exciting than the average episode of Doctor Who. I did feel a bit silly waiting around all that time for a story that wasn't really anything all that great I, literally, found myself saying: "Is that it?!" as the ending credits rolled up.
But, at least, it's not terrible like Next Doctor was.
A RAY OF SUNSHINE
Waters of Mars is the only true happiness I feel as I sit through the Specials. It's an absolute Classic.
Just this once, Ten's angst is actually working. It's ripping his hearts apart that he can do nothing to help this group of genuinely engaging characters. We want him to save them as much as he does. We do really like this crew. Which makes his transformation into the Time Lord Victorious that much more believable. We feel a lot of what he's going through as he takes this dark journey.
As a hardcore fan, I also appreciate that Waters helps to settle one of the greater debates that we indulge in: Why is it that the Doctor can, sometimes, interfere with things and other times he can't? It's something we've been wondering about since Season One. In The Aztecs, he tells Barbara she can't re-write history. But only a handful episodes earlier, he's freeing Marinus from the tyranny of the Voord. How is it that one event must remain untouched while the other seems to get massively altered?
The answer, of course, is that one is a Fixed Point and the other isn't (well, it's the simpler answer, at least). Thanks to RTD for finally settling this problem. He not only came up with a great concept, but he explained it within the context of a superb story.
There is an excellent balance, here, between A Plot and B Plot. RTD (along with a little help) is showing that he can get the emphasis right when he puts his mind to it! Both narratives unfold at a gorgeous pace, too. As Fixed Points get explained to us, we also learn what caused the disaster on the Bowie Base. All of this flows quite beautifully. Like Blink, I find that once I start watching this story I can't step away from it. It totally draws me in.
The Doctor also becomes really scary at the end. There's some serious megalomania going on as he realizes there's nothing anyone can do to stop him from altering a Fixed Point. I really loved seeing the character go in this direction and wish we'd gotten more of it.
I would also note that this is probably Tennant at his best. He pitches everything perfectly, here. Even the angstiness as he's stuck in the airlock is not getting under my skin. And when he does lose his mind for a bit, his arrogance and fury are awesome to behold.
Waters of Mars makes all the other Specials worth it. I put up with them just because I know there's this beautiful treat is sitting at the center of it all.
GETTING THROUGH THE END....
At last, we reach The End of Time. The era is nearly over. This should be a happy thing. Unfortunately, we've still got a good two hours of some fairly bad stuff to endure.
Before dwelling too hard on the negatives, I'll discuss some of the stuff I like about this story. Getting a decent look at the Time Lords for the first time in New Who was definitely very exciting. All those crashed Dalek saucers around the Citadel was definitely a memorable image. And the hint made about the Doctor and the Moment was quite intriguing. I really enjoyed all the stuff involving the Time Lords. Timothy Dalton was the perfect casting choice for Rassilon.
The "ultimate showdown" between the Master and Rassilon with the Doctor between them with a big 'ole pistol was also a pretty great moment. Particularly as the Doctor recognizes the mysterious woman who's going to get turned into a Weeping Angel and Flavia's Lament starts to play in the background. It gives me the chills every time.
But then there's the rest of the tale: A long drawn-out mess with a threadbare plot that's largely uninteresting. If this weren't the Grand Finale for both Tennant and RTD, I doubt anyone would really get into this part of the narrative all that much. The Master getting caught up in a series of unfortunate events while the Doctor keeps trying to catch up with him is all we're really getting for most of the story. I'm not sure why RTD thought this would be the sort of thing we'd want to watch for a few hours.
We also get one more of the Head Writer's tragic flaws on display before he leaves us. Once again, he's fiercely dedicated to making both episodes last an hour. But, as usual, there's just not enough plot to sustain the run-time. This becomes most obvious in Part One where we have to spend an endless amount of time watching multiple Masters waving to us from all around the world. A handful of shots like this does make sense. We needed it firmly established that everyone in the world really was the Master, now. But, instead, we get another "possessed Sarah Jane walking through a nuclear power plant at the end of Part One of The Hand of Fear" situation. Because Production needs to mark time, the sequence drags on forever. To the point where I really do just want end the episode early and go to Part Two.
The lack of plot in Part Two is even more formidable. I still remember when I saw this episode for the first time. A friend had actually downloaded it and we were watching it together. Because it was a download, it had that little browser bar thingy at the bottom showing us how much of the episode was done and what was still left. Both of us were a bit befuddled as Ten releases Wilf from the glass chamber. We were like: "This is it. He's gonna go regenerate, now. There should be, maybe, five minutes left to this episode!" But the browser indicated there was waaaayyyy more than that!
So Ten runs around for a while and we get a condensed version of Stolen Earth. Again, he catches up with the old gang. Even though we saw all this just five episodes ago. Not only did we not need this again so soon, but - even when the show did this the first time - it hardly felt necessary. Why are we already wallowing in nostalgia for something that's only been running for four seasons? Does TV really move this fast, now? Four seasons is now the equivalent of a Twentieth Anniversary?! Or is this, perhaps, a bit of sentimental overkill that is trying mask the fact that there really wasn't enough plot?!
I'm betting on the latter.
FINAL ULTIMATE CONCLUSION
And so we come to the end. Tennant has stepped out so Smith can take over. RTD is letting Moffat seize the reigns. And I, admittedly, am happier for it. By the time we reach the end of this era, I really do feel as though some major house-cleaning is in order.
I will extend a certain level of leniency toward Russell T. Davies. First of all, he did successfully bring back Doctor Who. Because of what happened in '96, we understood that this was a much trickier task than imagined. He needed to get the formula just right. It was a precarious balancing act between staying true to the show's roots and still making it accessible to new viewers. In Series One, he nails this perfectly. Which will go on to guarantee a long life for New Who.
I can also accept that this can be a tough act to continue. Over the next few seasons, the show is really going to need to find its feet. And this will involve some experimentation and even some failure. So I don't want to come down too hard on the guy. He had to forge a whole new path for the show and there were bound to be some mistakes.
Having said that, however, there were still a certain amount of bad choices that could have been avoided if the Head Writer had, perhaps, been a bit less married to his method. He insisted on keeping angst as a core character attribute to the lead. Which actually ended up making Ten very unattractive. He also thought it appropriate to actually celebrate himself at the end of his era. And, most significantly, he maintained his paint-by-numbers writing style throughout the entire four seasons. This, more than anything, makes this period of the show very difficult for me to re-visit. I'll watch an episode here and there. But getting through an entire season can be quite arduous.
I don't totally hate RTD's work on the show. Even after Series One, there's quite a bit of stuff there that I can really enjoy. Just like there's a lot of stuff from the Letts and Dicks period of Classic Who that I find genuinely charming. But I also feel that this is another period in the show's history where we do reach a creative low.
Which means that, when RTD does finally step down as Head Writer, I'm glad to see the back of him.
