What has come before…
The return of Doctor Who to the airwaves is old news now. No longer a cult series but now a Hugo and BAFTA Award winning program, Doctor Who has not been this popular since William Hartnell held the role in the 60’s.
The premiere season if 2005 featured Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor, a strange and moody alien wanderer in time and space. His mission is to fight injustice wherever he finds it and push the human race forward so that they can reach their full potential. In the season finale, the Doctor sacrificed himself so that his deadliest enemy, the Daleks were wiped from existence and his companion Rose watched in shock as he changed forever into a new man.
With his Christmas Invasion debut as the 10th Doctor, David Tennant brought such life and vitality to the part that fans have not seen in ages. Gone were the deep thoughtful glances and inner turmoil of his predecessor, Chris Eccleston. Now we had the most animated version of the Doctor since Tom Baker. Waltzing around dangerous aliens set to destroy the planet, excitement over little things we humans take for granted and a fierce protective instinct for his companion.
2006’s Season Two saw the Doctor’s relationship with the incumbent companion Rose ebb and grow until it was an over-current of the season. A veritable will they/won’t they situation was dashed to bits in a large scale dual invasion of the Daleks and Cybermen, leaving the possible lovers separated forever.A gloomy Doctor then met an anxious wife-to-be played by comedic actress Catherine Tate and got his edge back in time to flush an entire race of spider-people into the center of the Earth.
That brings us to Season Three (still broadcasting as I type)…
David Tennant has been the Doctor for 15 episodes and has signed a contract making him the highest paid actor on British TV to play the part for two more years.
But the big change this year is new companion Martha Jones. Gone is Rose, the street-level shopgirl who became one with the forces of time and space. Her ‘replacement’ is a level-headed doctor-in-training at medical school. The first companion to scoff at the Doctor’s title as being his name, Martha is a welcome addition to the show who plays to Tenant’s strengths. A unique and strong pair, this is a Doctor/companion duo that I’m more than happy to accept.
1. Smith and Jones- In the series premier, Martha Jones is the center of attention. This is a good thing since the story is very light and makes no sense if you think about it for a minute or more.
In the opening, we see Martha struggling with both her family and divorced parents as well as her demanding superior at the hospital where she works. When an enigmatic and smart-talking patient enters the story, it’s just one more annoyance for her to work through. But that’s her strength; working through problems. While she’s not the best student or even the best daughter, she just muddles through it. This is what makes her the star of the episode. After a patient attacks the head of the hospital and the building itself is pulled to the moon, everyone freaks out… except for Martha.
It doesn’t take long for her to team up with the Doctor to set things right… which involves lots of silliness from Tenant’s Doctor that just takes up screen time and makes little sense. His anti-radiation dance and ’shoeless on the moon’ routine are neither humorous or charming. He touches on charming at several points, but I give full marks to Martha for humoring him. The space cop Judoon are very well-designed and visually impressive, but otherwise forgettable and just poor imitations of previous monsters the Sontarans (left).
The plot dissolves into a run-around and hasty explanation of the last 42 odd minutes, leaving our heroes to get back to their lives. Almost as an afterthought the Doctor offers Martha an escape from the frustrations of her overbearing mother and frustrating family issues. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Martha have an awkward exchange where the Doctor’s long lost love Rose is mentioned and he insists that Martha is not a replacement for her.
Ofcourse she’s a replacement.
All in all, a promising start to the season. Full of impressive special effects and a new companion who breaths fresh life into the series, it gets full marks for getting me excited about the series once more.
2. The Shakespeare Code- The second episode involves a story that many are probably surprised has not happened before in Doctor Who’s long history.
The Doctor meets Shakespeare.
Set directly after the play ‘Love’s Labors Lost‘ has finished its initial run, this episode features stunning effects work showing us England in Shakespeare’s time and utilizes the BBC’s ability to produce period pieces to its fullest. Shakespeare is shown to be a sex-crazed ass who writes his plays of genius at the last minute. After the awkward conclusion of ‘Love’s Labors Lost’, he promises the audience a sequel which will make all right.
This is, for those of you not in the know, the story behind Shakespeare’s lost play, ‘Love’s Labors Won.’
The Doctor meets his hero, but is sidelined for Martha, whom Shakespeare cannot resist, and who can blame him? The villains of the piece, three alien witches called the Carrionites, have a plot that involves manipulating Shakespeare into writing certain words into his play which, when spoken in the perfect resonator, the Globe Theatre, will open a portal and allow a race of weird alien witches to take over the world.
The resolution has Shakespeare, the Doctor and Martha recite a counter-line which closes the gate. The ‘incantation’ relies heavily on the Doctor’s faith in Shakespeare as a master of words… including constellations of alien planets he’s never seen. The dodgy finale over, the Doctor and Martha narrowly escape the clutches of an enraged Queen Elizabeth to the safety of the TARDIS (apparently resulting from an adventure that has not yet happened) for another adventure.
Hailed as a high mark for season 3, this is only an average story in my opinion.
The Shakespeare jokes where he is constantly stealing bits of dialog from Martha and the Doctor… lines which are written by Shakespeare… only not yet… are far from funny and take up much of the episode.
This is a continuation of the new series problem with humor.
It THINKS it’s funny, but it seldom is.
The word magic of the Carrionites is also very interesting at first but sillier as the episode reaches its end. And the deepening romance between the Doctor and Martha is groan-inducing enough (the program has run for over 26 years without a single Doctor/companion romance and suddenly he’s going for whoever steps into his ship?), but made even worse when the Doctor is insistent on talking about Rose.
This is the Doctor in love with Martha angle is already tiresome.
Dean Lennox Kelly has a lot of fun playing Shakespeare, but we’ve already got a lead actor full of himself. If nothing else, this forces Tenant to reign in his manic performance for a change and deliver a more restrained version of the Doctor.
3. Gridlock- The third episode is a return to ‘New Earth,’ last seen in the premiere of Season 2, where the Face of Boe (from Season One) told the Doctor he had a great secret to lay on him. So in some ways, this is a loose trilogy.
The future city of New New York is very similar to anyone paying attention to Doctor Who v.2. It’s almost identical to the episode ‘The Long Game’ from Season One, where the Doctor is introducing his companion to what he expects to be a great and modern culture but is instead surprised to find that it has been replaced with gutter trash. In the Long Game, the reveal was junk food salesmen. In Gridlock, it’s emotion drug sellers.
If that doesn’t make sense to you now, you’re S.O.L. because it never gets explained fully.
The entire planet… everyone, is either a commuter or a drug addict on the streets. The commuters are stuck in a perpetual gridlock (hence the title) from which there is no escape. When Martha is abducted by a couple trying to get into the faster lane reserved for larger groups, the Doctor dashes after her into a series of slapstick encounters with strange personalities. One of whom, a cat man, is played by Father Ted’s Dougal, Ardal O’Hanlon.
Not even this welcome addition to the cast can sell the unfunny gags including a litter of kittens delivered from a cat man and a human woman, and an aged Lesbian couple who obsessively watch the vehicular traffic on paper (thus enabling the Doctor to track down Martha).
Putting humor aside, Martha is the prisoner of a desperate couple who have unwittingly put themselves in great danger. Unknown to all, a fierce race of man-eating crabs are picking off anyone stubborn enough to get into ‘the fast lane’ which leads to instant death.
The rest of New Earth’s populace are revealed to have been completely wiped out by a virus spread from an emotion drug, Bliss. Before you can ask how a drug can spread a virus, we are also told that The Face of Boe protected his cat nurse from the virus with his force field that no one had any idea he had.
If it’s not the bad humor that annoys me in new Doctor Who stories, it’s the way that one impossible problem is done away with by an impossible solution. I played with kids who pulled this kid of crap back in the day. If I could give producer and sometime writer Russel T. Davies a chocolate swirly for pulling it now, I would.
The Doctor finally (and reluctantly) meets up with The Face of Boe and finds his great secret is that he is not alone. A heavy message in that we’ve been beaten over the head with the constant reminder that he is ‘the Last of the Time Lords‘ in every episode. This is rumored to pay off in the season 3 finale.
The Doctor refuses to treat this message with any seriousness and also sees no reason to explain the implications to Martha, until she forces him to. He finally drops the manic facade and tells her of his home, Gallifrey. This is perhaps the most touching moment Tenant has had in the role since 2006’s The Girl In The Fireplace. Ofcourse the moment is cut off as the camera pans away… why we were not allowed to listen in on this conversation but were allowed to hear many other nonsensical moments in the story is a mystery to me.
In case you’re interested, the crab monsters are 1960’s characters, the Macra, last seen in the 1967 story, ‘The Macra Terror’ (not seen since ‘67 since it was burnt to a crisp in the famous BBC junking of old programs). Even knowing this does not make this stinker of an episode any easier to watch.
A terrible and stupid story, Gridlock did feature some of the most impressive visual effects I’d seen in the show’s history. A breathtaking future city skyline, the Doctor hopping from flying cars like he’s Tom Cruise in Minority Report and the Macra themselves were all quite well done.
But the anti-drug message was so painfully lazy and ham-fisted that I desperately needed a drink after watching this one. While I am hard on this episode, I still found it entertaining. Perhaps it’s just the interesting visuals or getting to see Dougal again, but I found this easier to bear than the English degree silliness in episode 2.
After a good rest and drink, I’ll submit my reviews of the next three episodes, consisting of the two-parter Dalek story and The Lazarus Experiment.
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