nuWho Reviews - From Start to Hurt!

The Star Trek threads have been fun and we have enough Who watchers around, let's try this.

I'm not covering old Who because my access to it is very incomplete, and I'd be annoyed every time an episode became available that I'd already passed. So, if someone wants to take a shot at the old series, go for it.

Ratings are something like as follows:
4 - Really good
3 - Good
2 - Lacking
1 - Bleh
I expect to like most of the episodes in most seasons, so I don't know how much use the bottom rankings will get.


01x01 - Rose

We open with a shot from space to establish the scope of the show (and to set up the revolving world thing later). Then we see Rose Tyler getting out of bed and heading off to her job at a downtown department store with a casual dress code. She's got a boyfriend (Mickey) and they seem happy enough together. Their lunch break is a brief scene, but establishes their relationship pretty solidly for me. He's willing to act the fool in public for her, I'd say he might be a keeper. I'd seen Mickey in bits of other episodes, but he always seemed like an afterthought until now.

White mannequins have been finding their way, ever so innocuously, into several shots. I appreciate this level of subtlety. One of the nice things about TV is you can easily stick a plot point this casually in the background, whereas in print you have to be really careful if you want to slide something past a savvy reader.

Energetic music has been playing through all this, to let the viewer know that this is going somewhere, so bear with us, there is a point to all this. Rose gets stuck doing something after hours, and as she steps out of the elevator lift, it's not out of the question that a spy will rush up to her and hand off the Star of India for safekeeping before exiting stage right, pursued by henchmen with machine guns.

Instead the suspenseful wandering around begins, so the action music runs off and hides. You've got your person who isn't answering, your shabby corridors, your unsettling noises, your suddenly finding oneself locked in, all that jazz. And then: one of the mannequins surrounding Rose turns its head in her direction. Dun dun dunn! It looks like I'm only about four minutes into the episode, so good job getting through the Rose introduction efficiently. Rose backs off, hoping it's a prank, which I guess it could be in this case. But then she manages to get herself backed up against a wall, and adopts the standard reaction of giving up, because whenever a monster corners you it's made of contact-poison lava, you know. The Doctor pops in from some direction that Rose could presumably have run in, and he hauls her away. More on his appearance later, but for now I will say that he could have been the one showing up with the Star of India and not looked out of place.

Anyway, Rose is now introduced to an essential Who activity: running for one's life. The mannequins are in fairly good shape for being mannequins, but they're no match for human muscles. There's a mildly creepy bit when one gets its arm through the lift door, and its bland face gazes in as the Doctor pulls the arm off.

The Doctor seems like he's in his element right now (as he should be). He explains that the mannequins are remote-controlled living plastic, then shoos her out so he can save the world without distraction. As a shaken Rose pauses on the other side of the street, the building blows its top off.

Next scene, Rose's mum is on the phone, talking about Rose's wonderful escape as the fire rages on the telly. Rose refuses to talk about what happened, even turning down an interview with Michael Jackson. Her mum (Jackie) starts to scold her before getting immediately distracted by a call from another friend. Jackie does seem to enjoy talking. I'm not sure Rose would have said much to anyone even if the Doctor hadn't warned her to keep silent. Mickey comes in with some awkward dialogue and an awkward hug, then leaves, taking with him the arm the Doctor pulled off. He tosses the arm into a garbage bin. Dun dun dunnn.

Rose now has no income. Jackie has evidently decided that her life's work is to remind Rose of this 24/7. This seems in line with what I know of her personality. Desperate for a distraction, Rose looks at some nails or screws on the floor near the door. She looks through the cat flap, as the word Staywell materializes on it for absolutely no discernible reason, and catches the Doctor looking at it from outside! She insists he come in and 'splain himself. Jackie immediately hits on the Doctor. This is definitely in line with what I know of her personality. (I'd like to have seen Tom Baker's take on this whole paragraph.)

Then we have a dubious moment. The Doctor is wandering around the living room, showing off his Alien Powers as Rose shows off her hospitality, and he looks in a mirror and apparently sees himself for the first time. This does set up the regeneration principle for new viewers, but . . . he's giving off an aura of Snappy Dresser, yet he hasn't bothered to look at his new self until now?

There follows a comic/horror scene as the stray arm attacks first the Doctor, then Rose. Like all evil disembodied body parts worth their salt, it can ignore physics. The Doctor deactivates it with his sonic screwdriver.

Rose tries to dig information out of the Doctor, but he's had way too much practice at keeping information to himself, and she blows a chance at a "Doctor who?" So he just enjoys fencing with her, tries to freak her out a little, then tells her to go home again as they near the TARDIS. The dialogue here is fast-paced, maybe a little too much so, but that's modern Who for you. As Gillian Rose walks away, she hears a strange noise behind her, but sees nothing when she turns back.

Rose uses Mickey's CRT computer to search the WWW for "Doctor" and gets more than 17 million results. Sucker. I get 227 million on Google. Oh Internet, you were so tiny back then. Narrowing the search returns a fuzzy mugshot of Eccleston and a page title: Doctor Who? (ding!) Obviously Rose is going to have to check out this Clive person.

Mickey now further demonstrates his merit by driving Rose to her meeting in a bright yellow Beetle. He seems a little overdressed for the apparent weather, but this is England. The sunshine probably caught him off-guard.

Clive is keeping track of scads of references to the Doctor, just to remind us that there's a lot more where this came from. Eccleston in particular has been turning up in proximity to some of the most famous disasters of history; I guess the Time War turned his tastes morbid. This is an unusual perspective on the Doctor: His appearance signals great danger, not just for the baddies, not just for a few guest stars who are going to get munched, but for everyone in the area. We're used to seeing it the other way around: Something bad is already happening, and the Doctor shows up, sorts out what's going on, and helps save the day.

Meanwhile, a garbage bin tries to sneak up on Mickey. He's not quite dumb enough to fall for that, but he does head over to see what's inside. He only wishes he got a rabid raccoon in the face, as the bin sticks to his hands and growls before sucking him in. Rose comes out to find a cartoonish version of Mickey waiting for her. She rides off with him despite looking right at him, so she deserves whatever happens to her next.

What happens is that cartoon!Mickey grills her on the Doctor. The Doctor himself shows up, and wackiness ensues. Rose follows the Doctor into the TARDIS out of desperation, looks around from the entrance, and steps out backwards. Luckily this is only the pilot episode, or else the headless monster would have been right there to catch her in its arms. I don't have a preference for one TARDIS interior over the other, so no commentary here. It looks fine, moving on now.

The Doctor tries to explain the TARDIS, but Rose is upset that the plastic head of her boyfriend is melting. The Doctor is upset that the receiver for the signal is melting. He pulls some levers, and when they pop out the door again they're at the waterside.

More conversation reveals that the big baddie this week is called the Nestene Consciousness, who was/were attracted to Earth by a bunch of toxins. Rose points out a big Ferris Wheel as a potential transmitter, and they run back underground to find the pool of Consciousness, all glowy like molten iron. Rose assumes (with the viewer) that it's time to go in for the kill. But the Doctor, while apparently too jaded by the War to care about Mickey, still wants to save this dude. Collection of dudes. I'm not sure. He opens communications, while Rose spies Mickey and rushes off to hug him. The Doctor shakes his head in disgust at her. Seriously? Was she supposed to stand there and hold Your Ladyship's train off the ground whilst you chit-chatted with a giant blob of alien plastic? The Doctor tries to tell the Nestene thing to get off the planet, but before he can try bribing it with chocolate milk, a couple of Autons discover he's carrying some anti-plastic. This causes negotiations to break down. The Consciousness has brought the TARDIS here, the Doctor admits he couldn't save any planets during the War, and Rose is told to get out yet again.

Jackie now phones her to tell her that everything's okay, Rose will get money, and now Jackie's off to shop downtown. Uh-oh!

The signal goes out, and the plastic rampage begins. Clive gets a moment of vindication before being shot. Poor guy.

Rose finally decides she has nothing to lose (Mickey begs to differ I'm sure), hacks a chain loose, and swings through the air, allowing the Doctor to get free and causing the anti-plastic to take the Nestene plunge. Jackie is saved in the nick of time, fiery explosions occur for no clear reason, and the Autons dance in the streets to celebrate their freedom.

The Doctor offers Rose a chance to travel around, but Mickey's feeling a little possessive right now and Rose turns him down at first, but when he mentions it travels in tiiiime she jumps in. And where will he take her first? Straight to see the final death of the only planet she's known, long after the human race as she knows it has gone extinct. Yeah, his tastes have gotten pretty morbid. Maybe he'll drop her off to watch one of her parents die next.

The special effects are effective, aside from the fire right after the explosion and the champagne popper sproinging into cartoon!Mickey's forehead. And the arm floating around, I guess. The score is pretty good too, no question. This is a case where music adds to an episode rather than carrying or hindering it. The music when Rose first surveys the TARDIS interior had a very unexpectedly creepy feel to it.

A mostly solid start to the series, for old-timers and newbies alike. There were plenty of lighter moments to balance out the more serious parts. It's unusual in that it's entirely from the new companion's perspective, with the audience even farther behind the Doctor's train of thought than normal. I'm sure the prospect of introducing the Doctor to a whole new audience gave TPTB that idea. My main complaint is in the Doctor's attitude toward Rose being upset over Mickey. It seems a little pointlessly unpleasant for my liking.

Rating: 3 disembodied Auton hands out of 4

Favorite dialogue: Doctor: "What are you doin' here?"
Rose: "I live here."
Doctor: "Well, what'd you do that for?"
Rose: "'Cause I do."

Number of large splashes of TARDISy blue not actually part of the TARDIS: at least 9 plus a bike rack


So, this was the big kick-off of the new show. Let's see if I can get any sort of handle on the characters.

First off, there's the standard female companion to balance/draw in demographics. And Rose Tyler is pretty standard right now. She basically exists. She's a generic Everywoman, with few standout characteristics. She works/ed in a department store, she has a boyfriend of friendly but unclear standing, she has a certain amount of brains and bravery (which she needs in order to be a Companion), she gets her love of pink from her mum.

Mickey seems like a good guy who doesn't take himself seriously. He tries to get her to relax at the pub so that he can catch the end of a (football?) match, but at the same time his concern for her seems genuine. He feels more fleshed out than Rose at this point. They certainly have some chemistry. All the leads have chemistry really.

Then there's the Doctor. I've said before that, as ridiculous as it may be to say, Eccleston does not look like the Doctor to me. He's too slick, too modern/contemporary, even too action-heroey. Too little hair. But I'm sure the Ninth Doctor's look was intended to send a message that this show would not be stuck in the '60s. No eccentrics wandering around a super-cheap set here! So, nothing wrong with it per se, and Eccleston's performance is quite good, it's just that the Ninth sticks out like a canary in a coal mine, and my brain rebels just a little as a result.

The Doctor is . . . not actually dark, but he stays businesslike even when he's being playful, and the episode's mood is likewise. The banter here always has an undertone of seriousness. He scoffs at Rose for caring about her boyfriend and twice basically dismisses contemporary humanity, basically out of nowhere, as stupid apes. He was stressed both times, but that's a far cry from, say, Tom Baker's big speech in "The Ark In Space" where he marveled at humanity's eternal will to survive. Possibly Eccleston sees humanity's failures more sharply because they remind him of his own failure to stop the Time War peacefully. Possibly he's too burned out by the War and other losses to care about individuals right now. Possibly TPTB just wanted something darker and edgier to go with the times. Still, the Doctor has often been impatient with those whose petty concerns get in the way of him saving the day, but scoffing at compassion is a new one on me.

I like the modernized theme music well enough. The title sequence is fun, although most of the streaks of green feel out of place. But the logo (JJ Abrams's eye, amirite?) is possibly my least favorite of the franchise.

Great thread!

"Rose" started off a great new beginning for Who, and deserves respect for that, but as an episode, I think it is massively overrated. I can't use this to introduce new viewers to Who; it's far too silly, in a bad and uninspired way. You've got Eccleston doing Eddie Murphy-esque slapstick three separate times; terrible SFX, especially on Mickey getting swallowed by the bin; incoherent character arcs, with Rose switching from shock over the Doctor's dismissal of her boyfriend's apparent death to giggly adventure and back with no rhyme or reason; her Mum and several leser characters appear only as one-dimensional jokes; and the action scene in the climax is so badly shot it's actually hard to follow what exactly Rose does to save the day.

So, meh. The same style comes up once more with the jump and run routine in the next episode, and arguably some of the Cassandra scenes; and then, thank God, it's over.

Pretty much this, I never liked old Who and I thought I would give this new incarnation a try....living mannequins and garbage cans trying to eat people. Turned it off....yeah, no thanks.

I do still think the Dr Who theme is one of the best out there though.

Rose hasn't dated well. Ecclestone's series had some real stand-out stuff like 'Dalek' and 'Fathers Day', but it was the template for what was to come. Who has always been inconsistent, but its current focus on 40 minute resolutions is almost as bad the days when you had to have 12 bloody episodes to tell a story.

Been catching up on a lot of Classic Who, and it is no surprise that the Tom Baker years have weathered better (not just down to Baker, but you also had the likes of Douglas Adams involved.) Tried watching Resurrection of the Daleks, just couldn't, despite having grown up with Davidson's Doctor. You could also see why Colin Baker won't shut up about Eccleston's outfit, he wasn't a bad Doctor (watched Mark of the Rani the other night), but Peri was fucking annoying and him being dressed like Jackson Pollock had colluded with Vivienne Westwood to outfit the poor bastard wasn't a help.

It was even interesting to compare 'Wolves of Fenric' with 'Fathers Day', both tackling parental issues, and that even now they require a Monster of the Week to insert into such a story.

The Autons were terrifying when they first appeared in Classic Who. Shop dummies coming to life... They were the Weeping Angels of their time.

The bin bit was... Well, it was godawful.

Rose did seem to flip between trains of thought quickly. I kinda alluded to that sideways when I mentioned the dialogue being maybe too fast-paced. I'm willing to let it go for now, as being a relaunch episode that needed to get a bunch of details in.

01x02 - The End of the World

I've seen this one once before, and I'll tell you right now that I'm not fond of people destroying Earth or large portions thereof. My rating may be lower as a result.

Jokes about morbidity aside, TPTB are methodically establishing benchmarks of this show for newcomers. We had creepy "science" in contemporary society last episode, we'll have supernatural with a Historical Guest Star in the past in the next one, and right now is an off-the-cuff answer to "How far in the future can we go?" and "How many aliens can we pack into an episode?"

The Doctor asks what time period Rose wants to visit, and she decides she wants to see the future. Now, when I say that I wish I could see the future, I typically mean I want to see amazing positive developments that will come to pass after my natural lifespan has passed. I want to see hypermegaultrasupercomputers. I want to see flying cars. I want to see common people living long, healthy, happyish lives. I want to see world peace and generalized prosperity. I want to see humanity populating the galaxy faster than light and finding fascinating planets and aliens as it goes. I want to see the Blues win the Cup, dagnabbit.

The Doctor finally decides that what will really blow Rose's socks off is watching her world die. So he takes her to the year five-point-five-plural-Z-alpha or whatever and grins as he motions her out of the TARDIS. He talks about being too obsessed with death to allow for life's possibilities, the Sun explodes, the title rolls.

Our heroes are on an observation deck orbiting the Earth. The Earth has been kept in some arbitrary, historical state by a Trust for some time, with the Sun being held back by gravity magic, but now the money's run out and there's a convenient wrecking ball aching to be used, so it's time to let the old girl go. The psychic paper comes out for the first time this series to convince a confusing alien that the Doctor is an invited guest. The way the steward acts at first, "Maximum Hospitality Zone" comes across as a euphemism worthy of the drones in "Let's Kill Hitler".

Rose gets a moment to deal with the existence of very blue people (I suspect the short ones evolved from Oompa-Loompas), then we get a parade of aliens, including the Face of Boe. Jabe, a cross between some sort of a ceratops and a tree, gives the Doctor a sapling as a peace offering, claiming it was cut from her grandfather. (Someone has plastered some flowers to the back of her head.) The Doctor did not come prepared for a gift exchange, so he breathes on her. That probably is a greeting of some alien race or another. In fact, the next high-falutin' VIP spits in Rose's eye. The Adherents of the Repeated Meme hand off the episode's Plot Device, again very innocuously. Then the main antagonist appears, Lady Cassandra O'Brien O whatever, who doesn't look a day over 2,000. She should be the Lady of the Single Veil. Get it? Because she's just a patch of skin with eyes and mouth on a frame? Uh, anyway, it's a pretty icky concept. Rose stares in shock, while the Doctor does everything but guffaw and slap his thigh. The CGI of Cassandra is convincing for me, but I find King Kong swatting down aeroplanes an impressive achievement so what do I know. Lady Cassandra is chatty and self-absorbed and very much proud of being the last human in existence. This opens up the main philosophical discussion provoked by this episode, which runs for me about like this:

- What is human? What do we mean when we say human?
- If we insist that Cassandra is not human, is that being unfairly restrictive? Is it because she lacks most of the body parts that we are used to seeing in a human? Because she has made choices that would horrify us? Because her points of pride -- being born on Earth in particular -- are already points that science fiction fans would consider moot?
- If we insist that Cassandra is human, of what worth is that distinction? She may be genetically human, she may well represent the end of our species as a thing unfiltered through alien biologies, but how much should that matter? Does that matter for purposes of interaction, seeing as how she now lacks so many of the things we consider to be typically common ground of the human experience? Might Rose not, in fact, have more practical common ground with the blue blobby guy who spits in her eye?
- If we insist that Cassandra does not count as a human, is it because we simply don't want to be associated with her? Are there not worse people who are undeniably human through and through today? Does she not in fact express very human emotions and characteristics?
- Where is her brain located, anyway?

The other point of interest is the idea of when to let go, when to move on, when to decide that something has served its purpose and is now more hindrance than help. As beautiful as we know this planet to be, as full of history as it is by the year five zillion, humanity has totally abandoned Earth [the Sun trying to go nova probably had something to do with it] and its existence serves no more purpose than does a historical building. But a historical building has to be seen to serve any further purpose, and there is no sense of that occurring here. There is no sense in this episode of the common people caring about the Earth, no sense of any media coverage of this event. That is how incredibly far in the future this is. When does the burden of maintaining a beautiful thing for its own sake become too much? Is there not a parallel intended here between keeping the Earth alive and Lady Cassandra's willingness to go to extremes in an attempt to keep the human race alive and pure in herself?

Such are the deep questions that this episode invites, ultimately bringing us to examine the nature of our reactions to those who are different from ourselves yet claim to be similar. Whereas within the previous few years, need I remind you, Star Trek had been getting men pregnant, peeing on sacred trees, and continuing to let entire species die out of a vague fear that Something Bad Might Happen If We Try To Do Something Good.

Rose is going to insist that Cassandra is not human, and our form of humanity is so far in Cassandra's past -- and Cassandra's ego rides so much on being The Very Last One -- that Cassandra rejects Rose as human too. To Cassandra, Rose doesn't count. Rose mustn't count. Rose is fake, she's a time traveler, she hasn't turned up in Cassandra's daily obsessive scrutiny of galactic headlines, whatever. We are certainly supposed to see the absurdity in Cassandra's rejection, the result of having wandered so far from the source, and being lost in one's pride, to the extent that one is unable to accept the real thing when it comes along (and one can doubtless invoke any number of examples here, from the Jewish leaders of Jesus's day to contemporary people twisting a political philosophy to mean whatever they want to do). But I also feel we are supposed to sympathize much more with Rose's rejection of Cassandra, and yet we should be aware that she is perhaps being closed-minded as well. She is applying the label of Not-Human in a pejorative way when she should be applying the label of, for example, Snotty Sociopath. Meanwhile, the Doctor seems to be enjoying Cassandra's speeches, probably more than they merit. Is he trying to make a point in front of Rose? No, passive aggression doesn't seem to fit with this Doctor's personality (although TPTB were doubtless going for this angle with the audience). Is he laughing at Rose's reaction?

Most likely, the director simply overshot his mark, but that's not as fun.

Back to the plot. Cassandra confuses ostriches with dragons, calls a jukebox an iPod, and lumps '80s music together with Debussy, right under Rose's nose. (The first notes sounded like "SOS" by Rihanna, which would also have been appropriate.) Rose finally can't take this madness anymore and heads out of the room as the Memesters hand out more Plot Devices. The devices start to hatch wiry robots, and the plot continues to . . . heat up.

Rose chats with a blue plumber about normal things like suites and hot water. That brings her down to earth (heh) and she second-guesses rushing off with a total stranger. She wanders away and the plumber gets pulled into the air duct by the robots in a rather cheesy manner. When there's trouble afoot, it doesn't matter if you're in a horror movie or Doctor Who -- hanging around tubes is a bad idea.

The Doctor catches up with Rose and she decompresses a little in a nicely staged scene. The series arc is touched on, with the Doctor flaring up when Rose presses him for the name of his planet. As a way of mending fences, the Doctor enables her cell phone to transmit across time. First thing she does is to call Mum. Wouldn't you?

Then the structure rumbles a bit, presumably because the robots have been messing with systems. One crawls around the chief steward's office as he tries to sort things out. It's squeaky and yet he never looks up. This happens so often in fiction that I guess this is a sort of social version of things making noise in space; the audience just has to accept that the sound is thrown in for our amusement. A robot strolls over and taps a single button, much like Bugs Bunny pressing the plunger while Elmer Fudd is setting up the dynamite. This causes the office's sun shield to lower, and of course raising it is much too hard somehow, and the steward is incinerated.

The Doctor heads off with Jabe to see the engine while Rose goes to talk to Cassandra. I think the Doctor actually tells Rose, "Don't start the fight." The, not a. He knows there's going to be trouble, he accepts it, but it's fine as long as Rose isn't the instigator.

Jabe explains that the facility is fully automated and that "nothing can go wrong." If only human culture had survived the race itself, the people of the galaxy would know better than to doom themselves like this. So there's nobody to help if things go wrong? the Doctor asks. I guess not, Jabe replies. "Fantastic," the Doctor says, and grins.

Cassandra reminisces about her boyhood spent in the Los Angeles region. She shows disdain for all the "mongrel" humans out there in the rest of the galaxy, then tells Rose she has a little bit of a chin sticking out. Cassandra had hers removed in her latest operation, you see, so she's already convinced that chins are universally bad news despite having lived several thousand years with one without adverse effects. Rose says she would rather die than be a "bitchy trampoline" like Cassandra. She calls herself the true last human, then storms off.

Jabe tries to get the Doctor to open up about his past, finally as good as telling him that she knows him to be a Time Lord and that she feels terrible for the loss of Gallifrey. The Doctor solemnly accepts her condolences. They catch on to the sabotage. The Doctor finds that a shield has been dropped and rushes off to save anyone in there. Naturally, it would be Rose in there, she having been kidnapped by the Memememememe and trapped in the room. The shield is raised, but Rose is stuck for now.

Cassandra has been enjoying being the life of the party, but the Doctor and Jabe bust in with news that the Steward is dead and the "spider devices" are everywhere. The blue blobby guy immediately jumps to the conclusion that someone killed him. Hmm. Cassandra tries to pin blame on the Face of Boe. The Doctor looses a robot with instructions to report to its master, the robot looks at Cassandra before heading to the Meme adherents. The Doctor exposes the Memes as merely cover for someone else, and this time the robot heads to Cassandra and stays there.

Cassandra explains that she was trying to get the station taken hostage for the sake of a huge ransom. Failing that, she'll leave them all to die and watch her stocks soar as their companies plummet. She teleports away. Jabe and the Doctor rush off to find a System Restore switch with two minutes to go. It's on the other side of that walkway from earlier, you know, the one with no guard rails and huge fan blades sweeping across fast? And now it'll be really hot if the fans are shut off. Jabe stays behind to keep the power to the fans turned off and burns alive, but not before calling the Doctor "Time Lord". The Doctor has to use his mad Alien Skillz to get through the last fan, but makes it and the shields go up zippety-zap during the last second. Then all the cracks in the station repair themselves within seconds. Guess that was a pretty good automated system after all.

Rose and the Doctor return to the main stage, where whimpering and sad warbling abounds. Some of the aliens, notably the blue blobby guy, didn't make it. Rose is distraught and the Doctor is grim, having just walked away from Jabe's smoking remains. He finds a teleportation booster in the ostrich egg and manages to call just Cassandra back. He then stands there and watches her dry out. Rose asks for mercy, but the Doctor has decided this is her time to die. There's your parallel. Cassandra moans, tightens, reddens, and . . . uh, whoa, was that where her brain was kept? Ew.

This is a dark thing for the Doctor to do. Emotions were high, yes, and Cassandra was just bragging about how she would get away with it, but the Doctor does not typically seek to bring about someone's death unless it's to save other lives or they're droning about extermination or assimilation. He prefers talk over violence. One might suppose that watching Cassandra prattle on about how she would survive, while so many innocents had been destroyed by the War, caused his patience to snap.

Everyone else has left, and Rose is left all alone, watching chunks of her planet drift by, unidentifiable, unmourned, and destroyed by the very star that had been its source of life for billions of years. I tell ya, it takes a special person to be a Companion at the best of times, but right now . . . .

The Doctor takes her back home, and she looks at the everyday life around her with new eyes. The Doctor talks about the impermanence of things (there's a third philosophical idea for you, if you like, which is echoed in the human race blending with other species, which actually loops back into Cassandra being too obsessed with death to notice life's possibilities) and finally brings himself to confide in her: his planet is already dead, the rest of his people gone. Rose considers what to do next and decides she needs some chips before she takes another trip through time, and the episode ends. This is probably where the Rose/Doctor 'shipping started to kick into high gear, right here, with the baring of the man's soul and the hurt/comfort overtones.

Again, the music is pretty good and, as far as I know, specific to this episode. (Compare to, say, Matt Smith's run, where, for better or worse, the same music was mostly used throughout.) The font used is a fun take on the Latin alphabet, with extra lines and "Greek" E's that still allow one to read most of the words. The episode itself is undoubtedly put together more cohesively than the first. It still gets a simple rating of "Good" from me.

The preview contains an early contender for favorite dialogue in the next episode: "What happens in 1860?" "I don't know. Let's find out."

Rating: 3 saplings cut from dear Grandpa

Favorite dialogue: Jabe: "The gift of peace. I bring you a cutting of my grandfather."
Doctor: "Thank you. Yes. Gifts. Umm . . . I give you in return, air from my lungs."
Jabe: "How . . . intimate."
Doctor: "There's more where that came from."
Jabe: "I bet there is."

Most uninspired word: Meme. What's the point of spelling it like that if you don't want to pronounce it mee-mee? Why wouldn't you want to pronounce it mee-mee? If you're going to pronounce it meem, wouldn't it be more fun to write it that way?

I just started watching the 2005 reboot, after never having seen "Classic Who," at the recommendation of a former student/current colleague. I like Chris Eccleston and Billie Piper, and I'm wondering how hard it will be to adjust to a new set of protagonists.

As long as you don't get hung up on "WHYYY DID YOU TAKE MY ECCLESTON AWAAY?? " then you should be fine. Tennant's very good in the role. Smith's Doctor starts out much . . . lighter in tone than the previous two, so there will be something of a tone shift then, but there will still be scary monsters and running around and all that. The companions do change as well, for one reason or another, and that's not an entirely bad thing, as it helps keep things fresh.

I've always thought that in "Rose" the Doctor should have brokered peace between the Nestene Consciousness and Earth (in the form of UNIT).

The Nestene have lost their homeworld due to the time war and have nowhere to live and Earth, if the Nestene leaves the people alone, will produce more than enough food for them to live on. Can you imagine a better symbiotic relationship for them both? Earth makes as much pollution as possible and the Nestene naturally and safely cleans the atmosphere. Talk about win/win!! What a shame he killed them instead.

And normally I would expect him to do something like that, but this time he opened negotiations with an aggressive 'Get off this planet.' Maybe the Nestene appreciate belligerence, but it feels more like an attempt to establish his character as being more in that direction than in peace and kindness.

Fortunately Rose accidentally knocked the Auton holding the Nestene killer stuff into the pit, and the Nestene was in the act of being a big murderous meanie at the time, so we don't have to figure out / spend screen time on him transporting the alien or setting up a treaty, the casual viewer doesn't feel even a twinge of guilt, and nobody technically committed genocide!

Unless you happen to be a viewer who thinks.

Oh, come on. It's the Nestene. They were trying to take over Earth long before their own world was lost. They'd already killed Wilson, and tried to kill Rose more than once simply for getting in the way. Fuck'em.

Short sighted.

And if we only tried harder to negotiate with the Daleks, we could all have flying cars right now. Spare me the moral outrage.

Well, I'm into the Tennant era now, and got used to him surprisingly quickly. Partly because he IS good, and maybe in part because Rose is really the main character in a lot of ways and she's still the same...

Please.

It's what the Doctor always did in the Classic series. You might think "fuck 'em" but he doesn't. The Third Doctor worked his ass off trying to broker peace between humans and the Silurians and he was succeeding with the Silurians when the Brigadier blew them up. The Doctor was livid that happened.

There is no reason...and in fact more reason for him to try here given Nine's obvious feelings of guilt over their lost homeworld. Offhand genocide should never be a trait of the Doctor's.

That's one example, with one species. And the Silurians were a special case as they weren't invaders. They had a legitimate claim to Earth as well.

He gave the Nestene a chance. They didn't take it, and they attacked. I'm not going to cry about it.

Yes. The quibble is about the Doctor's character (although mine is more about seeing the practicalities of filming and the perception of the audience affect the plot), not about the abstracted morality of the situation.

Still not having seen most of Eccleston's episodes, I don't entirely believe that he meant to use that anti-plastic. Certainly, as much as I've ragged on him, I don't believe he would use it without regret. I expect he would have used it if he had had to in order to save the planet, but he would have dragged negotiations out as much as he dared and a bit more before tipping it in. He walked in cocky and applied the vinegar instead of the honey and didn't bother to look over his shoulder, and the thing blew up in his face. It was old times again, I suspect, and his spirits lifted a little too much. Planet in danger, he was running around and figuring out things just fine, there was even a human around to be useful and impressed, and he got overconfident that the Nestene itself would fall in line.

01x03 - The Unquiet Dead

Victorian England and Charles Dickens and streams of spectral light emanating from people's mouths! This ought to be fun.

We open with an undertaker consoling a man over the loss of his grandmother. "She was so full of life," the man says as he looks down at her. "I can't believe she's gone." "Merely sleeping," the undertaker soothes; then he leaves. Suddenly her face turns blue and wisps come out of it. Her eyes open wide, and she reaches up and strangles her grandson. The undertaker rushes in, rolls his eyes, yells "We've got another one!" and is overpowered. Grandmama busts her coffin open, rises in the approved stiff fashion, and walks into the camera, moaning and emitting blue spirits from her mouth, to finish the teaser.

Oh, how I love cheese done well.

The undertaker calls for his housekeeper, Gwyneth (sounds like Quinnah to me), to help him corral that old lady. Gwyneth tries to convince him to get the authorities involved. The undertaker assures her that he will get help, just as soon as he takes care of this little problem. I have my doubts about the truth behind that assurance. If rumors once get out that corpses you're entrusted with come back to life, you're sure to lose all the mother-in-law and rich uncle trade. It's just not worth it.

Rose is tickled that they have landed in Christmastime. She muses on the impermanence of things: Christmas 1860 only happened once and then was gone forever, except for the Doctor. This pops up a few times during this episode, the flexibility of time and timelines.

The undertaker, Mr. Sneed (how's that for a Dickensian name), urges his housekeeper to use the sight to detect Grandmama's position, threatening to fire her if she doesn't obey. The housekeeper says their quarry is lost and bewildered, but excited for tonight and expecting to see a great, great man all the way from London.

Now we meet Charles Dickens. He's got curly, two-toned hair and a beard, the better for inept viewers like me to distinguish the important characters from the background. He is moody because he's feeling alone on Christmas Eve, having apparently gotten himself into trouble with his family. (I see David Copperfield had been published by then, so I'll believe it.)

Dickens feels old and wonders gloomily if 'he's thought everything he'll ever think.' Oh dear. Should I go ahead and check his bibliography to guess what the Doctor will inspire him to write?

The Doctor is futzing around under the control console when Rose steps out in the latest fashion. The Doctor demonstrates his alienness again by saying with surprised admiration that she looks beautiful . . . uh, for a human that is. Yeah, that's the ticket. She does look better a few seconds later in what I guess is different light, but on first impression I'm not convinced that black and that color go together all that well in that proportion, much less on her. Maybe the black whatsit around her neck reminds him of his prom date. I wonder where Time Lords like to hold their proms.

Rose steps out into an alleyway of glistening clean, color-coordinated buildings. I'm not sure that's how the 19th century worked, or how the 21st century works for more than a month or two.

Dickens steps out on stage to 99% warm applause and 1% sunken zombie eyes. Meanwhile, Rose manages to avoid running into horses but seems surprised when the attached cart passes in front of her. Not sure what she thought a pair of horses on a street would be doing that wouldn't involve something behind them. The Doctor picks up a newspaper and finds that it is in fact 1869. The first of two burns on Cardiff occurs now, and they're both good ones.

Dickens is performing A Christmas Carol from memory. He gets to the knocker suddenly having Jacob Marley's face, at which point I guess Grandmama Redpath can't hold her excitement in any longer and pulses blue in the face. She stands up, moans supernaturally, wisps start to come out of her mouth, and everyone screams and rushes for the exit. Hearing this perks the Doctor up, and he heads for the trouble. (Is he a thrill-seeker? Looking to make amends? Or eager to return to his old rhythm of life?)

The theatre has been mostly emptied by the time the Doctor and undertaker arrive. The blue wisp has also entirely left Grandmama, and she slumps over, a mere corpse again. Dickens thinks the Doctor caused this with some optical chicanery (which would be quite a trick with the wisp swirling all over the place as it is), while Rose apparently thinks the undertaker and his housekeeper are picking on an old woman and hurries after them. How she thinks she has any understanding of the situation is beyond me. I would have guessed they were helping a fainted old woman out of danger. She finds the old lady being loaded into a hearse and naturally assumes that those two have killed her, whereupon Mr. Sneed chloroforms her because, well, plot reasons. Either he's a decisive person who has no intention of letting his business be known as a home for unholy goings-on, or this was the easiest way to tie up this scene quick and drag the protagonists to the mortuary. It feels like both to me. The Doctor comes out, deduces that that strange woman just put Rose in the hearse, and commandeers the Dickens coach for a chase. He goes fanboy on Dickens, causing Dickens to warm up to him. The conversation's transition back to focusing on Rose feels a bit clunky to me.

The Doctor listens to a wall and determines that something is living in the mortuary's gas pipes. Meanwhile Rose tries to fight off a couple of possessed bodies. Good to see she's learned something since the pilot. Unfortunately that just means she hurls a vase at one of them and then hammers and shouts at the door until one grabs her. This is why RPGs are important. They teach you how important, and how easy, it is to not get cornered by shambling corpses. With the layout of that room, she should expect to keep them away indefinitely. The Doctor walks in, pulls an arm off of her face, then asks what they want. The possessors say they want help surviving, then flee the bodies for the safety of the wall candles. That's the ghosts over and done with, then. It's aliens now.

Obviously this is time for tea, and time for Rose to berate Sneed. You tell him what-for, Rose. The Doctor thinks the blue wisps showing up are a sign that a rift between here and elsewhere is getting bigger. Sneed relates the house's "haunted" history, in appropriately muted lighting. The camera angles and the room itself seem to be going for a crowded, enclosed feeling. The Doctor's amusement counteracts the effect a little, though.

Actually, between this room and Rose's skirt and other shots, I wonder if they were going for a muted warm and neutral color scheme throughout, to contrast with the bright blue wisps. They certainly aren't shirking on the candlelight.

Dickens wanders off, poking at lights and corpses to try to discover the "mechanism" behind what's happening. The Doctor apologizes for telling him to shut up. Dickens gets existential. I don't see how the reality of ghosts trivializes starving orphans, but he's badly rattled and he's been melancholic about his life lately, so I'm sure it's all tangled together in his brain right now.

In a kitchen-like room, Gwyneth lights a powerful wall candle so the gas people can visit if they want to, then scolds Rose for trying to help her do her job. Rose has no idea how this works, apparently, because she accuses Sneed of working Gwyneth to death. I've watched the whole episode and I don't have that impression. All Rose knows is that Sneed had her help carry the old lady off, probably help carry Rose around (and Rose isn't exactly Donna Noble), and make tea. Gwyneth looks to be in good health too. Now, Sneed is certainly domineering in his own way, but if Rose thinks Gwyneth has a bad life, well, she obviously hasn't read Dickens. Anyway, they bond over daring deeds of school truancy. Gwyneth is taken aback at Rose's blunt mode of speech, but Rose is trying to get her to open her life up to more than being Sneed's housekeeper. This part may not seem entirely relevant to the main story, but it's a chance to give Rose more of a character, so I'll take it. That is one powerful candle that Gwyneth lit. Maybe there are more at the other end of the room. Anyway, Gwyneth lets slip that she knows Rose's dad is dead and a couple of other things that can't entirely be explained away by her thinking too much. Then she gets all future-see-y and Rose-brain-read-y and weirds Rose out, ending with a reference to the big, bad wolf.

The Doctor explains that since Gwyneth grew up on top of the rift, she's part of it. In fact, she's "the key." For Gwyneth, the sight has been a curse more than a blessing. She hears voices in the night, goes to spiritualists for help, feels that what she has is not a right thing. But she's here, and the Doctor intends to use her in a seance. Dickens wants nothing to do with this -- apparently spiritual quackery is part of what he's worked so hard against.

The seance works, and the aliens (the Gelth) tell their story. They're nearly extinct, their planet and physical forms having been ravaged by war. The Doctor is not paying attention to his own story arc, as he doesn't know right away that it was the Time War. They want Gwyneth brought to the rift to serve as a bridge. Ultimately, they want to use dead humans as new bodies on a more permanent basis. Rose is aghast at the idea, but the Doctor rebukes her: "Why not? Not decent, not polite? It could save their lives." With a final cry for pity, the Gelth leave. Rose tends to Gwyneth while Dickens gives up on his disbelief.

The Doctor is clearly for trying the Gelth's plan. But Gwyneth is exhausted, and Rose divides her time between mothering her and trying to shoot down the plan. The Doctor finally tells her, "It's a different morality. Get used to it or go home." This Doctor is not much for diplomacy or hashing out arguments. Gwyneth gently tells Rose that she's ready to help "the angels", whom she regards as being sent by her mother in childhood to sing to her. Conveniently, the weakest spot is the morgue itself, so down there they go.

Rose wants to know why there weren't any corpses walking around England in 1869. The Doctor tells her that history is easily changed. He then offers the Gelth transport to somewhere else where they can build new bodies and let the old ones once again lie in peace. Quite a reasonable solution all around. He could have mentioned this to Rose, but it would have gotten in the way of the points he was trying to make.

The main spirit turns red and fiery -- it's a devil, not an angel! There are a lot of them, and they aren't interested in the Doctor's deal when there are so many people on Earth they can use. Corpses begin to animate and attack the living characters as more Gelth come out of Gwyneth's mouth. Sneed is possessed. Rose and the Doctor take refuge behind a gate and reconcile themselves to dying. The Doctor mentions three big historical events he's been witness to, and unsurprisingly they're all violent. Dickens comes up with a clumsily explained idea: let gas fill the house and draw the Gelth out of the bodies. Ignoring the fact that air itself is a gas, they're perfectly capable of swimming around in open air already, and if they don't want to come out of the bodies, why will they do so?

Anyway, it apparently works. Gwyneth can't send them back, but she can control them enough to keep them present while she ignites the gas. Rose screams at her not to do it, but the Doctor sends her away with a promise to keep Gwyneth safe. The Doctor offers to strike the match himself, but she's too dead to listen, so he leaves her to her brave end. Outside after the explosion, he has to meet Rose's accusing eyes. He suggests that Gwyneth had been dead from the moment she got into position. Rose protests as to how that could be, but Dickens exercises his new open-mindedness. (The unspoken answer is that Gwyneth retained "scraps".) Dickens, in fact, has a new lease on life. Now that he has unlearned what he has learned, he's freed to go home and make peace with his family, and maybe write an ending to his murder mystery that will be met with cries of foul play. And yes, that's an actual novel that was unfinished at the time of his death.

I'm not used to this level of dissension between the Doctor and his companions. You'd think it would happen more often, realistically, so I'm glad to see it getting some play here. I wouldn't want it all the time, but yeah. Rose's attitude is entirely understandable. The idea of aliens surviving by using the bodies of dead humans may seem tame in a sci-fi context, and certainly the Doctor will approve of saving lives, but it's really a very strange-to-contemporary-humans idea that goes against everyday Western ways of thinking. Possibly she would have come around to it with more time and less pressure. But how upsetting would it be to lose a loved one, bury him or her out of sight, try to move on with your life, and then suddenly the person is walking around town again -- except it's completely something else in that body, and all it does for you is constantly remind you of that person you'll never have back again?

I think it would have been interesting -- not better, but an idea for another story -- to play up the candles connection with the menace more. Later monsters, the Vashta Nerada and the Weeping Angels, will play into light's significance as a giver of life and knowledge. How creepy would it have been to invert that here, if they had had to extinguish all the lights in the house so the spooks couldn't reach them, rather than as part of a quick finishing tactic? To sit there in pitch black, silent and blind, afraid every moment that this was a fatal mistake and any moment a flash of blue would appear in the darkness and there would be nowhere to run?

I actually looked at the wiki entry for this episode, mainly to figure out the names, and apparently somebody blasted this episode when it came out for having a nasty anti-immigration message. That never occurred to me while watching it. The wiki also mentions several previous incidents where the Doctor referenced Dickens, so his fanaticism here is not out of the blue.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode, but there are several little bits here and there that I feel really needed some more polishing, so I'm going to do something I don't mean to do terribly often and give a half rating.

Rating: 2.5 chloroforming Mister Sneeds

Alternate favorite dialogue: Dickens: "Can it be that I have the world entirely wrong?"
Doctor: "Not wrong. There's just more to learn."

Number of Dickens literary references I noticed: 3
Number of Shakespeare literary references I noticed: 2

For me, this was when the new series really started to work. No more outright silliness, strong plot and performances.

I did notice that the rips on Cardiff are very underplayed. Contrast with, say, much of Matt Smith's run.

And agreed that pretty much all of the performances so far have been strong.

Incredibly detailed reviews, NAHTMMM! As a new viewer, I'm loving this!

I can't help it, I just keep seeing things I want to comment on. I'm curious how long the reviews will be once I make it to Matt Smith's run and start in on episodes I've already seen several times.



01x04 - Aliens of London

Yeah, this Doctor's a showoff. He delivers Rose back to her own time and place and immediately leans against the TARDIS in a Joe Cool pose, anticipating her adulation. Maybe he took being off by nine years in the last episode personally. Rose jogs off to check in on her mum, in the process heading up a stairwell that has been insulated against foley. The Doctor, having nothing better to do, heads over to check on a Missing poster that the camera thinks is important. Turns out Rose has been reported missing for a year. When she gets home, her mum acts horrified, like she's seen a vengeful ghost. Not shocked. That is a horrified expression on her face. Mickey never mentioned the disappearing blue box thing to anyone? I can understand why he wouldn't mention it to the police, because super-fishy explanation is more suspicious than no explanation, but not even her mum? Maybe he did, and people assumed that the box's owner was behind the killer mannequins because Occam's Razor, and her mum gave her up for dead.

A little boy spray-paints BAD WOLF on the side of the TARDIS as if completing an errand. Meanwhile Jackie is scolding Rose for running off and vanishing. She's convinced the Doctor spirited Rose away for pervy purposes, and slaps him. The relationship between Rose and Jackie is laid out here, as Jackie gets Rose alone and chastises her for never checking in with her. Jackie is most hurt that Rose refuses to tell her what she's been up to. This is clearly a fundamental breach in their relationship. Both of them are in tears.

Rose and the Doctor are now on top of a building. Rose isn't sure she wants to keep traveling if it will cause her mum this much grief. The Doctor asserts that Jackie is not coming along, and they both have a chuckle over that idea. In hindsight, one could try to tie in "I don't do families" with Time War angst, but I'm pretty sure the Doctor is letting down Rose gently. The slap is only an excuse to avoid pointing out that Jackie is not suited to be a Companion. (And that he has no desire to put up with Tyler family friction.) An alien tractor trailer blows its horn to warn them off the road as it zooms by. The CGI in this sequence looks a bit model-y at times, notably with the bridge, but it's fine. The ship smacks Big Ben in the face before crashing into the Thames. Rose, on being freed from the burden of thinking she's the only human alive who knows about aliens, mutters, "Oh, that's just not fair." The Doctor laughs and takes off after the ship with her. I do like his eagerness for adventure, I just wish it didn't resonate with his angsty darkness such that it resembles morbidity. People screaming for their lives? Sweet! Someone just crashed into a planet? Fantastic!

UNIT (I'm guessing, given their fatigues, caps, and Lethbridge-Stewart mustaches) has blocked off the crash site, to the extent that Rose expects all of London is gridlocked. The Doctor says that this is what he travels for: to see history happen. Rose suggests that, since they can't get up close themselves, they could watch it on TV. The Doctor gives her a funny look. Two-dimensional audiovisual transmission? How quaint!

BBC coverage reports looting, unrest, and a national state of emergency. Also, apparently the UK uses eleven-digit phone numbers. Also, apparently the UK went digital before the US did. Also, unsurprisingly, Rose and her mum are both wearing pink.

I can't imagine how these reviews run so long.

The Doctor fends off a little boy in time to learn that a body retrieved from the spaceship has been brought to a particular hospital. Inside that hospital, a military officer expresses shock at being shown the face region of the body by a doctor (Sato).

Inside 10 Downing Street, the guy in charge of overseeing the export of sugar finds out that he is acting Prime Minister and that the Cabinet is isolated from London. (We also meet Harriet Jones, currently a Member of Parliament representing Podunk.) Further conversation reveals that a car carrying the P.M. and his Cabinet has in fact disappeared entirely.

Clearly this is time for flatulence humor.

Anyway, he gets alone with another man and woman, and they grin smugly and cackle evilly at each other for like ten or fifteen seconds, because that is what villains do. I do hope gas isn't going to be the clue to uncovering this conspiracy.

The Doctor makes his excuses and leaves the apartment. He feels a little hemmed in with Jackie bragging about getting hit on, the boy wanting to watch a cooking show, and everyone else chatting about top-up cards, which sounds like petrol rationing but apparently is a cell phone thing. He's chuffed that this could be The Big Day, when humanity grows up and goes interstellar. Rose is worried he'll disappear on her, so he gives her a TARDIS key. Contrary to reports of looting and such, the other dwellers in this apartment seem receptive to the aliens. It's a nice, quiet little bit.

Mickey leans over the railing and sees the Doctor heading toward his graffitied TARDIS. This alarms him. He runs after the Doctor, but can't catch up before the TARDIS dematerializes. He runs into the corrugated wall behind where the TARDIS was and knocks himself flat.

Harriet Jones is still trying to get in to see the Prime Minister. She seems a well-rounded character, being aware of the gravity of events but still wanting to get her work done. She besieges Sugar Man, whose name is Green, with a proposal involving hospital ratings, but he and his buddies brush her off. Left alone, she heads into the conference room to see if anyone's there. There is a briefcase, which she starts to tuck the papers into, but then she notices the EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS and sticks around to read them.

Sato is alone in her workspace, it's dark (and very blue), and the alien was very conspicuously tucked away into a particular death drawer that was then fastened shut. Naturally, now it starts to thump around. Fortunately, the Doctor has arrived, so she at least has a chance to survive this. Unfortunately, he walks straight into a room of soldiers who take him prisoner. The lighting on the death drawers is a little garish. #5 opens right in front of Sato, who screams. The Doctor takes charge, barking out orders, and the soldiers rush off in pursuit of the scream. The girl is alive but bloodied, and the alien has disappeared. Or has it? The Doctor actually waves in armed backup before going to check some rattling in the corner. Finally, the dreaded face of the scary, portentous alien comes into view around a corner, and it is . . . a pig. An oinking, pig-sized pig. No wonder the officer thought it might be a hoax. It runs away, straight into some soldiers, one of whom shoots it down. The Doctor scolds the shooter for firing upon a scared little pig.

Harriet Jones is still in the conference room when Green and friends come back. Desperately, she hides in a closet. A military official is upbraiding Green for not taking action in this crisis. Green starts to drop his guard, and all three start in with the gastrointestinal noises. Packard was probably re-evaluating his hopes for a mature update by this point. The official relieves Green of duty, at which Green and co-conspirators unzip their heads and do something horrible to the official.

The Doctor thinks he knows what's going on: Someone juiced up a pig's brain, put the pig in the spaceship, and let the spaceship crash into Earth. By the time Sato works through the details and turns to ask why someone would do that, he's rushed back to the TARDIS.

Back at the party, everyone finally notices Mickey in the doorway, staring at Rose. Evidently he has not actually been at this party all along, which really raises too many questions for me. How did the Doctor come to park right outside his apartment? Why did Rose not recognize the surroundings and pop in to see him first, seeing as, from her POV, she had already called her mum? Why did TPTB not bother to better differentiate one balcony from another? You know, by showing the actual building attached to each one? On the other hand, now BAD WOLF doesn't have to mean anything special to Mickey, as he chased after the Doctor to ask about Rose. Evidently he didn't tell Jackie about the Doctor because he figured Rose had run off romantically with the Doctor. Mickey has a big chip on his shoulder, and he enjoys Rose being upset over the Doctor "dumping" her.

This is something the modern show does much more than the old. There's far more interest in how the Doctor disrupts his companions' lives, and in them continuing to have "normal" lives that they sporadically return to, rather than just hanging out in the control room as the Doctor goes straight from one of his adventures to another.

Anyway, Rose insists that the Doctor is not her boyfriend, but then makes the mistake of saying he's more important to her than that before the key begins to glow and the TARDIS returns. I guess that's a handy feature if you aren't sure where you left your spare key. She tries to shoo Jackie away, but Jackie is just as headstrong as her daughter.

The Doctor has just enough time to explain a bit to Rose before finding a couple of peeved humans have also entered his sanctuary. Mickey accuses the Doctor of ruining his life, and really harping on this theme could have sunk the show very quickly. Sucking the fun out of the premise and making everything dismal and edgy and gritty and negative to follow pop culture's trend. But a little of it can provide new perspectives, as here. The Doctor tries to brush Mickey off by treating him like an idiot. I guess he's in another of his "affairs of mere monkeys do not concern me" moods; when Mickey comments on the strangeness of starting an invasion by alerting your target, the Doctor quietly agrees with him.

Meanwhile, Jackie has rushed off because I guess it's all too much for her, and Rose took off after her. A man on the TV requests that anyone with information about aliens call a helpline, and Jackie perks up. She phones in about the Doctor, making it clear in the process that she's upset because Rose isn't safe, and the word TARDIS sets off alarms on the other end.

Rose apologizes to Mickey, and he unloads to her about how he spent the previous year constantly looking for the TARDIS to come back. Just as they're about to commence with serious domestics, however, the Doctor announces the results of his retro radar: the spaceship was actually launched from Earth.

One of the alien triad has put on the dead officer's old body, and promptly . . . passes gas. Yes, this is going to still be a thing. Even the lady alien says it's getting ridiculous. The previous person's skin is tossed into Harriet's closet, and a flunky comes up to tell the triad that a certain word has been detected, "Doctor", indicating a particular expert on aliens. The triad show no sign of recognition.

The Doctor is pleased to see UNIT on the case. Mickey mentions that he's read up on the Doctor, and every time his name appears a list of dead people follows. The Doctor retaliates by patronizingly calling him Ricky again. This is not the Doctor playing the buffoon, it's not accidental in the slightest, it's a deliberate attempt to build himself up by tearing Mickey down. For shame, Doctor. One may suppose, then, that Mickey had a noble motive in not telling Jackie about the Doctor, so that she wouldn't have cause to worry about Rose scooting around spacetime with a dangerous man.

The Doctor wants to stay away from UNIT, as he wouldn't be recognized (and could probably have a freer hand alone). So they step out of the TARDIS, ready to work incognito, and head right into a helicopter's spotlight. Busted! Mickey gets the wind up and runs away from the attentions of the guns and tanks and police cars, bringing some unfortunate timing into this review being posted just now, and Jackie tries to run to her daughter, who not only is still with that scary alien but also has a lot of weapons pointed in her direction now.

The Doctor treats this as a lark, and Rose catches his attitude. He figures he's being brought in as an expert on aliens. "Don't you just love it," Rose retorts. Yes, he does. In fact, he takes a moment to smile and wave for the cameras before he enters 10 Downing Street. The ego is probably my biggest surprise about this Doctor so far. Not that it's a bad thing, or that other Doctors haven't had egos just as big, I just wasn't expecting it here. Meanwhile, Jackie is questioned about the Doctor by an alien who's disguised as a human being. Gee, this doesn't remind me of the pilot at all.

Harriet Jones comes downstairs. She tries to approach the Doctor, but has to settle for Rose. The Doctor is being treated like anyone else, suggesting that nobody there actually knows who he is, which is odd because I figured someone would be up on their UNIT history. Is UNIT just completely off doing their own thing elsewhere? This episode has some serious disconnects for me, and I don't think it's all on my own end.

Meanwhile, Harriet Jones has a bit of a breakdown in front of Rose in a yellow-and-pink shot, as the scene from the conference room hits her. She explains to Rose as best she can, and they find the Prime Minister dead in another closet in the same conference room. Not every planet provides convenient storage units to stuff incriminating evidence into!

The Doctor quickly takes control of the meeting as he pieces together the circumstances behind the spaceship launch. He realizes that this was a trap, to bring all the alien experts together. Because 2000-era Earthlings know so much about defeating aliens, after all!

The female from the triad finds that the P.M. has been discovered. Meanwhile the disguised alien prepares to do away with Jackie, and the two aliens in the expert meeting (I guess there are at least four total, not three) drop the pretense and prepare to make with the killing. That's three out of four leads in mortal peril. Mickey was last seen hiding among garbage bins, so presumably next scene will see him attacked by a leftover Auton. We finally see the aliens, and they are very alien, although the child-like faces keep them from entirely falling into "scary alien" territory. It's a fun design, really.

The ID cards worn by the alien experts turn out to be electrocution devices. As the episode ends, the Doctor is being helplessly zapped, Jackie is cornered in her own kitchen, and Rose is cornered with only a pencil pusher and an aging politician as her allies, and not a vase in sight.

As you might have guessed, I'm not fond of the toilet humor. To be fair, it's supported by a legitimate underlying idea, that not every alien is going to magically fit snugly into some random human being's skin. Still, there were also several points where what seemed to be going on was not in fact what was going on, due to either a lack of clarity from the creators or a lack of competence from me. There's also a lot of the human side of the story, with some important and worthwhile scenes involving Jackie and Mickey, but I'm not currently invested enough in them or their relationships to give that as much weight as maybe I should, within the scope of the episode.

Ultimately I feel like the actual action is crowded out somewhat by administrative work, with all the relationship development and Rose's feelings and the graffiti and establishing the Doctor's imprecise control and introducing Harriet and UNIT, and of course, the Doctor spends a significant fraction of the ep either watching TV or mucking about with the central console. And insulting Mickey for daring to stand up to him. All of which is good enough stuff, aside from the Ricky bits, but it does add up in runtime.

It has fun moments and Harriet Jones shows promise, but I have no desire to watch this again.

Rating: 1 Harriet Jones cunning plan

Favorite Dialogue: Rose: Every conversation with you just goes mental. There's no one else I can talk to. I've seen all that stuff up there, the size of it, and I can't say a word. Aliens and spaceships and things, and I'm the only person on planet Earth who knows they exist.
[An out-of-control spaceship passes right overhead]
Rose: Oh, that's just not fair.

Most likely to be pointed out, half a century from now, as an example of how badly this series will have aged: Jackie's outfit. Or the whoopie cushion aliens, but I'm going with the outfit. I'm sure she just threw on whatever she had lying around, and it isn't eye-gougingly ugly, but dark blue stripes above and faint pink below . . . you aren't representing your decade well, Jackie.

01x05 - World War Three

I guess I forgot to mention last time that the aliens call themselves the Slitheen. One of them was polite enough to mention it at the end of the episode. That's how aliens talk. "We are the Slitheen." "I am Klingon!" "We are the Blarghy-blarg, and you are our prisoners." Humans never introduce themselves like this. They're always "I'm so-and-so from Starfleet, United Federation of Planets," or "Hi, I'm George."

Anyway, unsurprisingly, the Doctor is the first to get out of his inescapable mortal peril. "Deadly to humans maybe," he says as he rips off his badge. Then he sticks it on one of the aliens, which somehow causes all of the aliens to get caught up in their own little electrical superstorms, because who knows. Rose must have managed to crit her Intelligence roll, as she realizes that not only can she run around the distracted alien and escape the room on her own, she can even drag Harriet Jones with her. Harriet runs back to get the emergency protocols, which turns out to just give up their head start on the alien who had them cornered. Let's call that one Alien Lady. Mickey comes in, busts a chair over the head of the one tormenting Jackie to get it to step aside, and drags her out, getting a mugshot of the alien (Jackie Alien?) on his cell as he does so. This is never important to the plot, but good for him.

The Doctor brings a bunch of troopers back to arrest the aliens, but they're back in disguise now and order him to be arrested and killed. He escapes via lift. The two aliens in charge (Green and the high-ranking officer) order the building quarantined, the upper floors super-quarantined, and the Doctor shot on sight. Very sensible plan.

Now the Alien Lady starts hunting through the room where Rose and Harriet are hiding. Her brothers join her, and they start exulting in how humans smell when they're scared. Harriet is flipping out a little over the gruesomeness, but when they "find" Rose, she jumps out to offer herself first. Then the Doctor comes in and distracts the two male aliens with a fire extinguisher, giving Rose a chance to clumsily bring a curtain down on Alien Lady. The chase is back on, with the Slitheen striking another nice action pose or two.

The Doctor manages to call a stalemate with deliciously flammable booze and gives the aliens a chance to explain themselves. Slitheen is actually their surname, so hey, they're more like humans than I realized. His bluff is called, so the Doctor triggers safeguards that surround the room with three inches of steel. The Slitheen are content to have him contained, figuring that it's now safe to call in their family and resume the plan.

Jackie and Mickey have slipped away and are now holed up in Mickey's apartment. Mickey makes sure to mention where they are, because he's learned the importance of setting the scene since last episode. He also mentions that Jackie can't hold her liquor. Not surprised. He repeats that the Doctor seems to bring death wherever he goes, but adds that the Doctor is the only one who can deal with the alien threat. They make up a little.

The Doctor inquires as to the name of the secretary from the first part, whom Harriet brought coffee to and who is now dead. Harriet can't say. The Doctor simply tells the secretary "Sorry" before moving on to business. No fuss. Not to harp, but this is more palatable than when he got all high-and-mighty in the pilot. He says that the neck thingy the aliens wear compresses them to fit within the human skins they inhabit. I had figured it was a vocal thing so they'd sound like their victims, but this does seem a more important function. Harriet rebukes Rose for trying for a bit of gallows humor in response (and it's not very good anyway), the Doctor tries to remember where he's heard her name before, and she announces that the emergency protocols are useless, since all the people they require are dead already. The protocols basically listed all the people who would be the biggest threats to the aliens, so the aliens rounded them up and electrocuted them. If the work of identifying your top threats has already been done for you, you may as well kill them.

Rose brings up the possibility of a nuclear strike. Harriet says that the necessary codes are all in the UN's possession. This gets the Doctor thinking, because this could be a plot point, and he needs plot points. He still hasn't figured out why these aliens would bother with a planet that they don't seem interested in.
Harriet contributes to the conversation in such a sensible fashion that the Doctor compliments her on it. Rose's superphone gets a ring from Mickey. Rather than say "Hey! We've got a contact with the outside world, let's make something happen!" the Doctor spits out "Oh, tell your stupid boyfriend we're busy." I just . . . this is bordering on childish. Mickey and Jackie start venting about their terrible experience (Rose warns Mickey not to let her mum get hold of the phone ), but the Doctor grabs the phone, calls Mickey "Ricky" AGAAAIN, and then asks for his help while making it clear that he finds the idea of treating Mickey as a sentient being entirely repugnant. Seriously, ugh.

Speaking of ugh, let's talk top-secret government security. Mickey accesses a UNIT website -- you know, UNIT, super-secret squad for dealing with aliens that the government doubtless denies the existence of -- which displays a reasonably informative-looking page while demanding a password. All you need is a URL to confirm the existence of this thing? The password turns out to be a common English word, "buffalo". I won't fault the Doctor for telling Mickey how to spell it, since they were potentially short on time, but maybe he should have specified capitalization as well? Unless case wasn't important, which given the overall shoddiness of the security seems plausible enough. Mickey runs into more password requests, all of which are answered with buffalo. This isn't even treated as a joke. I'd happily give it a pass if it were funny enough, but no.

While the others try to figure out what's going on, Jackie takes the Doctor to task for all the chaos he's brought into her life. Jackie is the embarrassing mother who you love and who loves you, but she does inappropriate social things and sometimes she sticks up for your safety when all you want to do is wail "Moooooom!" like a teenager. Which I guess Rose is. Jackie demands the Doctor answer her whether he can keep Rose safe, not just now, but always. The Doctor takes a long time thinking about his answer, with Rose looking at him intently, but is saved by Mickey, who has completed the arduous task of clicking on relevant-looking things and copy-pasting BUFFALO umpteen times. UNIT has picked up a message from the North Sea, and while the Doctor listens to it over the phone to try to decipher it, Jackie goes to answer the door.

Surprise, surprise, it's the Jackie alien. The real surprise is that he lets her close the door in his face, but she doesn't bother locking it so it doesn't really matter. We know it could smash through the door like the others did in 10 Downing, yes, but the point is the Tylers are both kind of ditzes in the face of danger. Mickey prepares to defend home and Jackie with a baseball bat, and if the sound of him being noble doesn't serve as a reason for the Doctor to stop treating him like dirt then I can't conceive of what's going through TPTB's minds. Rose and Harriet rattle off attributes of the aliens, until the Doctor deduces that the aliens are living calcium (wut), specifically calcium phosphate, from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius. This means that acetic acid will be super-effective against them. Jackie puts pickled eggs and other stuff into a pitcher and tosses it in the alien's face. There's a moment of anticlimax and then the alien completely blows up with a flatulent noise, tossing green nastiness everywhere. It's just like humans have a lot of hydrogen and oxygen in them, see, so if you toss a lit match at one it'll explode. I guess.

Harriet Jones mentions Hannibal dissolving boulders with vinegar when he crossed the Alps, which one ancient historian claimed did happen but with fire also involved.

Military Alien tells Green Alien that Jackie Alien is no more. Green Alien claims he sensed it, which really doesn't diminish the deus ex machina nature of the electrical superstorms at the start. Green Alien then makes a televised announcement that murderous aliens are among us, and he needs the nuclear codes back from the UN before the planet gets genocided, or worse, thrust into ID4. Of course we know that this is all far from the truth, not least because the Slitheen alone are more intelligent than basically the entire cast of that movie combined. The Doctor says this explains everything: the Slitheen wanted humanity to get scared enough to lash out. Lashing out can be a useful survival mechanism, but often, as here, when you don't understand the situation clearly, it's a bad idea. The Doctor rolls up the metal and, as he will do, talks the plan over with the baddies. They intend to reduce "this beautiful planet" (Harriet's words) to "slag" and then sell it off, because radioactive slag is much more useful than non-radioactive slag that you can reduce to radioactive slag at your discretion. The means are intelligent, but the end sounds stupid. Stupider than getting rid of your last star player for cheap before putting the team on the market (that's another Blues reference). But there's a galaxy-wide recession and the slag is to be used as fuel, so I guess maybe the used planet market is non-existent right now. Or this was supposed to be a very subtle parable about Alaskan oil or the like.

The Doctor warns them to leave or he'll stop them. "What, you? Trapped in your box?" Alien Lady giggles. "Yes. Me," the Doctor says firmly, and he holds her gaze as he deliberately reaches back over and seals himself in again. That wipes the smirk off her face, and honestly, Eccleston's Doctor is the best one I know of to have delivered this scene with such menace.

We get a shot of the not-crashed-honest spaceship emitting smoke, then back to another news report. It's an interesting thing to occasionally have news media comment on the goings-on in a sci-fi universe. It can bring things down-to-earth, show how the "mundanes" react when given a peek into what the protagonists get up to every week or movie. At the same time, it can provide some insight into what's going on in society at large. Here, the media have generally been practical, to the best of my memory (still not going back to watch that last one again). What happened? What will happen next? What is the government doing about this? At the media level, at least, there has been tension, making it that much easier for Green Alien to incite a panic. All the civilians, the reporter says, are at home, waiting to see what the UN does.

The UN, naturally, immediately demands to know how the UK noticed massive weaponry in space that no US or other installations have detected. Hmm, I bet this is about the Iraq war actually. No, there's no such demands, just an anchor telling us that the UK "has provided them with absolute proof that the massive weapons of destruction do exist." GET IT?

I'm noticing the 10 Downing environmental palette again. Consistently warm. Even the red phone (which Alien Lady spazzes out over) has Reeses Pieces next to it, because blue or green M&Ms would wreck the scheme. Or you can pretend it's an E.T. reference. . . . Oh, right, aliens and a phone. Well then.

There's a nice little scene between the protagonists, where the Doctor insists that there's always a way out, but the one he's found would put Rose in danger. But the alternative is that everybody on Earth dies. Jackie continues to insist that Rose stay safe, but Rose is willing to go along with it. Some nice character moments (unfortunately, Rose's involves being bland) and the Doctor has a good line here. Harriet steps up and orders the Doctor's plan to be carried out, taking the responsibility upon herself.

"Victoryyy . . . should be nakeeed . . . " Green Alien now says, because there's totally a way to deliver that line that won't break the tension.

Meanwhile the Doctor explains to Mickey that "buffalo" will override everything and I'm sorry, I know world governments can be pretty stupid, but I think they're better at guarding their precious weapons than that. Jackie informs Mickey that she's thinking about being a complete tool but will refrain from it for the moment.

The Doctor has no such reservations. "Mickey the idiot, the world is in your hands," he says without the slightest hint of apology or humor. Mickey meanwhile has some disgusting sweat lathering his face. It becomes apparent that the plan involves hitting 10 Downing Street with a non-nuclear missile.

The military evacuates the vicinity, and the guy in charge hurries up the stairs to warn the PM. He opens the door, finds himself facing a bunch of weird aliens, says "Sorry", and leaves. I'm not saying it's hilarious, but it's sure funnier than all the flatulence "humor" combined.

Rose gets everyone into the closet to survive the missile strike. Harriet tells the military to tell the UN to calm down. The Doctor and Rose suggest she could be the new PM, which she brushes off as ridiculous -- she only represents Flyspeck, after all -- and then she strides off to get things organized. I already know she's going to be PM, but this episode makes her leadership qualities clear. The Doctor says she'll be known as the architect of Britain's Golden Age, however that would be measured. I guess picking the time when Britain ruled the waves will be too un-PC to praise in the future because of all the colonialism involved. I don't even think it's possible to have a political Golden Age anymore. There's always someone ready to pop up and point out fifty things they think are wrong with the country (or vice versa). Anyway, Harriet delivers a ridiculous little speech for some eager cameras in which she praises humanity. Because the aliens totally weren't stopped by another alien at the last moment in their plan to exploit humanity's weaknesses!

After their happy reunion, Jackie and Rose discuss things. Jackie thinks Rose should be getting knighted for saving the world . . . and the Doctor can get credit too if Rose insists. Rose says the Doctor doesn't bother with any fuss, he just moves on, which is accurate enough in that sense. But he does like impressing people, don't try to deny that. This is a pretty okay conversation, as Jackie shows that she's willing to bend and get to know this scary Doctor who seems to be so important in her daughter's life. It's a welcome depth to her character. Rose gets a call from the Doctor, however, who bluntly tells her he has better things to do than hang around for dinner with her mother. No fuss, just move on to the next adventure. Rude maybe, but not going out of his way to make me roll my eyes again. He wants to surf a plasma storm in the Horsehead Nebula and see where he ends up.

Jackie comes back to find Rose packing her backpack. She begs Rose not to go. Personally I would have blown off the storm, in Rose's place, for Mum's sake.

The Doctor has caught the boy who graffittied the TARDIS in part 1 and made him clean it off. Mickey is there, asking him how people can already be writing off the whole thing as a hoax. The Doctor tells him that humanity is still too thick to accept the reality of aliens if they don't absolutely have to. He makes peace with Mickey in his practical way, hinting that Mickey maybe isn't an idiot, admitting that Mickey is right that he is dangerous and, if Mickey is so afraid for Rose, he could come along maybe? Mickey doesn't think he could stand the way of life, but he does accept a virus that will remove all mentions of the Doctor from the Internet. Meanwhile Jackie is promising (like a teenager, no less) to clean up her life if Rose will stay, but Rose tells her that travel with the Doctor is too wonderful to let the dangers keep her home. The Doctor does Mickey a favor by insisting that Mickey can't come along, saving Mickey the embarrassment of looking like a scaredy-cat.

The ending surprised me, in that I thought they were going to end up chasing Alien Lady along the riverfront. I guess that's a different episode.

This is much better than the first part, but there are still a few dumb parts in it. It's a shame the two-parter isn't up to the aliens' standards, because they're visually well-crafted and quite competent opponents. Another bright spot is that Jackie has become a somewhat likable, relatable character, rather than just a thing to pull out for plot complications or a laugh. When she calls the Doctor out, when she pleads with Rose, it's as a human being, not a caricature, and I really feel for her. I still don't particularly care for her, but at least she has some dignity now.

Rating: 2 Cab'net walls of three-inch steel

Favorite dialogue: Doctor: [to the Slitheen] Who, exactly, are the Slitheen?
Harriet Jones: They're aliens.
Doctor: I got that, thanks.
Alien: Who are you, if not human?
Harriet: Who's not human?
Rose: He's not human.
Harriet: But he's got a Northern accent.
Rose: Lots of planets have a North. [repeating the Doctor's retort from an earlier episode]

Goofiest newspaper headline: "Don't get the Colly wobbles" on the back of Mickey's paper at the end, bold as brass. Oh, Britain.

01x06 - Dalek

I like the Daleks. They look distinctive, they talk funny, and they serve well as a continuing menace for the Doctor. They are for him what the Borg are for Picard, minus the cyborgification trauma. Both the Doctor and Picard value life in all its myriad variations, both of them strongly prefer to talk than to kill. But neither the Borg nor the Daleks will ever be talked out of their sole driving purposes, purposes that go squarely against everything their protagonist rivals believe in. The Daleks are ideal recurring opponents for when you want to take negotiation off the table and write a story about desperate tactics and cunning and villainy. So they are one-dimensional, yes; they do look goofy on modern TV, yes; but they fit very well into the universe of Doctor Who, which likes a little cheese.

A signal for help has detoured the TARDIS to somewhere under 2012 Utah. Rose and the Doctor realize they're in a museum of alien artifacts. The Doctor's eyes are practically shimmering with nostalgia as he zeroes in on an old-school Cyberman head. "The stuff of nightmares," he calls it, which calls to mind Neil Gaiman's later "Nightmare in Silver". An alarm goes off, and a bunch of men come in, very promptly, with full battle gear and big guns and surround the two.

We meet Henry van Statten, the guy who owns the place, and -- speaking of cheese -- he's a Whimsical Big Meanie Who Controls Everything From Behind The Scenes. He tells his lackey to replace the President, who's dropped ten points, presumably in his approval ratings, and when the lackey suggests that that isn't the best idea he fires him too. His new lackey suggests the next President be a Democrat because, um, they're funny? There's a dramatic pause as she comes under the scrutiny of the W.B.M., but fortunately for her, his internal roulette wheel settles on the "I like you, kid" reaction. She adds that two intruders have been arrested, 53 floors below. Underground bunkers are well and good, but this is a bit much. van Statten suggests everybody laugh at a pun. They chuckle. I trust the power structure is clear to everyone by now. He schedules the intruders followed by a visit to his "pet". The new lackey, Goddard, radios Simmons to see if he's made any progress in getting the pet to be more amusing. Cut to a Dalek's eye view while Simmons, who seems to be drilling into the thing, says he's got it up to screaming.

The Doctor and Rose find van Statten admiring what looks like a pan flute made out of a scallop shell. The Doctor suggests he not hold the thing like that. Goddard tells him to shut up in a professional manner, while the guy showing Statten the thing asks if it's dangerous. We have our Implacable Roadblock and Open-Minded Smart Person identified. "No, it just looks silly," the Doctor answers, to finish off a nice little exchange. Everybody prepares to blow him to bits, but van Statten just hands him the flute, and he plays a few notes on it. van Statten takes it back and gets some pleasure out of playing the same quality of notes that the Doctor was producing.

Introductions are made, with Rose getting her back up at being treated as a mere pretty face. It turns out that van Statten secretly owns the Internet (this was after the dot-com bubble, remember), whatever that means. He's probably to blame for the GoDaddy Super Bowl ads though. Then, uh, some sort of message is shoehorned into the dialogue out of nowhere, with the Doctor accusing van Statten of locking away everything he doesn't understand and van Statten amusedly asking if the Doctor claims to know more than he does.

I don't understand the purpose of the Doctor's accusation here. The usual implication, for me, would be that van Statten tries to ignore or neutralize anything that he "doesn't understand". But when the Doctor meets him, van Statten is holding a thing he doesn't understand. He cheerfully accepts the Doctor's information about the thing. That isn't locking it away in the literal or metaphorical sense. So, what's the deal? The Doctor's tone isn't one of warning, just accusation, so it isn't about meddling in things one doesn't understand.

Anyway, van Statten turns a little less whimsical and a little more threatening as he asks what the Doctor was doing so close to his "one living specimen". van Statten and the Doctor head down to see it, because why not show the burglars around. van Statten has won life already, the rest is just using the universe as his toy.

van Statten invites the Doctor to "impress" him. The Doctor is locked into the room with the "metaltron". (van Statten is rather prouder of his creativity than he should be.)

It's a dark and dingy room, with unpleasant tools and dramatic lighting, and also a small blue light at the far wall. It's a Dalek! The Dalek announces its desire to exterminate, the Doctor announces his desire to get out of the room, and van Statten is just happy to finally have it talking. One can imagine him showing off for future guests by tossing a random henchman into the room and watching the results. The Doctor realizes with joy that the Dalek's shooty bit doesn't work . . . at which the Dalek looks down at it like an action hero who just found out that he emptied his gun's clip.

And now it all comes out, as the Doctor taunts it with an earnest vigor that I can't quite imagine coming from any of the classic Doctors I've seen. The Dalek wants orders, but the Doctor tells him with relish that he wiped out all the other Daleks. "You destroyed us!" the Dalek responds, and the Doctor is sobered by that thought, unable to look the Dalek in the eye now. Even though it was the Daleks, it was genocide and repugnant to him. Or maybe he's imagining a Time Lord saying that to him, because it turns out that he destroyed them too. The Doctor protests he had no choice but to burn everyone. The Dalek calls him a coward, which unhinges the Doctor. He coos that he heard the distress signal, then taunts the Dalek again. The Dalek brings up a recurring point, that it and the Doctor are alike in that both are alone. This hits the Doctor where it hurts, and he basically says, fine, I'll act like you then, and electrocutes the Dalek without any of the pity it begs for. Eccleston does a good job with this scene, swinging from one intense emotion to another without going overboard.

Naturally van Statten sends people in to stop his pet being destroyed. He rushes in himself to talk to his precious Dalek and get it to talk to him . . . but the Dalek remains silent, even when confronted with the owner of the world's greatest repository of kitty pictures. van Statten tells Simmons to make it talk again, and Simmons puts on his best creepy serial killer grin in response. Sadistic Henchman, check.

Next scene is in a very brown room. Everything is brown and yellow except the floor. It's the workshop of Adam, the guy who was showing van Statten the flute. He tells Rose that he believes the U.N. is hushing up the existence of alien visitors. Rose agrees politely. The dramatic irony is thick, with Rose suggesting attainable interstellar travel and alien abductions and Adam laughing it all off. He's not that crazy. Adam shows her Simmons zapping the Dalek and Rose insists on doing something about it.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is telling the others about the Daleks. van Statten is particularly interested in the bit where a genius genetically engineered them. Goddard surmises that the one they have has gone insane. The Doctor declares that it must be the sole Dalek survivor of the Time War . . . sure. Exactly one Dalek survivor, and out of all the zillions of planets and suns in the universe, it happens to crash-land on the second-favorite planet of its greatest enemy. If you believe that, I've got a $1.6 billion Powerball ticket I'll sell you for five bucks.

van Statten points out that the Doctor also survived the war, to which the Doctor responds simply, "Not by choice." He then points out that the Doctor is just as valuable as the Dalek, to which the Doctor responds with a look of "I don't like where this is going."

van Statten forcibly scans the Doctor and announces that he will patent the Doctor's dual-heart system. I guess you could patent a specific method of dealing with the neurological and hydrodynamic challenges. The Doctor's "locking away" accusation from earlier now fits into place in the plot, as van Statten turns out to be collecting things so that he alone can profit from them. He used Roswell tech to make broadband, he used a holographic medical program he snatched from a bunch of yahoos from the future to replace short-order cooks everywhere, and he used bacteria from Tunguska to find a cure for the common cold, for which he will now sell "thousands" of non-curing treatments for cold symptoms.

CLEARLY HE IS TEH EVIL MASTERMIND. Except, there are only like, what, six cold symptoms? Are your treatments targeting individual nerve endings? And to be able to cure the cold, you'd have to be able to kill any of the hundreds of viruses that can cause the symptoms referred to as a cold. You could sell a few cures instead and still make money, and your brand will be regarded as an amazing industry leader into the bargain. Plus, with all the geniuses at your command, surely you're extrapolating cures for other, more serious viral infections now, too. No mention of those?

The Doctor tells him he's worse than the Dalek, then tells him to do as the Doctor says so that the Dalek doesn't kill everyone in the base. But van Statten is confident that the Dalek cannot escape its confinement. Meanwhile, Rose heads down to tell the Dalek the Doctor can help it escape its confinement. She tells it she isn't afraid of it, which is just rubbing salt in the wound when you're a Dalek. The Dalek is very droopy and depressed and other words one doesn't associate with Daleks. Rose gives it a pat, and it turns out that that plain metal casing can take in cellular material that rejuvenates a Dalek in no time flat.

How much of the despondency was an act, and how much was genuine? I think there was some honesty there. The Dalek motivation is "We rock", and if there's nothing in the universe that rocks, what's the point of existence? I also believe that the Dalek recognized an unwitting pawn in Rose, and calculated the best way of getting a human ignorant of its nature to free it. Humans are big ol' softies, with their mercy and empathy and yecch.

The Dalek destroys its chains, then accepts Simmons's invitation to sucker him to death. The Doctor hears the red alert and tells van Statten, again very simply and without heat, "Release me if you want to live." He does, apparently without argument.

Rose and company get out of the Dalek's cell and lock it. The Doctor says that the Dalek can calculate the lock combination quickly because it's a "genius", which is taking the word into "inconceivable" territory. Geniuses are creative. Being able to spam ten billion numbers a second doesn't make you a genius, it makes you a supercomputer. I question whether the electronics could distinguish such brief inputs anyway. So the Dalek gets out, and Rose still shows no fear, merely flinching away as the guards demonstrate that Bullets Won't Stop It. The Doctor watches on a screen with muted horror: It's all beginning again. The Dalek smashes the screen on its end and takes in sweet, sweet electrical power to smooth its knobs, shine its coat, and recharge its shooty bit. Somehow it taps into power plants and Internet too. The Doctor claims it "absorbed the entire Internet." Genius or no, that many viruses and popup ads ought to crash its brain permanently.

Anyway, the Dalek takes a few practice shots, then zaps a fleeing guard straight to the bone, then casually picks the assault team off one by one. Oh, it also now has an energy shield that shifts projectiles out of reality or something. The Doctor says it melts bullets, but I guess the FX budget wasn't up to that. While van Statten is still ranting about keeping his toy unharmed, the Doctor tells Goddard to arm everyone with whatever guns can be found, and Goddard, who seems to have switched allegiances (very surprising to me), rushes off to do his bidding.

A guard tries to talk peace with the Dalek from atop a flight of stairs, but the Dalek has mastered special effects enough to float around now. The Doctor makes it clear to van Statten that negotiation is impossible -- all the Dalek wants is slaughter.

It gets a slaughter when the next assault team attacks. The Dalek casually lifts into the air, sets off the sprinklers, then electrocutes everybody with two shots. One wonders if it feels a special need to flaunt the Dalek superiority, being the last one. The Doctor takes this hard, but quietly. Rose, who by now is really frightened, has noticed that it seems to be following her around.

As the Doctor, van Statten, and Goddard discuss sealing off the Dalek, the Dalek patches through to their room. It announces that it has confirmed that the Daleks are gone, but will continue to EXTERMINATE. The Doctor tells it there's no point to that anymore, and the sad little Dalek in the rain gets all forlorn. He viciously tells it to kill itself, in fact. His body language and tone of voice have been fairly low-energy since the first confrontation, but now Eccleston dials it up again. This suggestion is clearly born of the Doctor's hatred overcoming any compassion or hope he might otherwise have for the Dalek. The Dalek tells him, in fact, "You would make a good Dalek." That deeply shocks the Doctor, as he realizes the truth behind the statement.

With the Dalek close behind Rose and her guard, the Doctor has to consider sealing the vault before Rose has made it out. He decides it must be done. Adam makes it out, but Rose is stuck with the Dalek. They hear EXTERMINATE and a zap, and that's the end of Rose. The Doctor is deeply hurt by his failure to keep Rose safe, and takes it all out on van Statten, who is actually showing a bit of empathy by now, being a mere human again and not Lord Of All He Surveys.

Turns out Rose is still alive! The Dalek just wants to complain about how her biomass corrupted it with fear and cooties and a love for pink and Skaro knows what else. Oh, and hold her hostage. The Doctor can't bring himself to let Rose die again, and nobody stops him lifting the seal. Adam mentions that there are uncatalogued weapons outside the vault -- and by the way, there's seriously only one staircase connecting upstairs with all the good stuff below? -- so they head to his workshop, where the Doctor finds something sufficiently big and powerful-looking.

"I feel pret-ty, oh so pret-ty, I feel pret-ty and wit-ty and -- WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME"​

Rose endures one of the more awkward lift elevator rides in history. Forty-five stories, and all the other person wants to talk about is genocide and how violated it feels by your touch. They get up top and the Dalek corners van Statten, who blubbers excuses for all the torture, then blurts out that he just wanted it to talk, which is close enough. Rose stops the Dalek from killing him, and the Dalek decides what it really wants is freedom. It blows a hole in the ceiling, and when Rose expresses appreciation for the sunlight, it opens its chassis so the tentacled blob inside can experience it for itself.

Rose talks the Doctor down from destroying the Dalek, insisting that it's changing its ways and demanding he consider what he's turning into, lugging around a huge gun from a testosterone-loaded action movie. This gets through to the Doctor, who has never been fond of guns AFAIK, and he backs down, thanking Rose for stopping him and saying that Rose's DNA has made the Dalek something new, evidently something that the Doctor now wants to see keep living. Unfortunately, the Dalek can't cope with this, telling Rose to order it to commit suicide, because DAH-LEKS ARE SU-PREME AND MUST BE KEPT PURE and honestly it just can't handle this fear thing. Finally Rose gives in, possibly feeling pity for someone who's got the Internet rattling around in its brain, and the knobs come off and envelop the Dalek in a sphere of vaporizing energy. TPTB have gotten their money out of the tentacled blob effects in this scene. It looks pretty okay to me.

Goddard, upset because of all the deaths, has van Statten taken away, memory-wiped, and dumped by the road in the same manner that van Statten got rid of her predecessor. This is one time it's nice to see a Standard Role turn out to be a normal human. Really, everyone in this organization seemed to be "normal" people, aside from Simmons and van Statten. There was no sense of Armed Guards #1-100 being "Durr, I am guns for brains," but rather just people doing their job. They had very few lines, so this was all down to nonverbal language, costuming, and directing. In fact, the characterization overall turned out to be more nuanced than I had expected after the first few scenes.

In the face of Rose's hopeful suggestion, the Doctor insists he's the last survivor of the Time War, at least until TPTB get another idea for a Dalek story. He acknowledges that he needs Rose's companionship as well. He doesn't want to give Adam a lift, being miffed that Adam left Rose alone with the Dalek, but lets him slip in behind his back when Rose intervenes. And off to the next adventure we go!

For all the darkness in these first few episodes, this one makes it clear that the Doctor has some sort of moral compass that restrains him. The Doctor told the Dalek that everything the Dalek's race represented is gone, but the same isn't true for the Doctor. That's because he made his own path, decided for himself that he stood for something more than standing around watching the universe fall apart, and he's continued along that path even after the Time Lords are gone. Electrocuting the Dalek is done with a ferocity we haven't seen from him, and the Dalek and Rose shock him several times when they point out how he's letting his hatred control him. Clearly this is less about the Doctor having an unpleasant side and more about how much the Time War has affected him.

Rating: 3 stories below Utah State

Favorite dialogue: Doctor: I'm the Doctor. And who are you?
van Statten: Like you don't know. We're hidden away with the most valuable collection of extraterrestrial artifacts in the world, and you just stumbled in by mistake.
Doctor: Pretty much sums me up, yeah.

Game that futuristic computers are most likely to be based off of: Battleship

Stickied. Keep 'em coming!

Still feel that way after the recent Zygon eps?

1x07 - The Long Game

The Doctor has taken Rose to visit a large space station orbiting Earth in the year 200,000. Adam is technically present too. He's a little overwhelmed. (I suspect nobody has bothered to explain anything about anything to him.) Rose teases him by expertly regurgitating everything the Doctor just told her, then they find a window to look down at Earth. It's covered by a lot of squarish architecture that can definitely be seen from the Moon. Even the Borg would have to rate this as a "fair start". The Doctor announces admiringly that the galaxy is at the height of the fourth human empire. Adam finally faints, which takes him out of the running for Rose's affections.

The Doctor assures Adam that this is the era of humanity's finest culture, at which point they slam into a street vendor in a Purina bandana selling "kronk" burgers. Apparently this is so very not-fine culture that the Doctor checks his watch to be sure he got the target era right. I guess some empires are just so awesome that even the lowest, scavengy-est street vendors deal in veal and caviar. Just think of it, a world where even the dumbest sitcoms don't need laugh tracks to tell you when they're trying to be funny. Adam wonders where all the aliens are, if this is an interstellar empire. The Doctor agrees that this bears investigating, which requires cuisine, which requires money. He hacks an ATM, then leaves Rose and Adam to fend for themselves despite Adam's protests. My time as a companion would probably be like Adam's thus far, except with less fainting and more "will there be time for a visit to the library please."

The Doctor questions a couple of young women, Cathica and Suki, on his whereabouts, accepting their assumption that he's a secret shopper sent by upper management to drill them on their PR skills. This is floor 139 of Satellite Five, and the two are hoping to advance to floor 500. They show no clear idea of what exactly is so great about that floor; presumably they can exit the dungeon with their loot and record a high score.

Cathica delivers a few news highlights, with yet another "Bad Wolf" thrown in randomly. There's no sinister organization we know of that's attached to the phrase, as there was with "the Silence", so it's just some bit of trivia at this point. Anyway, the pregnancy of the Face of Boe is either the most or least disturbing of the news of the day, with water riots and vicious sunspots disrupting things elsewhere. Cathica declares that Satellite Five is the news, which is arguably more disturbing than any of the news she mentioned. S5 broadcasts six hundred channels of news, and these two are among the journalists it employs.

A white-haired man in a monitoring room senses something off about the Doctor's conversation and orders a deep security check. He says it's something fictional, which, combined with the woman's insistence that nothing happens without S5 knowing about it, says bad things about the ego of the people running six hundred channels of news media.

Rose has managed to find a beef-flavored slush puppy. Adam is still trying to cope with the sudden loss of everything he considered part of his reality, all vanished without a trace into his past. Rose offers him her supercellphone, frustrated that he wants instructions for it. You know, some people can just plunge into a strange situation, but others need a little handholding as they ramp up to "I've got a grip on this." One approach is not intrinsically superior, it depends on the situation. And, keeping in mind his previous employer, maybe Adam has developed extra caution about breaking other people's things he doesn't fully understand. Anyway, his pet dog comes in and gets slightly whiny at the sound of his master's voice on the machine, just to liven up the scene a bit. Adam leaves a message and the Doctor calls them over as "Mutt and Jeff" which I'm aware is a pop culture reference. (Turns out it's a comic strip.) Adam makes a big show of keeping the supercell.

Grown-up Draco Malfoy continues to watch, insisting that he can "taste" that someone isn't supposed to be there and calling for a second security check. I keep stopping short of saying he's ordering people to do things; he's very all-business, but personable in his demeanor and voice. Considering what it turns out he has hanging over him, that might be how he stays sane.

Cathica has collected an assortment of people in a sterile white room for a full inspection for the Doctor & co.'s benefit. Suki looks scared about the whole thing. Presumably she's worked hard to get this high and doesn't want to be sent back to Floor 57 where they've never been able to scrub the ketchupy odor from the air filters. Anyway, Cathica says that it's company policy to be honest and unbiased in their news-gathering efforts, to which Suki adds that it's the law. It's subtle but apparent that internal policy is more important than legality, at least in Cathica's mind. This gets better and better.

Everyone around the table interfaces with it. Cathica climbs into a chair in the middle and clicks her fingers, whereupon her forehead pops open to reveal a metallic cavity. She orders a "spike" and blue energy flows into her cavity, the Doctor saying that she's basically downloading all the news of the day. Her brain interacts with the other employees' to process and broadcast the news on all 600 channels, but it won't retain any of it after the link is cut.

The security computer, having determined that someone in the room shouldn't be there, and having presumably listened to the foregoing question-and-answer exposition, now takes several long, dramatic seconds to consider the Doctor & co. One wonders why it hasn't just run a database of authorized secret shoppers by now. The Doctor announces something is wrong about this technology (which gets him and Rose grinning), and the background music changes from quiet long notes to excited crackles. Now the security camera focuses in on Suki, much to Draco's satisfaction. Sure enough, Suki jerks away from the interface in pain, breaking the link. The sound effects indicate she was fired upon by a psychic photon torpedo. Something snarls unintelligibly at Draco, who makes profuse apologies to the top of a wall and promises to detain Suki ASAP.

A screen on the wall of the sterile room announces an incoming promotion. It's for . . . waaait for it, let's let Cathica embarrass herself a little more . . . Suki! She drew the "go straight to Floor 500" card! It takes a moment for this to sink in, as Suki protests that she didn't really expect them to choose her application. She's really tickled pink about it. Cathica just fumes about being passed over yet again.

Suki hugs her "lucky charm", the Doctor, who agreeably says that he'll hug anyone. Adam was really freaked out by the forehead thing, and wants to find a quiet spot so he can decompress. He heads for an observation deck, with Rose giving him a TARDIS key and puffing and pouting the whole time. He comments as he leaves that it'll take "a better man than me" to divert Rose's attentions from the Doctor. Suki now exits the scene via elevator, with Cathica glad to see her go, explaining that nobody ever returns from Floor 500.

Suki is about two steps below spazzing out as the elevator rises. She steps out on a wintry wasteland of a room, complete with falling snow and one of those circular table interfaces. It's got skeletons in the seats. She finds another room, which leads to the security room, where Draco waves at her.

Suki, still freaked out, approaches Draco, who introduces himself as The Editor. He replays the biography she submitted with her job application, calling her a liar meanwhile, then calls her by her true name and appends a resume of her as a terrorist. At the mention of her true name, Suki finally starts to drop her facade. She pulls out a gun, demands to see his superior, and insists she has proof that S5 is distorting the news. See, this is the kind of customer feedback that keeps the news media honest. He introduces Suki to her boss, who's been her boss "since the day you were born." Her boss descends upon Suki, who demonstrates that Energy Bullets Won't Stop It before spending her last few seconds screaming into the camera.

Cathica complains about the Doctor's continued questions, saying she's only allotted 20 minutes for "maintenance" (because cogs in a machine don't get "free time"). She decides the Doctor isn't actually an S5 employee, at which the Doctor snarks, "At last, she's clever!" Cathica now protests complete ignorance, but the Doctor gets her to drop little details, details that mean nothing to her but build a picture of an empire beginning to crack. The Doctor insists that everything's wrong, that the current technology should be obsolete by now. Turns out, it's as old as S5, which is good enough to indicate proximate cause in an hour drama.

Adam has taken my advice and accessed a library. Now he tries to transcribe advancements in the microprocessor onto his parents' answering machine, but the system detects something's fishy and displays "Floor 16" -- the place where Cathica just said she got her forehead doohickeyed. Ruh-roh! He heads down of his own volition and winds up paying for a not–brain surgery with the hacked money the Doctor gave him. The not-surgeon cajoles him into taking the full info-spike doohickey.

The Doctor is messing around in what Cathica calls the mainframe, over Cathica's objections. His trains of thought are baffling to her, in large part because she accepts everything she's told without question, as she cannot conceive of anything being rotten in the state of S5. For example, Rose questions why the mainframe area is so hot, and Cathica dismisses it as just something to do with a turbine, she never inquired as to details.

Cathica doesn't come across as being brainwashed or indoctrinated, just a normal person who has chosen her life's ambition and is going with the general flow of society on her way there. This makes the episode more effective. It's easy to write a sci-fi story about a totalitarian regime that controls its populace through obedience devices or staring at a hypnotic screen or constant PSAs about Our Glorious God-Emperor. That's a story about brainwashing, about those helpless people over there in that society that doesn't resemble ours. This is more about normal people with free will, living with a corrupted source of news that proclaims transparency and a lack of bias even as it distorts galactic events as it sees fit. It's about the Cathicas who accept the values of society, and the information that the press gives them, as implicitly true. It's about the Sukis who fight for a press that will genuinely report honestly and with humility, because that is something that matters. It's about deciding for yourself what matters, rather than accepting water riots as no big deal because the media treats it as just another news story. And it's about questioning what you are told and thinking for yourself. All of that is something that has more to say to the viewer about the viewer's own life than "don't let the evil genocidal tyrant stick a dolled-up hair dryer on your head."

Anyway, The Editor is still tracking the Doctor and Rose, and nibbles the scenery a bit about how the computer could possibly have no record of either of them. (Suki is now a zombie helping to run security checks.) He schedules them for a trip to Floor 500, sending the Doctor's hacked interface the appropriate elevator code. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rose have worked out that the vents and pipes on the station are working very hard to draw heat out of the top of the satellite, so they both want to go up and see what the source is. Cathica repeats that she wants no part of this, and the Doctor cheerfully writes her and Adam off.

Adam has begun to cautiously explore the use of his info-spike, and as I write this sentence I realize why he's named Adam, as he's gone against his better judgement for the sake of gaining knowledge that he hopes will make him like unto a god. Anyway, he heaves and vomits (honestly, my stomach is turning a bit), only to find that Not-Surgeon Lady also gave him nanotermites that freeze any regurgitated food. A special package deal for such an excellent client as yourself, and would sir also like a 24k gold foie gras slushie for just five million more?

The Doctor steps out on Floor 500 and suggests Rose retreat while he looks around worriedly. She comes along, of course, and The Editor captures them so he can learn who they are. He introduces them to his boss, who appears to be just a slimy, ribbed blob of flesh with a head that has spiky teeth in it. Not very inspired, but it's not a spider so I won't argue. The Editor explains that the Jagrafess has controlled humanity's ambitions and actions via control of their news, which answers the viewer's question of "Why should we care what the news media does?" Because people distorting the news generally do it for reasons you may not agree with, selfish or ideological or otherwise, and by doing so they keep people from behaving in accordance with the truth of any given matter and eventually stunt the growth of society. This episode takes a positive view of humanity, incidentally, implying that people will advance properly when given the truth and encouraged to think for themselves, rather than needing the "right" person at the head to steer them this way or that. Which shouldn't be surprising, given that the Doctor isn't too fond of authority figures in general.

The Editor talks more about the Jagrafess's manipulation of media, just in case viewers don't get the point. He says that being able to see inside people's brains allows him to squelch any dissent before it begins . . . at which point Cathica strides out of the elevator, having begun to doubt while The Editor was distracted with the Doctor. She overhears the exposition about the Jagrafess letting people have a herd mentality while it stays cool at the top of S5. Meanwhile Adam has found a chair and is transmitting data to his parents' answering machine so hard that the blue stream somehow travels along the signal and envelops the machine. The Doctor, with himself and Rose under torture, admits who he and Rose are, but The Editor is now drawing information from Adam's brain. You knew Adam's info-spike would be a plot point sooner or later, right? Anyway, The Editor can levitate the TARDIS key from out of Adam's pocket remotely. It's more original than having thugs capture and search him, at least.

Cathica uses the abandoned chair to drop the safeties, cut Adam's stream, and cancel the heat sink mechanism. The Doctor is pleased, being surprised at this awakening in her. The Editor tries to cut her stream, but she blows out the controls at his end. The Doctor and Rose escape before the alien explodes. The Editor tries to escape too, but there's enough of Suki left that she grabs him and keeps him there.

The Doctor leaves Cathica in charge while he deals with Adam. He takes Adam, who is blubbering excuses throughout much as van Statten did in front of the Dalek, and plops him back in his home. The Doctor then destroys the answering machine, scolds Adam, plays with Adam's spike to drive home his utter lack of sympathy for Adam's plight, and leaves. Rose tries to play peacemaker but can't resist triggering the spike herself, and when Adam asks her to let him come along, glares at him and leaves. Adam's mother comes home, very surprised and tickled that he's there. She happens to click her fingers, which Adam never changed from being the spike trigger, and makes a very "eccch" face as we go to the end credits. He'll have fun explaining that one!

Adam can be seen as a warning against abusing special knowledge for one's own ends, but we had that last episode. He's more important as an example of why the Doctor doesn't let just anyone come along.

Objectively this is probably another 3, but I believe I would think nothing of skipping over it in a binge-watch. And since these are subjective scores . . .

Rating: 2 beef-flavored slush puppy drinks

Favorite dialogue: The Doctor: The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guidebook. You've got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double, and wind up kissing complete strangers. Or is that just me?

Hope you're doing these reviews from Blue Ray discs, not NetFlix. NetFlix is dropping Doctor Who on February first. Yeah, that seriously upset me as well.