Season 1 wrap-up

After working my way through Season 1, I thought I'd do a little wrap-up.

My scores

Episode 1 - Rose                               8/10
Episode 2 - The End of the World        7/10
Episode 3 - The Unquiet Dead             7/10
Episode 4 - Aliens of London               8/10
Episode 5 - World War Three              7/10
Episode 6 - Dalek                             10/10
Episode 7 - The Long Game                8/10
Episode 8 - Father's Day                     7/10
Episode 9 - The Empty Child              10/10
Episode 10 - The Doctor Dances        10/10
Episode 11 - Boom Town                     5/10
Episode 12 - Bad Wolf                         8/10
Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways   9/10

                              Season Average = 8/10

Three episodes were 10/10 for me, which I suspect will be tough for another season to top. If it wasn't for the Godawful Boom Town, it would have been mostly killer and very little filler.

Winner

Winner

Chicken dinner

Ongoing problems

Let's see how the season fares when it comes to the ongoing issues I always go on about (otherwise known as my pet peeves). Not all of them had a showing in Season 1, but the ones we did see were the ones that annoy me the most.

Season 1 saw:

• 3 episodes featuring instances of Hunka hunka burning Doc
• 4 episodes with In-Who-Endos
• 4 episodes that resorted to Deus Ex Screwdriver

That last one surprised me the most. I honestly thought it took longer for the Sonic Screwdriver to become a crutch for The Doctor, but there it is. Interestingly, all four of those were in the latter half of the season.

I was also a bit surprised to see the Hunka hunka burning Doc start so early too. I would have sworn that didn't happen until David Tennant came in. Still, one of those three was from Jackie "upright with a pulse" Tyler and despite the odd relationship between Doctor and Companion in Season 1, the other instances of this are mostly from other females, not Rose.

Though not all of them

Season Arc

The Bad Wolf arc played our quite subtly on the whole. There were a couple of excellent hints, but there were a couple of horrible ones too. Some, like the landing chopper in Dalek seemed a little forced. To my mind, there is no reason there has to be a season arc reference in each episode, so if it can't appear naturally, why force it?

Ultimately Bad Wolf is little more than a verbal reference to the final episode. It's supposed to be a warning, but how? what did it warn them of? And whilst The Long Game technically ties in, it's not as integrated as they could be. As I said in my review, The Doctor simply neglects to ask any of the questions that he really should have asked. This is where more could have been done to hint at the arc. It's tough to have The Doctor ask questions in case he gets answers, but so long as the answers only lead to more questions, it will work well.

A solid season arc is one that has clearly been planned ahead and worked into multiple story lines, with dialogue and situations clearly (at least with hindsight) having been included to progress the arc story in advance of its dedicated episodes.

Bad Wolf doesn't feel like that, and could easily have been written last and the words retroactively added during filming. The only hints that really feel properly integrated are Gwyneth's scene in The Unquiet Dead and maybe The Doctor's realisation in Boom Town. Gwyneth shows us Bad Wolf is tied to Rose, and The Doctor's soliloquy makes the implication that the words are somehow following them. Later seasons seem to do better at progressing the arc story than this first one though.

All up a very entertaining season with some all-time classics in it.

Anniversary poster revealed!

The BBC have just revealed the poster for the 75 minute 50th Anniversary special, named The Day of the Doctor.

John Hurt looks badass! I see exploding Daleks, bits of TARDIS and a Bad Wolf reference.

I'm freaking excited!

Review - The Parting of the Ways

Season 1 comes to a dramatic conclusion, as does Christopher Eccleston's all too short tenure as The Doctor in The Parting of the Ways.

Season 1, Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways

We pick up this story with The Doctor and Captain Jack flying off to rescue Rose from the recently revealed Dalek armada. Here I get a little confused as to why all of the sudden the TARDIS is apparently defenseless. I thought it always had some kind of shielding, but I could be somewhat confused. After bodging up a shield using the Extrapolator we get treated to a nice long conversation with the Emperor Dalek, wherein we learn it has a God Complex and it loonier than usual.

After The Doctor, Jack and Rose escape, there was an awkward bit of sexual tension back on the Game Station between The Doctor and Lynda. I thought they were hinting at that in Bad Wolf, but wasn't sure until the weird, kiss-no-hug-no-shake moment. Very strange, and possibly one of the few Hunka hunka burning Doc moments with Nine.

As the Doctor begins enacting his plan to foil the Daleks (not really using the Sonic Screwdriver much if at all), he forcibly evacuates Rose back home using Emergency Program 1. Rose then has a significant culture shock freak-out. Her speech about how The Doctor teaches you to lead a good life was inspired, and very well delivered. It really dug its claws into me for some reason. Maybe because I sort of feel that way about The Doctor myself in a way.

The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know, he showed you too. That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say, "No." You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away...

I loved the classic flying saucer design of the Dalek ships, and the flood of Daleks pouring out of them was a fantastic sight. We also saw our first specialist Dalek of New Who in the form of a blowtorch wielding one. We also got to hear some classic Dalek lines:

"I cannot see! My vision is impaired!"

Then the big companion tease with Lynda is ended with a silent, "Ex-ter-mi-nate!" You can't hear the Dalek say it, but you know what each flash of those lights means. Little details like that are always appreciated here. When Jack's time came, he copped it sweet, and it would have been a perfect ending for him if things went differently.

Captain Jack Harkness. Dying, like a BOSS!!!

There's a lot of ethical agonising over killing all life on Earth to destroy the Daleks, and you could see the conflict in Eccleston's face as that scene played out. The Doctor chooses not to be that man again and to face the consequences of that decision. Rose channeling the Time Vortex gives a handy out to that problem, and if she'd showed up a couple of minutes earlier, we could have been in for a repeat of the end of Boom Town. I was glad the Doctor made his choice before Rose's return.

I can't work out if I liked Time Vortex Rose or not. Was she nailing the performance, or failing badly? In the end I just went with it. I'm confused as to why absorbing the power of the Time Vortex was fatal to The Doctor, but not to Rose. She had the power for much longer and suffered no ill effects beyond passing out. I suppose this is likely a symptom of Eccleston suddenly leaving the program though. And quite why The Doctor had to kiss the Time Vortex out of her, I can't begin to imagine.

The Doctor prescribes 200 CCs of Lurve.

So, all told this was a solid episode, and a great way of ending the season despite the quite literal Deus Ex Machina ending. It was also a reasonable send-off for Eccleston, who, as I've said before, was woefully under-rated as The Doctor. If we'd have had another season or two with him, I think more people would appreciate Nine.

9/10

Can we fix it?

Not really, no. I know I haven't given this one a straight 10, but I can't really pick where it could be improved. Perhaps the way it ended makes it feel a bit rushed. Rose is able to deal with the Dalek threat in a literal instant, making The Doctor's 20 minute struggle to get the Delta Wave generated seem a bit of a waste fo time. A bit of explanation on how Rose survived the Time Vortex but it caused The Doctor to regenerate would be nice. All it needed was a throwaway line during the Regeneration sequence.

Minor tweaks, anyway. Still totally re-watchable.

Review - Bad Wolf

Stuff starts getting REAL as the season 1 season arc bears delicious Dalek-fruit in Bad Wolf.

Season 1, Episode 12 - Bad Wolf

Back we go to Platform 5, a century after The Doctor made his gross assumption that everything would go back to normal, only to find that it didn't. That worked well, didn't it Doctor? If only you'd asked where that Jagrafess had come from. Seriously though, I love to see The Doctor as fallible.

This time around the concept of televisual thought control is taken to the next logical step, with reality TV being the focus. As an added bonus of revisiting this episode, I also got to revisit some of the crappiest TV programming of the new millennium.

It really is a wonder this stuff didn't last.

The droids are all delightful representations of their real life inspirations, and the games work well as ways to destroy people. All except the What Not To Wear show, which really forced a way to kill the contestant. Those segments were the most entertaining though. John Barrowman plays it so well, clearly enjoying a chance to really ham it up as Jack. And did I see him grope one of the droids at one point?

Yes. Yes I did.

This episode has also given us our first Deadlock Seal to stop any Deus Ex Screwdriver. We got our first Torchwood reference too, starting that neat tradition of teasing the next season arc.

We get a bit of what I'm going to call Companion Tease, where Lynda shows an interest in traveling with The Doctor, and The Doctor shows an interest in letting her. Or is that just an interest in her. I couldn't really tell from this if there was supposed to be a romantic spark here or just an interest in travelling. Either way, this helps support Rose's "death" by making it feel like they're introducing a replacement.

She certainly seems the type.

The Controller was nice and creepy, and she was offered up as a solid Red Herring villain. Her death gave a good hint at who the Big Bad really was. We got a bit of monster vision when Rose woke up too, which again gave a strong hint. The revelation the enemy are Daleks plays out nicely, and the threat level of one Dalek established in the episode Dalek makes us understand this threat is near unbelievable.

It was interesting that The Doctor defied the Daleks when that were threatening Rose's life. I'm not sure he could have known they wouldn't just exterminate her. He did end it well though, and the closing shot of the interior of the Dalek ship was just ace, and left me hanging for The Parting of the Ways.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Well, my only real bugbear with this episode was the reality shows the crew ended up in at the start. Of all of them, I think Big Brother is the only one left on the air, so it hasn't aged well. The main issue was that the What Not To Wear show didn't have a realistic way of destroying people. This is a tough one, because those sequences were so entertaining, but I think they needed to either figure out another way to get the disintegration ray into that show, or put Jack in a different show altogether. Perhaps some version of The Bachelorette would have allowed Jack to give us some awesome Jack moments but still retain the element of elimination common to the other two shows.

Bring on part two!