Review - Father's Day

Rose gets a big bunch of very emotional character development wrapped up with a fairly standard time travel trope story-line in Father's Day.

Season 1, Episode 8 - Father's Day

There's not a hell of a lot of action in this episode, which is fine, it just gives it a different tone to some others. As a result, it's quite talky. Again, this is fine for me, but some others may feel it drags a bit. It's definitely a vehicle for some character development of Rose, and by the end of the episode we've pretty much caught up on who she is and a lot of her motivations. Still a little unclear on the whole "dump your boyfriend at a second's notice" thing though. Maybe she got her monogamy genes from her dad.

We got a lot of good "monster vision" before the full reveal, which really only made the reveal a bit more disappointing. We had lots of poignant shots of kids shoes, bikes, prams and so on to indicate a bunch of nastiness is going down. This reminded me a bit of that long, lingering Ewok death scene in Return of the Jedi. When we do finally see them, the Reapers did look a bit naff, but ultimately were not really seen up close too frequently so it didn't hurt too much.

Just not doing it for me

The whole "Watson, come here I need you" bit was a neat little hook. People who knew the reference could have a little smile to themselves for being clever before The Doctor explains it. The old-school mobile phone gives opportunity to both play with this, and as a tool for The Doctor to use later on. I suppose it's not completely unfeasible to use sound waves to recharge a battery, but we're sneaking into Deus Ex Screwdriver territory here. There was a lot of opportunities to laugh at the 80s though, which is nice for those of us that can remember them.

The Doctor and Rose's relationship has some ups and downs here, with The Doctor pretty much dumping Rose near the start, and having a go at her a couple of times throughout. Ultimately though he does try to save her some hurt by looking for an alternate solution to the one he know's will work. That particular solution was telegraphed almost from the start though. It did remind me a little of the Red Dwarf episode Tikka to Ride, in which President Kennedy has to assassinate himself in order to stop history from changing.

Not nearly as interesting to conspiracy theorists though

All up this episode was pretty much all about Rose, but not in a The Companion Show featuring The Doctor kind of way. If you're not that into her (like me) you may find your mind wandering (like me), but I think it's important to have these kinds of episodes every now and then. It makes the companions more than just pretty faces who love The Doctor (I'm looking at you, Amy Pond).

7/10

Can we fix it?

This is a tough one. I don't think we could improve my score for this episode without changing the core of the story. There were some elements that weren't really explained very well, like the TARDIS key and how The Doctor could rematerialise the TARDIS just by hooking it up to a battery. It was either under-explained, or just not thought out. In the end it was unimportant, as it played no part in the eventual solution. Maybe it was just there to show us The Doctor was trying to save Pete. I'm not sure if I'd drop it or not. My gut is saying not.

I'd have liked a better design for the Reapers too. It's my understanding that this wasn't what the original concept called for, but I think they could have created a creature that had more of a resemblance to the Grim Reaper than just a scythe blade on it's tail. Something that shared more of the overall silhouette. That way we could have had some distant glimpses of them looking like death, with the implication being it was THE Grim Reaper come for Pete. This parallel is kind of lost with big black bats attacking a church.

It will never be a favourite, but still worth a watch.