The Times on Doctor Who

[philmophlegm]

The Times's TV correspondent makes some telling observations on the new series...



"As an episode of Doctor Who, the first of its latest season (BBC One, Saturday) made a pretty good Catherine Tate Show. Admittedly Tate wasn't “doing” more than one character - a plucky loser called Donna - and, admittedly, Sarah Lancashire stole the show with her impersonation of Jo Supernanny Frost, but the tone was sketch show, sketch show, sketch show, albeit one that lasted even longer than a Catherine Tate sketch. I really hoped it would end and turn out to be a spoof on behalf of charity.

Writer Russell T. Davies, the over-indulged genius who will probably end up with a knighthood for regenerating this national icon, had two large targets in his sights: the slimming industry and bossy nannies. Missing, somehow both, he fired a tranquilliser dart into the heart of Doctor Who.

There is so much right about the new Doctor. Few can doubt that David Tennant is an original incarnation of our Gallifreyan friend. The casting is impressive. The show's special effects are terrific. Indeed, if it were just that Tennant can be as annoying as a teenager with ADD, that celebs now regard a cameo on Doctor Who as they once would have an invitation on to Morecambe and Wise, and that the technical wizardry encourages the scriptwriters to blow up the universe every week, I wouldn't cavil.

My worry is that Davies has forgotten that Doctor Who's main task is to send children scuttling behind sofas while entertaining their fathers with the odd philosophical idea, the occasional classical reference, a joke or two they would probably not wish to explain and a wee bit of space totty. It is not there to explore the Doctor's sex life, labour the acceptability of male on male lip action or send up other television programmes. Most of all, it is not there to send junior chuckling to bed.

But Saturday's story was laughable: an alien plot to produce babies for intergalactic adoption by sucking the fat from overweight Brits who took diet pills whose only side effect was that the fat literally walked out of your side in the form of infants that looked like a cross between pencil erasers and the Pillsbury Doughboy. These were later beamed up to a spaceship by Miss Foster (mother, geddit?) as played by Lancashire. To compound the facetiousness, the Doctor was later observed zooming though the skies waving through the Tardis's open doors at Bernard Cribbins, who was looking at the stars through a telescope on his allotment. Let us get this straight. The Tardis materialises and dematerialises though time and space, it does not blast off, career down streets or dart between clouds. Davies is thinking of a Thunderbird.

And then there is the Catherine Tate problem. Actually, as the new assistant, she was fine and gave a toned down performance, but she is so well known for comedy that she cannot but exacerbate Davies's instinct to play the show for laughs. Even so, she had to face another dilemma, entirely of Davies's making. Because, thanks to his relationship with Rose, the Doctor is now a sexual being, every time he hires a new companion the will-they-snog question has to be resolved. Last time, Martha fancied him but he was still pining after Rose. This time Donna, it was excruciatingly explained, doesn't fancy the Doctor and the Doctor doesn't fancy her (maybe he can't get Nan out of his head). Let that be an end of it."

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I've give up watching (though the magic words "written by Stephen Moffatt" can call me back) but I did see the last fifteen minutes or so while eating dinner on Saturday. However, I am very impressed by this review. It goes to the heart of the current problem, particularly with RTD's scripts.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

A combination of sharp points and misapprehensions, but no-one will be surprised that I think that...

...The Guardian is also critical, from another angle.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

...and the Guardian's central point that RTD writes too many of the stories is a very good one*. He's excellent in the role of a script editor, devising and developing characters and themes. He's not so good at writing individual stories. This episode was a perfect example of that - the Donna character is promising (and unlike some, I think Catherine Tate will be good - she is underappreciated as a serious actress), but the plot was flimsy. I could excuse that in the Rose / 9th Doctor introductory episode and the Martha introductory episode, but we've already had a Donna introduction in the Runaway Bride.


* I'm agreeing with comment in The Guardian. That's not like me...

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

RTD always has been as much the star of this series as the actors playing the Doctor and companion, at least in the eyes of those in the commissioning chairs. I think that if he wrote fewer episodes (though he only intended to do four this year; the fifth fell his way late in the day when Tom MacRae's script for episode ten became unworkable) some people would feel shortchanged. There's definitely a sense now that he wants to leave; a report on a recent speech of his at an industry meeting seemed to include a plea for a new commission.

His style tends to subjugate plot to character, and speak of a world where emotion has a direct influence on cause and effect. I thought Partners in Crime superior to Smith and Jones because I thought that its threat was contained and less gimmicky than 'let's move a hospital to the moon and have rhinocerus monsters striding about!'. I liked the Adipose, and the news on the website (based on a line cut from the transmitted episode) mthat the Shadow Proclamation have prevented them from meeting their parents so they can be brought up responsibly (a nurture, not nature, agenda, arguably rare for Doctor Who) strengthens my suspicion that a pre-school spinoff may be in the works.

I still think an introductory episode for the 'new' Donna was necessary; The Runaway Bride didn't show Catherine Tate or the character to advantage, and as anticipated (or hoped for) Donna has had extensive refashioning to make her fit for a regular place in the TARDIS.

[wryelle.livejournal.com]

I also thought the episode seemed tired. I didn't mind the Adipose plot, although perhaps it was a bit menace-free. I did think the characterisation of the Doctor is looking like they are running out of ideas. RTD has taken the Doctor to a new level by exploring why he has companions, and his emotional effect on his companions - the devastating effect of the culture shock, and of the Doctor's own magnetism - but I think having made those points they are struggling with what to do with the character next and have been for a while. All this stuff was brilliant and new, and done far more subtly in the Ecclestone season - this time listening to Donna gushing about how wonderful the Doctor was I just cringed and thought 'ok...we get it already'...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I have a suspicion that this over-the-top gushing about the Doctor was a set-up for a later episode, maybe even next week's. Possibly the Doctor refusing to evacuate people from Pompeii because he doesn't want to change history, and Donna's opinion changing. That sort of thing.