WARNING – POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE EPISODE AND CHRISTMAS PREVIEW
The beginning of the end. That’s what it was hailed as, the start of the trio of episodes that sees the exit of the great David Tennant from his role as ‘The Doctor’, and without an episode of Dr Who since Easter us Who-fans were just dying of anticipation for Waters of Mars. It had been massively hyped up by the BBC, Tennant has been flying about from show to show getting the word out and about 40 minutes before I write this up, it finished. 60 minutes of Dr Who. Was it worth the wait? To quote The Doctor himself… ‘ohh-ohhhhh yes!!’!
To put it simply, the episode was even better than I was expecting. It was written by Russell T. Davies, and his episodes for me tend to be over written in content and story at times so I had that on my mind. I will admit – towards the end I did wonder to myself how long it was going to be before RTD involved some over the top, unnecessary addition to the action unfolding in front of us. It kind of happened, but it stayed far less ridiculous than previous ‘RTD moments’ and it ruined nothing for me. Add that to the fact that there was no Dr Who for the majority of the year; this episode had a lot to live up to! As ever though it prevailed with flying colours and a sense of utter wanting from myself for the next episode to be screened at Christmas. I can’t wait just over another month!!!
So what made it such a great return to form after this unnecessary absence? The story, and characters involved, worked wonderfully well and they had their reason to be there. We were given their stories oh-so briefly through the Doctor and for the most part they all seemed vital to keeping the story and show watchable. Adelaide Brooke was a fine leader for her team, and almost companion, in the epsiode and the way her history was affected by what choices were made by the end of the episode – her own choices included as we saw. I found it quite smart how the whole history aspect of the story changed a few times depending on the Doctor and what he did, and of course, for the first time we saw a new side to Tennant’s Doctor. Plus, the return of the Ood that, previously a while ago, mentioned a song relating to the end of The Doctor… lots of little callbacks to references previously mentioned made it even better!
How weird was it to see Tennant turn his lovable cheeky-rascal character into a malicious, arrogant, power-mad creature? For me seeing the Doctor go from a down-trodden, defeated friend into an unlikeable fool was quite something. It was a side we’d never seen before – whereas the Doctor knew he had his power as a Timelord, the limits were always there and boundaries more than existed in his mind. By the end of the episode, these boundaries were more than gone, the power had gone to his head and it was bizarre to see his unlikeable quality of him that, for me at least, I did not expect to see. Despite that, it was pretty wonderful to see how easy it was for Tennant to flick the switch and decide to take everything into his own hands, and give a fresh angle for the Doctor before his time is up.
So that leaves us waiting with much exasperation for Christmas. The preview showed so much – the return of Donna Noble, the legend that Donna’s grandfather Wilf (cheers James!), scenes of mayhem and chaos, the Doctor continuing his new line of power and, of course, the return of The Master. Yes, we knew it was happening, but my god was it good to see. The mention of the four knocks, the sinister laugh, and John Simm in tow to take this Doctor’s era out with a bang…
Christmas can’t come quick enough…
6 comments:
just one thing Lukeh. Wilf is Donna's grandfather ;)
Oops, thanks james. Corrected now. :)
What kind of things are RTD moments?
I think the writing was better than you anticipated because it was Phil Ford and RTD. Phil Ford writes SJA and has also written Dreamland. I always think RTD is better when he's editing someone else rather than just writing on his own
Well, the main example for me is finales with Daleks. Russell seemed to always go straight back to daleks at times and it got a bit predictable albeit it brilliant at times. We started back in Series 1 with that single Dalek but before we knew it, we had them around every corner out of nowhere. Most of the time I found it was from episodes written by RTD himself.
Another thing is how, at times, he would turn the Doctor into a god-like character. One of the finales had him going from ridiculously old with The Master dancing about to pop songs, yet later on he was floating about with light coming out of his orifices and allsorts. even for a sci-fi show I just feel at times his writing can get a little over the top with the way he uses the characters. He almost did it tonight when The Doctor returned but soon made up for it when it revealed it was all about the power going to his head rather than using him as the saviour of everything and whatnot.
Hopefully that makes more sense :) it's just something about his episodes I always seem to notice!
I hear ya. The daleks are very over-used.
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