Rose The End of the World The Unquiet Dead Aliens of London World War III Dalek The Long Game Father's Day The Empty Child The Doctor Dances Boom Town Bad Wolf The Parting of the Ways

BBC New Series Season One

• The New Who Is Old - The Nature of Season 27 by Adrian Loder
• Time And Relationship Discussions In Space by Daniel Saunders
• A Review of the first two episodes by Larry Summers
• A Review by Rob Matthews
• The Year of the Eccel-Doc by Terrence Keenan
• A Review by Tal Hazeldon
• No matter where you go, there you are... by Thomas Cookson
• Series 1: a Japanese view by Finn Clark

The New Who Is Old - The Nature of Season 27 by Adrian Loder 2/8/05

Season 27, huh? Why, I must be some kind of continuity-fetishist, desperately trying to fit the new Who into some mold created by the 40 years of prior history. Unable to cope with change, a fan of a certain Who and can't deal with RTD's new vision, right?

No, no. Yes, I had reservations about certain directions the show had taken - certain aspects that made me cringe, but as the season worked its way along, I came to a few realizations, and I think that these things illuminate the nature of the new Who. Really it isn't change I have an issue with - the particular changes that were made, or, in some cases, the way in which they were implemented, left me unsatisfied. Yet no matter what, I still enjoyed it week in and week out, and finally, when Father's Day came, there was a kind of epiphany, so let's start there.

I felt at the time, and do now, that Father's Day was the perfect melding of what came before with what Doctor Who is in the here and now. This has been explained satisfactorily in my review of that episode, so there will be no reprise here. I was, however, quite keen to see other takes on the show. In particular someone put forth the opinion that were it not for little, tenuous links like Daleks or U.N.I.T. this really wouldn't be a continuation of the old at all but rather a reboot, indeed it was very close to being such as it was. Nevermind that the creator of this rebirth, as well as the BBC website, officially proclaim otherwise - let's look at the essence of the show.

What, really, ties the new show to the old? Well, it was created by a longtime fan, it is being produced by the BBC, some of the writers have worked on other, previous incarnations of the show (novels, Big Finish), incoming director Graeme Harper worked on episodes of the so-called 'classic' series. Internally, the title character is not just the same in principle, he IS the same guy, his incarnation is the one following the last to be seen on TV (and indeed heard and read), and his opening episode displays him checking out his new digs, as it were. The trappings are the same - TARDIS, sonic screwdriver, there are (or were) Time Lords, Daleks, Autons, Cybermen. In other words, all the peripherals are the same, but, though the internal content - plot, characterization, etc - have certain similarities, there are many differences from what has gone before. The Doctor is by turns effervescent and cheery, and incredibly serious; he can be uncompromising and almost cruel in judgement, yet sometimes cannot bring himself to be a destroyer; he gives of himself for humanity yet is more brutally critical of people and his companions than he has ever been before; he is brilliant yet he often screws up completely and has left a wake of bodies as big as he ever did in the past. He is contradiction embodied and while showing similar traits, the whole is unlike anything we've seen before.

In addition, a greater emphasis has been placed on the consequences of the Doctor's actions - taking people away from their loved ones, in particular, as it has explored mother-daughter, and lover-lover relations, though not always effectively. The Doctor has been more consistently prone to romantic feeling, and stories have often been critical of the Doctor and his ways, above and beyond the past. These things are hardly forbidden, but some of us have been upset with them, or with how they've been employed. Indeed, I hated the domestic aspects, but then when they were done well, in Father's Day, I became reconciled to their place, provided they were handled with real feeling and had a place in the essence of the story being told.

In short, the little things, the tenuous links, are the same as before, but the character of the show is radically different. But does this make it but a hop, skip and a jump away from being a series reboot?

Let's look at the Hartnell era - a crotchety, sometimes doddering, sometimes manipulative Doctor who, when placed in a bad situation is often just as interested in getting out, out, out as anything - as opposed to later incarnations who felt it their duty to stay and fight injustices they came upon. He involved himself consistently with Earth's history, and had little contact with those of his own kind, revealing next to nothing of his past. He is also the only Doctor to have given evidence of family ties. Compare this to the Fourth Doctor, say, in the Hinchcliffe years - things are entirely different. This Doctor was committed to fighting injustice, visited alien worlds predominantly, was often physically involved, only played the fool to get his enemies to drop their guard, was capable of great humor in the face of danger and rarely touched the history of Earth. His companions were very different, the women largely self-assured and capable, as opposed to screaming coffee-makers like Susan, Vicki , Dodo and Polly (though in fairness Polly busies herself with coffee in The Moonbase, with Troughton's Doctor rather than Hartnell's). In terms of television shows, they were completely different. The only real ties were that the character, though played by a different actor, was indeed the same person; he traveled in a TARDIS; if we stretch to Troughton, he had a sonic screwdriver; he encountered Daleks and Cybermen; the show was called Doctor Who and it was made by the BBC.

The point should be clear. This new series is, in fact, no more different from what came before than later parts of the original were from other, earlier parts. If Tom Baker-Who is part of the same show as Hartnell-Who, then so is Eccleston-Who, 16-year hiatus or no. As Rob Matthews has stated, Who is a 40-year accumulation of shows, audios, books and the like that have formed a body of material collectively known as Doctor Who. This is the only reason why we view the new series as being a departure - because what has gone before has agglomerated into a kind of homogeneous ball, with certain, broad characteristics being painted across the whole. But on closer inspection, these are a deception, forged by human beings that, like most people, must categorize, sort and file things, order them into a logical hole that they then can easily refer to and characterize. In truth, though there have been certain links maintained - links still carried on in the new BBC series, as well - through the series' history in all media, the fact is that radically breaking from the past is, ironically, one of Doctor Who's most consistent traits. In failing to be a mere homage to the old, the new Who is in fact closer to the spirit of the old than if it were being written by Robert Holmes, Brian Hayles and Eric Saward, and produced by Innes Lloyd, Phillip Hinchcliffe or John Nathan-Turner, aping the past as much as possible.

We may protest the particular alterations, but on looking at the old in detail I think it is obvious that the divergences and mere peripheral links to the past are wholly in tune with the sprit of the past and in fact make it clearer than ever that this new show is very far indeed from being a series reboot. This is why I call it Season 27 - because, cancellation and rebirth or not, it is.

I also want to add a note on continuity. There have been some contraventions of prior history in the adventures of Doctor number 9 and some are quite funny - I certainly dug Aliens of London and World War III - more than most, it seems - but 'first contact'? Hahahahaha... The Web of Fear? The Invasion? Spearhead From Space? Terror of the Autons? Come ON. However, as amusing as this is, there is something that the continuity-obsessed need to realize - trying to patch over these things is more fun, and more rewarding, than too much complaining. Granted, sometimes Robert Holmes' 'I will contravene continuity simply to make a point and not with any rhyme or reason behind it' gets irritating. You can't just rewrite history every story, BUT, in a fictional world, so much can be done, and accomplished, and re-done, that really you can alter the past or at least bend it some and still be alright. Indeed, continuity should be a guide, but not a straightjacket. An excellent story should receive precedence over continuity, granting it isn't something that would alter one of the two or three fundamental basics of the show's premise. And as The Discontinuity Guide shows, you can come up with an explanation for anything, and it is, indeed, great fun to try.

Eventually one has to come to the realization that Doctor Who has now stretched over more than a hundred writers, directors and producers in multiple media and that to expect a strictly, internally-consistent whole is just foolish. Impossible. Just as the universe seems to be programmed with several strands of chaos embedded in an otherwise logical and orderly whole, so, too, are there such things in a phenemenon as broad and long-lasting as Doctor Who. Eventually you have to accept it and simply be happy that the big, huge important things are, more or less, consistent. That, in itself, is a minor miracle.

So, to be brief - all hail the new series of, rather, Season 27 of Doctor Who. And thank you to everyone who brought it back.

Time And Relationship Discussions In Space by Daniel Saunders 9/8/05

The basis of the new series' popular and critical success is that it has successfully reached a family audience. The makers of the series had to fight hard to make it a family show, as almost everyone in the industry insisted that such an audience no longer existed. Modern television programmes tend to be created with a particular, narrow, demographic group in mind. For a long time it has been assumed that only young children and geeky, obsessive fans watch science fiction. The fact that the new series has shown that the family audience still exists and can be catered for with supposedly "niche" science fiction may well be the greatest achievement of Russell T Davies and company. Also worthy of praise is the care with which this programme has been created, or rather, re-created. There has been an attempt to introduce many of the series' key concepts, to make the show intelligible to a new audience while not alienating anyone who remembers the original series by altering things needlessly. Only those facts that are essential to a new audience have been introduced and this has been a gradual process. For example, we find out that the Doctor is an alien in episode one, but there is no mention of his ability to change his appearance until episode four and even then the reference is oblique; only in the final episode do new viewers really find out about the process (at least, that's how it should have been had the press not, as usual, ruined everything in its ruthless search for a scoop). Conversely, many of the things mentioned here were only introduced late in the original series' run. For example, the fact that the Doctor and his companions can understand alien languages is addressed in episode two, while the original series did not do so until season fourteen. This implies that much care was taken in deciding what was essential and what was not. If nothing else, the season deserves much praise for the very way it appeared on our screens.

The acting was the most successful aspect of the season. Christopher Eccleston succeeded in scenes containing suspense, emotion, character conflict, comedy and, indeed, dancing, without appearing to be a composite of characteristics changing according to the needs of the plot. The most obvious example, among many, is the last scene of The End of the World. The sudden shift from a big, emotional revelation to a decision to get some chips could easily have descended into bathos were it not for Eccleston's careful performance. Billie Piper's acting was comparable to Eccleston's despite his far greater experience; the success of the "going for chips" scene is due as much to her as to him. It is harder to assess the performance of the other regulars, given their smaller amount of screen time. John Barrowman portrayed Captain Jack with suitable gusto, but Bruno Langley, Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri were less impressive, although Clarke managed to recover from a bad start in Rose to make Mickey much more sympathetic by the end of the season. The guest cast was much less memorable, largely due to the fact that the regular characters were the focus of many of the episodes, but Shaun Dingwall, Florence Hoath, Simon Callow and Simon Pegg all stood out (note to the casting director on season two: employ more actors called Simon!).

Actors can only deliver good performances with well-written characters. Rose was an excellent audience identification figure. In order to give viewers who were not familiar with or receptive to science fiction a way of entering the fictional world, Davies took time to establish her everyday life in the first episode. Her reactions to her travels are realistic, as incredulity, shock and confusion give way to excitement and curiosity (with terrible consequences in Father's Day). Captain Jack I liked less, at least in his first story. There, he seems to be something of a wish-fulfilment character, but unfortunately, his wishes do not correspond to any of mine. I find people who, like Jack, are arrogant, self-opinionated and sex-obsessed, profoundly irritating. Fortunately, he is more likeable in the later stories, probably because he is sidelined in Boom Town and is in danger for most of the final story, so that he lacks time to boast, although this does mean that he turns into a slightly generic action hero. The most surprisingly effective regular character was, appropriately, the Doctor himself. This Doctor dances to the popular music of both the forties and the eighties, dresses fashionably, uses modern slang and ultimately has a deep emotional bond with his companion, although it was wise to leave this ambiguous, not just because it would have polarised the audience (both fans and, to a lesser extent, non-fans), but because the nature of the show's format requires a degree of distance between the concerns of the viewers and those of the Doctor; if he had a clear romantic relationship he would seem less alien, just as if he had a job, a mortgage and a list of household chores to do. This reinterpretation of the Doctor was successful because he was written in a consistent way. Had he alternated between his new persona and the type of eccentric-academic-cum-dotty-bachelor-uncle we saw in the original series, he would have seemed completely false. As shown on screen, he felt at times like a rounded, complicated, yet still sympathetic character, one actually shaped by his experiences rather than plot necessity. Naturally, he still retains many old characteristics, including his sheer joy in life, travelling and adventure, shown by his constant cries of "fantastic!" His strict moral code is also present. He is disgusted by killing and eschews violence except as a last resort.

However, at times he shows a callous side to his character not seen previously, perhaps caused by his experiences in the Time War. This is shown in the ruthless actions he is willing to take to defeat his enemies, notably in The End of the World, Dalek and Boom Town, where he seems to have a wider definition of "the last resort" than we have seen previously (at least in the television stories). It also manifests itself in a less tolerant attitude to humans, with "stupid ape" being almost as much of a catchphrase as "fantastic!" In many episodes he fails to consider or care how those around him will react to events, seen most clearly in his naive shock and anger at Rose's understandable actions in Father's Day.

However, this leads to the first serious flaw of the new series. The first few stories see the Doctor develop, as he becomes more tolerant of the emotions of people like Jackie and Mickey and less ruthless, concluding neatly in Dalek. In later stories he is less callous, especially in his attempt to avoid the obvious, but brutal, way of resolving the time paradox in Father's Day. However, Boom Town and The Parting of the Ways then unexpectedly suggest he will resume his ruthless attitude of the first half of the season, but having seen the way the events of Dalek changed him, the audience does not really believe this will happen. This deprives the season's finale of some of its tension and means that there is less of a sense of the Doctor developing across the season.

This attention to the development of the regular characters is the greatest and most controversial difference between the new series and the old. It is not the case that Doctor Who can not feature both characterisation and plot. In most fiction plot is simply the interaction of characters with each other and with events. Science fiction is one of the few genres where characters can be ignored in a story that is still successful. Wells and Asimov, for example, produced stories that had no realistic characters, but succeeded because of the strength of the ideas in them. However, the two can be married. Philip K Dick was able to explore abstract philosophical ideas through realistic characters who drove his plots. This emphasis on driving the plots is key. One reason the new series' character-based nature has attracted criticism is that too often the character development has been used to garnish a self-contained plot rather than being an essential ingredient. The plots of Dalek and Father's Day are intimately connected with their characters. Their storylines are simply the outcomes of the interaction of the characters in a believable and natural way.

Conversely, in some other stories, especially those by Davies, a self-contained adventure story has had some character-based scenes added. The Long Game is perhaps the best example. The scenes with Adam barely connect with the main storyline concerning the Jagrafess. This approach becomes a huge problem in the final episode, where we constantly cut from the exciting events on Satellite Five to yet more discussions about the dangers of time travel and how upset Rose's family will be if anything happens to her, immediately dissipating the tension. I think the difference is that Davies seems to see science fiction character drama as a mixture of character-based scenes and plot-based scenes, while the other writers see it as science fiction stories driven by their characters' personalities.

The second reason these character-based stories have been controversial is the fact they focus on the TARDIS crew. In many of the stories of original series, they reacted to problems that started independently of their presence. As a result, the supporting characters were very important. For example, Davros drives the plot of Genesis of the Daleks and it would be harder to rewrite the story without him than it would without the Doctor. This occurs less frequently in this season. This may simply be because the shorter story length does not allow as much time to develop the guest characters, explaining why many of those explored in depth are defined by their interactions with the regulars (such as Pete's relationship with Rose) or by comparison with them (the differences between Rose's acceptance of the alien and Dickens' disbelief or the similarities between the violent actions of the Doctor and the captured Dalek), although there are a few exceptions, most notably Nancy.

However, it does feel like the production team is trying to attract a new audience by adding a soap opera element. A lot of criticism of the new series seems to use "soap opera" as synonymous with "focused on the regular characters", but I see it as meaning that the scripts are focused on the mundane aspects of the characters' lives, rather than their reactions to the unknown and unexpected. The fact that Boom Town focuses on Rose is not a problem; the fact that it focuses on her relationship with Mickey is, because dumping your boyfriend is the same whether it is because you are leaving the country or leaving the planet. There is no science fiction element to the plot strand and it therefore feels out of place. Conversely, her reactions to the aliens in The End of the World or to watching her father die in Father's Day are more clearly based on the consequences of space and time travel and are therefore more appropriate to the nature of the programme. In an action-packed series like Doctor Who, this attention to the lives of "ordinary" regular characters has the additional problem that there is no way that they could realistically put themselves in such danger every week and still enjoy the experience. In Dalek, Rose, facing imminent death, tells the Doctor that she is still glad she joined him and immediately the internal consistency of the fictional world is destroyed. Since the first episode, the viewers have been invited to identify with Rose, but they would almost certainly prefer to live rather than spend a short time travelling in the past and the future. As a result, they either no longer identify with a character introduced primarily for that purpose, or ask why at the end of the adventure Rose does not go back to the safety of her home.

The shorter story length is also responsible for many of the best and worst aspects of the stories themselves. Like the title sequence, they move at incredible speed. This means that unlike the original series, there is no need to pad the stories with pointless capture-escape-chase-recapture sequences. However, there is also a much greater use of plot devices to keep the story moving, most notably the sonic screwdriver, used here to do almost whatever the story requires. Other examples include the strange transformation of the TARDIS interior in Father's Day, presumably intended to stop the Doctor going back and resolving the problem immediately, Adam's ability to phone home in The Long Game (shouldn't he have reached 2005, not 2012?) and "Margaret" keeping equipment vital to her plan on display in her office. There are excuses for this, besides the time factor. Any fast-paced story is likely to have some convenient or inexplicable plot devices and many of those listed above did nothing to damage my enjoyment of the story. Rose and Father's Day make a virtue of this confusion, intentionally making the audience as bewildered as the characters.

Nevertheless, in several stories there is a feeling that the writer has been lazy and this is a particular problem regarding the story resolutions. Rose, Boom Town, World War Three and The Parting of the Ways all end with convenient (currently spoiler-protected) plot devices. When a conclusion feels forced and unnatural, the whole narrative retroactively seems less worthwhile, as it did not drive the story to a conclusion, in the same way that a football match can seem pointless if a penalty shoot-out allows one team to win despite not playing as well as the opposition for the preceding ninety minutes. The endings of Dalek, The Long Game, Father's Day and The Doctor Dances flow naturally from the events leading up to them and so were more satisfying than the others.

A second problem with the shorter episodes is the fact that there is more to telling a successful story than just rushing from plot points A to B to C. Atmosphere and detail are also important. The Unquiet Dead does not have the chance to build up the atmosphere it needs to be a great horror story. The Long Game suffers from not having enough time to establish the nature of the society it is set in, a problem as the plot is intimately connected with the way it is being run. The concentration on the regular characters as opposed to the guests also deprived some of the stories of a sense of tension. It is difficult to care about what happens to characters like the Steward, Suki, Doctor Constantine and Lynda, as we do not find out enough about their personalities to get any real sense of who they are. In many cases, the sense of shock when someone dies or relief when they are saved is due to the ability of the actors to make them likeable, rather than because it is possible to identify with the characters them as real people. The episodes do not need to be expanded to the length of old four-part stories; an extra fifteen minutes would probably help to solve these problems, although this would make the series almost impossible to sell abroad.

I have up until this point attempted to be as objective as possible. However, there is one other thing that affects my enjoyment of this season a little. This is for purely personal reasons, so I do not intend it as a criticism, but I would not be presenting my views on the season accurately if I did not mention it. There is a huge difference in saying "this does not appeal to me" and "this should not have been done" and I stress that this is purely the former. To successfully appeal to a new audience, I am fully aware that the new series has to be modern and it is. Moreover, for the first time, Doctor Who is cool. The original series was popular, but never cool. The new Doctor wears a leather jacket, reads Heat magazine and dances to pop music, while his companions are constantly flirting and engaging in sexual banter. I'm not likely to ever do any of these things nor (and this is the point) to want to do so. It's cool. I'm not. It's not that I dislike these things per se or that I think they have no place in Doctor Who, but I am just not on the right wavelength to really connect with this series and its lead characters, even though I can see it is good, just as some people cannot connect with the Williams or Hartnell eras (two favourites of mine). I am not surprised by this at all, as I knew the new series would be more like modern telefantasy, not to mention the novels and audios, none of which I like that much, than it would be like the original series.

However, I stress that this is not a criticism, in many ways it is praise. While I watch Quatermass and The Prisoner, the rest of the audience, that essential family audience I mentioned at the start, watches Buffy and Sex in the City and this is aimed at them, not me. This is a very good season indeed and I would not be surprised if there are some well-deserved awards on the way to BBC Wales, regardless of the fact that I fight the urge to stop watching whenever the TARDIS crew start flirting with each other.

A Review of the first two episodes by Larry Summers 26/3/06

I have seen only the first 2 episodes of the new 2005 Doctor Who. I was a big fan of the earlier Doctor Who. I don't like the new offering, so far. Doctor Who should be about the Doctor, but this new version is more about Rose Tyler and friends. I like the new actor for the Doctor - great attitude. I like that Rose is more human than the earlier companions.

I do not like the huge change in history where the Doctor is the last Time Lord left. There were many dynamics in previous stories between the Doctor and Time Lords.

My opinion will not be permanent until after I see how the Daleks are portrayed. I have always felt that the Daleks were portrayed a bit too stupid, and I am hoping they have become a more worthy foe. I have seen some images of the new Daleks. The Dalek-look was kept - which I think strange. It could have been an area for some new creativity.

BTW - Rose's Mum is daft. Please keep her off screen. (Yes - I am a man and it is obvious that the new show is meant to attract a more feminine audience. I get that, but it doesn't do much for me...)

A Review by Rob Matthews 1/5/06

It may not in the future be remembered as part of the season proper, but in the trailer for the 2005 Doctor Who series, Christopher Eccleston walked about the TARDIS set promising us 'The trip of a lifetime.'

That, as it turns out, was not merely a bit of nice-sounding but empty sloganeering. It turns out to be somewhat of a key phrase for the 2005 series; indeed, I think it's just as apt an umbrella title for the season as The Key to Time was for season 16, or The Trial of a Time Lord for season 23. The beauty of the Who format lies largely in its capacity for continual (cyclical, perhaps) reinvention, and the preoccupation with 'life', or perhaps more specifically, 'a lifetime' was what constituted the main shift in emphasis in the 2005 season from those before.

Editor's note: You can read the rest of this article in Time, Unincorporated, Volume 3, published by Mad Norwegian Press. For copyright reasons, we are unable to display the online version simultaneously.

The Year of the Eccel-Doc by Terrence Keenan 15/5/06

In two days, I watched all 13 episodes of the RTD inspired Doctor Who and, overall, was impressed. The look, the effects and the performances were all very strong. The show was geared for reaching a wide audience, rather than for hardcore fanboys/fangirls. And it wasn't as Buffy-influenced as I feared it might be (though there are a couple of moments that are straight from Buffy, which we'll get to in the individual episode breakdowns).

The show worked well within the 45 minute episode format. However, that led to one of few things I felt was lacking about the series: a lack of worldbuilding and relaxed storytelling. Instead we get situations and "character pieces." Only in the two parters, did you get the sense of and worldbuilding.

As fas as the individual epsisodes go:

Rose: It's a kick-in-the-ass opener. Does a bang-up job of introducing the Doctor, Rose and establishing their relationship right away. The conspiracy bit was well done, and thankfully wasn't continued on. It's a strong start to the New Who.

The End of the World: I liked this one a lot. It's a nice little mystery, set against a brilliant idea: the rich and powerful are still interested in only themselves, even when the world is blowing up around them. The last human concept was brilliant as well. The Unquiet Dead: Mark Gatiss hits the first home run of the season, a gothic piece full of atmosphere, character and a cool alien race, the Gelth. This was the first one to really get the inner fanboy raving. A side note: Lawrence Miles took a bit of a kicking from fanboys on the web when he blasted this story as anti-immigrant/racist. Um, I think MIles makes an interesting point, however, the "nice aliens are really bastards underneath" is such a cliche in Sci-fi, that he would have probably made a better point attacking the lack of originality, then adding social implications.

Aliens of London/World War Three: Too many moments with Jackie and Mickey whining and moaning, combined with adolescent fart jokes drag down some interesting concepts and ideas. The plot is brilliant in itself, and the exectuion is strong, but after the third Slitheen fart joke, I was annoyed. Could have been so much better.

Dalek: This is the first story that really should have been expanded out to two episodes. Robert Sheman's rewrite of Jubilee works well enough, but I felt like things were slamming together far too fast for the ending to play out as strong as it should have. Dalek begs for atmosphere and a slower pace. Strong, but could have been so much better.

The Long Game: A bit of fun, this one. Anything with Simon "Shaun of the Dead" Pegg is going to be good. Although at times it smacks of filler (the whole Adam plotline), I found it quite entertaining.

Father's Day: It contains Billie Piper's best performance as Rose, and shows the entire cast stepping up to the plate. The chance to do the "another chance/paradox/what if plotline" in Who was worth doing, even though it has been done by most sci-fi/fantasy series in one form or another, just to see what the Who take on it might be. However, Father's Day made me cuss out the TV as I watched it. Why? Paul Cornell's subtle-as-a-frying-pan-upside-the-head manipulation of the viewer's emotions. None of it felt natural. The opening narration by Rose, the bits with young Rose and Jackie, the way the story develops, are all designed to have the audience crying. It's the Who equivalent of Beaches. If you want a real emotional moment in Who, grab your Fenric DVD and watch the Doctor dismiss Ace in is final confrontation with Fenric. That's a true humdinger, and it comes naturally. So much potential wasted.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: The best of the season, by far. Steven Moffat manages to come up with a wild story that has great bits of humor, an intriguing plot that twists at the right time, killer performances, and some genuinely scary moments. It's the only pair of stories where I felt a world was really being created for the viewer. And the ending packs a real emotional punch. And it felt real and honest.

Boomtown: It's the most Buffy-like of the new Who. Tons of domestic bits and long conversations, with a bit of action and a deux ex machina at the end. The worst of the new season, as it really felt like we were wasting time and tying up subplots before moving on to the end.

Bad Wolf: Um, the first 30 minutes of this episode annoyed me. Parodying games shows is just wrong, especially when you are trying to gear up toward the big finale. (It's my prediction that this episode will age as poorly as the first couple of years of the JNT reign, which just scream "living in the 80's".) However, the last few minutes almost make up this, and what an awesome moment it is when the Doctor tell Rose he's going to rescue her. The return of the Daleks, as a huge force of evil and chaos is brill.

The Parting of the Ways: The Who equal of Buffy's Prophecy Girl. And just as well executed. The resolution of the Bad Wolf season-long plot was unexpected. The Daleks were better executed than in Dalek. Although I wish it had been the Doctor who had destroyed the Daleks once and for all, the whole season has been gearing towards Rose having her big "Slayer Moment". Overall, sloppy, but quite good.

Who has been reborn for a new audience and a new time. And sucessfully reborn at that. Despite a few minor kinks and a couple of stories that I found disappointing. The year of the EccelDoc was well done.

A Review by Tal Hazeldon 9/8/06

27.1 Rose
Fantastic! P-p-peet-tzah!

27.2 The End of the World
How can something so silly be so fun? Ok, I'm hooked. More, Russell T!

27.3 The Unquiet Dead 27.4 Aliens of London
We're watching it on the telly like everyone else.

27.5 World War Three
At least Micky proved fun.

27.6 Dalek
So, a Dalek can be an interesting conversationalist after all. Give us more, Shearman.

27.7 The Long Game
Yes! It's Simon Fucking Pegg!

27.8 Fathers Day
Beautiful.

27.9 The Empty Child
It's official now, the resurrection of Doctor Who is here. Best summed up with Doctor Constantine's reply, "[I'm] dying I, should think. I just haven't been able to find the time."

27.10 The Doctor Dances
This is more than resurrection, this is rapture. No need to stand in the corner Jack, I'll dance with you. Best story ever. Who was it that said, "Tears through joy is my favorite emotion"?

27.11 Boom Town Doctor Who should never be limited. Some fun dialogue to be found here. Female villains work well in Who.

27.12 Bad Wolf
Rack it up Russell T. This is gonna be good.

27.13 The Parting of the Ways
Yes, Chris. You were fantastic. Don't go.

No matter where you go, there you are... by Thomas Cookson 7/4/07

When Russell T. Davies took the helm of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, he had inherited a British institution. One with a boundless, eternal capacity to run as a neverending story that would always speak to young audiences. One that sadly went a bit tits up in the 80's, suffered to dead wood and ultimately needed a mercy killing, but would die remembered as a major embarrasment.

Russell had to turn a train wreck embarrasment into the height of cool with his 'midas touch', and he seemed to have the right idea on how to wipe the slate clean. The Time War was a novel idea to give the show's continuity a state of grace, and spare us any more tedious Gallifrey adventures a la Arc of Infinity. He also had the right attitude to the show of trying to return the show to the golden age of the 70's and to avoid all the mistakes of the 80's. The plan for Season One seemed to fit the idea of having the perfect season of Who, with a story arc, a believable companion to experience it all through, a Doctor who was mysterious and unsafe, and Daleks that were actually indestructible. Basically having Spearhead from Space, The Ark in Space, Talons of Weng-Chiang, Power of the Daleks and Curse of Fenric all in the same season.

The 80s was terribly low on inspiration, leading me to think that had the Sylvester McCoy era format of only four stories a season been introduced back in the Davison era, the show would have been much improved. The 45 minute story format of the new series ensured that we'd get concise and efficient adventure stories with no room for didactism or lengthy TARDIS-interior scenes or intrusive continuity. With the new pilot Rose, the ante of pacy storytelling had been upped, in the same way that Genesis of the Daleks had done for the show back in 1975. In terms of reinvigoration of the old, Dalek seemed like the perfect example of condensing Dalek lore to its briefest and letting the action and battle of wills continue unabated.

Russell T. Davies had some very unconventional ideas of how the modern Doctor should be, which all seemed rooted in creating a Doctor that the youth could dig. The ninth Doctor is “not your daddy’s Doctor Who”.

There was a tendency for this new Doctor to be macho and to shy away from the classics of literature or indeed from literate terms, and to use common slang in a conformist and unprogressive way (aside from the old school, highly literate scripting of him in The Empty Child). This had always bothered me about the new Doctor. The reason is because I've always valued the Doctor as a nonconformist, articulate and learned character, especially as a male character. In the current 'lad' culture, I find that very important and precious. It was indeed my highest hope for the revival of Doctor Who.

To steal a point from Tat Wood about the state of the 80's era of the show:

"Doctor Who had always been based on an idea of literacy as power against the powerful, developing the individual's self-knowledge and ability to understand others, and above all conveying the basic message that things as they are isn't all there is. Now it all goes philistine and illiterate. The boy-Doctor and his teen titans only ever read instructions manuals."

Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor was also fairly rude and mean, but for the most part it was something that characterised his alien-ness and his damage, with a tendency to refer to humans as 'stupid apes'. His riballing of Mickey in Aliens of London actually hint that the Doctor has become evasive and uncomfortable with people and that being inane and rude is his defense mechanism. There was of course also that controversial scene in End of the World, which at the time didn't bother me that much, given that the Doctor has been known to adopt a 'live and let die' approach before this (Remembrance of the Daleks, Planet of Fire, Creature from the Pit). The surrounding controversy of that scene amidst fandom indicates to me that the Doctor has existed in the minds of fans as an archetype of peace and mercy for so long that people just aren't open to the idea that the Doctor as a character might change or develop over time.

But what makes the Doctor mean doesn't necessarily make him unwatchable, and rarely has done, for the simple reason that he's often mean in a way that suggests alien-ness. Unfortunately, this rule did get broken for me in The Long Game where the Doctor invites Rose and us to delight in him bullying Adam, and for me that episode did leave a bitter aftertaste. But of course I liked to think that this was something we could get past, and indeed as the season went on, the Doctor did seem to develop more humility towards others, in Father's Day and Bad Wolf. So it seemed like part of the character's development and in that it was refreshing. It wasn't a betrayal of the character because it was fundamentally about the spirit of the Doctor in that it was about the damaged Doctor getting back to his old compassionate self.

There was a wonderful way that the show took the Doctor through the grieving and healing process, firstly for the primal scream therapy in Dalek, and then (and not a lot of dramas do this, since hope doesn't make as good drama as misery) showing him come out of his shell in a moment of joy in The Doctor Dances.

I had initially gone along with the Anorak Zone's view of the Ninth Doctor as a grinning goon who kept gurning and interrupting the gravitas. But when he was gone, I realised that I actually had fallen in love with the character precisely because he had tried so hard to make a good impression and feign jovialness to try and overcome his moodiness and damage. It's a bit like what I said once in a film review on Nikita:

"Luc Besson displays a wonderful skill for framing and capturing a moment of joy between the couple, or of sexual foreplay. Not a calculated sense of climaxing joy that typically comes from Hollywood films, but one of genuine character spontaneity which dares to be badly timed and embarrassing, and which is far more human and from the gut."

As I said, the Doctor was presented as an alien, which meant he was seen through a pair of human eyes, namely those of Rose. The Rose of Season One was a magnificent creation. She was believable and likeable. Although some described her as a 'chav', there was nothing alienating or mean about her. She was pro-active and heroic, responsible and compassionate and she often played as the Doctor's conscience. Has any great character ever suffered such a terrible fall in her following season?

The domestic world that Rose worked in, during Season One felt like a real place with a heart and pulse. It felt like our world, despite the cartoonish spin, there was a sense of real tedium, grit and belligerence to existence on the council estate, and more than that. An acknowledged sense of degradation that is all too familiar to our modern society. The dialogue was authentic enough to bring it to life and make it touching without trying too hard.

The season did very well to make the personal into the cosmic and vice versa. I would say that one thing about Series One is how it took the modern council estate and subverted it, made it part of a symbiotic whole with the past and future that the season took us to. Series One worked thematically because it was Earth-bound. As early as Rose there really was a sense of the eerie, and of undercurrents and the echoes of time just on a typical estate footpath. Come Parting of the Ways and you really feel that the nightmarish future is now, the ghosts of victims of Dalek wars to come haunting the present. As Rose grew in her awareness to this, there was a sense that the adventure and the emotional journey were one and the same.

Unfortunately, the gravity tended to be undermined whenever Russell indulged himself in moments of slapstick humour, and that was my real bugbear with Season One.

The other day, I watched Nightmare of Eden with my flatmate who is a major fan of the "serious" sci-fi of Star Trek and Stargate. He has often mocked my love of Doctor Who, but he laughed all the way through Nightmare of Eden, declaring it as high farce at its very best. He saved the copy of the story on Youtube to his internet history and let me know "You've won me over!"

Moments like that should be savoured.

So indeed, it seems sound all round that a head writer like Russell should inject some humour into his scripts. But I've got to say I'm not happy with the results. Rose had made me laugh plenty, but I had always felt that the frivolity in End of the World and Aliens of London seemed out of place. I had always found End of the World (which was closest to my expectations of the show being like Queer as Folk in space) malnourishing, and I'd tried to put my despondence at the farting around and witless satire of Aliens of London down to the fact that I'd been listening to Jubilee a lot and had higher expectations of more intelligent politics and sharper humour.

But no, it's the lack of discipline. What turns me off about the frivolity of the Russell's stories is the underlying contempt in the humour. Contempt for the characters, contempt for the story and script and atmosphere which I'll say feels very intrusive to the point of being brutal, as if the joke has barged itself in and insensitively tramples over the art. It took watching the Key To Time season to realise that it wasn't that I don't like humour in the show, but that I feel the tenderness has gone, and it's a feeling I had long before things went way too far with crude fellatio gags coming out of the blue. It goes without saying that at 45 minutes length, the characters seem to have gotten impatient and more belligerent, quicker to find an intellectual rival. Season One was a terrific series but I always much preferred the stories that Russell didn't write for that reason.

I have said that I preferred the episodes written by guest writers in Season One, but ultimately the season as a whole was a great team effort and Russell was arguably its mastermind. There were many defining gem scenes that Russell gave us. That scene with Rose on the phone to her mother in End of the World is beautiful, likewise the scene in the cafe in Parting of the Ways and sometimes his dialogue is so unpretentious and real, such as when Rose returns and Jackie says "What worries me the most is that you still won't say."

It was a very well planned season too. For the first half of the 13-part season, the show's accessibility is of paramount importance, which means that the line-up remains rigid and plots remain event-driven. After the halfway mark the episodes are able to bend form in such ways as to introduce another companion (The Empty Child) or to do episodes that are character driven (Father's Day). Indeed, Dalek took advantage of this convention to lead the audience to briefly believe that Rose had been killed, and I distinctly remember how I believed it too. Ultimately having ensured its core audience, the finale of the season (Parting of the Ways) is at liberty to pick up crucial plot points and linking bridges to earlier stories. In this case, the finale takes place in the same futuristic setting as the seventh story, The Long Game, which was crucially placed mid-season.

The season finale had a sense of a multi-faceted, culminated journey with everything reaching its proper conclusion, and allowed plenty of room for people to read into the little details or the vague bits that could say a thousand different things.

The 2005 season of Doctor Who is modernised and distinct from seasons of the show before it, by its culminated narrative that runs through the season, as well as its self-contained individual narratives for each story.

And narrative is a key point. The series was based heavily on traditional narrative ideas, moral tales and binary oppositions, and the new series did this well, using its characters to articulate its morality with passion. Placing binary opposition between Adam's greed and Rose's selfless loyalty, the demonic reapers and the sanctuary of the church. On an aesthetic level there is an immediate distinction between the Doctor and Daleks, man and machine, the regimented Daleks and the natural cohesiveness of the Doctor and companions, the vibrancy of humanity juxtaposed with the harshness of death. The Doctor represents life in all its forms; he fights to preserve life; he revels in the lives of those around him, knowing how fleeting those lives are; and on a basic level he regenerates and possesses various lives. By contrast, the Daleks represents death; conditioned to kill; and by the season finale they have even been harvesting the dead to swell their own form.

I liked the battle of wills in the story Dalek, because it managed to convey the Time War in spoken word and metaphor, with two survivors coming to represent the entire conflict in 45 minutes, the violence, the anger, the pathos, the suffering. It built greater concepts and images than those on screen, after all Doctor Who has often conveyed a sense of scope best through spoken word.

The morality was what made the show such a great viewing experience to share with my mother. The show had been very good-spirited and has particularly spread a message of how everyone counts, whether they be a dellboy or a Dalek. Indeed, the consistent theme of that season was of anomie, and of ordinary people saving the world and no-one else even knowing about it. The bitchiness of The Long Game always stuck out like a sore thumb in that regard (and sadly pre-empted much of Season Two's repellant sneering attitude), but even then it managed to attack the clique mentality, and although I've described the episode as being a washout, I'll say that recently my experiences in youth subcultures has taught me just how frightening group-think and a culture of denial can be, so I guess sometimes simplicity says it best.

To sum it up, though, all the poignancy and emotion, the strong narrative integrity made the first season of the show really potent and resonating. Going back two years ago to when I was watching it as something current, I remember how eagerly I was looking forward to each next story. I had actually stood up and given applause at the ends of Unquiet Dead and Dalek because I was that impressed with them, and the only other Who stories that have had me doing that were Evil of the Daleks, Seeds of Doom and Snakedance. At the end of Parting of the Ways I spent the entire day with a lump in my throat about to fall to pieces at any point for reasons I couldn't explain, just a sense of something coming to an end. I'd been left with something vivid and life affirming that would stay with me for most of the year. And I was really impatient to see Season Two from that point on, to the point of desperation, until the blubbathon of The Christmas Invasion completely deflated it.

All in all I hold the 2005 Season up as one of my favourite seasons, alongside Seasons 13 and 16. It was a grand year indeed.

Series 1: a Japanese view by Finn Clark 24/2/08

It's a fairly simple idea. Show a bunch of Doctor Who stories to a Japanese person (Tomoko) who'd never even heard of the show before and see what they think. So far we've been swapping between black-and-white stories and the Eccleston era, although she also caught some 2007 Tennant episodes on BBC1. Having just staggered through to the end of Parting of the Ways, this seemed like a good time to summarise what she thought of that opening 2005 season.

The first thing to say is that these episodes are hard for language learners. Admittedly they could hardly be worse than the impenetrable UNIT era, with its double whammy of technobabble and military jargon. The Invasion literally sent her to sleep and there aren't many Pertwee stories that I could even consider, but on the other hand it's immeasurably harder than the early Hartnell era with its crisp BBC accents. There's a startling difference between even the Hartnell and Troughton eras in how much naturalism the BBC permitted. However the Eccleston era takes that to a whole new level. Colloquialism, sloppy diction, broken sentences and regional accents... and that's just the Doctor! Hitherto I'd never really registered Eccleston's Northern accent, but this time I've found myself having to explain exactly what he's doing with the vowels in "funny" and "money".

And that's without mentioning the universe's ultimate evil: the Daleks. Forget their love of conquest and genocide. No, what makes the Daleks so terrible is their voices. Nicholas Briggs is at his worst in these stories, incidentally. Even I found myself struggling from time to time, whereas Tomoko initially failed to realise that those sounds were meant to be speech. She's been doing everything imaginable to get to grips with them... replaying their scenes, turning on the subtitles and consulting the script book. Nothing helps. Particularly bad is that they squawk everything in disjointed syllables. At least the Cybermen talk in recognisable English rhythms. Tomoko both hates and loves the Daleks. She loathes the sounds they make, but on the other hand she adores them and wants to watch Dalek stories. Apparently they're cute! As in the early sixties during Dalekmania, the Daleks are Doctor Who's greatest selling point. She enjoyed The Daleks (Hartnell: Serial B), but the real killer was Dalek (Eccleston: 6th episode). Remember all that Dalek porn? It worked. Flying Daleks! How cool is that? The correct answer, you'll be happy to know, is "exceedingly".

Oh, and apparently "exterminate" sounds a bit like the Japanese for "I want to eat ice cream".

Tomoko's other favourite episode was The End of the World, simply for its sheer visual opulence. It looks like a feature film, but it's a weekly TV show. That was an eye-opener, especially given that Japanese TV would be incapable of producing anything like it. That's not the only such example, incidentally... the use of Channel 4's Big Brother in a BBC show for Bad Wolf was also startling for her. I get the impression that Japanese TV is a bit more hidebound about things like that. Episodes she was less fond of include The Unquiet Dead (she doesn't like zombie films) and in particular The Long Game (which just wasn't very interesting, although the finger-clicking was funny).

From a language point of view, the easiest episode to understand was Father's Day. Rose is also comparatively straightforward, though with more SF elements. However, those episodes aside, I've generally had to explain some or all of the plot afterwards.

Overall, Tomoko likes Doctor Who and was even recommending it to a Japanese friend of her. Watching old and new episodes side by side has definitely made it more interesting for her, too. It's great fun to go from the BBC's flagship 21st century show, dripping with CGI, to a creaky televisual antique with laugh-out-loud production values. Crap monsters are a comedy highlight. When selling the show to that aforementioned Japanese friend, we followed up an Eccleston episode with bits of The Web Planet and the pantomime bear from Androids of Tara. She's also tickled by "loony" fans who'll do things like buying Davison's celery for #5,500 on Ebay for Children in Need, or buying a full-size Dalek from This Planet Earth for #2,395. Doctor Who's deliberate retro stylings (e.g. the low-tech bits on the TARDIS console) also struck her at the beginning as something that would need explaining to Japanese people, who'd perhaps expect SF to look more futuristic. She got over that pretty quickly, though.

It's been a worthwhile experiment and one that's still ongoing. If anyone else finds themselves in a similar position and wondering which DVDs to show a language learner, I'd suggest alternating New Who with:

HARTNELL - An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, Edge of Destruction. The Daleks will be fiendishly difficult, but worth it. Meanwhile, the cavemen are easier to understand than you'd think, despite the grunting, since their dialogue isn't exactly Oscar Wilde.

TROUGHTON - Tomb of the Cybermen, The Mind Robber. Under no circumstances even consider The Invasion.

PERTWEE - The Three Doctors, Carnival of Monsters. Restricted choice. Even Carnival of Monsters is full of difficult Holmesian dialogue, but at least it's colourful and lively enough that you'll know what's going on anyway.

TOM BAKER - Season 12, omitting Robot.

DAVISON - Earthshock, Arc of Infinity, The Five Doctors. I've yet to check the technobabble levels in Earthshock, but the language in Arc of Infinity is surprisingly accessible and it brings back Omega from The Three Doctors.

COLIN BAKER - Vengeance on Varos, The Two Doctors.

MCCOY - Curse of Fenric, Survival, the TVM.

Steer clear of Master stories if you can, since technobabble and/or elevated dialogue seems to follow the character around. That's why you'll want to avoid both Robert Holmes and Pip & Jane Baker, which might be the only time you'll see those writers bracketed together. The Davros arc is complete on DVD if you're watching with a Dalek fan, but don't expect it to be easy. And have fun!