The Day of the Doctor

I didn't mean to take a whole month before writing about The Day of the Doctor, but I'm glad I didn't have to think coherently about it straight away. That weekend turned out to be an incredibly intense experience, with The Day of the Doctor, An Adventure in Space and Time, The Five(ish) Doctors and many other shows needing to be watched and then rewatched. It was a lot to take in, and I'm very happy that I wasn't expected to think critically about any of it while I was still watching. Instead I was able to just revel in the absurd and wonderful weekend when Doctor Who (the show that gave us the Myrka, don't forget) delighted a global audience of seventy-five million people.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. This was an excellent anniversary story that delivered everything that could reasonably have been asked of it, and much more that couldn't even have been imagined. There's so much to talk about, and I'm going to forget some things, but here's what still stands out for me now, a month later.

It begins with a very original opening or, rather, the original opening. Monochrome titles and Delia Derbyshire's unmatchable version of the theme - both still gobsmackingly good and, after a sensible rest from our screens, still retaining the power to shock and delight. Better yet, is there a more suitable way to drive home the point that this is still the same show. Like Trigger's shovel, everything has changed, but this is still Doctor Who.

Much of this episode is whizz-bang fantastic, with great stunts and some extraordinary 3D action over Gallifrey. There are plenty of these kisses to the past throughout the show, but most of them are almost invisible jokes, tucked away in props or muttered comments, to be enjoyed on repeated viewings. But, although the bells and whistles are marvellous, although the Daleks, Zygons, UNIT and Rose all return for their anniversary bow, they're not essential to the unwinding of this story. At last the focus of the programme has come to rest squarely on its lead character, and the result is spellbinding.

The essence of drama since ancient times has been someone talking to themself. Only Doctor Who, of course, can take a soliloquy and turn it into a three-handed conversation. But the point is that this is not a multi-Doctor story in the way we have known it before. In the original series, the character of the Doctor was so much less well defined and, if different versions met, it was their costumes that varied most, and any differences of demeanour resulted as much from the personalities of the actors as anything else. In The Five Doctors, they take turns being the Doctor, even when they're in the same scene. This time we get something else.

That scene in the dungeon of the Tower is centrepiece of a wonderful drama, the lynchpin of the story. Three versions of the same man, locked together, forced to converse and through doing so revealing how they have changed. These aren't personality clashes forced by the arbitrary neural-rewiring of regeneration - at last, the Doctor is portrayed as someone affected by the passage of time, a character moulded by events. Imagine yourself, at 20, at 35, at 50 - trapped in a room. The youngest is eager to find out what happens; the oldest, perhaps, has tried to move on. In between them is a man who regrets his mistakes, who resents the vanished opportunities of youth, and who can't forgive the old man for the fact that he seemingly no longer cares.

That's what we get here, told through three superb performances. Hurt, the young Doctor, watches his older selves with some humour. Smith, impossibly old, trying to remember, but it was all so long ago. Tennant does it with a look. When the Eleventh Doctor mutters that he has no idea how many children were on Gallifrey, the Tenth glances at him - surprised, disgusted, but most of all horrified. What will I become? For most of us, that's a disturbing thought - how much more so for a Time Lord.

Moffat (such a clever trick with the sonic - we thought they were different, but they were always the same) forces even the most casual and incurious member of the Saturday night audience to see these three actors as the same man, not just sharing a title, but the same internal life, the same memories and thoughts. The younger can rekindle hope in the older two; the old dogs can show the whelp that the future is worth fighting for. Youth and experience combine to undo past mistakes, without evading their consequences.

The Doctor is the centre of the episode, of the story, of the whole anniversary, and the restoration of Gallifrey is a fitting present for the old man. It's very slickly done too, the technology of it so far off the scale that it doesn't, can't and shouldn't matter that we have no idea how it's being achieved. If you're worrying about that when the skies fill with TARDISes, I can't help you. Most importantly, perhaps, Moffat manages to reengineer the fate of Gallifrey without trampling over what has gone before - the Ninth Doctor will still be guilt-ridden and traumatised; in another room, Rassilon still plots his own escape. And how fitting that the Doctor should be able to take his greatest defeat and turn it into a victory: Gallifrey not destroyed but saved, his own self not damned but redeemed.

Then, not content with giving us every single previous Doctor, Moffat throws in a couple of future ones. I must confess, the sight of Capaldi's Eyes made me gasp aloud and I'm sure that, even were I to make it to the 100th anniversary, that would still be one of the most thrilling moments in the series' history. But the killer blow belongs to that genius loci of Doctor Who, Tom Baker, back in the programme for the first time in thirty years to play a mercurial future incarnation. It's an emotional moment (how wonderful to see him and Smith together), and a suitably timey-wimey way to salute both past and future.

There's so much more to talk about (incredible direction from Nick Hurran, astonishing production design) but not enough time to do it justice. But I can't not say how good it was to have David Tennant back as the Doctor. I know some feel that his and RTD's era was being sent up slightly, but this really isn't the case - it was more of a greatest hits package, condensed perhaps but without condescension. And Moffat's tenure got just as much needle, not least Hurt's complaints about Smith's flapping hands or the childlike "timey-wimey" (gifting Tennant the best joke of the script: "I've no idea where he gets it from"). He, Hurt and Smith combined beautifully, and the result was brilliantly funny, even joyous - perfectly pitched for an anniversary episode.

Piper and Coleman were also excellent, the former's return astutely executed by Moffat: any further return for Rose herself would have been difficult, if not downright irritating, and her appearance as the Moment/Bad Wolf was just right - simultaneously full of meaning, portent and nostalgia. Coleman had a more difficult job perhaps. Companions can get lost or over-looked in the most straightforward of episodes, but holding her own amongst all this hoopla was no mean feat. Clara's contribution is impossibly important, for it is she who, at the last gasp, forces the Doctor to fulfil his promise. In that moment Clara represents every companion, and justifies the very existence of the role in the show. It is a big deal.

But Clara does something else, right at the top of the episode, that although easily overlooked might be even more important. She ploughs her motorbike through the TARDIS doors. Now, they can keep pulling off this trick every week as far as I'm concerned, because it is superb. It's a perfectly executed entrance shot - a breathtaking composition that takes Clara (and us) from an exterior location, through the TARDIS doors and into the studio set. But this is more than just showing off - this journey, replayed again and again throughout the show's history, is a strand of the programme's DNA, as distinct and as important as the Police Box, the music or the Daleks.

The very first episode, fifty years ago, pivoted around that extraordinary transition, dramatically, technically and in other ways besides. Perhaps we take it for granted, but every time someone moves through those doors, stepping from junkyard to shining white control room, or out into a petrified jungle, a space station, or a country house, we are witnessing the essential magic of Doctor Who. From the outside, that little box is perfectly unassuming - but once the threshold has been crossed, suddenly the spaces on both sides of the doors are full of wonders.

The End of Time

I forgot something. I live in America. It slips my mind more often than you might think. In 2008, just a few weeks after Journey's End aired, we left Cardiff and moved to Texas, swapping the centre of Who on Earth for a strange new city where it was always summer and I couldn't ever find the BBC on the dial. It took some adjustment (I'm still adjusting, five years later), but I was quite relieved that there wasn't going to be a regular series in 2009: I simply had no idea how I would be able to watch it. Although in Britain Doctor Who had been transformed from rubbish old show into all-conquering primetime smash, America was so far uninterested. When I started investigating, I found only a few hazy memories of Tom Baker on PBS, the occasional Eccleston DVD in Best Buy, and some confused souls who had accidentally seen a strange kids' show on the SyFy channel.

Luckily we went home that first Christmas so I did see The Next Doctor, and we stayed long enough that I was able to watch Matt Smith's unveiling too. And then I flew back to Texas, excited, but feeling a little bereft. But something happened over the course of 2009 and some of it must be down to me (obviously) because, feeling a bit lost without my native culture and suddenly completely unencumbered by decades of British fan-embarrassment, I started to proselytise. When talking to Americans about my homesickness, or explaining to them what was wrong with their country, I would mention Doctor Who. And slowly I started to notice a response as America began to catch up. Soon BBC America acquired the rights to the show (SyFy having not got any traction) and broadcast the Christmas special (in July, but hey), followed by Planet of the Dead. Earlier episodes appeared on Netflix and I soon found myself talking to children who loved the Doctor and, let's face it, moms who loved David Tennant. I started to see t-shirts around town emblazoned with Weeping Angels and TARDISes as America's teenagers discovered a show which, being British, weird and obscure, offered them a mother lode of purest cool. By the following Christmas the transmission delay between BBC One and BBC America had been reduced to around thirty hours; there was a sense that Doctor Who was becoming an underground phenomenon, and those in the know were buzzing with pre-regeneration excitement.

And in the first few days of January 2010, I found Radio Free Skaro. The fan podcast is one of those modern inventions, like Twitter, that will irritate many and delight others. I think it depends on the content -  I have tried other podcasts and I have found them either to be too irreverent (or not irreverent enough), or too preachy or politicised, or (worst of all) not very interesting. But RFS (Steve Schapansky, Warren Frey and Chris Burgess, three Canadians who have been serving up weekly episodes of news, interviews and comment since 2006) get it spot on. It helps that they are men about my own age, and that between them they offer a range of opinions on Doctor Who. What hooked me though, was the total shoeing they gave The End of Time when they reviewed it in January 2010.

At that point, it was what I needed to hear. I had been left slightly disgruntled by the two festive specials and anxious about whether Smith had been given the best possible start. Listening to RFS excoriate those episodes was cathartic and funny and afterwards I was still impatiently looking forward to Series Five, just as they were.

Having just watched The End of Time again, I have to admit it is better than I remembered, and probably a lot more enjoyable than we were prepared to admit at the time. I can't help but wonder if that impatience affected my viewing experience. As I've mentioned previously, thanks to a combination of factors both on and off-screen, it had come to feel like Tennant had been regenerating since The Stolen Earth. And now, watching the final story, it felt as if the Tenth Doctor's last moments were being stretched out as much as possible. Firstly, the combined running time of both episodes was over two hours, making it the longest story since 1979's The Armageddon Factor (or 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord, if you must). Secondly, even once he had been killed, the Tenth Doctor somehow managed to stagger on for another twenty minutes before he finally gave way to the new guy. I could just about cope with him hunting down Rose, Martha and Donna, but Jessica Hynes? Was it really necessary? "I don't want to go!" he says. Yes, I did get that impression, actually. If he put this off any longer he'd be tracking down Dodo Chaplet. At the time this all felt indulgent and treacle-slow but, after a year and a half, I was desperate for the new era to start.

All very uncharitable of me. Now, after nearly four years of Matt Smith, I much more relaxed about RTD taking his time over the end of Tennant (it is still indulgent though), and The End of Time has got some stunning moments, worthy of the end of an era. Sadly, some elements were terrible then, and still are today. There's a lot to get through so it's back to the time-saving bullet points.

The Terrible

• Magic. I like Harry Potter, and so does RTD. It's a subtle but definite influence on his time on Doctor Who and it peeps through in odd moments and episode titles (The Parting of the Ways anyone?). It's never more obvious than here where the Master's resurrection is - well, hang on, I'll let William explain. "This is just like when Voldemort came back," he says perspicaciously, "except Mrs Saxon is Harry." Yes, it is, isn't it? Of course Doctor Who should be full of implausible and ridiculous events that are beyond modern human comprehension, but I'd like them to at least be garnished with the fig leaf of science. The Master is brought back to life by witches with magic potions who have read magic books, and the process is almost derailed by Lucy Saxon's magic 'anti-potion'. That she happened to have handy. The only thing missing is for the Governess to say "Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Bizzy" before she starts. 
• Remember all that incredible Doctor-changing drama at the end of The Waters of Mars? I bet that will need to be addressed, eh? No, instead let's have some feeble jokes about the Doctor locking the TARDIS remotely like a car, and shagging Elizabeth I. Is this supposed to be Christmas knockabout humour? Because I've had funnier jokes inside crackers. 
• The Silver Cloak. Don't get me wrong, it's a joy to have June Whitfield in Doctor Who - she's a legend. And crikey, that's Barry from Hi-De-Hi!, hello! It's like This is Your Life. In fact I like the oldies working together as a sort of elderly Red Hand Gang, using their ancient networking skills to locate that nice young man with the spiky hair. What annoys me is that they call themselves 'The Silver Cloak', because that is a stupid thing to do. Old people, who are - despite their bum-pinching antics - really grown-up, do not give their social circles grand and mysterious names. Unless they are the Knights of Columbus or something. Okay so some old people are self-aggrandising, but Bernard Cribbins and June Whitfield are not. It is cool, poetic and rather lovely for RTD to think of them as The Silver Cloak - but it ruins it if we hear them take this title for themselves. 
• The Time Lords' escape. That whole business with the diamond and the signal... it feels like the paint is still wet on these ideas, and that the paint is covering up something rather Heath-Robinson. If it's possible to send a jewel through the Time Lock, then why not anything else? It's not as if the barrier is a physical one, like cell bars, with gaps through which it is possible to poke a tiny thing when a whole planet won't fit.
• The Master. Before I launch into this, bear in mind that there are some good things about the Master coming up in a minute. But. The problem last time was that he was presented as some sort of demented clown, like The Joker, only he fell into the Untempered Schism rather than a vat of chemicals. This is rightly toned down in this story - until he starts flying like Iron Man,  takes over all the humans, and then starts to squee and grin and bounce around like a bunch of idiots. The Master Race - it's a grand visual idea that brilliantly masks the approach of the true cliffhanger. But unfortunately it is also the biggest load of unthought-through bobbins. Everyone is the Master. Everyone on Earth has been transformed into a physical and mental copy of the most self-serving, devious, ego-maniacal villain in the Universe. So how in the name of Rassilon do they co-operate? It should be instant chaos, like being stuck in a lift full of cats. They surely should be fighting, racing off-world, each trying to trick the others, to seize control? And yet there is an obvious and boggling hierarchy to this new society. The Master accepts subservient positions, he's a lowly guard, a scientist; he mans radar consoles; thousands of him patiently stand on duty in Chinese parade grounds. If we are in a situation where The Master is happily taking orders from anyone, even himself, someone has not thought this through. As a result, it doesn't feel like a planetful of Masters at all. What we get, complete with CGI-facilitated antics, is a load of Despicable Me Minions, all with John Simm's face. 

The Alright

• Suddenly the mild anti-Americanism of World War Three and The Sound of Drums is replaced by sunny optimism. It's no secret that the election of Barack Obama was cheered to the rafters in Britain, but I'm still surprised to see that afterglow percolate through into Doctor Who. The painfully high expectations we all had in 2008 are on display here as RTD has Obama prepare to deliver a speech (on Christmas Day FFS) that will magically fix the world economy. No pressure, Mr President. 
• I can't get my head around this one. For what earthly reason are the Nobles opening their Christmas presents while standing around in the kitchen? Each to their own, of course, but is this really something people do? Tell me you sit on the sofa by the tree or I won't be able to sleep at night. 
• Having Donna in this episode could have been awful. But it's nicely done and her level of involvement feels entirely appropriate. It's masterful restraint on RTD's part and it preserves the horrible beauty of her exit in Journey's End. 
• The Mysterious Woman. Claire Bloom is very good, dignified and sad, a bit regal, and I quite like that she is a mystery... But, hang on. If she's a Time Lord, how come she's not locked inside the Time War? If she can project her way out or something to appear to Wilf, how come Rassilon can't do the same? And, if she is the Doctor's mother (and the hints are there that she might be), then this is a pretty subdued reaction from her son. Considering how much he blubbed over Rose (twice) and Jenny, he might as well be flicking v-signs at this nice old lady as he consigns her back to Time Lord hell. Hey, maybe she's Dodo? It would explain why he's not too bothered to see her go.

The Brilliant

• Cribbins. Matchless. Superlatives can't do him justice. From beginning to end he is perfect and every mood and utterance is undershot with a beautiful poignancy: funny, sad, bemused, shocked, reflective, just everything. Highlights include him reminiscing about his National Service, entering the TARDIS ("I thought it would be cleaner."), every scene with Tennant where the two old men get to talk things over, and digging out his service revolver from under the bed... Wilf is one of the best things in Doctor Who. 
• Dalton. Timothy flipping Dalton in Doctor Who. Unbelievable. And he's Rassilon? Okay then! The Time Lords in general here are a delight: entitled, privileged, sick to the core and determined to exert their will over the rest of the universe. But Dalton sets the tone - his Rassilon is completely believable, a force of nature, a man who has tamed gravity and time and refuses to face his own demise. I know I complain about excess sometimes, but there is nothing over-the-top about bringing back the Time Lords for this story. It is exactly the right thing to do and Dalton underpins it all. His narration is spellbinding, his reveal to camera, half-way through part one is electrifying, but the cliffhanger in which the Time Lords announce their return, is total heart-stopping genius. 
• The Master is greatly improved from Last of the Timelords. Simms still doesn't get the opportunity to demonstrate the devilish sophistication of his predecessors, but this is a darker and more subdued performance that does much to suggest the Master's intelligence. My favourite parts are those scenes where he gleefully lacerates the spirit of Christmas and transforms our own full bellies into an act of complicity. "That's human Christmas out there. They eat so much. All that roasting meat, cakes and red wine. Hot fat blood food. Pots, plates of meat and flesh, and grease, and juice, and baking, burnt, sticky hot skin."  
• Matt Smith. At last, it's the Eleventh Doctor! Oh, but I was so nervous after that last scene. I felt it had been handled quite badly. I think I based this idea on Tennant's first appearance at the end of The Parting of the Ways, which was utterly perfect: that final "Barcelona!" convinced the entire country that the TARDIS was in good hands. I needed these opening lines to deliver the same sting of anticipation and I didn't think it quite worked. Of course, I had no need to worry at all. 

The boys are a bit dumbstruck by all this ("it can't be put into words!" one protests), but what do they think of the Tenth Doctor now he's finally shuffled off?

"He was a very good Doctor," says William. "I liked how he was so upset and emotional, especially at the end here. And he could be deadly serious or silly and funny."

"He was funny, and he could have always been funny," adds Chris, "but it was clever how sad he was sometimes. It made him better." 

Their favourite stories are Voyage of the Damned ("or Planet of the Dead") for William and Tooth and Claw ("no, wait, The End of Time! No, I can't decide!") for Chris. But what about the Tenth Doctor's companions? Who's their favourite and who do they think worked best with him?

"Christina was my favourite," says William, "because she could take control and tell him what to do, I liked that. But Rose was best for him I think."

Rose is Christopher's favourite. "She was as clever as the Doctor, and she stayed around the longest: there was an obvious attachment. The best for him though was Donna. They were a great team."

Tennant is a great actor and he has undoubtedly taken the chance to show this during his time as the Doctor. But the tenth incarnation is too human, too accessible for my taste, although I realise this is an important reason why he was so successful with the wider audience. Both he, and RTD - who brought this show back with steely discipline, shining wit and much love - have my unending gratitude.


NEXT TIME...

The Waters of Mars

Why isn't this the regeneration story? Much as I like it, I am always mildly disappointed at the end of this one because it feels as if something is missing. It's a really strong episode and a great story: thrilling and powerful, it deals with all sorts of issues of Time and time travel, and aspects of the Doctor's character. In those final moments they come together and it seems as if we really are about to surge over the edge into new territory - but the story suddenly stalls, teetering on the brink.

It's frustrating because we nearly get a proper Shakespearean tragedy, with the Doctor himself fashioned into a tragic hero. A.C. Bradley defined such a character as being a man of high estate or good nature who, through his own nature and actions, causes a catastrophe that destroys him. Until the very end, this is exactly what seems to be happening to the Doctor in this adventure, but instead he swans off, the pay-off deferred.

It is his irresponsible wandering that leads him to Mars in the first place. When Adelaide Brooks asks him what he is doing there, he replies, without much flippancy, "fun." Once he realises where and when he is, he knows that should leave but he does not - partly through coercion from Brooks, but primarily because of his curiosity, his original and signature flaw ever since he sabotaged the fluid links on Skaro. Time and again it has been his undoing, most significantly in The Caves of Androzani. Here on Mars it prevents him from extricating himself in good time.

Finally comes the crucial moment: he does try to leave, but cannot bring himself to abandon the astronauts to their deaths. It is a fantastic, thrilling scene that culminates in his return to the base, his full powers revealed to the terrified humans, and it is this decision that changes everything. Why does he do it? Partly through compassion - he is the hero, the doctor who tries to alleviate suffering, and we want him to save Brooks and the others. But he is also a Time Lord. As he agonises over whether or not he should intervene, we must remember that this is a conflict he must also have experienced long ago, before he left Gallifrey for the first time.

At his first trial, in The War Games, he is accused of by the Time Lords of repeatedly breaking "the most important law of non-interference in the affairs of other planets" but he has never accepted their judgement or repented. Here he restages his original act of rebellion: he cannot merely observe, he must become involved. The difference now is that the Time Lords are no more - destroyed perhaps by their failure to remain above the fray - and so the trauma the Doctor has suffered affects his decision and he rages against not just the laws of Gallifrey but the forces of causality itself. As a result he does change history and save three of the crew, but in the process another of his major flaws comes to the fore: his arrogance.

ADELAIDE: You should have left us there.
THE DOCTOR: Adelaide, I've done this sort of thing before. In small ways, saved some little people, but never someone as important as you. Oh, I'm good!
ADELAIDE: Little people? What, like Mia and Yuri? Who decides they're so unimportant? You?
THE DOCTOR: For a long time now I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious.
ADELAIDE: And there's no one to stop you.
THE DOCTOR: No.
ADELAIDE: This is wrong, Doctor. I don't care who you are. The Time Lord Victorious is wrong.
THE DOCTOR: That's for me to decide. […]
ADELAIDE: Is there nothing you can't do?
THE DOCTOR: Not any more.

It's chilling and fascinating: this wonderful and caring incarnation of the Doctor is going bad before our eyes. Brooks does the only thing she can and reasserts control (and the 'proper' timeline) by killing herself, robbing the Doctor of his achievement. Stunned by what he has done, he flees. At the time it was a deeply unsettling ending but it felt as if it was building to an incredible resolution. Surely the Doctor's final story would concern the consequences of this failure and end in his ultimate redemption? Well, to be fair, that is sort of what happens in The End of Time except that none of the events in that story occur because of what happens on Mars - there is no consequence other than that the Doctor be mildly shaken. Other than that he seems entirely unaffected by this monumental failure and The End of Time is categorically not about the Time Lord Victorious suffering the consequences of his transgression. Instead the Doctor goes on the run from all of this and when he does get his comeuppance, it happens in such a way that he becomes the victim rather than the perpetrator and there is little sense that he has brought this upon himself.

But what a regeneration it would have been if it had come at the end of  The Waters of Mars? The Doctor, arrogant and unbound, suddenly sees what he has become and that his death is the only thing that can fix the mess he has created. We would have a proper tragedy with a truly tragic hero, brought to catastrophe by his own mistakes and flaws, brought low by his own greatness. Except that with this hero, death is also a new beginning. It would have been an astounding end for a Doctor.

Well, yes, that would have been good, but then we wouldn't get Wilf in the TARDIS or Timothy Dalton, and there are so many regenerations yet to come! One of them will turn out like this eventually.

There were lots of other things I wanted to mention - the excellent Lindsay Duncan, the rather lovely views across the Martian landscape where "the only straight line is the sunlight", the effective callbacks to Pompeii and The Stolen Earth, and the omens of the future - but I have run out of time. The boys were both gobsmacked (10/10) and a little tremulous by the end and fair enough - regardless of the non-regeneration, it's a fabulous ending that creates much anticipation for The End of Time. Chris summed it up best: "He knows his time is almost up."


NEXT TIME...

Planet of the Dead

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Planet of the Dead, except that in the spring of 2009 it was the only new episode of Doctor Who available, bridging the long gap between Christmas and November. It can't quite support the weight of our expectations.

After the familiar scheduling of The Next Doctor, this is the first of the extra Specials and it has much the hardest job: offered in lieu of an entire series. If this was part of a small season of two or even three episodes I think it would be really very good. As a traditional series opener, it would be spectacular. But, devoid of reinforcements, it feels like a lone sentry asked to guard home territory while the entire army is fighting somewhere else. Perhaps it's no surprise that thoughts turn to Beau Geste - in more ways than one Planet of the Dead is a lone outpost in the desert.

Maybe if there was some actual fight in this episode it would feel stronger. Without a proper antagonist, there's very little conflict and nobody for the Doctor to confront. Instead we get the brief face-off between Captain Magambo and Malcolm, a few seconds of quickly-dispelled tension when the Tritovores turn up and the occasional barbed comment from Lady Christina de Souza. The Swarm, although powerful and rather nicely realised, are not a credible threat. Without a voice or an argument to make, their menace is reduced to that of some heavy weather; we know Earth will be saved and that everyone will survive their approach.

So what's special about this Special? If nothing else, the desert vistas are enough, all by themselves, to justify the label. The location shooting is wonderful, and well worth all the extraordinary effort that was required to bring it to the screen. And the guest cast is lovely - once again modern Doctor Who celebrates ordinary real people, determined to show us that they have worth, abilities and personality that might be undervalued by society and even by themselves. Daniel Kaluuya is especially good as Barclay, but everyone on the bus gives us a reason to like them and to want them to get home.

Yes, even Lady Christina. Some of the original reviewers didn't like her (one was filled with 'revulsion' by her, another described her as a 'shameless Lara Croft rip-off''), but I think she's rather good fun. The boys were rather sad to see her go and suggested she would have made a good proper companion. I'd agree. She feels like a bit of a throwback, and there's something inherently ridiculous about being an upper-class adventuress who dabbles in high-class burglary for thrills, but her class and privilege remind us of the Doctor's aristocratic origins whilst simultaneously making him feel more grounded. After Rose and Donna (there was always something a little classier about Martha), Lady Christina's poshness feels fresh and the dynamic between her and the Doctor is a new one for the revitalised series: competitive, charged and exciting. Certainly, over the course of a full series, she would have had the chance to develop, change and win over those critics.

Chris, completely transfixed as usual, gave this a nine ("one off for the Fly Men") but liked Malcolm and his silliness, particularly the bit with the fire extinguisher. William, perhaps rather spoiled by Series Four, could only go as high as six. He liked Christina, but thought there was too much techno-babble ("computer gibberish"), hinting darkly that if they hadn't had to say it all, maybe they could have got on and closed the rift more quickly. So young and yet so cynical.

Much more exciting than all of this was the eventual revelation, after days of rumours, that the lost Troughton stories The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear had been recovered. William and I (Chris's not keen on black and white TV) watched part one of Enemy and were enthralled.

It just goes to show that you don't have to go to Dubai, or even Australia, to make brilliant Doctor Who, although it may be necessary to go to Nigeria in order to watch it.


NEXT TIME...

The Next Doctor

So it turned out that Series Four wasn't quite the end for David Tennant's Doctor - but the moment was being prepared for. Or was it that we were being prepared for the moment?

Is it coincidence that the forthcoming Christmas Special - with its provocative title announced on the sly in the pages of RTD's book The Writer's Tale, published September 2008 - also raised questions about the demise of the Tenth Doctor and prompted speculation about who might take over? Was there a plan to get the audience used to the idea that this highly popular incarnation would not last forever?

No, I don't think so. I think if anyone needed to adjust to the end of the RTD era and the passing of the Tenth Doctor, it was Davies and Tennant themselves. Both long term fans of the show, they had found themselves in positions they had dreamt of since childhood, and worked like slaves to make Doctor Who the best thing on television. Surely neither of them wanted this to end, but both knew it must. The planning for the final specials, and for the handover to a new production team, were already underway during the writing and production of Series Four. It should come as no surprise that eschatological ideas should filter into Journey's End and The Next Doctor.

In October 2008, in between the biological metacrisis and the Cyberking, Tennant received Best Actor at the National Television Awards and used his speech to announce he would be leaving Doctor Who.  At the time we was unable to say exactly how long he would remain in the role - the schedule for the Specials had yet to be finalised - but the long goodbye had begun.

I'd never say that Tennant outstayed his welcome, but this exit strategy had an unfortunate and unforeseen consequence. Press and public speculation generated by the almost-regeneration in Journey's End had been fever pitch and this announcement, along with the title of the The Next Doctor, allowed this to bubble along for the rest of the year. Every newspaper, and almost everybody, had theorised about who should take over, and the search for the Eleventh Doctor was actively under way. On the 3rd of January, just days after The Next Doctor aired, Matt Smith was unveiled in a surprise one-off episode of Confidential and the new era began to take shape in the minds of the public. But a whole year would have to pass before the Tenth Doctor would eventually succumb to the inevitable - and it would be another three months after that until the Eleventh would get to eyeball the Atraxi.

When The End of Time came, the moment had perhaps been a little over-prepared.

And The Next Doctor? Well, watched shortly after Journey's End it does feel a little odd that both Donna and Jackson Lake should end up with the Doctor inside their human heads, but Jackson's story is really rather touching. David Morrissey serves up his ersatz-Doctor with real gusto (William: "Ugh, he's so fake.") and there's pleasant camaraderie between him and Tennant, both before and after Lake's human nature is revealed. The scene with the fob watch is a beautiful moment and a clever bit of writing: Time Lord grandiosity suggests that Lake's Doctor alter-ego might reside inside, but instead there's a comic deflation as the ordinary innards fall out. The truth is that these tumbling cogs show us Lake's real identity: his life has fallen apart and is in bits.

The Next Doctor is enjoyable Christmas fare, full of warmth and heart - but it is undeniably another disappointing Cybermen story. Talk of Cybershades and images of Cybermen in a twilight, snow-covered Victorian graveyard, made me excited that we might see a return to the spookier, silent silver giants of the Troughton years. Sadly, although the scene in the churchyard is great, the snow does not soften the leaden thump of the Cybus boots and the Cybershades turn out to be some sort of shambling bear in a mask. Worst of all the Cybermen themselves are reduced to mere flunkies, lining up behind the villainous Miss Hartigan. Dervla Kirwan is very good and Hartigan is a fun villain, suitably vicious and vibrant but with a chilling back story that seeps through the Christmas cheer. But such a character can't help but take centre stage and as a result the Cybermen lose their voice, just as Davros pulls focus from the Daleks. The CyberKing is nothing more than some outlandish fun, but really the Cybermen could have been removed from this story entirely and it could have stayed much the same, perhaps with Hartigan as an evil Ada Lovelace-type building steam-punk robots. Either way, the real story belongs to Jackson Lake.

Chris liked him a lot and appreciated how he coped with becoming the Doctor. "When he realised he wasn't the Doctor, he lost his courage because he knew the Doctor could do all those cool things and he was worried that he couldn't. But then he found his own courage and became happy. I liked his balloon TARDIS too and it was nice of the Doctor to appreciate Jackson's efforts - he could have been very rude. Ten out of ten."

William was once again incredulous that the Cybermen didn't use their arm-mounted guns, but he too enjoyed the interaction between Jackson and the Doctor. "The Doctor seemed happy to meet himself, just like in Timecrash. I expect he'll get on well with the Eleventh Doctor too. I can't imagine the ninth Doctor being happy in that situation. Jackson's story was sad though."

It is interesting to think about how the Tenth and Eleventh will cope with each other. The Doctor's comments here to Lake suggest that The Day of the Doctor should take place after this episode as far as the Tenth Doctor is concerned, which raises questions about exactly how Rose will be involved. But then who knows what wibbly-wobbly explanation we'll get this time?


NEXT TIME...

The Stolen Earth / Journey's End

The boys call this one 'Red Dalek', which I think is a rather super title, although perhaps not for this story. I'm often surprised by the extent to which they engage with and are affected by the emotional content of these episodes, but they are still eight and ten year old boys and really, it's all about the hardware.

I don't know how many times I've watched these two episodes, but I still don't really know what to make of them. Even after several years, there's still so much to take in: we've seen some grand and incredible Doctor Who stories, but this is the only one, so far, that truly deserves to be called an epic. RTD throws in Daleks, Davros, Torchwood, Sarah Jane, Donna's apotheosis and Rose's second send off. Oh, and we also get Martha, Mickey and Jackie, and a fake regeneration. And a second Doctor. And the attempted destruction of the entire multiverse. That's quite a lot and you'd be forgiven for thinking this monster mash-up should never have even been attempted; that it holds together at all is a remarkable achievement. That it is even any good is just incredible, but it is often brilliant.

It's by far the most satisfying of any of RTD's finales, although, I don't like all of it, of course. More than once the joyous exuberance bubbles over into preposterousness and there are several moments that I would be happy to excise entirely.

Let's start with the Good:

• Lis Sladen. Nothing sells the threat of the Daleks like Sarah Jane crying into Luke's hair. Barrowman is trying to do the same thing for Ianto and Gwen inside the Hub, but he doesn't even get close. Sladen's greatness was her ability to absolutely convince us that any nonsense on screen was not only real but terrifying, and her performance here is a masterclass. What's more, Sarah Jane is a wonderful link back to the show's past, as demonstrated here when Davros recognises her from Genesis of the Daleks. Suddenly this isn't a one-off adventure but an installment of a fifty-year serial. Goosepimples.
• The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It doesn't take up much screen time, but this is one of the best invasions we've yet seen - considerably more impressive than the one in The Parting of the Ways, which was represented by a computer outline of Australia changing shape. Here instead we have CGI Daleks streaming across Manhattan and pouring over the Valiant, like ants over an elephant. And all this is before they even reach the ground. Later on we will be treated to the sight of them floating through the forest, screeching in Germany. "Exterminieren! Exterminieren!" The Daleks are proper scary throughout, and for once Davros isn't in charge. The Reality Bomb becomes the ultimate expression of the Daleks' fascist intolerance.
• The Harriet Jones Joke. It should be awful. It should make me cringe. But it isn't and it doesn't. It's always funny and never more so than here when we hear it for the last time, delivered by the Daleks themselves. It's funny because they are not joking, and through their ring modulators the stupid gag suddenly sounds like sinister and ruthless preparation. 
• Donna. What a character, what a companion. What an ending. Her Doctor-Donna persona is wonderful, and her sudden appearance, right at the end, provides one of the best and most enjoyable reversals of fortune in the modern era. Daleks spinning, Sarah Jane and Martha grinning as they push them around, Donna in the middle just revelling in her new capabilities. Losing her, and her losing herself, is extremely sad, easily the most depressing departure of a companion since (well, I was going to say Jamie and Zoe, because of the memory thing, and I never got over Romana leaving, but, realistically) Peri's shock exit - either of them. But even before the biological metacrisis takes effect, Donna has been exhibiting Doctorish qualities, just watch her at the Shadow Proclamation, rationalising and explaining: she has become a bit Doctorish all by herself.
• Cribbins. Just wonderful. Every time. 
• The Regeneration. What an ending to The Stolen Earth. Surely the greatest cliffhanger in the show's history (which is not necessarily the same as the best). Once again the nation was beside itself for a whole week as newspapers filled page after page with speculation and pubs, workplaces and playgrounds were awash with theories about what would happen. This is a trick you only get to pull once, and it was done pretty well. But the wellspring of all this feverish excitement was the underlying thought that the Doctor might actually properly regenerate. Deep down, I realised that was what I wanted. It would be worth bringing Rose back if her Doctor would then immediately die to be replaced by a different indifferent man. I am a mean person. Of course, when considered in the cold light of day, that was never going to happen. Whilst a surprise regeneration or a mid-story regeneration might be a huge coup, there's no way that the new Doctor wouldn't be shown at the end of part one. So really, we all knew that Tennant was staying on, for now. The question remained, how clever was the resolution going to be? 

Now the Not-So Good.

• The Fake Regeneration. Even watching this again on DVD, William was nervous. "I know he doesn't die, but I can't remember how he does it?" I asked him what he expected. "That it'll be a cheat and that it won't really make sense." So on we ploughed with Journey's End and a few seconds later I checked with him again. "It was a cheat, but I liked it," he said. What about, I asked, if Matt Smith had turned up at this point instead? "Oh that would have been completely awesome," came the instant reply. This is pretty much how I feel about it too. It's a good trick, but the resolution, that the Doctor can fizz the 'excess' regeneration energy into a 'handy biometric receptacle' feels like a cheat. We knew the hand was for something, but we didn't know that could happen. It's all dealt with a little too quickly, a little too neatly. But, I'm not really complaining - if this hadn't happened, we wouldn't have ended up with the Doctor-Donna, and we wouldn't have had Matt Smith cast as the Eleventh Doctor and I'm not prepared to give up either of those. 
• Destiny. I know that writing a long running story in installments like this must be a mix of forward-planning and making-it-up-as-you-go. I don't have a problem with that. I don't mind when thinking ahead comes unstuck (the duck pond with no ducks in The Eleventh Hour?) and I don't mind when earlier bits of a story serendipitously happen to connect to whatever idea the writer has just had. What I don't like is the habit RTD seems to have of pointing out these happy coincidences and attributing them to some vague sense of destiny. We get it here with Donna and we will get it again with Wilf. "Oh," says the Doctor, "it's more than that, as if the universe was binding us together, as if this was always going to happen, to lead to this moment and echoing back through time." I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist and I don't like it. It's a personal thing, but you can't start messing about with ideas of destiny (and therefore also free will) in a show about time travel, surely? Why can't it just be coincidence that Donna bumped into the Doctor again? To suggest otherwise puts extra weight on events that are already, in the words of Marty McFly, pretty heavy.
• Prophecy. Once again, just like Rose's hyperbolic pronouncements at the beginning of Army of Ghosts, we get prophetic statements that don't do anything other than pretend things are going to be worse/more exciting than they will turn out to be. Throughout the story Caan ("crazy drunk Dalek dude" according to William) keeps chuntering on about "one of them [the Doctor's companions] will die!". No, they don't. Unless Rose being in a parallel universe is a 'death' (it was last time), or Donna's amnesia is the same as dying. Either way, it's much less interesting than the prophecies of Pompeii, where the concrete certainty of the seer was undermined by the mutability of events.  
• Davros and the Daleks. Oh, Davros is pretty good here actually, albeit a bit more bonkers (giddy even) and a bit less calculating than of old. But the chief problem with Davros is that, whether or not he is in charge of the Daleks or their 'pet', once he is on screen, the Doctor stops talking to the Daleks and they fade into the background. And while I appreciate that something pretty climactic has to happen when the threat level has been ramped up to include the entire multiverse, I am getting bored of the Daleks being utterly destroyed down to the last atom every time they turn up (Emergency Temporal Shifts aside) and then magically returning, a million strong, a few months later.
• Towing the Earth back. Is it cool? Or stupid? It's deeply stupid, although I'll put up with it just for the grin that Martha delivers straight down the camera. As for the TARDIS needing six pilots to be flown properly, I can just imagine River's response to that: "Or, sweetie, you could learn to multi-task?"
• I'll never get over the Shadow Proclamation being an organisation rather than a document. I can cope, just about, with it being an organisation based on a document ("At the UN Charter in New York today...") but we never even get given that fig leaf. 
• Rose. Oh, of course she should be here with everyone else. But the fact that she is here just shows how she throws the programme off-balance. The love-story with the Doctor makes her too important for ensembles and this elevated status (compared with the other companions) means so much must be pushed aside for her to be accommodated. Having said that, I did like it when Martha turned up on the Subwave screen and Rose had no idea who she was. In your face, Tyler. So we get all the slow-running and the gooey-looks and then, bleurghhh, we are back on Bad Wolf Bay. I didn't like this the first time, but I can't believe we have to do this again. Even worse, this time Rose gets given her own play-Doctor. Oh well, if it means that's the last we see of her then it's a price worth paying but, to be fair, if it wasn't for Rose's infatuation, would we have ever got River? Also, missing London and turning up in Norway is worse than hitting Aberdeen instead of Croydon.

It's silly, isn't it, the things that bug you when you're watching something you love. Ah well, as always, the brilliant things are more numerous and more important that than the bits I would change - not that I'd ever be in a position to change them anyway. 

When the credits eventually rolled (love that ending, the Doctor, alone, empty) the boys collapsed back against the sofa and, in unison, breathed one word.

"Epic."

And then they said a ton of other stuff, some of which I wrote down.

"I liked both episodes," said Chris. "In the first one, I liked how they didn't show Davros for ages and ages, even though we all knew it was him. It kept it mysterious. And I liked how it was just an ordinary Dalek that killed the Doctor, that makes them all seem more dangerous than if it was the Red One. I'd say that was one of the most memorable stories ever. The second one was amazing, I liked how everyone worked together and how Jack, Martha and Sarah Jane all had weapons to fight the Daleks."

"Both ten out of ten, obviously, but it was really sad how Donna left," said William. "She was a good Doctor and it was really unfair how she had to lose her memory when Rose got her own Doctor, like a reward. But both of them had to go, because neither of them would have left if it was just up to them. I want to know what the other Doctor said to Rose on the beach though."

"I dread to think," I said, accidentally out loud.

"I think it was 'You were brilliant'," said William, ignoring me. 

"No," said Chris, "I think it was 'I love you.'"

Then they looked at each other. 

"Ewww!"

NEXT TIME...

Turn Left

A very strong episode, and one that received high praise at the time. It's undeniably good, another excellent story in a very strong series, but I've never liked it quite as much as I thought I was supposed to. Partly that's me being contrary, but there are things about this that I was never going to like.

We'll come to those in a minute, because it can not be denied that this is a powerful emotional drama working on a scale seldom seen in Doctor Who. There can't surely have been anyone left to win over by this point, but once again Catherine Tate proves why she was such an excellent, albeit unexpected, choice for companion. We've watched Donna's gradual development over the course of Series Four, but here we get to see her do it all again in just forty-five minutes as one Doctor-less crisis after another reduces Britain to chaos. It's a reminder that the companions don't necessarily need the Doctor in order to achieve their potential. Yes, Rose arguably locums here and pushes her to make the right decisions, but the overall progress (from Runaway Bride loudmouth to Journey's End saviour-of-the-universe) is Donna's achievement.

I'm not sure that watching so much Doctor Who so close together is such a good thing. It's good to run some episodes together (I love being able to watch The Eleventh Hour straight after The End of Time), but most stories deserve a little space afterwards to let them sink in. On the other hand, binge-watching is great for Turn Left: it's the most ridiculous continuity-fest, but having all these previous adventures and calamities-that-weren't fresh in the mind makes it more intense and helps knit things together. My favourite callback is the newsflash that announces the Adipose have struck America: it's funny and dark and contrives to be a surprise - we had all forgotten about the little Adipose, and transplanting them to the country that serves cheese with everything is a masterstroke.

Best of all is the terrifying and wonderfully underplayed moment when poor Mr Colassanto and family are dragged away to the labour camps. Doctor Who rarely gets this dark, but the hints of genocide and xenophobia still fly straight over the kids' heads. I wonder if that's a bad thing? History repeats itself because the original impact of the awfulness recedes over the generations - maybe we should make a point of horrifying the children with the facts as soon as possible? But then we wouldn't get this beautiful horrible moment: a look, shared by Wilf (Cribbins, you legend) and Colassanto. The old men can do nothing else but remember.

And then there's Rose. You won't be surprised to learn that I'm not pleased by her return. The more I think about it, I realise that my problem isn't with her (although she's still way down my list of favourite companions), but with the effect that she has upon the Doctor. She can be as lovesick over him as she likes - that at least makes sense - but I'll never understand why he feels the same way about her. His absence from Turn Left postpones the inevitable weirdly drippy reunion but Rose's Doctorless reappearance still doesn't quite ring true. To be blunt, this isn't the Rose we remember and, whatever the reason (is it Piper's performance? direction/production decisions? all the ADR?), she's oddly vacant here, a shadow of her former vivacious self. It's a shame and lessens the impact of having her back.

The episode ends with an unexpected cliffhanger as everything turns Bad Wolf. It's dramatic and exciting and I can't help but love it and the impetus it provides as we move towards the series finale - but, at the same time, it just doesn't make any sense and that infuriates me. I seem to remember that in the Confidential for this episode, David Tennant, on set for these scenes, teasing RTD, repeatedly asking "Yeah, but what does Bad Wolf mean?" He didn't get an answer. It's just a flourish: wonderful and exciting, but ultimately meaningless.

Of course the boys LOVED it, William so much that he forgot not to comment. "Wow," he said and walked off. Chris sat there open-mouthed, trying to collect his thoughts.

"One simple choice," he breathed, his head spinning, "and the course of EVERYTHING changes! And Rose and Donna had to work together to save the whole universe. That is so cool."

And he's right, and RTD is right, and I am just old Mr Grumpy Face.


NEXT TIME...

Midnight

At the time, I think this was my pick of Series Four. It's not quite as amazing as I remember, and I think the reputations of The Fires of Pompeii or Silence in the Library have risen higher since, but it is still very good indeed.

As we've seen, later episodes in a series can garner low expectations and there has sometimes been a sense of a series holding back, gathering resources for a finale. With its single set and claustrophobic atmosphere, Midnight gave the impression that it might be a cheap, inconsequential story after all. But that original transmission was electrifying.

One of the key moments in my love of Doctor Who was a BBC Two run of repeated stories called 'The Five Faces of Doctor Who' that began in November 1981. I had never seen any of the previous Doctors before and I was enthralled by the murky black and white images and the spooky music of the Hartnell and Troughton episodes. These days, neither 100,000BC (or whatever we are calling it these days) or The Krotons are perhaps as suspenseful as they seemed to me at five years old. But at that early stage the idea became fixed in my mind that a crucial element of a 'proper' Doctor Who story should be an oppressive sense of mystery, and to this day I am delighted by any story that makes me gasp "What the hell is going on?" as I watch it. Moffat's scripts aside, it's not a terribly common feature in the RTD era of the show. But Midnight delivers it in spades and that's why it's brilliant.

We never see the 'thing'. There might not even be a 'thing'. If there is an outside influence and this all doesn't just rise up out of Sky Silvestry's mind, we never learn what it is, and it is never given a name. The voice games and repetition may suggest playground pursuits, but their execution here, thanks to some hard work from the cast and the sound engineers, is unearthly, almost unbearable. The unexplained, unknowable nature of the threat makes Midnight scarier and more interesting than any prosthetic or CGI alien design could have done. Christopher disagrees: when Sky becomes possessed but sits with her back to the passengers, he expected her to turn around to reveal a visual shock, a skull-face or something; but for me the joy of that moment is that Lesley Sharp's face has been transformed, albeit subtly, and the Sky that we briefly knew has gone. In fact, Chris didn't really appreciate the mysteriousness at all, and docked a point because we never got to find out what had been going on. But I think that just reinforces my point: we don't like not knowing and that makes this story scarier.

You might think that the scariest thing in Midnight is not, however, the unknown but the all too familiar humans: RTD delivers a beautifully observed display of all the ugly impulses, the pettiness and the brutality that we are capable of when we give in to fear - the Daily Mail factor, perhaps. The other passengers are terrifying: deluding themselves and being deluded, angrily turning on one another and resorting to extremes of violence and murder to try and save their skins. But even this scenario can't avoid the standard loophole of morality in Doctor Who - in order to save the Doctor, somebody has to kill, and sacrifice themselves in the process. In this instance it's the unnamed hostess and I don't think it is a coincidence that she was the first to suggest the idea of throwing somebody out the airlock, back when things started getting unpleasant. At the time the Doctor shouted her down, condemning her for her base instincts, but once again a story needs somebody to murder so that the Doctor can survive. Perhaps it is just a convention of story-telling, but it does sometimes feel like these endings undermine the Doctor's principles, and make him look naive. As a result, stories like The Empty Child and Silence in the Library feel all the more significant because they show the Doctor defeating violence itself (and death too), rather than just villainy.

I'm not trying to pick on Midnight by raising that point here - the deaths of Sky and the Hostess make the story work, especially with the Doctor incapacitated and in danger himself, and it is this state in which he finds himself that is the other great thing about this episode.

We're used to the Doctor being in command, earning the respect of those around him and issuing orders. We know he's clever, we know he's experienced - these are both reasons why we like him so much. Here all this is turned on its head and his arrogance (which we have seen previously, although it has almost always been played for laughs before) becomes a weakness, just as his intelligence and his eloquence begin to work against him. It hasn't been done before (the closest would be Power of the Daleks or Snakedance, where he is derided as a prophet of doom) and the effect is genuinely unsettling, helped by another brilliant performance by David Tennant.

There's another, more traditional, character flaw of his on display too. When he saunters into the cockpit of the stalled bus, the Doctor begs the crew to open the shutters for just an instant so he can see the landscape of the planet, as yet unobserved by human eyes. His curiosity has always been getting him into trouble, but is it actually the catalyst here too? There's nothing to suggest that the bus hasn't just developed a mechanical fault - what if it was the Doctor's insistence that the shutters be opened that caused the thing to turn its attention on Crusader 50?


NEXT TIME...

Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead

Is it normal for television to deliver actual shivers of delight? The Doctor stands before his TARDIS in an ancient room. He snaps his fingers, and the room fills with light as the doors fly open. Stepping inside, he turns to face us, we who are left behind. Donna at his side, he stares out dispassionately before clicking his fingers once again. And the TARDIS doors close, like the pages of a book.

This is a wonderful pair of episodes. The Vashta Nerada, although not quite as successful as the Silence or the Weeping Angels, are nonetheless an instant classic: a spooky combination of lurching, zombiefied space suits and darkness itself, rendered with piranha-like ferocity. The reveal, that it was their forest that became the books of the library, is a characteristic piece of Moffat plotting that relies on something we already know but have not had time to consider, in this case that paper comes from trees. What's more, there's a surreal, transformative quality to there being a forest inside a library, just as later we will see a forest in a bottle in a ship in a cave, or fish swimming in the fog.

The Library is a brilliant idea, executed with considerable flair: a great mixture of sweeping CGI wide shots and clever location work (including the beautiful Brangwyn Hall in Swansea) create a vast and imposing world that is still full of dark corners and intimate spaces. The result is that this strange world feels like a real place.

It helps that the people in it are so believable. We've seen our fair share of disposable supporting characters over the years, but this small team of explorers must be some of the most likeable. Dave, Other Dave, Anita, who faces death with such dignity, and Miss Evangelista, whose cruel demise provides the chief emotional moment of Silence in the Library; each of them a tiny part that becomes a real person thanks to some great writing and a wonderful guest cast. The others aren't bad either: Colin Salmon as Dr Moon, beautifully urbane and reassuring, is a particular coup and Eve Newton is remarkably good as the young girl/super computer CAL, who sits in the mysterious space we think of as our own, watching and responding to the Doctor's adventures on her television. Key points in this story depend on her performance and she doesn't disappoint.

I think Forest of the Dead is the slightly better of the two episodes. Donna's side trip into the wonderland of CAL's imagination is just one of many curveballs Moffat pitches along the way, but it is marvellous: mysterious, funny ("But I've been DIETING!") and deeply unsettling. He creates a landscape out of the visual language of television itself, using cuts and edits to mask the gaps in Donna's reality. But the distortion of Miss Evangelista's face is simply an updating of the traditional gothic heroine's disfigurement, and at the centre of this fabricated reality are real human emotions. Donna's relationship with Lee is undeniably real even if, like their children, it is a fabrication. CAL, watching the Doctor, might be so scared she has to switch over to another programme, but for any adults (let alone parents) in the audience, the gut-churning moment where Donna's children tell her they are afraid that they are not real, and then disappear from their beds in the blink of an eye, is surely the most terrifying and awful moment in the whole of Doctor Who. Catherine Tate has been incredible in this series, and this story is another very high point.

Tennant is extremely good as well. When River whispers in the Doctor's ear, Tennant shows us, for a few fascinating seconds, a broken man, suddenly unsure of everything. She turns away and we can see him rebuilding himself, reconstructing the persona of the Doctor until he is able to snap back into action. Once he's recovered, the Doctor gets to be rather wonderful, saving everybody, even River, and turning back the Vashta Nerada by showing them his entry in Who's Who? There's more to say about the legendary interpretation of the Doctor, but for now, this feels like a very cool trick, albeit one that can't be used very often. 

But it isn't enough that these episodes are brilliant; they are also important, a lynchpin, that connects the Tenth Doctor to the Eleventh, the RTD era to that of Steven Moffat.

As soon as we saw the Next Time at the end of The Unicorn and the Wasp, we were extremely excited. I hadn't given it much thought in advance, but the imminent arrival of River Song felt like a massive event. It's no surprise that hindsight (or foresight, it's difficult to tell) changes the way that we watch her episodes now, but I was unprepared for the full impact of her appearance in the library. She is a harbinger, a John the Baptist figure, heralding the future of Doctor Who itself.

There was a slight sense of this at the time, with her references to her future-Doctor, but with Moffat having been announced as RTD's replacement only days earlier it felt chutzpah on his part to be using this script to tell us how wonderful things were going to be when he took over. Not that I ever doubted that the Moffat era would be anything other than brilliant, of course, but River's appearance here seemed designed to deliberately raise everyone's expectations - a rather cocksure gambit.

Now we know: if it was arrogance, it was utterly deserved. The brilliance of this story is that Moffat delivered on those expectations, exceeded them even. To watch this story now is to swap the original thrill of anticipation for the glow of recollection. We've seen the crash of the Byzantium; we know and love the Doctor who can open the TARDIS with a click of his fingers; we've watched River be born, get married; we've met her mother.

The incomparable genius of it all is that this story serves as a fitting and perfect finale for River Song. On transmission, we didn't, couldn't, know that she would return, that we would see her whole story. In that sense Silence in the Library didn't promise anything. The rest of her story that came after, woven through subsequent series, delivers in ways we could never have anticipated and unexpectedly makes this two-parter so much more powerful, so much more important, and so much better than we ever realised.

I know there are some viewers, some fans even, that don't like her or, at least, prefer it when she's not around, but as far as I'm concerned River Song is the most startling and ingenious addition to the series since the TARDIS, and her higgledy-piggledy narrative is the best piece of extended storytelling in the whole run. If it wasn't part of Doctor Who, if River's story had been conceived as a separate show in its own right, told out of sequence over five years, it would be lauded, considered the most audaciously brilliant piece of television in years. Instead here it is, beginning and ending in these two episodes where, for the first time, the show about time travel takes a trip into its own future.

Christopher's favourite bit was when the Doctor dived down the swishy-blueness, a wonderful moment which you think would be worth a ten out of ten all by itself. He held a point back until I could explain how all the other dead people could join River in the Libraryscape, but we finally ended up with a ten, which is, in my opinion, the very least this story deserves.


NEXT TIME...

The Unicorn and the Wasp

The Unicorn and the Wasp is pure fun. It's so much fun, in fact, that it feels like a guilty pleasure, like a cream bun: undeniably delicious, but it wouldn't do us any good if Doctor Who was like this every week.

Each to their own, but crashing a 1920's posho garden party would be fairly high up my time-travelling bucket list. First stop: Venice in her pomp, of course, but very soon after that I'd be up for Pimms and croquet, I reckon. Still, the chances of finding a party as fun as this one are slim. Not only is it hosted by Felicity Kendall, for crying out loud, but a rather famous guest is self-consciously wandering across the lawn towards the Doctor and Donna.

"Agatha Christie," she says, sticking out her hand.

"What about her?" asks Donna.

Slightly embarrassed in that beautifully English way, the woman replies, "That's me."

Donna can't help herself. Her mouth falls open and her eyes gape. "NO!" she gasps, half-incredulous, half-exhilarated. "You're kidding!"

Donna's reaction is hilarious, feels very genuine, and helps set the tone for the episode. But I think it also exemplifies the spirit of the revitalised series. Look how much fun this is! The question has to be asked, why on Earth did the original show never do this? Why did we never get to pal around with brilliant people from history and have hi-jinks? We did meet Marco Polo, and HG Wells, but it wasn't fun, and we always just seemed to miss Leonardo da Vinci. In the new Doctor Who, the Psychic Paper becomes a pass to the roped-off, VIP areas of history. Once inside, the trick is to have fun with the famous guest stars, rather than at their expense. That's what Tooth & Claw got horribly wrong, and The Unicorn and the Wasp gets brilliantly right.

Yes, Christie chastises the Doctor, just as Queen Victoria did. But in Tooth & Claw, it came at the end of the story, like a judgement on the rest of the episode. Here it happens early on, and it works as a check on us and the Doctor, a reminder that, no matter how much fun we are having, people are dying and there is a real threat to be uncovered. But once delivered, we are all allowed to carry on enjoying the Whodunnit.

A lot of the fun in this episode derives from the playful way it adopts the conventions of murder mystery television. Every last morsel is wrung from the witness statements, with flashbacks within flashbacks, unreliable testimony, and the repetition of events we have already seen ourselves. The traditional I've-gathered-you-all-together scene gets a similar treatment. The 'moving finger' picks out each suspect in turn, revealing a different secret every time, but we also get Donna's commentary, munching popcorn as if she was sat on the sofa at home, trying to keep up with Poirot. With each fresh accusation (accompanied by a whiplash turn of Christie's head) Donna furrows her brow and asks "So she/he did it then?" It's lovely stuff.

Other trappings of the genre are served up more conventionally: a nice supply of red herrings; the below-stairs gossip; the POV shot of the murder victim; dinner, complete with power-cut and a knife in the back during the soup course. Doctor Who seems so comfortable with the format that it becomes clear that this could have been done completely straight and it would still have been very good. But it is undeniably better as it is: it needs the giant wasp, it needs the broad comedy of the Doctor's poisoning. These elements stop it getting bogged down in country house chat, and inject a dash of the fantastic. They remind us that Doctor Who is not only special but unique: there is no other programme on television that can tell a story like this.

It's episodes like The Unicorn and the Wasp that make me conscious that the show is being made by people of my generation. This blend of influences remind me of how television was when we were children: with a paucity of channels and very little choice, we ended up watching whatever was on. As a result we saw, and loved, all sorts of things that we would never have deliberately sought out for ourselves. BBC Two used to show silent movies in prime time for goodness sake! Harold Lloyd, and Laurel & Hardy! But we also got things like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, Joan Hickson's Miss Marple and the Peter Ustinov Poirot films.

I know this makes me sound like a grumpy old Reithian in these multi-channel days, but I do think maybe television should give people what they need, rather than what they want. My boys not only have access (albeit limited) to dedicated channels of cartoons that run twenty-four hours a day, they also have Netflix, which lets them watch whatever they want, instantly. And so, in order to introduce them to something, I have to say, "Hey kids why don't you try watching this? It's really good." Sadly, nothing is as uninteresting as something your parents have recommended  (can you imagine your parents telling you to watch Monty Python? How can something be subversive if your parents have told you it's okay?), but I did get some traction with Charlie Chaplin once by telling them it was "a bit like Mr Bean."

The point of this is that my kids haven't ever been exposed to the works of Agatha Christie, and so they know nothing of the genre. But they absolutely loved The Unicorn and the Wasp.

"Ten out of ten!" said Chris. "It was great. I loved the detective stuff, how they had to ask questions, how it was a mystery."

"Yeah," chips in Will, "it was like that game, Cluedo!" (Okay, he didn't say Cluedo, he said Clue, because he lives in America, but we are going to pretend he said Cluedo.)

"Well," I said, "you know there are TV shows like this that are based on Agatha Christie books? With country houses and murders and detectives - would you like to watch one some time?"

"Sure!" they said.

And that is yet another reason why Doctor Who is the best TV show ever.



NEXT TIME...

The Doctor's Daughter

Intriguing episode titles have been used to keep audiences watching Doctor Who since The Cave of Skulls, but some are just downright provocative. There's nothing new about that either (see 1965's The Death of Doctor Who), but it feels like we've had more of them over the last few years. There's a connecting pattern as well: The Next Doctor, The Doctor's Wife, The Wedding of River Song, The Name of the Doctor - sure they might raise the eyebrow of the casual viewer, or grab the attention of a newspaper previewer, but theres a certain amount of fan-baiting about them too isn't there? Titles such as these hint that sacred cows are about to be slaughtered by a production team tinkering with the show's core tenets.

To be fair, I think the desire to be provocative is a healthy one and that the key objective is to prick journalists into action and to generate publicity. If I were in charge, I'm not sure I wouldn't want to tease the hardcore fans every once in a while either, but it must be noted that none of these stories ever actually do the terrible thing the title threatens to do, or reveal the terrible thing that must never be revealed. It should also be noted that it is fans of a certain age that tend to have conniptions about things like this - my boys, of course, have no preconceptions, and no notions that certain 'fact's about the Doctor are 'fixed', as if particular lines of dialogue could be given Grade I listed status; they are as likely to blithely accept The Doctor's Granny, as we were the Doctor's granddaughter.

When I discovered that an upcoming episode was called The Doctor's Daughter (I spoiled myself, idiot, clicking on a link when I should have waited for DWM to tell me), I thought to myself "Oh, they're going to do that are they?" and I was mildly disconcerted for a moment or too. But I was much more uncomfortable about having found the title out prematurely than I was about what it was. And then, when the time came, the 'mystery' of the Doctor's daughter was cleared up before the opening credits - no tortuous back story, no unnecessary revelations about the Doctor's original family, no how-did-you-escape-the-Time-War speeches - and I was able to simply enjoy the story.

It is mostly very satisfying. For one thing it is very neatly constructed, managing to make room not only for both Donna and Martha, but Jenny too.

Jenny and her relationship with the Doctor are at the centre of the episode, and their story plays out very nicely. Georgia Moffett is very good, and suggests that Jenny is learning and developing without ever making her appear childlike, sceptical and determined without ever becoming truculent or sulky. The Doctor makes a convincing parent, consumed by the normal nightmares: the agony of losing a child; the pain of seeing his own failings echoed in her behaviour. With much economy, but without ever being unconvincing, the episode uses the time it has to chart how these two gradually warm to each other. The beautiful sting in the tale is that, although Jenny's death always appears inevitable, her resurrection does not; her regenerative glow relieves the gloom that would otherwise make this episode really quite dark.

Donna, ever the human half of the Chiswick/Gallifrey hybrid, chivvies the Doctor along, a sort of emotionally literate Jiminy Cricket to the Time Lord Pinocchio. She teases and cajoles him, insists on naming Jenny and treating her like a person - but she does this all so gently, never pushing too fair, slowly enabling the Doctor to let himself feel the emotions he is desperately trying to hold in check. As with The Fires of Pompeii and Planet of the Ood, she is once more behaving as a missing but complementary part of his personality - the arc for this series is secretly playing out right in front of our eyes, hidden in plain sight. And whilst the Doctor is distracted by family problems, Donna gets to apply her office skills to the wider universe and unlocks the mystery of Messaline. I love that the mundane business of understanding timestamps, filing and archiving is a transferrable skill - it makes Donna so much more accessible to us than Zoe with her photographic memory, or Leela with her janus thorns.

Martha, meanwhile, carries half the episode all by herself: the only speaking character in the Hath side of Messaline. Surrounded by prosthetics and talking to herself, this could have been ended up rather strained, but Ageyman's performance is never unconvincing or unnatural and Martha's qualities (so competent, so likeable) mean that she wins over her captors, teams up with Peck, and navigates the perils of this alien world with some flair, if not ease. Even better, and unlike some previous companions (Mel the computer programmer? Peri the botanist?), she repeatedly utilises her medical training: fixing Peck's shoulder and rushing to Jenny's aide. Like Rose, like Donna, Martha feels like a real person, thanks to great writing and acting. Out of the three, though, Doctor Jones has easily the best music, and Murray Gold's theme for her is never better than at the end of the episode, where it rises in a potent bluesy farewell.

Martha is the first companion to get her second chance at leaving the new series, and both goodbyes are really good. They certainly both feel justified, or, rather, they feel to me like they are two halves of one protracted goodbye: the first is abrupt and somewhat incomplete; this, the second, leaves everything neatly wrapped up. It is very satisfying and, importantly, the series feels like it has regained the emotional reality that went out of the window during Last of the Time Lords.

You'd think there wouldn't be room in the episode for anything else, but there's still quite a lot! There's something really alien and mysterious about Messaline, thanks to some ingenious choices of location, some good design work, and some clever concepts. The whole scenario - the colonisation, the underground city, the generations of soldiers fighting a war over seven days - is exotic and intriguing in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. For all that, I'm not convinced it entirely makes sense - it's never explained, for example, why Cobb is so much older than everybody else (is he part of the original crew, manipulating the younger generations for his own ends?), and surely not everyone from the earliest generations has been killed within a week? Is there no one left who actually remembers the landing? I'm not enamoured of the Doctor's preachy shouting at the end either ( "a man who never would, except for when I blew up Skaro or gunned down all those Cybermen in the TARDIS") but he has just lost his daughter and I'm never actually going to complain when someone on television tells my children that guns are evil.

Despite the somewhat upbeat ending, William was wistful enough to comment for once: "I wish she had gone with the Doctor..." Chris could only give this an eight because Jenny "should have regenerated completely not just come back to life. Also I don't believe the Hand could bring the TARDIS there. It's a hand, it hasn't got magic powers."

Oh, just you wait.


NEXT TIME...

The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky

Well, this blew me away, much to my surprise. We watched both episodes together and for the first time, I had the feeling of watching a Doctor Who movie. It's great: alien invasion on a grand scale, with sneaky infiltration, all-out battle, a gung-ho UNIT, and a suitably epic ending.

I've decided I like having two companions, and there might not be a better combination than Donna and Martha. They don't get a lot of time to interact here, but the few moments they do get are just lovely. With Rose out of the picture there's no jealousy, and it's nice to have two women know the Doctor without feeling they have to fight over him.

It is just nice to see Martha again. In the old days companions never ever came back (apart from Tegan, and that doesn't really count) but these days everybody returns. I have a pet theory that the first goodbye is always the best, but we'll look at that in The Doctor's Daughter. And Journey's End, The End of Time, and The God Complex or The Angels Take Manhattan. Anyway, it is nice to see Martha. Her return doesn't pose any awkward questions, or unbalance the show's equilibrium, or throw the story off in an odd direction. We just get to see that she is fine and happy, engaged to her lovely Doctor Tom, and working for UNIT. As breakups go, this has turned out to pretty well. It's just a slight shame that she is so quickly sidelined. Although it's fun (both for us and, presumably, for Freema Agyeman) to have Evil Martha running rings around UNIT command, I would have liked her and Donna to get more time together.

But there are niceties to be observed: Donna is the incumbent companion and rightly gets more attention. She gets multiple opportunities to impress - "I'll take a salute"; showing off her temp powers in the ATMOS office; impassively waiting for the Doctor to realise he is barking up the wrong tree with his eloquent "You're leaving" speech; catching up with her grandfather and happily enduring her mother; pragmatically puncturing the Doctor's next big speech, snatching the TARDIS key from him as she tries to escape the poisonous fog. Her greatest moment is aboard the Sontaran ship. Alone and desperately out of her depth, the Doctor pushes her to step out from the safety of the TARDIS. She manages to get the job done despite her own fears and rises even further in our estimation as a result.

There are so many things to like. Early on there's a simply brilliant shot through the TARDIS doors with Donna still impossibly deep inside the Console Room. David Tennant is on excellent form; now in his third series, his performance feels effortless and the Doctor is so much fun to be around, whether he's taking out Field Marshall Staal with a squash ball, bickering with Colonel Mace, out-pedanting Rattigan, bonding with Ross, or coldly keeping an eye on turncoat clone Martha. The Doctor isn't without his contradictions though: he rails against UNIT's penchant for violent military solutions and makes a point of not carrying any guns - but he still charges onto the Sontaran ship with a home weapon and the intent to kill everyone aboard. Of course here, as with a lot of other nasty decisions, he hesitates just long enough for someone else to decide to sacrifice themselves instead. For all that, it says something about the momentum of this story that it struck me that the Doctor really could die doing this - I know he won't (and not just because I've seen this one before), but even making such an outcome a credible theoretical possibility is an achievement.

The Sontarans are very good here, and show why they deserved to come back. If nothing else, they are clearly delineated from other villainous races. Visually, they retain their unique facial appearance, regain their distinctive fingers and stature, and are improved further by a strong redesign of their uniforms. The proper martial characteristics are all present and correct, and there's no fuzzy emotional overlap with the Daleks or Cybermen: we know, from everything they say and do, that the Sontarans are all about war. Staal is genuinely aggrieved that his race was kept out of the Time War and, rather touchingly, seems to think that defeating the Doctor will mean the Sontarans somehow won that conflict, rather like Scotland beating England in 1967 and claiming to be world champions.

Of course, these two aren't the only belligerents in this conflict and it is rather pleasing that the Sontarans get to go up against the new souped-up UNIT, especially seeing as the humans defy all alien expectations and kick some extraterrestrial bottom. The counter-attack that begins with the descent of the Valiant (thank you Mr Saxon) is one of the most gung-ho moments in the entirety of Doctor Who and, unlike many of Eric Saward's bust-ups, it still manages to delight, not only us, but the Doctor himself, as Colonel Mace notes. If this new relationship doesn't quite have the chemistry of Pertwee and Courtney, at least it captures the old sense that these two respect each other despite their disagreements.

This two-parter is really very good, but it seems to be a little forgotten - overshadowed maybe by the epic climax of Series Four, or by the way Strax has become such a dominant version of the Sontarans during the last year or two. It's a shame because this story shows that they really do deserve to be considered among the top rank of returning baddies, and that they are definitely worthy of a season finale all of their own.

Still there is an odd moment or two - the clone race seems to have retained some vestigial sexism, and neither Israel or Russia appear on Captain Price's list of co-operating nuclear nations, although North Korea does! Almost as confusing as one of the boys cheering "Harriet Jones!" when Kirsty Wark turned up. Chris eventually gave both parts ten out of ten, but I had to talk him up from a nine on The Sontaran Stratagem: initially he had wanted to take off a point because he didn't believe Rattigan could have invented all those gadgets. Not unreasonable, really.


NEXT TIME...