Doctor Who Season 27 (Episode 1, "Rose" and Episode 2, "The End of the World")



To steal a tagline from the FOX TV movie, Doctor Who is back, and it’s about time. Like that failed pilot, the new Doctor Who is an all around update of the concept for the classic TV series, but the difference is that the update works this time.

The new series is, as near as I can tell, a straight continuation of the original series, though there is radical new status quo for the universe. There’s been some sort of war, and the Time Lords have been wiped out. The Doctor, now played by Christopher Eccleston, is not merely a renegade; he’s the last remaining Time Lord, period. What alien race could be powerful enough to destroy Gallifrey and kill all the Time Lords (presumably everywhere in space and time) has not been revealed, but I assume that this mystery will serve as an overall story arc for this 13 episode season of the show. (Considering their popularity and certain statements I've seen Eccleston give in interviews, the Daleks are a good bet.)


"No! We musn't let Paul McGann back in here!"

The first episode, "Rose," serves to introduce the Doctor’s newest traveling companion, Rose (Billie Piper). Rose works at a department store. She’s in the basement one day when she is attacked by mannequins come to life. As she flees she runs into the Doctor, who is headed the roof of the building. After she’s out on the street the building explodes.

The next day the Doctor shows up at her house, looking for the plastic arm of one of the mannequins. It has crawled to her house under it's own power, and it attacks her and the Doctor. After this rather unsettling incident Rose demands answers, but the Doctor refuses to give them and urges that she go on with her life. However, that will be a little difficult because her boyfriend has been replaced by a plastic replica...


"Save 50% for a limited time... You're dead, time's up!"

Long time Doctor Who watchers won't find it very hard to figure out what's going on, as this is nearly a remake of the classic story "Spearhead from Space." What is new is the pacing. It feels like a two hour story compressed down to less than half that time. In the over-before-you-know-it 45 minute episode we're introduced to the Doctor, the TARDIS, Rose, her mother, her boyfriend, a conspiracy theorist who runs a website about the Doctor, and his family; we see a wheelie bin eat someone, a plastic monster tear up a restaurant, a London landmark turned into an instrument of death, and an entire alien invasion.

But never fear, the old Doctor Who magic is there. Christopher Eccleston is genuinely funny as the Doctor, but also projects enough gravitas to keep the episode from seeming nothing but comic. I was concerned when I first heard Billie Piper was cast because it sounded like stunt casting. She's primarily known in England as a teen pop star and bride to a cradle-robbing millionaire businessman/radio personality. Turns out that she always wanted to be an actor, and moreover she's good at it. (And after listening to some of her songs, take my word for it, anything that keeps her away from the microphone is good.) Her character appears to modeled a bit after Buffy Summers, but she pulls it off, and she's certainly the most attractive companion the Doctor has had since Peri. Apologies to all the Bonnie Langford fans, both of you. Best of all the episode recaptures the peculiar kind of horror that Doctor Who was best at, the idea that everyday items might come alive and aliens could exist in the most mundane places.


Five billion years in the future, and you'll still be able to make Michael Jackson jokes.

The second episode, "The End of the World" has the Doctor take Rose five billion years into the future to witness the destruction of the Earth by the sun. The event is being witnessed from a luxury space station by an elite group of aliens and Cassandra, the last "pure' human, who has been transformed by plastic surgery into nothing but skin stretched over a metal frame. From this set up we are treated to more back story on the Doctor, a rather mundane mystery, and a surprising amount of interesting talk about what "the end of the world" really means.

It's the philosophical talk and strong character development that really makes this version of Doctor Who unique, and that's because this series is being guided by Russell T. Davies, the creator of Queer as Folk and writer of both these episodes. It's said that good TV writing serves the characters first, the plot second, and the action third, and that's exactly what Davies does in both the episodes. As a matter of fact I get the sense that he's a little lost when it comes to action, because both the climatic action set-pieces rely on the kind of unlikely staging that Galaxy Quest (1999) so ably mocked. Luckily everything else in these episodes is so strong you're likely not to care.

The new series has been producing more than it's share of odd headlines in England. Even though he's been getting nothing but glowing reviews for his performance as the Doctor, Eccleston has already quit the role. (An announcement that was made right after the first episode aired -- how can the BBC make such a good series about time travel but have such rotten timing?) Next season the Doctor will be played by David Tennant, who perhaps not coincidentally narrated a documentary called "Doctor Who - A New Dimension" that aired directly before "Rose' in England. Also in an attempt to prove that England exists in a strange Bizzaro universe where everything is upside down, the BBC got complaints that the third episode of the series was too scary and prepared to issue a warning, but was then chastised by the government for not making Doctor Who scary enough!

Posted: Sun - April 17, 2005 at      

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