Doctor Who, Series 1 Review

June 19, 2008 at 2:09 am · Filed under TV Reviews ·Tagged Christopher Eccleston, Doctor Who, Kriti, Season 1, TV shows

NOTE FROM MATT: Hey all, this is the beginning of what should be a great undertaking – making my humble blog a more collective effort, with anybody who cares to tell people what they think doing just that.  Kriti is an amazing person who decided to grace us with her contributions, and she will be reviewing TV shows here, unless she decides to review other things of course.  Enjoy!

Hello, I’m Kriti and I will be reviewing TV shows, I think. Here’s my take on the first season of the revived Doctor Who, on BBC. It was aired in 2005. I have the title of each episode, followed by what I think of it and a synopsis. Here we go.

Rose

This is the first episode of the revived Doctor Who, so it had a lot of expectations riding on it, I guess. It was not the first one I saw, so I can’t really talk about that aspect. It’s named after the Doctor’s new companion, Rose, and features the canon Ninth doctor (Christopger Eccleston) for the first time on TV. Eccleston does a fantastic job as the Doctor (no pun intended, although his catchphrase is “Fantastic!”) I’m not the biggest fan of Rose, but the episode is pretty good. The show definitely gets better, though – a lot of time is spent on character development, rather than defeating the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness.

The End of the World

Definitely a great episode. The Doctor takes Rose to the year five billion, when Earth is blown up by the sun. She sees her first “real” aliens, and realises how far she is from home. She’s also rather appalled at the people who have paid to come see the earth getting blown up from a safe vantage point. In the middle of this, passengers and staff are mysteriously dying, but who is killing them and why? The murder mystery style of the episode makes it even more compelling. The episode is also immensely witty – British humour (and spelling) is the best!

The Unquiet Dead

This episode wasn’t all that great, although I love the concept of Charles Dickens being surrounded by ghosts at Christmas. We are introduced to the space-time rift at Cardiff, which is featured in many other later stories, and in the Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood. The Gelth, who lost their planet and corporeal form in the Time War are seeping through the rift and animating corpses in the funeral home built over the rift. The Doctor attempts to save them and give them a home. It isn’t as brilliantly written as most of the other episodes, and it wasn’t as gripping.

Aliens of London / World War Three

This is the first two parter of the series. An alien spaceship crashes into Big Ben, and an alien body is recovered, but the whole setup is found to be faked… by other aliens. It’s an entertaining story, and the alien antagonists, the Slitheen, make great villains. We also meet Harriet Jones, who reappears in other stories, and her characterisation is amazing. Rose’s mother finally understands what it means to travel with the Doctor, and the family drama is well written – it entertains, but does not dominate. Overall, a wonderful episode.

Dalek

I loved this episode. The Doctor lands in an alien museum on Earth, and discovers a Dalek. It is dying, but uses Rose’s DNA to repair itself, and begins to weak havoc. The museum’s owner is enthralled and refuses to destroy his prize specimen, and then pays the price for it. The Dalek has absorbed human DNA, though, and absorbs some traces of humanity, and the episode is very poignant. Rose is good, and Adam Mitchell, who joins the Doctor on his travels in this episode, is somewhat obnoxious, but well portrayed.

The Long Game

The Doctor, Rose and Adam land on a satellite during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, but something is wrong. Humanity isn’t as advanced as it should be, and the answer seems to lie on Satellite 5, the satellite they are on. Simon Pegg is absolutely brilliant as the sinister Editor, and I’m proved right about Adam being obnoxious. The Doctor is as inquisitive as ever, and the plot is pretty well developed.

Father’s Day

This is another really poignant episode. Rose, whose father died when she was six months old, goes back to the day her father died to be with him when he dies. She cannot bear to see him die, so she saves his life, creating a distortion in time. There are some unpleasant emotional shocks for her, as she realises that her parents’ marriage wasn’t the idealised relationship that she had in her head. It’s wonderfully written, and the human drama never gets too overwhelming.

The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances

This award winning two-part episode was the first contribution to the revived series by my favourite Doctor Who scriptwriter, Steven Moffat. The writing is brilliant, fantastic, wonderful, amazing – whatever superlatives you choose to throw at it. It goes from poignant to extremely creepy to incredibly witty in the space of five seconds, and engages you completely. Hundreds of people’s physiology has been altered to the same pattern – severe internal injuries, a scar on the back of the hand, and a gas mask attached to their faces (physiologically), but they are not dead. I don’t really want to see more – this is a brilliant episode, and introduces us to the the Doctor’s new companion, Capt. Jack Harkness – a pansexual, charismatic renegade Time Agent from the 51st Century. Easily my favourite episode from the first season.

Boom Town

The Slitheen from Aliens of London / World War Three are not all dead! One survives, and is planning to take her revenge against Earth. In the middle of this, Rose is upset that her boyfriend is seeing someone else, even though she abandoned him to travel with the Doctor. This episode is rather subtly written, and makes the Slitheen a more complex character. Capt. Jack is as amazing as ever, and Christopher Eccleston does a wonderful, wonderful job.

Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

The season finale. It starts off rather weirdly, with the Doctor, Rose and Jack being transmatted onto Satellite 5 and placed in different reality TV shows, a hundred years after they were last there. They discover that if you’re kicked off the show, you’re disintegrated, and that everyone on Earth is a potential game show contestant. This still does not align with the historically accurate Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, and the Doctor discovers that a Dalek fleet has been controlling Earth through Satellite 5 for a very long time. I’m not quite sure what I think of this episode. It’s a little bit too dramatic for me. The premise of game shows is innovative, but really? Come on! It’s Eccleston’s last as the Doctor, and that’s a little bit sad. Overall, I think it could’ve been better.

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