Army of Ghosts

I can tell I am terribly old because the thing I like least about modern Doctor Who is the way in which it is compelled to shout "Watch me! You have to watch me!". It's just a fact that television has changed. The monolithic structures of the Sixties have been replaced by a brash digital arena in which programmes and channels must compete for our attention. I don't like it because I grew up in a time when Doctor Who was Just On and everybody (or nearly everybody) watched because the ITV regions hadn't agreed on what to schedule against it.

Things began to slide in the Eighties. I distinctly remember the agony of a school playground full of children who had watched The A-Team instead. Boys and girls, running, shooting at each other, plucking imaginary cigars from their mouths, and me stood in the middle of it all, arms folded, alien. Doctor Who's producer, John Nathan-Turner, seemed to spend all his time courting publicity, leaking stories to the tabloids, provocatively suggesting that he might do away with the Police Box, give the Doctor a wife, or cast a slew of light entertainment stars. His catchphrase, "Stay Tuned!", had an increasingly desperate edge to it as ratings dropped and the show faced first a hiatus and finally cancellation. In those last years, the BBC put Doctor Who on against Coronation Street, the dreadnought of the ITV schedule, as if to hasten its departure.

When the show came back and confounded the doubters, it felt wonderful. Suddenly Doctor Who was the BBC's big beast, dispatching whatever ITV offered on the other side. And yet, it still had to compete, to plead for every viewer. It always makes me think, with distaste, of the years when the show was in trouble and (often) a bit rubbish.

Publicity, these days, is a good thing of course. It means the show is being backed heavily by the BBC and that the papers are interested enough to write about it. Billboards, press launches, Radio Times covers, live shows revealing casting decisions(!) are all evidence of the show's tremendous strength. But sometimes, still, the show does things to itself, contorts itself unnecessarily just so that there is something new with which to try and ensnare viewers and win over TV journalists.

"This is the story of how I died."

It's not quite a lie, but Army of Ghosts does begin with brazen hyperbole. She doesn't literally die, although that is presumably not what she means: Rose is sufficiently self-absorbed that she might claim that life without the Doctor is as good as being dead. We can't, surely,be expected to agonise about someone being mistakenly counted amongst the dead. But using this language, referring to a "war" when subsequent episodes will simply call it a "battle", is artificially raising the stakes. These exaggerated claims will not be substantiated by the rest of this story and, much worse, they will be utterly undermined by Journey's End. This opening is pure snakeoil.

Agh, such a small thing to write so much about, but it is so prominent. Front and centre, at the top of the episode, it might as well be written in fire: WE WANT YOU TO WORRY IN CASE ROSE DIES. But watching this, knowing it's a two-parter, it is as if we are already being told that only the end of this story matters. We'll come to Doomsday, but Army of Ghosts should be worth a look all by itself, and the problem sort of is that it is only really a stepping-stone, to get us to the finale.

It's a strength and a weakness, but this episode trades a lot on the fact that the audience thinks it knows what's going on. After two series and especially after the previous year's Dalek stories, it is beginning to feel like a template is being assembled for Doctor Who. Introductory episode, historical, future, early two-parter, mid-season odds and sods, later two-parter, a cheapish filler and then final two-parter that brings back the big baddy. We know what's coming and we feel clever that we know. It doesn't matter that last week's Next Time made it explicit, that the trailers were full of Cybermen, that this episode features images of Cybermen from an early stage, we still feel like we've cracked the code. We don't notice that we've actually been tricked.

It's good misdirection. And it leads to one of the greatest cliffhangers in all of Who. We weren't expecting anyone else: the unknowable laws of Doctor Who tell us that the Cybermen are strong enough bad guys to warrant a two-part finale story. We, like Mickey, are thinking that there must be a Cyber-Something inside the Voidsphere. When it opens, it is thrilling and mind-bending: nobody expected Daleks to fly out. (Okay, I know you did, clever-clogs, because you spotted the tell-tale extermination visual/sound effect in the Next Time trailer, but you're special.)

But here's the problem with this legerdemain. Firstly, whilst we are waiting for the surprise that we don't know to expect, it all seems a little obvious. Yes, the ghosts are Cybermen. Is that it? The main part of this episode is spent waiting for the Doctor to catch up with us, or at least to say out loud what we guess he has already deduced. Secondly, it turns out that the Cybermen aren't strong enough bad guys that they get their own finale. The impact of the Cybermen is sacrificed wholesale so as to convince us not to expect the surprise that we didn't know we weren't supposed to expect. The Daleks are still the bigger draw, top of the bill and this diminishes the Cybermen - even more so when the two species duke it out next week. I'm not sure that the Cybermen have ever recovered either; I'll let you know when we've rewatched Nightmare in Silver. Thirdly, well, it's the Daleks again. Watching this for the first time I remember my excitement tempered by those insuppressible fan anxieties: are we going to have Daleks in every series finale?

For all that, there are some great things in Army of Ghosts. The wonderful idea that people, like Jackie, can't help but impose human memories onto the blankness of the cyber 'ghosts'; the excellent joke "Peggy heard this noise in the cellar..."; the enigmatic Torchwood being revealed as nothing more than a ghastly modern workspace, bedevilled with corporate-speak and office politics. And the Cybermen, before they are revealed to be a sideshow, are tremendous. Yes, the CGI makes them look a little like a synchronised swimming team as they materialise en masse around the world, but their sheer physical presence is literally brought home during this invasion: most terrifying of all is the Cyberman that appears at the top of the stairs, just as a young boy is running for the safety of his bedroom. For the first time ever in Doctor Who, I was worried about the impact it might have on children - that single image is devastating and brings the imaginary threat right into a child's real world. Scared me, I can tell you.

Christopher, the contrary so-and-so, disagreed. "It was scarier when they were hiding in Torchwood. That was quite creepy. Really good episode though. Nine out of ten."

William is beginning to get a little pernickety. "Why did Rose follow Mickey? Did she recognise him? That makes sense. Except she was surprised when he turned around later on. Hmmmm. And I'm not sure if Daleks versus Cybermen is a good fight. Eight out of ten."

And this is why Doctor Who needs to scream and shout. They are, partly because of me, committed fans, but they are also eight and ten years old: at any time their enthusiasm could flip to cold ambivalence. And if they can't get excited about Daleks versus Cybermen, we're all in trouble.


NEXT TIME...