When I was a kid, all television, and therefore Doctor Who, happened in the Big House in London, Television Centre, so far away and remote that it might as well have been another dimension. The idea that any programme could be made in my vicinity was an alien concept. That Doctor Who was returning was incredible enough - but when its universe started to materialise around me, I couldn't quite believe my luck.
The place where you live always feels like the centre of the universe because that's where you are, walking around seeing and hearing things, experiencing existence and filtering reality through your location. But all of a sudden Cardiff became the centre of all things Doctor Who and, for a while, it was weird. Nice weird. At work, people would come back from lunch and say "Oh they're out filming today!" as if they were talking about the weather. Production meetings would be held in hotels down the street from our offices and I would walk past Noel Clarke or Camille Coduri on my way to the sandwich shop on the corner. I even went out to have a look at the filming of Rose, a night shoot on St. Mary's Street doubling for central London. Me and some other stunned fanboys watched the TARDIS prop being assembled on the pavement outside Howells.
"Is it a bit too.. big?" one of them whispered, full of what Gareth Roberts calls 'anticipointment'. But I was just trying to understand how it was that the TARDIS had appeared in front of my eyes, not on a television, but in my real waking life. In Cardiff.
Then, on my lunch break one day in W.H.Smith's, Billie Piper walked past me. It was February and she, like me, was looking for a Valentine's Day card. I didn't say anything of course, she was busy making Doctor Who, presumably on her lunch break too and I wasn't going to interrupt or jeopardise that magical process. Then I realised that they were probably filming close by, and that she was in costume. This was Rose Tyler, walking the streets of Cardiff. Where I lived.
They were filming just around the corner, at City Hall, working on this episode, Boom Town, which is set in, er, modern day Cardiff. My wife worked at the Wales Millenium Centre and called me to say that the TARDIS had been parked outside all day by the fountain. The fictional universe had broken through the Rift into our real lives.
We went back to Cardiff for a week this summer, partly to show the boys. We walked around and I pointed out landmarks, real and imaginary. "That's where I worked. That's where Rose worked. That's where Wilf's newspaper stand was. That's the castle where your mother and I got married - it also doubled as the Tower of London in The Christmas Invasion."
We had a good look around the Bay, ate in the restaurants, went to the Doctor Who Experience of course. It was wonderful to be back. It's changed so much in just a few years, but it still feels like home - and Doctor Who is very much part of that feeling.
It was all very fresh in the mind when we watched Boom Town, which was lovely. Throughout, the boys chorused "Been there! Been there!" every time they recognised something. There was even a hiss of indignation from them when Margaret announced that Cardiff Castle would have to be demolished to make way for her power station - that was messing with us directly. There were lots of laughs, the loudest yet, when Mickey clattered and stumbled through the corridors of City Hall and they laughed again when Margaret tried her tricks on the Doctor over dinner. They both could only give it a nine. William said it was "complicated" and raised "interesting questions. Is she a baddy? Is it her fault?" Chris said he liked the ending, but both of them were repulsed at the description of the Raxacoricofallapatorian death penalty.
The great thing about Boom Town (other than seeing Cardiff on screen, properly, on BBC1) is Eccleston's performance. Annette Badland is great as Margaret: by turns duplicitous, sincere, evil and troubled - and her scenes with the Doctor are excellent. But Eccleston is just amazing. Those tight close ups over dinner: every twitch of his face, every blink, is deliberate and calculated. It's intense and compelling and completely lacking in any crazed histrionics or bellowing. Everything is perfectly gauged and full of nuance. He is superb.
But then the TARDIS coughs up some magic light that turns the baddy into an egg and saves everyone the trouble of having to answer complicated questions. Which is a shame. It's a great ending for Margaret, and it is right that second chances should be on offer - that's a compassionate Doctorly thing to do and it won praise from all three of us. Except that the Doctor doesn't do anything to achieve this outcome and the TARDIS is transformed into some sort of genie's lamp, bestowing wishes on anyone who can rub it up the right way. It's a bit rubbish.
This is also where the rot begins to set in with Rose, sadly. Up until now she's been great, but this episode shows us how she, Jack and the Doctor look from the outside: smug, self-centred and silly. It's a brief glimpse, during which Mickey momentarily becomes the audience identification figure, but in the future, when the Doctor and Rose seem to be enjoying themselves too much, we are going to remember how this felt.
Well, I am, anyway.
NEXT TIME...
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