Blink

The simple question here is this: is Blink as good as everyone says it is? And the answer is yes, of course it is. Blink is instantly brilliant, evoking a tangible connection with the past as soon as Sally Sparrow walks into Wester Drumlins: reverence amongst decay. The past becomes the vanished present, a place full of the things we had in our grasp just a moment ago, now unreachable, pushed there by the passage of Time, or the touch of an Angel. Again and again, Sally is forced to accommodate a sense of loss for something she doesn't yet know has been taken from her: she has to accept Kathy's old age and death when she has just left her in the next room; Billy tells her the story of his life from his deathbed just minutes after they first meet. The Angels didn't harm either of them, but they hurt Sally terribly. They are bereavement itself, robbing those left behind of the chance to appreciate their loved ones before they disappear.

Much as I love returning villains, nothing has excited me during this entire run of Doctor Who as much as the success of the Weeping Angels. They are proof that the series will continue to invent and evolve and renew itself. Their true genius, especially here in Blink, is that Moffat has created a race which is capable of terrifying both adults and children. So much of it is brilliant simplicity, the parlour game antics of blindfolds and peeking, the childlike power of being able to nullify a threat by simply seeing it. With every blink, the statues move, they creep closer to you. But this isn't a game and they will get you. Children know all this instinctively. For the adults, the horror is different. It is the question of how much time is left, how long have we got? Unlike the children, we hear the ticking of the clock, getting faster and faster as the years begin to race past. Whatever time we have left, it is not enough, and the Angels could steal even that.

The fairy tale sensibilities of Moffat's work have been evident in his previous stories and they're here in Blink too. The moment where the Doctor's DVD easter egg starts talking back is completely magical and it might as well be an enchanted painting or mirror springing to life. Then there are the gorgeous shots of the angels, posed like supplicant victims of Medusa. There's one tableau in particular where they have arranged themselves about the TARDIS in the garage which is gobsmackingly beautiful, like a Renaissance painting.

Best of all though, Blink is just clever. It must be a terrible headache writing for the Doctor. Nobody is as clever as him and the pressure to think up cunning reversals and witty retorts on his behalf must be crucifying. Far too often, RTD has him throw a switch and say "Oh, I'm brilliant, didn't I mention that?" (Gridlock and Utopia to name two examples off of the top of my head.). This has the advantages of being quick and of avoiding stupid technobabble but it does leave us without any sense that something clever has actually happened. There's no, 'of course!' moment. Moffat has a different tactic which I find much more satisfying. He has the Doctor do simple, straightforward things, but doesn't give me any time to anticipate what they are going to be. What's more, these reversals tend to hinge upon things we understand instinctively. Flesh & Stone is a brilliant example of this, where Moffat/the Doctor shows we are in a ship that has artificial gravity and then switches it off so that all the Angels fall down what is now a shaft rather than a corridor. The climax here works the same way: the dematerialisation of the TARDIS leaves all the Angels looking at each other, transfixed. As soon as we see it, it makes perfect sense, even blindingly obvious! Except we didn't think of it in time and the Doctor did.

Chris gave it a 9 and particularly liked all the statues at the end. "Everyone should know what cool statues Cardiff has." William complained that the Doctor was largely missing again but (full disclosure) the Weeping Angels bit of the Doctor Who Experience was the bit he found most frightening, so make of that what you will...


NEXT TIME...

Human Nature / The Family of Blood

My only problem with Human Nature is that everybody liked it so much. That's not to say I didn't like it, I did. I thought it was really very good. I just didn't see why everybody else had to be quite so gushy about it. Nothing is going to put my back up as much as universal acclaim; it's a character failing I have and it possibly accounts for my inability to support a football club or pick a religion. So, no matter how much I liked this story, as soon as the forums lit up with adulation, fan polls started rating it the best ever and TV critics raved, I instinctively began to grumble to myself that it couldn't have been as good as all that. I don't have those qualms any longer; watching it again, in context, it's clearly exceptionally good. Is there any justification for my original opinion? Well, a sliver perhaps, because this is the first Doctor Who story with the inbuilt capacity to disappoint.

Doctor Who stories always have source material or, at least, influences: from the fascism of the Daleks, through the Thatcherism of Helen A, to the Blairite tendencies of Aliens of London. In the Seventies the series would rework Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and the Prisoner of Zenda into SF adventures. Some stories even rework the show's own history: Planet of the Daleks is more or less a recycling of the original Dalek serial; Attack of the Cybermen tries to be a sequel to all of Cyber history; Dalek is loosely based on writer Robert Shearman's own audio adventure Jubilee. But Human Nature is something we haven't had before: a direct adaptation of an earlier Doctor Who story, in this case the 1995 novel of the same name, written by Paul Cornell and starring the Seventh Doctor.

It's a great book and a great Doctor Who story, thrillingly radical at the time but also prescient. When it was announced that the programme had tapped Cornell to adapt it for television, the decision made perfect sense: the book's premise, that the Doctor should become human in order to hide from Time Lord-hunting aliens, was exactly the sort of story that the new series was equipped to tell. Of course, being an adaptation, changes had to be made. And of course, having read the book, some of those changes were always going to jar a little. Let's get them out of the way because, let me say this again, I really like Human Nature. It's just in some ways the book is better.

I think the story works better with the Seventh Doctor rather than the Tenth. Tennant does well differentiating between John Smith and the Doctor, and his performance really sells the idea that Smith is a person in his own right rather than a facsimile. But, of all the Doctors to make human, the Tenth? Surely to goodness he is the most human incarnation we've seen? He fits in so easily, emoting all over the place, loving, hating, prideful, humble, lonely. The only suggestion of his alien nature comes when he dips his fingers into a jam jar in Fear Her, and his occasional comments on humanity sound more like observational stand-up ("Edible ball-bearings? What's that about?") than the bewilderment of an extraterrestrial. As a result there's much less of a contrast between Smith and Tennant's Doctor than there was with McCoy's.

There are other minor differences (the Doctor's fob watch-residing animus has much more of an impact on schoolboy Tim Latimer in the book, and John Smith manages to influence events even after the Doctor has returned), but the other major one is the concept of pacifism. The book is much more uncompromising. Smith's latent Doctorishness leads to a reaction against the school's militarism that requires him to teach both the history and practice of war. Latimer ends up, not in the army, but as a Red Cross volunteer during World War One and, at the end, the Doctor unapologetically wears a white poppy to the remembrance service. I completely understand why the book and the episode differ in this way. It is right and appropriate that the nationally broadcast television programme should respect those who served, but I still admire the passionate outrage of the book - after all, there's nothing as fun as climbing up onto a very high horse. How lovely that we get to have two wonderful versions of this story.

But let's put the book to one side. Why is this story (I'm cheating again by the way, doing two at once) so good? Time for a list.

1. Martha! Martha is great isn't she? And she fits into this story so beautifully. Her role as the the Doctor's protector and maid here suits her perfectly - desperate to help but almost entirely ignored by the man she dotes on. She protects him nonetheless, flouting protocol by rushing in when she's heard he's injured. She more or less runs rings around the Family of Blood, cannily spotting that Jenny has been possessed and holding back the lot of them in the Village Hall long enough for everyone to escape. Without the Doctor she properly becomes our identification figure for the first time, representing our 21st century values in an utterly alien environment. The way she deals with the ugliness of the period is brilliant: scandalising Jenny or enduring the racist taunts of Baines and Hutchinson. When Smith starts on about "cultural differences" Martha is rightly furious ("Oh you complete-"), and then she has to battle Joan's prejudices too: "Women might train to be doctors, but hardly a skivvy and hardly one of your colour." At least her sexism is less pronounced than her racist snobbery.

2. The Guest Cast. Harry Lloyd is incredible as the possessed Baines, constructing a terrifying, larger-than-life and very memorable villain. If it isn't the performance of the series then it can only be because of Derek Jacobi. Rebekah Staton also shines as one of the Family, revelling in a gleeful, bright-eyed malevolence. Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson) is a perfect Joan, full of dignity, tenderness and a steely contemptuousness which she directs at both Martha and the Doctor. She's very modern too - for her time - using all the opportunity society allows her to prompt Smith into asking her out.

3. The Doctor. Unlike either Love & Monsters or Blink, this Doctor-lite story is all about the Doctor. Despite his absence, his presence is felt, first as the eccentric fantasy of Smith's imagination in The Journal of Impossible Things and the business with the cricket ball, and then as a shadow that looms over everything. This is our first glimpse of his dark greatness, of the almost mythological Doctor that we will see so much more of over the next few years. It's thrilling because at this point it feels like something new is being revealed. Yes, there have been odd mentions of it (Clive's speech in Rose, the bathos of "Here he is, the Oncoming Storm..." in The Girl in the Fireplace), but this time we get to witness the terrible power of the wrathful Time Lord.

This is the point of course, the Doctor looms over Smith in the same way that the Great War looms over the boys. Neither Latimer or Smith have a choice: the war is inevitable, and so is the Doctor (the 'possible' future that Smith and Joan see is not an option at all: either the Doctor must return or the Family will destroy the world). The only option is to accept the future and its consequences, even if it means losing everything.

Thank goodness the boys could only give this an eight (William, his last score I think) and a nine (Chris, for a sixth episode in a row) because it means I can relax and, without fear of joining a brainwashed mob, declare Human Nature a stone cold ten-out-of-ten classic.


NEXT TIME...

42

This has much in common with The Lazarus Experiment in that I sort of expected it to be rather middling and was surprised how good it actually was. In some ways they actually feel like a two-parter: although the setting and plot changes, there's a very strong continuing framework built around the development of Martha's relationship with the Doctor, and Francine's growing Saxon-fuelled anxiety. Far from being bogged down with doing too much, 42 works very well, helped by the strong structure and frenetic pace of the real time format. It feels natural and normal that Martha must juggle her family life with the here and now of falling into an alien sun and that's a tremendous achievement: it is exactly this sort of balancing act that made those early episodes of Series One so effective.

At the heart of 42 is a rock-solid SF parable: humans, through greed and selfishness, damage the natural world with dreadful consequences. It might as well be the Exxon Valdez as the SS Pentallian, except that in SF the repercussions tend to be of the guilty-humans-get-incinerated-by-angry-star-being variety rather than innocent-wildlife-suffers-and-guilty-corporation-spends-20-years-in-legal-battles-to-reduce-their-fine (yes, I wikied that, but see for yourself, it's gobsmacking). This is why we need SF parables - reality is neither satisfying, nor fits easily into a drama/adventure format.

The real time structure isn't a gimmick either. When people suggest using the TARDIS to escape from an episode we often hear the Doctor say "No, we can't, we're part of events now!". Without further unwieldy explanation it never really feels like anything other than a deadlock seal, a convenient get-out clause. It's not uttered at all in 42, but for once it might be convincing. As soon as they step onto the Pentallian, it really does feel as if they are enmeshed in the situation, as if they had fallen into a fast-flowing river or landed on a runaway train. To make matters worse (or better) there are two distinctly uncomfortable lurches, firstly when Martha's escape pod is fired from the stricken ship, and secondly when the Doctor succumbs to the star's blazing personality. Of course we know everything is going to be okay. Everything is always going to be okay. But such a sudden turn of events pulls the story further away from its expected trajectory and makes us gasp, wondering how things will be brought back together. They are great moments in this episode that raise the tension even further.

And whilst these short-term considerations are being dealt with, the story glances sideways at Francine and Saxon's minions, making us think further ahead. It's clever because the audience has to absorb both the immediate danger and the lurking future threat of the Saxon arc. Now we have reached series three and are into more familiar territory, the boys are beginning to have memories of these episodes. Their emphasis is changing because they know roughly what is going to happen: they remember the Master and the Medusa Cascade. Whilst they are enjoying the individual stories, they really want to see how it all fits together, how the different series arcs work and how they combine to tell one enormously long story. Increasingly, it is moments like these that they are waiting for.

As a result, no score from William. Chris is still eager to hold forth though and he gave it a nine. He talked about the scariness of the Doctor being taken over and, very perspicaciously, pointed out how effective Martha is ("really useful" he said, which is not something you can say about all companions). She really is great - earnest, insightful, determined and full of wonder for the new things she encounters, all the while sat mournfully in the Doctor's blind spot.


NEXT TIME...

The Lazarus Experiment

This one's no mid-season clunker either. What was I worried about at the time? I don't know. I suppose this was about the point that I started taking the programme for granted again. Approaching the halfway mark in this third series, Doctor Who had stopped being the The Show That Miraculously Returned From The Dead. It had become, once again, a fixture and not only was it now inseparably embedded in that Easter to June slot in the schedules, it was also busily shooting off televisual spores in all directions: Torchwood, Doctor Who Confidential, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Totally Doctor Who. The show was safely established and the most complicated thing about it was that I might have to record it if I had to go to a wedding.

I don't think that happened with The Lazarus Experiment, but then I don't remember giving it much thought either. By now we knew what the 'important' episodes were, the tentpoles: there were openers, the two-parters and then the finale. Sometimes it felt like the episodes in between were just there to keep things ticking over until the next big one. Well, thank goodness I have the chance to look at this again because it's really very good.

The best thing about this episode is the developing relationship between the Doctor and Martha. They are stuck in an awkward friend-zone, a hinterland that lies between convenient labels. She doesn't want him to go, wants to be more than friends, but has to contend not only with his ambivalence, but also her mother's disapproval. Meanwhile the Doctor, hellbent on being breezy and oblivious to her concerns, quickly finds himself in the hottest of water, stumbling over his words with Francine, like a Richard Curtis reject. Daleks, he can handle; families, not so much.

Martha, compelled to ignore her mother's increasingly desperate pleas, determinedly throws in her lot with the Doctor in this episode, only for their partnership to apparently founder in the last scene. The Doctor invites her back aboard the TARDIS in the most casual of terms, offering her "one more trip", and she refuses. She demands to be accepted as a proper companion: she needs the Doctor to commit.

I love that moment. I love how she stands up for herself, demonstrating her own self-respect and resilience. Of course the Doctor wants to be flippant and carefree but he doesn't hesitate to agree with her request. All pumped up, expecting a fight, expecting to be let down, she doesn't immediately notice that he's said yes. Once she's realised, Martha is delighted - but should she be? That the Doctor has acquiesced so readily shows that this matters much less to him than it does to her. He didn't have to think about it because he is sure that he likes her, but it didn't occur to him to think about how she feels towards him. This asymmetry is the essence of their relationship and leads directly to their final conversation in Last of the Time Lords where once again Martha will demonstrate her wonderful self-respect.

And then there's the actual monster-run-around story. It's good stuff and we haven't had a 'mad scientist' plot in so long (depends on your definition but at the latest Time and the Rani?) that it all feels rather novel. I love the blend: the experiment being conducted at a black tie bash, complete with canapés; the impromptu family gathering as Martha's mother, brother and sister bicker away; the Doctor frowning, worried about Lazarus' intentions; the Saxonites loitering, dripping poison in Francine's ear. Mark Gatiss is suitably slimy and spiteful as both old and young Lazarus, and though we never quite get the sense that there's much steel in the man, perhaps that's right: Lazarus acts out of fear and, increasingly, desperation; he's no Tobias Vaughn. 

His rejuvenation confused the boys totally. Had they swapped actors? No? Then they must be using 'twenty year old' footage of the same actor? No... Well how had they done it then?! I gave nothing away. Fascinatingly, they latched on to the idea that Old Lazarus was being played by Peter Davison and then, when Young Lazarus stepped out, cried "Aha! No, that's Peter Davison!" which I think must be something to do with the wig?

Speaking of resemblances, the monster is good too - with the exception of its face, which looks absolutely nothing like Gatiss'. It's a shame because the rest of it is great, and the scenes where it wreaks havoc on the champagne reception or chases the Doctor through the laboratories are excellent, as is the the exciting climactic battle in the cathedral - a great setting that feels very fresh for Doctor Who. It's not just that the Doctor battles a monster with an organ, there's a great philosophical confrontation here too as Lazarus, desperate to avoid death, argues with the Doctor who dies all the time. Tish is a good addition in these final scenes and it would be interesting to think of her as a potential companion. We've never had siblings in the TARDIS (on television anyway) but it would be an interesting dynamic. It'll happen eventually, I'm sure.

William gave it a seven, but reluctantly. He found the Doctor's conversation with Francine hilariously awkward, but his main concern is the Saxon arc. Chris enthusiastically gave it a nine, calling it "cool, exciting, scary and unsettling" and noting that often the Doctor was forced to battle people who "don't understand death", which might just be the most satisfying observation I've ever heard.


NEXT TIME...

Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

Goodness me, I've fallen behind with this. Writing up series three has turned into a right old slog for some reason that has absolutely nothing to do with me accidentally powering up Mass Effect again. Oh no.

And I can't say it's because I am not enthused with series three either, because I am! It's really very good, much better than I would have suggested on the basis of six year old memories. We watched Utopia last night (that's how far behind I am) and, amazingly, there hasn't been one so-so episode, not a weak link in the chain. It may even be (that pinging noise is my ExcuseFinder3000 going off) that it's the high quality of these stories that has slowed me down: with no half-baked New Earth to frown over, with no Rose or disempowered Doctor to rant about, I've been bereft. The upshot of my sluggardliness is that I'm going to cheat, just this once, and write up this two-parter as one post. It only cuts the tiniest corner off of this 102 episode lump of Doctor Who, but it'll make me feel better.

Even if I wasn't playing catch-up, I'd be tempted to treat these two episodes as one story, if only so that I could just call the whole thing Evolution of the Daleks. That's a great title. It goes beautifully with the those rather grandiose stories from the classic series (Genesis, Destiny, Resurrection, Remembrance), and, even better, it actually describes what we see on screen (unlike, say, Revelation of the Daleks). It's also a much better title than Daleks in Manhattan which can't help but suggest a mid-Eighties fish-out-of-water comedy, perhaps with a montage showing Skaro's finest visiting landmarks, buying I♥NY souvenirs, high-fiving break-dancers and inexorably falling in love with the local girl who can see past the dalekanium shell to the bubbling lump of hate inside. Actually that sounds like a brilliant film.

A little more seriously, there is something about the Daleks that suits the idea of Manhattan. Viewed from afar the humanity is invisible and New York becomes a vast machine that people merely infest: a shining futuristic city of clean lines, elevators, and gleaming glass and metal. (Yes, I'm thinking of this possibly). It's easy to imagine Daleks gliding down wide avenues or zooming through the air along the concrete canyons, so easy, in fact, that the image can't help but undermine an episode which can't show them doing it.

Still, the ambition of Evolution of the Daleks (I'm just going to call it that) is tremendously impressive. Shoot New York in Cardiff? Which loon thought that would work? But it does, just about. Okay, we see a lot of sewers and basements (just like New New York, we are trapped in the Undercity), the grand avenues are conspicuous by their absence, and the Empire State Building drifts about, first loitering suspiciously in southern Manhattan before deciding to loom over Central Park - but those wonderful plate shots make all the difference. There are those gorgeous skyline views, the single shot of the real Central Park that allows us to push Bute Park from our heads, and, best of all, the excellent composite image of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Martha all stood underneath the Statue of Liberty. It's so impressive and does so much work to sell the idea of Doctor Who in New York.

At the time, these episodes got a bit of a kicking from the 'fans' on the forums and a lot of the negative comments sadly focussed on the writer, Helen Raynor. It all got very unpleasant, and it is to be hoped that the fact that Raynor was the first woman to write for the new series had absolutely nothing to do with that. Certainly, I struggle to see what was supposed to have been so terrible about these episodes. It's actually one of the better Dalek stories because it asks questions about the common ground that humans and Daleks share, rather than just treating them as sons et lumières like some recent adventures. The idea that they should look to us to improve their own villainy is utterly chilling, and the slow unwinding of this premise as Sec's humanity begins to assert itself is excellent, allowing both species to restate their principles. We do get sold that old lie once again about them being emotionless ("Daleks have no concept of worry!" - er, yes you do, not to mention betrayal, audacity, hope, triumph...), and the 'human' qualities the Daleks want are apparently "ambition, hatred, aggression, war" (really?). But the Daleks are on good form throughout. I love this sense of them as conniving, duplicitous creatures - this is their true essence, what the Kaleds were busy doing in the Dome in Genesis: whispers and lies and machinations. The moment where one of them looks over its shoulder before conspiring is wonderful.

As is the period setting and I'm not just talking about the dance number, or the Universal horror movie vibes. It's daring and inspired to show us an historical backdrop that the audience doesn't already know well, and the choice of the Great Depression is particularly apposite for the story: these humans, like the Daleks, are at rock bottom and so desperate they will try anything. Furthermore they're both (and the Doctor too) recovering from a war that has made them doubt everything. How American is this episode? Not very I'd say, the killer line being that Diagoras calls the black Dalek "Lord Sec" - it's not impossible that he's assuming the Daleks are British (I suppose their accents are still British under all that ring modulation) but there's no way any self-respecting American, let alone a tough Nooyoiker, would instinctively reach for "Lord" to show his respect or deference. 'Mr Sec, sir,' that's what he'd say.

Two tiny things. Firstly, this is where I started to clench my teeth at the whole 'animals as aliens/creatures' thing that we see so much of during RTD's tenure: we've already had rhinos, cats and spiders, not to mention the Slitheen pig, and there's wasps and flies to come. It niggles here because there's no obvious reason why the Daleks would make their captured humans look like pigs other than pure sadism. That would be a good reason for them to do it, of course, but they don't really explain why they've done it at all. On the other hand, the Lazlo/Tallulah sub-plot needs that disfigurement for it to work and Robo-men just wouldn't cut the mustard.

Secondly, for once, it shouldn't be the Doctor that saves the day. By all means have him cook up a potion to save Laszlo but that business where the solar flare/lightning transfers some Time Lord DNA into the Human/Dalek mix is no good. This story is about the Daleks seeking something indomitable they have discovered in humans - it should stay indomitable. How brilliant, how perfectly Ghostbusters II, would it have been if the New Yorkers, with their brash, callous exteriors and squidgy, sentimental innards, had defied the Daleks? The great Melting Pot resisting the genetic purists? This is one time where we don't need a Time Lord intercessor: the almost mythological (and perhaps, admittedly, clichéd) reputation of the citizens of New York would have been enough.

Although the boys enjoyed this a lot (Chris: "One of the best Dalek stories ever"), they enjoyed some minor nit-picking themselves. William found the backwards and forwards between minutes and rels highly derisory, and Chris felt troubled when a Dalek opened fire without warning: "What? Don't they HAVE to say 'Exterminate!' to make their guns work?" I'd never thought of that before but I like it - voice controlled guns! Maybe that's why they say it three times too, desperately trying to find the right cadence to satisfy their inner Siris. Neither of them particularly liked the pigs either, but Chris praised the cliffhanger and the Daleks' sneakiness. he gave it a 9. William gave it an 8. He liked Sec's gradual humanisation and, having studied the Dustbowl at school, was interested to see the urban consequences of the Great Depression as well. Or at least, to see what it would have looked like had it happened in Cardiff.

The Americanisation of Doctor Who is of particular interest to me because, much to my surprise, I ended up living here in the United States. When I first saw this, I had never even been to America, let alone New York. To be honest, back then, I really didn't care that the Empire State Building was in the wrong place. But I did care that they were filming in Bute Park because, living in Cardiff, I recognised it all too easily. Now, when they have filmed in the real Central Park (for The Angels Take Manhattan) and Utah and elsewhere (The Impossible Astronaut) it begins to feel eerily like Doctor Who is following me once again. A Town Called Mercy was even set in Texas which is surely just a shot across the bows from the production team. On the other hand, missing as I do the UK, and Cardiff in particular, it's rather nice to see the TARDIS land in a street or playground that I know very well from back then. And luckily, with Evolution of the Daleks, I get to see both sides of the pond at once.


NEXT TIME...

Gridlock

I love Gridlock. It's not perfect, but lots of things about it are very good and one thing in particular is wonderful: the Doctor, in full-on saviour mode, arriving in a static society and leaving it transformed.

There's an awful poignancy about all those people stuck on the motorway: all alone, doomed to spend their lives locked away in their boxes. Many of them have little idea of their true predicament. The smiling faces on their screens tell them everything is okay, but really they are entirely trapped in a world with no upward mobility, where the desperate end up racing to the bottom to try and get ahead. In truth we never see more than snapshots of this society, but the people we meet conduct themselves with such dignity. Brannigan, Mrs and Mrs Cassini, even that chap in the bowler hat, they're all putting on a brave face and trying hard not to make a fuss. If this is a dystopian future, it's a very British one.

In the old days, if the Doctor was going to foment revolution, it took a while, usually four to six weeks. He did manage to topple Helen A's regime in a single night in The Happiness Patrol, but even then the BBC managed to string it out for half of November 1988. Since 2005, we've seen him uncovering plots and invasions, stumbling into unfolding situations or even causing problems himself, but we haven't seen him do this: combatting the system itself.

The speed of his revolution is so breathtaking that Gridlock seems to run almost in real time and for some this might make it less credible - but the speed is the point. To a world trapped in a traffic jam, the Doctor should seem like a lightning bolt, a restless blur of action. He can't sit still and he refuses to accept constraints to which the survivors have long since become inured. In fact, it is their coping mechanism - the communal singing that brings them such comfort on the long road - that triggers him to leap into action. The Doctor, falling from car to car, perceiving a new direction, turns the stationary world of the motorway through ninety degrees - not a full revolution, but literally the beginning of one. A few minutes later, speaking from the Senate itself, he saves everyone. It's completely appropriate that it seems ridiculously fast. To Brannigan, who has just watched the Doctor vanish through a trap door only to reappear a moment later at the apex of society, it should rightly feel like a magic trick; incomprehensible, insane and a bit magnificent.

How appropriate that all this should be bookended by talk of Gallifrey: the original stagnant society, founded on the very idea that the Time Lords would "neither flux, nor wither, nor change their state in any measure." I wrote last time about how the Doctor is essentially a character of the very highest privilege, but the corollary of that is that he is also a natural rebel, someone who rejects systems and rules, and delights in the mild anarchy of personal freedom. Unable to cope with the stuffiness of Time Lord society, he left, throwing himself into the messiness of the universe and becoming, irrevocably, involved.

Ancient history by now as far as the show is concerned, but still personal history for the Doctor. Despite the subtlety of some of Eccleston's performances, the effects of the Time War have caused some heavy emotional outbursts. The Doctor's reactions here are beautiful, understated and all too human. At first he can't bring himself to have the conversation with Martha, unwilling to explain once again that Gallifrey has gone. Instead, he offers her a memory, a picture of the long vanished world of his childhood. When she confronts him at the end he gives in and admits to her what has happened. But almost immediately after spitting out the words 'Time War' and 'Daleks' he returns to those memories: the red grass, the orange sky, the sun glinting on the dome of the Capitol. Whether Martha is in the loop or not, he'd rather reminisce about the Gallifrey he left than face up to the reality of its destruction. As he talks, the city begins to fill with song once more, its people drawn together by shared experience. It just makes it clear to us that it doesn't matter with whom he shares his grief: the Doctor remains alone.

I mentioned that this episode isn't perfect, but I have only really tiny niggles. It's never properly explained how the Undercity connects to the Motorway, or to the rest of New New York, and so there's this nagging doubt as to how people can still be joining the traffic jam after all this time. And if the Undercity is sealed off along with the Motorway (as the script seems to imply) then why don't some or all of the motorists abandon the road and try and make a fist of things there? The other small gripe I have is that the Doctor doesn't arrive at the Senate through his own agency - he is trying to reach Martha, but Novice Hame kidnaps him in order to bring him to the Face of Boe. It feels a little forced and it would be better if he had to abandon the rescue attempt, and/or was persuaded that he could save Martha if he went to the Senate. But, of course, that would all take too long and this story just has to crack on.

Throughout, Gridlock is full of clever economies that make sure it can do just that. The absence of a true villain removes all sorts of obstacles from the plot. The cars themselves, a single set redressed for different motorists with a uniform exterior mass produced by the Mill's CGI, give this story a grand scale while allowing us to see a diverse array of characters with some intimacy. Martha continues to be very good. The very fact that she has only just met the Doctor gives everything an edge, whether it's her realisation that her life depends upon a man who is essentially still a stranger, or the way in which she eventually forces him to open up. Throughout these early episodes she is continually challenging the Doctor, asking questions and demanding his respect. Slowly she is earning it.

Meanwhile, the boys are growing tired of me asking for their thoughts on each episode. Which is okay, because they are certainly not getting bored with watching Doctor Who and that is much more important. They only gave Gridlock a seven in any case, but each to their own. The things they really liked - the description of Gallifrey, the Face of Boe's warning - hint that they're increasingly interested on the programme's ongoing overall storyline rather than individual episodes, which makes complete sense considering what the next couple of series are like.


NEXT TIME...

The Shakespeare Code

This episode begins with a beautiful flurry of questions from Martha. "How does it [the TARDIS] work? What happens if I tread on a butterfly? What if I kill my own grandfather? Am I going to get carted off as a slave?" They showcase her intelligence - these aren't questions that have been asked before in a show that is (at least sometimes) about time travel - but they also highlight the fragility of the Doctor Who premise.

I don't mean that it is not a good premise; it's excellent in that it provides an inexhaustible variety of stories, settings and characters. But it is also nonsense, not so much science-fiction as pure fantasy. If we ask too many questions (or worse, answer them) there is a danger that we will, as the Doctor puts it, "take the fun and the mystery out of everything." It's a timely reminder that we are all here primarily for the adventure.

On the other hand, Doctor Who can't dodge that last question Martha asks, even if the Doctor tries to brush it off: the matter of Martha's skin colour needs to be dealt with in her first historical outing. It's addressed gently, which is probably the right thing to do. The Doctor points out that 16th century London does have black inhabitants - and whilst we can't definitely say that this was the case, it is certain that the lives of any ordinary black people of the time will have been under-represented to the point that they will have become invisible to history. Quite right that Doctor Who, a show with progressive leanings, should show racial integration as a normal and long-standing state of affairs. Then Shakespeare himself shocks Martha by trying to use the appropriate Elizabethan terminology: "an Ethiope girl, a swarth, a Queen of Afric?" She can't quite believe what she's hearing and the scene raises the point that the words we use to describe ourselves and each other are of crucial importance. These epithets change over time, as do the nature of race-relations.

The Doctor's reaction is interesting. When Martha first raises her concerns he seems bewildered, but later on, with Shakespeare, he appears to anticipate that the Bard's language will provoke her 21st century principles. Just how colour-blind is he? His attempt to reassure Martha is telling: "I'm not even human. Just walk about like you own the place. Works for me." In other words, like most white men, he is largely oblivious to his own privilege.

Before the grand unveiling of Peter Capaldi, there was much discussion of a possible non-white Doctor, although nearly every article I saw on the matter mentioned only black alternatives. There's no internal reason why there shouldn't be a non-white Doctor, nor any shortage of good black actors who would be great in the role. But casting a black Doctor gives the show a moral obligation to explore historical attitudes to race, even more so than we have seen with Martha. This is not a bad thing, in fact this would be an excellent reason to have a black actor in the role. It would be fascinating and important to see the Doctor coping with prejudice and without the advantages that come with white skin.

But this would have to happen, or at least be acknowledged, every time the TARDIS went back into the past. In fact to ever ignore it in an historical setting would be to disrespect the suffering of people of colour. We might wish to live in a colour-blind society, but we can't do that if we gloss over the evils of the past. Making the Doctor black would be a valid direction in which to take the show, but might mean that Doctor Who appeared to become a programme that was only about racism. Such a shift might take time away from exploring other stories and issues. Let's face it, the Doctor has already been given the sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper in order to speed stories along and remove obstacles: if historical episodes weren't going to repeatedly explore similar racial tensions, they would have to start working around them.

I don't mean that any of this is a reason never to have a non-white Doctor. If nothing else it would make clear something that has often been taken for granted: that the Doctor, regardless of his apparent race or gender, is a character of purest privilege. He is an aristocrat, an actual Lord. And on top of that his species is superior to almost all others: the Time Lords were the crème de la crème, the self-appointed elite of the universe. For all his many acts of rebellion, the Doctor is merely gallivanting around Space and Time, his interventions caused as much by the grandest noblesse oblige as by his morality. And beyond these notions of class, the Doctor has intelligence, learning and experience in intimidating amounts: he is not, in any way, our equal. Even Eccleston's Doctor, the least patrician of the lot, made sure the "stupid apes" knew what he thought of them. As long as this superiority is not diluted, there's no reason why anyone could not play the Doctor.

These are some of the questions that would need to be mulled over. But, to go back to Martha, we need to be reminded sometimes that this is more a frivolous adventure show for kids than it is a weighty examination of the human condition. Casting a non-white Doctor would mean  walking a fine line between seriously examining prejudice and maintaining a lightness of touch and I can understand why producers and writers might feel this was territory best left to other programmes. However, the treatment of Martha in The Shakespeare Code certainly offers encouragement that this balance could be achieved. Although she isn't mistreated in this episode, her skin colour is addressed - but in between these conversations with Shakespeare (which are more likely to be considered examples of sexual harassment than racial abuse) it's all brushed under the carpet so that we can get on with the story.

The thing I love most about The Shakespeare Code is the evocation of Shakespeare's London. It's just a couple of streets and the Globe Theatre but it looks magnificent and real. There have been times recently when the modern city has not looked so convincing on screen as this does here. It's a triumph.

Tennant is good as well. There's something more satisfying about his Doctor this series, as if he's earned the authority that he wields, say, when he names the Carrionites. Looking back at the confrontation with the Headmaster in School Reunion or the fingers-on-lips scene from Fear Her, there was something a little unconvincing about the way the Doctor faced people down. He defers to Shakespeare here, but only as one genius to another: this year there's more confidence about both Tennant and the Doctor.

And look, for the third story in a row, female villains. Has that happened before? After Anne Reid's 'witch' in Smith & Jones, we get real witches here or, at least, Doctor Who's SF assimilation of them. But they aren't just a collection of fairy tale clichés. The opening scene, in which they lure a young man to his death, is savage and (according to the boys) "horrific". Throughout, their spells and ploys feel like the sort of thing stories about witches might be based upon rather than the other way around, and the only hocus-pocus on display is the Doctor's penchant for Harry Potter.

The boys both gave this an 8. William liked the interplay between the Doctor and Shakespeare and all the business of feeding titles and lines into their dialogue. Chris mentioned that he liked it when the historical figures turned up, but we're big fans of Horrible Histories. I wonder, did Doctor Who partially help prepare kids for that show by showing them Dickens, Queen Victoria and Shakespeare?

Overall this is much better than I remembered and I really enjoyed it, especially the non sequitur of Queen Elizabeth roaring in at the end. Once again Martha, and perhaps the audience, would like an explanation; once again, the Doctor is too busy having fun to think of one.


NEXT TIME...