The Unicorn and the Wasp

The Unicorn and the Wasp is pure fun. It's so much fun, in fact, that it feels like a guilty pleasure, like a cream bun: undeniably delicious, but it wouldn't do us any good if Doctor Who was like this every week.

Each to their own, but crashing a 1920's posho garden party would be fairly high up my time-travelling bucket list. First stop: Venice in her pomp, of course, but very soon after that I'd be up for Pimms and croquet, I reckon. Still, the chances of finding a party as fun as this one are slim. Not only is it hosted by Felicity Kendall, for crying out loud, but a rather famous guest is self-consciously wandering across the lawn towards the Doctor and Donna.

"Agatha Christie," she says, sticking out her hand.

"What about her?" asks Donna.

Slightly embarrassed in that beautifully English way, the woman replies, "That's me."

Donna can't help herself. Her mouth falls open and her eyes gape. "NO!" she gasps, half-incredulous, half-exhilarated. "You're kidding!"

Donna's reaction is hilarious, feels very genuine, and helps set the tone for the episode. But I think it also exemplifies the spirit of the revitalised series. Look how much fun this is! The question has to be asked, why on Earth did the original show never do this? Why did we never get to pal around with brilliant people from history and have hi-jinks? We did meet Marco Polo, and HG Wells, but it wasn't fun, and we always just seemed to miss Leonardo da Vinci. In the new Doctor Who, the Psychic Paper becomes a pass to the roped-off, VIP areas of history. Once inside, the trick is to have fun with the famous guest stars, rather than at their expense. That's what Tooth & Claw got horribly wrong, and The Unicorn and the Wasp gets brilliantly right.

Yes, Christie chastises the Doctor, just as Queen Victoria did. But in Tooth & Claw, it came at the end of the story, like a judgement on the rest of the episode. Here it happens early on, and it works as a check on us and the Doctor, a reminder that, no matter how much fun we are having, people are dying and there is a real threat to be uncovered. But once delivered, we are all allowed to carry on enjoying the Whodunnit.

A lot of the fun in this episode derives from the playful way it adopts the conventions of murder mystery television. Every last morsel is wrung from the witness statements, with flashbacks within flashbacks, unreliable testimony, and the repetition of events we have already seen ourselves. The traditional I've-gathered-you-all-together scene gets a similar treatment. The 'moving finger' picks out each suspect in turn, revealing a different secret every time, but we also get Donna's commentary, munching popcorn as if she was sat on the sofa at home, trying to keep up with Poirot. With each fresh accusation (accompanied by a whiplash turn of Christie's head) Donna furrows her brow and asks "So she/he did it then?" It's lovely stuff.

Other trappings of the genre are served up more conventionally: a nice supply of red herrings; the below-stairs gossip; the POV shot of the murder victim; dinner, complete with power-cut and a knife in the back during the soup course. Doctor Who seems so comfortable with the format that it becomes clear that this could have been done completely straight and it would still have been very good. But it is undeniably better as it is: it needs the giant wasp, it needs the broad comedy of the Doctor's poisoning. These elements stop it getting bogged down in country house chat, and inject a dash of the fantastic. They remind us that Doctor Who is not only special but unique: there is no other programme on television that can tell a story like this.

It's episodes like The Unicorn and the Wasp that make me conscious that the show is being made by people of my generation. This blend of influences remind me of how television was when we were children: with a paucity of channels and very little choice, we ended up watching whatever was on. As a result we saw, and loved, all sorts of things that we would never have deliberately sought out for ourselves. BBC Two used to show silent movies in prime time for goodness sake! Harold Lloyd, and Laurel & Hardy! But we also got things like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, Joan Hickson's Miss Marple and the Peter Ustinov Poirot films.

I know this makes me sound like a grumpy old Reithian in these multi-channel days, but I do think maybe television should give people what they need, rather than what they want. My boys not only have access (albeit limited) to dedicated channels of cartoons that run twenty-four hours a day, they also have Netflix, which lets them watch whatever they want, instantly. And so, in order to introduce them to something, I have to say, "Hey kids why don't you try watching this? It's really good." Sadly, nothing is as uninteresting as something your parents have recommended  (can you imagine your parents telling you to watch Monty Python? How can something be subversive if your parents have told you it's okay?), but I did get some traction with Charlie Chaplin once by telling them it was "a bit like Mr Bean."

The point of this is that my kids haven't ever been exposed to the works of Agatha Christie, and so they know nothing of the genre. But they absolutely loved The Unicorn and the Wasp.

"Ten out of ten!" said Chris. "It was great. I loved the detective stuff, how they had to ask questions, how it was a mystery."

"Yeah," chips in Will, "it was like that game, Cluedo!" (Okay, he didn't say Cluedo, he said Clue, because he lives in America, but we are going to pretend he said Cluedo.)

"Well," I said, "you know there are TV shows like this that are based on Agatha Christie books? With country houses and murders and detectives - would you like to watch one some time?"

"Sure!" they said.

And that is yet another reason why Doctor Who is the best TV show ever.



NEXT TIME...

The Doctor's Daughter

Intriguing episode titles have been used to keep audiences watching Doctor Who since The Cave of Skulls, but some are just downright provocative. There's nothing new about that either (see 1965's The Death of Doctor Who), but it feels like we've had more of them over the last few years. There's a connecting pattern as well: The Next Doctor, The Doctor's Wife, The Wedding of River Song, The Name of the Doctor - sure they might raise the eyebrow of the casual viewer, or grab the attention of a newspaper previewer, but theres a certain amount of fan-baiting about them too isn't there? Titles such as these hint that sacred cows are about to be slaughtered by a production team tinkering with the show's core tenets.

To be fair, I think the desire to be provocative is a healthy one and that the key objective is to prick journalists into action and to generate publicity. If I were in charge, I'm not sure I wouldn't want to tease the hardcore fans every once in a while either, but it must be noted that none of these stories ever actually do the terrible thing the title threatens to do, or reveal the terrible thing that must never be revealed. It should also be noted that it is fans of a certain age that tend to have conniptions about things like this - my boys, of course, have no preconceptions, and no notions that certain 'fact's about the Doctor are 'fixed', as if particular lines of dialogue could be given Grade I listed status; they are as likely to blithely accept The Doctor's Granny, as we were the Doctor's granddaughter.

When I discovered that an upcoming episode was called The Doctor's Daughter (I spoiled myself, idiot, clicking on a link when I should have waited for DWM to tell me), I thought to myself "Oh, they're going to do that are they?" and I was mildly disconcerted for a moment or too. But I was much more uncomfortable about having found the title out prematurely than I was about what it was. And then, when the time came, the 'mystery' of the Doctor's daughter was cleared up before the opening credits - no tortuous back story, no unnecessary revelations about the Doctor's original family, no how-did-you-escape-the-Time-War speeches - and I was able to simply enjoy the story.

It is mostly very satisfying. For one thing it is very neatly constructed, managing to make room not only for both Donna and Martha, but Jenny too.

Jenny and her relationship with the Doctor are at the centre of the episode, and their story plays out very nicely. Georgia Moffett is very good, and suggests that Jenny is learning and developing without ever making her appear childlike, sceptical and determined without ever becoming truculent or sulky. The Doctor makes a convincing parent, consumed by the normal nightmares: the agony of losing a child; the pain of seeing his own failings echoed in her behaviour. With much economy, but without ever being unconvincing, the episode uses the time it has to chart how these two gradually warm to each other. The beautiful sting in the tale is that, although Jenny's death always appears inevitable, her resurrection does not; her regenerative glow relieves the gloom that would otherwise make this episode really quite dark.

Donna, ever the human half of the Chiswick/Gallifrey hybrid, chivvies the Doctor along, a sort of emotionally literate Jiminy Cricket to the Time Lord Pinocchio. She teases and cajoles him, insists on naming Jenny and treating her like a person - but she does this all so gently, never pushing too fair, slowly enabling the Doctor to let himself feel the emotions he is desperately trying to hold in check. As with The Fires of Pompeii and Planet of the Ood, she is once more behaving as a missing but complementary part of his personality - the arc for this series is secretly playing out right in front of our eyes, hidden in plain sight. And whilst the Doctor is distracted by family problems, Donna gets to apply her office skills to the wider universe and unlocks the mystery of Messaline. I love that the mundane business of understanding timestamps, filing and archiving is a transferrable skill - it makes Donna so much more accessible to us than Zoe with her photographic memory, or Leela with her janus thorns.

Martha, meanwhile, carries half the episode all by herself: the only speaking character in the Hath side of Messaline. Surrounded by prosthetics and talking to herself, this could have been ended up rather strained, but Ageyman's performance is never unconvincing or unnatural and Martha's qualities (so competent, so likeable) mean that she wins over her captors, teams up with Peck, and navigates the perils of this alien world with some flair, if not ease. Even better, and unlike some previous companions (Mel the computer programmer? Peri the botanist?), she repeatedly utilises her medical training: fixing Peck's shoulder and rushing to Jenny's aide. Like Rose, like Donna, Martha feels like a real person, thanks to great writing and acting. Out of the three, though, Doctor Jones has easily the best music, and Murray Gold's theme for her is never better than at the end of the episode, where it rises in a potent bluesy farewell.

Martha is the first companion to get her second chance at leaving the new series, and both goodbyes are really good. They certainly both feel justified, or, rather, they feel to me like they are two halves of one protracted goodbye: the first is abrupt and somewhat incomplete; this, the second, leaves everything neatly wrapped up. It is very satisfying and, importantly, the series feels like it has regained the emotional reality that went out of the window during Last of the Time Lords.

You'd think there wouldn't be room in the episode for anything else, but there's still quite a lot! There's something really alien and mysterious about Messaline, thanks to some ingenious choices of location, some good design work, and some clever concepts. The whole scenario - the colonisation, the underground city, the generations of soldiers fighting a war over seven days - is exotic and intriguing in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. For all that, I'm not convinced it entirely makes sense - it's never explained, for example, why Cobb is so much older than everybody else (is he part of the original crew, manipulating the younger generations for his own ends?), and surely not everyone from the earliest generations has been killed within a week? Is there no one left who actually remembers the landing? I'm not enamoured of the Doctor's preachy shouting at the end either ( "a man who never would, except for when I blew up Skaro or gunned down all those Cybermen in the TARDIS") but he has just lost his daughter and I'm never actually going to complain when someone on television tells my children that guns are evil.

Despite the somewhat upbeat ending, William was wistful enough to comment for once: "I wish she had gone with the Doctor..." Chris could only give this an eight because Jenny "should have regenerated completely not just come back to life. Also I don't believe the Hand could bring the TARDIS there. It's a hand, it hasn't got magic powers."

Oh, just you wait.


NEXT TIME...

The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky

Well, this blew me away, much to my surprise. We watched both episodes together and for the first time, I had the feeling of watching a Doctor Who movie. It's great: alien invasion on a grand scale, with sneaky infiltration, all-out battle, a gung-ho UNIT, and a suitably epic ending.

I've decided I like having two companions, and there might not be a better combination than Donna and Martha. They don't get a lot of time to interact here, but the few moments they do get are just lovely. With Rose out of the picture there's no jealousy, and it's nice to have two women know the Doctor without feeling they have to fight over him.

It is just nice to see Martha again. In the old days companions never ever came back (apart from Tegan, and that doesn't really count) but these days everybody returns. I have a pet theory that the first goodbye is always the best, but we'll look at that in The Doctor's Daughter. And Journey's End, The End of Time, and The God Complex or The Angels Take Manhattan. Anyway, it is nice to see Martha. Her return doesn't pose any awkward questions, or unbalance the show's equilibrium, or throw the story off in an odd direction. We just get to see that she is fine and happy, engaged to her lovely Doctor Tom, and working for UNIT. As breakups go, this has turned out to pretty well. It's just a slight shame that she is so quickly sidelined. Although it's fun (both for us and, presumably, for Freema Agyeman) to have Evil Martha running rings around UNIT command, I would have liked her and Donna to get more time together.

But there are niceties to be observed: Donna is the incumbent companion and rightly gets more attention. She gets multiple opportunities to impress - "I'll take a salute"; showing off her temp powers in the ATMOS office; impassively waiting for the Doctor to realise he is barking up the wrong tree with his eloquent "You're leaving" speech; catching up with her grandfather and happily enduring her mother; pragmatically puncturing the Doctor's next big speech, snatching the TARDIS key from him as she tries to escape the poisonous fog. Her greatest moment is aboard the Sontaran ship. Alone and desperately out of her depth, the Doctor pushes her to step out from the safety of the TARDIS. She manages to get the job done despite her own fears and rises even further in our estimation as a result.

There are so many things to like. Early on there's a simply brilliant shot through the TARDIS doors with Donna still impossibly deep inside the Console Room. David Tennant is on excellent form; now in his third series, his performance feels effortless and the Doctor is so much fun to be around, whether he's taking out Field Marshall Staal with a squash ball, bickering with Colonel Mace, out-pedanting Rattigan, bonding with Ross, or coldly keeping an eye on turncoat clone Martha. The Doctor isn't without his contradictions though: he rails against UNIT's penchant for violent military solutions and makes a point of not carrying any guns - but he still charges onto the Sontaran ship with a home weapon and the intent to kill everyone aboard. Of course here, as with a lot of other nasty decisions, he hesitates just long enough for someone else to decide to sacrifice themselves instead. For all that, it says something about the momentum of this story that it struck me that the Doctor really could die doing this - I know he won't (and not just because I've seen this one before), but even making such an outcome a credible theoretical possibility is an achievement.

The Sontarans are very good here, and show why they deserved to come back. If nothing else, they are clearly delineated from other villainous races. Visually, they retain their unique facial appearance, regain their distinctive fingers and stature, and are improved further by a strong redesign of their uniforms. The proper martial characteristics are all present and correct, and there's no fuzzy emotional overlap with the Daleks or Cybermen: we know, from everything they say and do, that the Sontarans are all about war. Staal is genuinely aggrieved that his race was kept out of the Time War and, rather touchingly, seems to think that defeating the Doctor will mean the Sontarans somehow won that conflict, rather like Scotland beating England in 1967 and claiming to be world champions.

Of course, these two aren't the only belligerents in this conflict and it is rather pleasing that the Sontarans get to go up against the new souped-up UNIT, especially seeing as the humans defy all alien expectations and kick some extraterrestrial bottom. The counter-attack that begins with the descent of the Valiant (thank you Mr Saxon) is one of the most gung-ho moments in the entirety of Doctor Who and, unlike many of Eric Saward's bust-ups, it still manages to delight, not only us, but the Doctor himself, as Colonel Mace notes. If this new relationship doesn't quite have the chemistry of Pertwee and Courtney, at least it captures the old sense that these two respect each other despite their disagreements.

This two-parter is really very good, but it seems to be a little forgotten - overshadowed maybe by the epic climax of Series Four, or by the way Strax has become such a dominant version of the Sontarans during the last year or two. It's a shame because this story shows that they really do deserve to be considered among the top rank of returning baddies, and that they are definitely worthy of a season finale all of their own.

Still there is an odd moment or two - the clone race seems to have retained some vestigial sexism, and neither Israel or Russia appear on Captain Price's list of co-operating nuclear nations, although North Korea does! Almost as confusing as one of the boys cheering "Harriet Jones!" when Kirsty Wark turned up. Chris eventually gave both parts ten out of ten, but I had to talk him up from a nine on The Sontaran Stratagem: initially he had wanted to take off a point because he didn't believe Rattigan could have invented all those gadgets. Not unreasonable, really.


NEXT TIME...

Planet of the Ood

There is one problem with Planet of the Ood, which is that the Doctor’s presence has no impact on events whatsoever. The Ood rebellion was planned long in advance, and succeeds because of the FOTO agents Ood Sigma and Dr Ryder. All the Doctor does is witness the culmination of their scheming. As plot problems go, this is a large and significant one, and it makes this episode is a great disappointment after The Fires of Pompeii, where the Doctor believed he had no ability to influence events, only to discover that it was his job to trigger the eruption of Vesuvius. On the Oodsphere, he is merely an observer, albeit a partial one that somehow manages to get all the credit.

Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t a good Doctor Who story to be had where the TARDIS crew must simply survive or escape inevitable events shaped by the forces of history. There’s The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, for example, or (less passively) The Waters of Mars. But, great big CGI crane chase notwithstanding, the Doctor is barely involved here at all.

Thank goodness for Donna. She may not have much of an impact on events, but they definitely have an effect on her. For the second episode in a row, she shoulders the emotional burden of the story. She’s an empathy machine (in a good way) and the scene where she hears the Ood song is crucial to our developing understanding of her character. Rose was brave, but (as RTD himself admitted) selfish. Martha was emotional, but also analytical. Donna feels, she connects with people. Stacy in Partners in Crime, Evelina last week, and now an entire alien race - overcoming her initial shock at the Ood's appearance to empathise with their suffering. With every episode we are watching her develop as she explores the Universe, but at the same time, she refuses to compromise her principles. She continues to prove that she is more than a match for the Doctor, but this leads to an ugly misstep. Although disgusted with the Ood's enslavement, she swats away the Doctor's comparison with 21st century wage slaves and sweatshops as a "cheap shot". It's anything but that and her hypocrisy goes unchallenged - as a result a serious issue is downplayed, and Donna appears to give the audience license to forget about their own complicity.

Tim McInnerny is excellent as Halpen, the latest in a long line of villainous businessmen in Doctor Who. His callous sneering is of a very high quality and it's very satisfying to watch him gradually unravel as his exasperation grows. His denouement, transforming into an Ood, may be bizarre and slightly unbelievable, but it is undoubtedly deserved and utterly memorable. Memories of this middling story's finer details will fade, but a generation of kids will never forget 'the one where the man turned into an Ood and coughed up his brain.'

Although memorable, it caused Chris to knock off a mark. "Nine. Minus one for the whole brain-in-the-hand thing. I just feel that's really gross. But this one was very scary, like when Donna was in the container by herself and the Ood's eyes went red..."

The Ood do very well out of this story, not only emancipated but turned from a one-hit wonder into an important and recurring species with a distinctive culture and biology. It's not just the economics of reusing the costumes either - I think there's some guilt floating around from their first appearance. The Doctor actually comments again that he feels bad about not being able to save the remaining Ood in The Satan Pit, and there's a sense that the show itself had overlooked these underlings and wanted to make amends. If nothing else Planet of the Ood gives everyone's favourite squiggly-faced alien counter-tenors the happy ending they deserve.


NEXT TIME...

The Fires of Pompeii

People talk about Blink being the perfect episode to show someone who has never seen Doctor Who before but, while it might draw people in, it's not properly representative of the programme as a whole. You might argue that Fires of Pompeii isn't either - no other story has looked as good as this before - but it is, I think, an excellent place for the uninitiated to start, because it is just so bloody good.

This is that rare thing, a Doctor Who story about time travel, or rather about the consequences of foreknowledge. Once the TARDIS lands in Pompeii, even total newbies will know what's at stake and will understand the tension between the Doctor, who wants to escape from the inevitable destruction and protect the timeline, no matter how horrible it may be, and Donna, whose compassion compels her to try and limit the human misery the eruption will cause. The climax of the episode neatly resolves this conflict between them by replacing this dilemma with another: the time travellers realise that they have been folded into events all along and that they must decide, either to cause the eruption and kill thousands, or to save the city and allow the aliens to conquer the world. This is a great story, and a great time travel story, not least because it centres on a real - and for us, inevitable - historical event; the threat of Vesuvius is reinforced with every ominous rumble, every tremor.

But the drama continues even beyond the cataclysm. Donna's tearful rage against the Doctor is a desperately important moment in their relationship, just two episodes in. She is defined here by her most human qualities: her empathy and compassion, her determination to stand up to the Doctor. She demands, begs, that they use the TARDIS to save someone, anyone, from the disaster. Unable to relive his own trauma, his reaction is to run, reminding us not only of his alien nature (a vital aspect, much diluted during Tennant's tenure), but also of his Time War backstory and survivor's guilt. That she persuades him to go back shows us how important Donna is, both to the Doctor and to the show. There hasn't ever been a Doctor/Companion pairing like this before.

The rescue of Caecillius and his family is yet another tremendously powerful moment in the post-2005 run, and one of my favourites: the poor Romans, cowering in the ash and shadows, the TARDIS doors blazing light and the Doctor stepping like a god from the machine. It's glorious. Later on in this series we will begin to get further intimations of the Doctor's mythical status, but here this is clearly just how he appears to these superstitious ancients. I don't mean to belittle them with that description either: this family is marvellous: beautifully written, cleverly cast and sensationally acted, they put a recognisably modern face on historical Pompeii, rendering their culture of gods and omens so that we understand. Every one of them is great, but Peter Capaldi, a sensational actor, must now receive special attention - his casting as the Twelfth Doctor (and Karen Gillan popping up in a pre-Amy role) make The Fires of Pompeii a curio for future fans.

There's so much to love. The water pistol (properly Doctorish, that); the running TARDIS translation joke that peppers the script with Latin and Welsh phrases; the spine-tingling prophesy-off between Lucius Petrus Dextrus and Evelina, each magical pronouncement punctuated by the ominous rumblings of Vesuvius. There are some beautiful lines (the High Priestess says of the Doctor that "he carries starlight in his wake") and some strong ideas, like the disturbing notion for a soothsayer of feeling the future change ("And yet this was meant to be!"). And I know appearances shouldn't matter as much as they do, but the use of the ancient Rome set at Cinecittà Studios in Italy makes this episode dazzle. One of the very best.

The boys weren't going to admit to being moved by the powerful ending, but Chris did pick out Donna making the Doctor return to the villa as one of his favourite bits. He did feel that the story was weakened by the fact that Vesuvius was always going to have to erupt. "[The Doctor and Donna] were acting like it was a difficult choice! It wasn't, it was an OBVIOUS DECISION." So obvious that he had to knock off two whole points: eight out of ten from him.

NEXT TIME...

Partners in Crime

This may not be quite as neatly told as Smith and Jones was, but this Partners in Crime is undeniably more fun. But then maybe we're talking about the difference between Martha and Donna? Martha, as wonderful a companion as she was, just isn't as much fun as Donna.

That this is a reintroduction gives this story, and her relationship with the Doctor, a crucial balance. They meet here as equals, in need of each other. We see the Doctor's loneliness in a gorgeous wide shot of the empty TARDIS, while Donna, able to reference the events of The Runaway Bride, gets to tell us that she knows exactly what is missing from her life. With this so easily established, the joy of the first half of the episode is that they don't meet up, constantly just missing each other in a long series of near farcical sight gags, whilst unwittingly mirroring each other's investigations.

We're kept waiting, but when the reunion finally comes it is wonderful. Not only is that first mouthed conversation priceless and easily one of the funniest scenes in Doctor Who, but the mere fact that they are together again is simply joyous. Almost everything they say to each other, every interaction, is delightful: "Don't you ever change?", "Hold on!" - "I AM!", "I was right. It is always like this with you isn't it?" - "Oh yes!", all the way through to "PLANET OF THE HATS!" And by the end the there can't be many people who aren't excited by the prospect of a full series of these two in the TARDIS.

In that sense alone, this must be the strongest first episode we've had, although it's not quite perfect. The Adipose are a brilliant design and a great idea, and it makes a lovely change to have aliens that aren't evil, even if they do, through no fault of their own, pose a very real threat to human life. Although undeniably adorable, they embody an utterly horrible concept - a very satisfying combination. Miss Foster is the real antagonist, lusciously played by Sarah Lancashire who really seems to be enjoying herself. She's a great baddy, ice-cool, in control and magnificently unflappable, but she does seem isolated and spends a lot of her time (rather like the Editor in The Long Game) just talking out loud to nobody in particular. Her battle of wits with the Doctor is very enjoyable when they are face to face, but the technological duel through which he gains the upper hand is little more than unconvincing (and very bland) technobabble and some flashing lights.

Penny Carter is an unusually unsympathetic character: a snarky figure of fun who seemingly gets her just desserts. These desserts are not very severe, but it is very odd for Doctor Who to hold up anyone to ridicule, let alone someone so unimportant. If it wasn't for Donna, she would clearly be the candidate for new companion in this episode (and indeed Donna's involvement grew out of plans for a new companion called Penny). She has Sarah Jane's 'investigative reporter' thing going on and, just like Donna, she sneaks into the building and hides in the toilets. So why is she given such a hard time? It's not as if we need to see a useless might-be companion (like Adam) in order to realise Donna's suitability. Is it just a dig at reporters then? (The Doctor, when she asks  him to explain what's going on, shrugs and tells her to "just make something up".) Either way, she does cause a small tear in the plot: Penny is discovered in the loos instead of Donna, but she must just have heard Donna's hurried and hushed phone conversation in the next cubicle. She doesn't give Donna away, so she can't be all bad, can she?

Having Rose turn up out of the blue - and keeping it a secret until transmission - was a real coup for the production team, and it certainly added some sting to this episode's closing moments. I enjoyed the reveal at the time, but I wasn't excited about the idea of Rose returning. Now, knowing where this will end up in Journey's End, I'm actively irritated by the prospect.

For me, the genuinely marvellous bit is the proper ending, with Donna waving at Wilf. I've mentioned before about how lovely it is to have Bernard Cribbins in the show but his little dance here and the vicarious joy of a grandfather is really very moving. It's taken a long time but the Doctor and Donna are finally off in the TARDIS together - hooray for Series Four!

William still refuses to comment, but I can tell that he's just as glad as me to have her aboard. Chris gave this an eight out of ten: he very much enjoyed the moments when the Doctor and Donna kept missing each other. He also gave a six out of ten for scariness, which I think is a little high - it can't be the Adipose, but I wouldn't be surprised if Miss Foster's dark maternalism disturbed children whilst zooming right under the grown ups' heads.


NEXT TIME...



 

Voyage of the Damned

Much confusion has developed around the Christmas Specials in the age of 'catch-up' TV. Do they count or don't they?  The Christmas Invasion obviously has to, post-regeneration and all, and The Runaway Bride should (or else Partners in Crime might be confusing) - although we didn't know that when it was first broadcast. Either way, they were packaged neatly into the boxsets, and it seemed that this was to be the natural order of things. However with The Next Doctor and The End of Time things went squiffy because they both counted as one (or two) of the special Specials, which had their own boxset and - bafflingly - ended up on Netflix listed as a separate series distinct from the main run of Doctor Who.

Things went downhill after that. I just wrote a long and fascinating explanation of what actually happened to The Christmas Carol, The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe , and The Snowmen. But then I cut it, realising that anyone who cared enough to read it would know it all already. Suffice to say that their availability has been difficult to predict: Netflix ignores one entirely, and another was apparently going to be left off the DVD release. All very puzzling, but there's almost certainly no editorial reasoning behind any of this. It'll be to do with how series are sold and shipped in lumps, and the simple fact will be that sometimes odd standalone episodes get lost. It's a shame, especially if you're trying to work out how to buy the complete run without doubling up on an episode or (worse) missing one, but there you go.

But it leaves the viewer (or purchaser) with the idea that some of these episodes don't matter, that they don't advance the overarching story and are therefore optional. This is a shame because there is a danger that a casual audience might miss a treat.

Watching with hindsight, Voyage of the Damned is the first Christmas Special that really does stand alone. It is also the first to try and tell a Christmas story rather than a Doctor Who-story-at-Christmas. Okay, this particular Christmas story happens to be the one about the expensive celebrity-laden disaster movie extravaganza, but the point is that whilst this feels different from normal Doctor Who, it is definitely the sort of thing one would expect to sit down and watch after dinner on Christmas Day.

I didn't see it that way at the time. I thought the episode was alright, but because I was expecting something more Doctor Who-y than Christmas-y, it felt disposable: throwaway festive fluff. Stupidly, it's only now, binge-watching the entire show and viewing Voyage of the Damned in context, that I can see that it is precisely this idiosyncrasy that makes it such fun.

This episode is littered with pleasing little moments but the opening ten minutes is like pulling your all your favourites from a tin of Quality Street. First off, David Tennant's Doctor is a star in his own right by now. We get to drift along with him, an invisible companion as we take in the sights and explore the Starship Titanic. Then, up pops Kylie! Her appearance here isn't a surprise given the publicity the BBC made of it, but the initial reports of her involvement were staggering. Kylie Minogue in Doctor Who? What? It still feels odd to see her here, as if the Universe should have snapped back into its original state by now, one where Australian pop megastars didn't do this sort of thing. Then we get a couple of lovely old hands, Geoffrey Palmer and Bernard Cribbins, both of whom have been household names in Britain for as long as I can remember. In fact, they were both doing Doctor Who before I was even born. Palmer, adorably lugubrious, has a short but beautiful stint as Captain - and seems to sketch out a whole life in just a couple of scenes. Cribbins turns out for a one scene joke, the gist of which is how ridiculous having Christmas specials year after year is. But it works, largely because it is Bernard Cribbins sat there, twinkling away.

These star turns are treats, but there's a main course too. The core of the episode is the disaster movie. Tension builds, disaster strikes, and the Doctor excitingly takes charge, leading the survivors through the innards of the stricken ship. Considering there's only half an hour and a BBC budget with which to do this, this section of the show is excellent: plastered with danger, heartbreak and noble sacrifices. Russell Tovey is outstanding as Midshipman Frame. It's another small part (one I've taken for granted in the past) but, my goodness, he's good. Naive, wounded, scared, brave, dutiful, Frame is absolutely convincing and grounds the whole outlandish disaster format in a very human way. The Doctor gets more than his share of moments: one minute he's beating back the Heavenly Host with a steel bar, the next he's trying to prise information from them, grappling to come up with the one question that will allow him to survive. We get the beautiful but distinctly odd sight of him being hoisted by the robot angels, literally raised up, and then, finally, he gets to buzz Buckingham Palace in a Titanic-replica spaceship.

But no matter how much fun the rest of this all is, the question of whether Voyage of the Damned sinks or floats is largely down to Kylie. Her casting is a big deal, especially with the people who tuned in to watch her (13.3 million,giving the show its highest ratings since 1979), and in that sense it's a gamble that pays off handsomely. Astrid Peth is a little too sweet for my taste, and could have been a more interesting, rougher-edged character - but then many of the wider audience were here just to see Kylie, not Astrid, and I think they went away more than happy. Overall, I think it was a great decision and a piece of very good fortune for the programme that she was able to participate - but I would have had to have drunk an awful amount of Christmas spirit for that that 'stardust' ending to be anything other than overcooked schmaltz.

Christopher is still happily giving out scores. He's got into the habit of taking marks away from ten, effectively punishing episodes for what he sees as their failures. Voyage of the Damned got a 9 - one off  because he "didn't like how everybody died."

I explained that it was copying the disaster movie genre and that that was just what happened in such a story.

"Yes, but this wasn't the Doctor in a disaster movie, this was a disaster movie in Doctor Who, so the Doctor should have saved everybody anyway. It his rules."

"Ah," says William, who's been paying attention. "But if the Doctor can choose who lives, that would make him a monster."

Well quite. Who said this was a standalone adventure, cut off from the ongoing narrative?


NEXT TIME...