As a British citizen what I’m about to say may come as a shock to some of you, but for the sake of context I feel like I should put it out there. Until quite late in my life (last year in fact) I had never watched Doctor Who, Apparently, according to some, that is a crime for which, had the government known, my British citizenship would have been hastily revoked and all relevant documents incinerated in the core of a dying star. In my first year of Uni, (currently awaiting the start of my third as I write this) at the behest of a couple of friends, one of whom claimed to be “very disappointed” in me, I gave the first episode of the 2005 revival a watch.
For those who don’t remember, or haven’t seen it. The episode focused on a southern London girl named Rose for the better part of the first half, Mannequins had begun to come to life and were slowly replacing everyone around her. As she tries to get away she encounters The Doctor in his ninth body (Played by Northy McNorth-North the Black Pudding Man Christopher Eccleston), he introduces himself and then…honestly, I don’t remember much but running after that, at some point they ended up where the big-cheese of the operation was located, and Rose did something…to be honest I’d pretty much stopped paying attention at that point, not a great start far as I was concerned, as such I didn’t really think about Doctor Who again for a while.
Fast forward another year, around November I think, one of my new friends from halls was positively flabbergasted when she found out I hadn’t really seen Doctor Who, by this time we had established a precedent for getting together to watch things, so I begrudgingly agreed to give Doctor Who another try.
It took a few episodes, and I don’t know precisely at what point it happened, but eventually I did start getting into it, and a few months of the occasional Doctor Who night later, I was all caught up with the 10 years I had missed (I have yet to watch any pre-revival Who at time of writing so I won’t be commenting on anything from that era in this post)
And so, after cramming eight seasons in about four months, here are my thoughts on the past ten years of Doctor Who, unburdened by nostalgic love for the classics.
Season One:
This season is primarily notable for being the only one to feature Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, so if you’re a fan of that actor you’d probably want it to be good right? Does it deliver?….eh, sort of, in certain parts.
Season one was very hit and miss for me, it seemed like the show as a whole was still trying to figure out precisely what it wanted to be, I can forgive the understandably bad CGI as it was a TV show in 2005, which was before TV shows were given the budgets that some are today, but the general wishy-washy nature of a show that hadn’t yet decided on a target audience was very noticeable. The Doctor himself was, in my opinion the least eccentric incarnation, being essentially a down-to-earth no-nonsense and sometimes sarcastic northern bloke, (for the most part at least) this, for me hinted at the show going for a broad appeal, it seemed to me that Rose was there in the beginning for kids to better identify with, so that The Doctor wouldn’t have to appeal to those sensibilities as much, not that he never did, (I said least eccentric incarnation earlier, but that doesn’t mean the quirkiness wasn’t there.) Which is where the tonal inconsistencies I mentioned come into play, I understand it’s a wide universe and there has to be variety in the adventures and such, but at least three separate episodes of Season one were dedicated to thwarting (REALLY crappy-looking) alien body-snatchers whose key distinguishing feature is that they fart a lot, now I’m willing to grant that those episodes were probably aimed at kids and thus, not at me, but I think there’s a very good reason the slitheen weren’t featured much post-season one.
On to some positives, the sixth episode, “Dalek” (Guess what the danger is in that one?) was, and looking back still is, pretty great, the oft-alluded to dark nature of The Doctor is brought to bear for the first time, contrasting with his usual down-to-earth attitude as he lashes out and tortures a captive Dalek in anger over the horrors their two races have inflicted upon each other, a common theme throughout the show between The Doctor and the Daleks is that for all of The Doctor’s compassion, he hates the Daleks every bit as much as they hate everything else. (For those unfamiliar the Daleks seem to basically be Doctor Who’s obligatory Nazi Allegory, which I can only imagine was all the more haunting back in the early days of the show when WWII was still a fairly recent memory. The Daleks are possibly my favourite monsters in Doctor Who, mainly because they provoke a reaction from The Doctor that nothing else can, and in this episode when The Doctor is told “You would make a good Dalek” I almost felt how badly that remark must have stung.
Soon afterwards the reason for The Doctor’s hatred (and his generally brooding persona) is revealed (unless I’m mistaken and it happened before that) At some point before the show was revived, there was a “Time War” primarily between the Timelords and The Daleks, the war raged out of control until The Doctor did the only thing that would stop it, he destroyed both sides, committing mass genocide of not just the Daleks, but his own species as well, I think you’ll agree, that’s pretty heavy stuff.
Another episode that sticks out in my mind, would be the two-parter starting with Episode 9: The Empty Child, this episode is notable for the first appearance of Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, this character would go on to become a recurring cast member and star in his own spinoff show “Torchwood” which I haven’t watched at time of writing so I can’t speak on its quality. But for me this episode was also notable for its change in atmosphere, the tone shifted frequently for comedy moments, but the episode largely carried a pronounced vibe of horror, coupled with a little mystery, I found the suspense to be very effective, I won’t go into detail as I know at least one person who reads this hasn’t seen it.
And of course, another notable episode would be the season finale, “The Parting of the Ways”
Season finales in Doctor Who are always big, and this is the one that set the bar for that trend, it’s another Dalek episode, this time confronted by an army of them, The Doctor has to face the threat of the time war breaking out yet again, I really felt the stakes in this one, and the decision the Doctor makes partway through the episode only reinforces that, but with all said and done at the end The Doctor absorbs a lethal amount of energy from the TARDIS in order to save Rose, the episode ends as he is seen in the TARDIS telling Rose that he is dying, fortunately, whenever The Doctor is fatally wounded, he can survive by simply re-casting himself as another actor for whom the fatal wound never occurred. Thus ended Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor and began the run of David Tennant. Bloody hell the season one bit was longer than I expected, I think I’ll have to do this in parts,
So to sum it up Doctor Who is very much an adventure of the week type of show, there are a lot of fun nods to continuity throughout and you’d have to pay attention to catch them all, and there is a lot of subtle character development even in the not so good episodes, so if you can stomach the plastic farting bodysnatchers I would recommend watching them all.
Season One was not without its problems and Eccleston is probably my least favourite Doctor, as he’s basically just, every character Christopher Eccleston ever played, (apart from the bad guy in Thor 2) but with a time machine. But I did still enjoy it and I would still recommend it, although I would recommend watching it with someone else, I found it to be something best watched socially, so even the parts that are bad you can at least laugh at.
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