The Two Doctors .... again

Peter Davison and David Tennant will star in a Children in Need special Doctor Who!



From the BBC " ... Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, who played the part in the classic series from 1981 until 1984, will reprise his role alongside current Doctor David Tennant in the forthcoming Children in Need scene. The mini episode, entitled "Time Crash", was written by award-winning Doctor Who writer Steven Mofatt, and will be transmitted as part of the Children in Need fundraising evening on Friday 16 November 2007.

"It is an honour for me to be able to make the connection between the Fifth Doctor and the Tenth Doctor," noted Peter Davison. "However, now is not the time for sound-bites. I can feel the hand of history on my shoulder, even if I can't do the buttons up!"



Of course, that's not altogether fair, as David Tennant is thinner than all of his female costars, let alone his male ones. And, Peter still holds the "record" for youngest Doctor (he was 29 when he took the part) and Tennant's portrayal undoubtably owes a lot to this incarnation. Well, as a bonofide Doctor Who geek, this is kind of one of those moments when you have to question your sanity. Sure, it's for charity, so there are going to be some forgiving feelings about it.

The question is ... how will it be treated? Will it be a joke or a semi-real episode?

Voyage of the Damned pic

Kylie Minogue and David Tennant ... on the Titanic. Well, I'm already excited.

Doctor Who – “42”

9/10 – The edge of my seat … literally.

Plot - After a week off mid-season, Doctor Who came back with a very strong “real time” episode in which the Doctor and Martha find themselves on a spaceship 42 minutes away from crashing into a sun.



To make matters worse (and that really is what Doctor Who does best) they are immediately cut off from the TARDIS, find that someone has sabotaged the engines, and a security lock-down closes the (28 or 29) doors that lead to the auxiliary control area.



Oh, and one of the crew, the captain’s husband Korwin seems to be infected by the sun itself and begins picking the crew off one by one. His eyes blaze with light and vaporize the crew into smudges on the walls saying “burn with me.”





The Sun is alive and in pain (?) because the crew have been using fusion scoops to extract the energy for fuel (illegal in the 42nd century, apparently.) Martha and this guy Riley eventually get cornered in an airlock and are jettisoned into space toward the sun. the Doctor must risk everything just to save her.










Rant – Well, this was quite good. I can’t even complain that the plot was almost identical to the Tom Baker story “Planet of Evil” or that the sets were all the same/similar to last years “Impossible Planet/Satan Pit.” It could have been worse -- for example, they could have reversed it … and used the plot from “Impossible …” and the costumes from the 1975 “Planet of Evil” ...

THEN ...


NOW ...



Also, there was the ever so cheesy title “42” which cannot help but remind fans of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and the real time aspect which is “24” (an inversion of the numbers.) These seem to be the sticking points for most of the fans, but frankly they are surface issues. The story really had a gripping pace and the Doctor admitting he was scared was pretty well shocking.

Review – The frantic pacing of this story gave the viewer little time to think about what might or might not be wrong about the story. There is a small, but vocal group of fans out there who immediately bashed it as terrible, but they were soon overwhelmed by the “norms” (or the “not we”) fans and viewers who pretty much thought it was great. As a TV viewer I thought the pacing and characterization was solid and as a fan, I thought it was quite traditional Doctor Who with a bit of extra juice. The special effects – and this is always a shocking statement for Doctor Who – were on par with the program thus far (i.e., excellent). And, there was no actual villain … even more interesting.







In fact, in the group of episodes we can call “modern” Doctor Who, this one lingers on very few of the “personal” moments that, frankly, seem shoehorned into the program to appeal to female viewers. This is all about 42 minutes until the ship crashes into the sun. How could there be room for anything else? This is the first time I can ever remember sitting on the actual edge of my seat for a few minutes. When I realized this, I sort of couldn’t believe it. “That cliché actually means something?” I thought.

Doctor Who “The Lazarus Experiment”

8/10 - Strong rebound ...

The Plot - The TARDIS materializes in Martha's flat. The Doctor tells her that they had agreed - one trip and home. It is about twelve hours after they left. Martha's phone rings, but she does not pick it up; it is her mother, Francine, saying that her sister Tish is on the news. Martha turns the television on and, alongside Tish, an elderly man, Professor Richard Lazarus, announces that tonight he "will change what it means to be human." The Doctor says goodbye to Martha and, oblivious to her upset, steps into the TARDIS. It dematerializes, but quickly rematerializes.

“Hang On,” the Doctor says as he pokes his head back out. "Did he say he was going to change what it meant to be human?"

Lazarus invents a machine that makes you young. He’s a creepy old/young guy played by Mark Gatiss (who is actually really good in this) and then he turns into some kind of giant crab (some genetic strand we rejected in our evolution.)





The Rant – Well, this was sure a bright spot after last week’s really depressingly bad Dalek story. There really isn’t much to complain about here, apart from the monster. Bad CGI and a poorly conceived idea – basically a massive rip-off of John Carpenter’s “The Thing.” The other main issue is the way the story works … the “fake ending” up to the church bell tower … I mean, this stuff was cliché in “Die Hard.” It could have gone some place better.

The Review – This was surprising because it was so good after something so lame. There is always a dread of these middle season shows where things get stretched out. And, add to that Gatiss (another in the clique) playing something as stale as a man who invents a machine to get younger … well, not terribly thrilling. But, ironically, Gatiss was very good (especially as the creepy older version … Him hitting on Tish was disturbing) and even his mini-monologue in the church had a good classic Who acting appeal. The story pays obvious homage to “The Quatermass Experiment” (which was remounted a few years ago with Gatiss and David Tennant.)








The return to Earth means the return to the “domestic” aspects of Doctor Who. I do not really care about the companions mother, father, brother, cousin, in general … that’s sort of the point of the show. But, it looks like in this season the mother is going to play a pivotal role. We do find out a bit more about the mysterious Mister Saxon. Lazarus’ research is basically funded by Saxon (hmm, I wonder why?) And, his goons slip some nasty words into Martha’s mother’s ear about the Doctor …



And next week … nothing … Eurovision song contest … But, we did get a very nice trailer for the rest of the series ...

Doctor Who "Smith and Jones" review

Doctor Who “Smith and Jones” – 8/10

Plot - We start, for the first time in the new incarnation of Doctor Who, without the zoom in on the planet Earth first used in “Rose.” Euro-urban cliché hip-hop fades up as Martha talks to her many messed relatives on her cellphone. (Clearly we need the music to telegraph the fact that she is black to us. Oh no, whatever shall we do. Personally, since I regard Mickey as a companion, she isn’t the first black companion, which is the buzz word in the press.) Freema is great as Martha and the first episodes set-up has a great bookend piece of eccentricity right up front when the Doctor appears in front of her and for no reason takes off his tie and says, “Like So …” and walks off again. For Martha, this is the way things are going to be for a while.

She is a medical student and, while doing her rounds, comes across the Doctor again. He says he doesn’t remember her and their encounter. He then does a great piece of non-linear rambling about Ben Franklin and holding the kite, getting electrocuted, etc. Moments later (literally in terms of modern Doctor Who story telling) the entire hospital is enveloped in a very localized rainstorm … and the rain appears to be going up. Suddenly, the hospital is on the moon, they are invaded by rhino-like Jadoon (a race of galactic police) and fight a plasmavore in the disguise of an old lady.





My Rant - To be totally fair, this is the biggest hurdle the new series has had to face so far. The entire cast has now been replaced, and more importantly, Rose has been replaced. When the new series debuted with Eccleston’s damaged Doctor and Rose as more or less the main character, there was concern in some circles, not just about Davies’ “agenda,” but that the show was already tied to a short life-line. The soapy elements of the series (The LOVE STORY!!! Rose’s family, etc.) also seemed overdone. At the end of that series, we saw the regeneration of Eccleston into Tennant and a return to a somewhat more traditional Doctor. The love story remained and it took an awful lot of twisting and turning to come up with a season 2 closer “Doomsday” that could satisfy the “newer” fan expectation as well as return the show to its roots. It did. Last Christmas’ “The Runaway Bride” annoyed a lot of people, not least of all for Catherine Tate’s rather obnoxious character, but it did at least go straight for the traditional DW story telling without too much emotional baggage in the way.

Series Three does seem to want to throw us back into a Captain Kirk type pattern of serial monogamy, but in this case it seems that Martha likes the Doctor and he’s … well, 900 years old and not interested. This is, of course, as it should be. I’ve never followed that “modern” storytelling demands a love story (I mean, really, that stuff killed the Marx Bros. career 70 years ago. Modern???) It doesn’t mean that it isn’t good in other shows, but not in this one. This one is about something grander, bigger than life … and, frankly, intellectual. The Doctor in love is just not interesting anymore than Frankenstein doing a dance routine … in short; it is camp, spoof, silly, etc.



Review – With so much to do in 44 minutes, Smith and Jones is quite a good story. Good monsters (love the old lady with the straw) and a good new character. We are clearly back into some old territory for the long-term fans, while all the new ones should be able to come along for the ride. Martha’s crush on the Doctor seems more at a teasing stage and her family seem to be cut and pasted in over Rose’s, but we still have a long way to go before the big Saxon ending …