Let’s get the good stuff out the way first. This was, as ever, entertaining. There wasn’t a dull moment. I was moved. I laughed, I cried. My tears were jerked when I witnessed the best ever Rose/Doctor moment (when he sent her back in time, out of danger) and the best Rose/Jackie moment (when J realised that R had actually met her dead father, and perhaps realised just why Rose wanted to travel with the Doctor – you may recall it was the words “By the way, it also travels in time” that made her change her mind at the beginning of the series…) And we had that brilliant silent “Ex-ter-min-ate!” of course…
And finally – “Barcelona!” – roll the credits – settle back with a happy sigh.
If you’re happy to just be entertained, read no more.
This episode was supposed to be the climax of the season. As such, it suffered more than the average amount of post-coital triste. Because, just when you though Russell was going to treat you to a “Second Coming”, instead you got coitus interruptus.
But let’s start at the beginning.
Rose is alive! But she’s in the “hands” of the Daleks. “You will do as we say,” they say, “or your associate” (nice touch, that word!) “will be exterminated.”
So what does our fearless hero do? He makes a rousing speech, telling Rose and the Daleks (via a video link, natch) “I’m going to rescue her … I’m going to save the Earth … I’m going to wipe every stinking Dalek out the sky! Rose – I’m coming to get you.”
Now, this brought a lump to the throat, it was great, it was wonderful, it was… stupid.
Can you imagine Patrick Troughton making that speech? No, me neither. Because Troughton (and David Whittaker) respected the Daleks. He knew “the suffering they cause”. He knew that they were capable of exterminating Rose just because he’d dared to disagree with them.
But they didn’t. Not Russell’s Daleks. Apparently, all they can do is get in a tizz. “But – you have no plan!” They do, supposedly, have a reason (of which the Doctor was, incidentally, unaware) to keep Rose alive – to “predict the Doctor’s actions”. Well, OK. So they put her into one of their fiendish torture/mind-reading machines and… oh. No, they ask her politely. And she refuses to cooperate, so they exterminate her… oh. No, they keep her hostage in a cell… oh, no, they use one of their famous neck manacles (which often has to be held in place by the actor in question)… oh. No, they leave her to wander around their control room unfettered. As you do with a captured enemy.
These are DALEKS?
Well, no, as it turns out. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
So, anyway, the Doctor and Jack have to rescue Rose from the Emperor’s flagship. That’s a big space ship: even the smaller ones hold 2,000 Daleks apiece; the Emperor’s must be a mile across, easily. Gosh, I can see there’s going to be some problems here! The Doctor doesn’t know what the Daleks have done with Rose, so he’ll have to materialise the TARDIS in some inconspicuous corner, and they will have to sneak through those Dalek-infested corridors until they can find Rose, rescue her, then make their escape.
Or not. A better plan would be to fly the TARDIS through space (it’s not as though it can just disappear in one place and reappear in another, after all) and let the Daleks shoot at it. Because, what with the Time War and everything, they certainly won’t have developed any TARDIS-busting missiles, will they? Certainly not one that the Doctor’s TARDIS can’t withstand, because it’s such a super-duper advanced model, isn’t it, not a crappy old mark 40 or whatever.
Or not. Still, in some unexplained manner, it allows Jack to charge up a gun he put together out of something he lifted from a makeover show, and a force field, and – I can’t be bothered with more sarcasm, yes, Russell has the TARDIS miraculously locate Rose in the Emp’s mile-wide ship and appear around her, and then they have a forcefield which follows them around so they can step outside and belittle the Daleks even more, just in case we didn’t get the point that the metal monsters have now been turned into pussies.
And apparently the Daleks call the Doctor “the oncoming storm”. Very poetic, just the sort of thing you expect from them.
Sigh. This is just one thing that Russell got completely, almost mind-bogglingly wrong. The Daleks. I could write more Dalek-like Daleks. You could. How could he possibly not get them right?
Sigh. So Russell disses the Daleks. OK, let’s move on. Without further ado, cutting to the chase, etc…
Then we have the Delta Wave. The Doctor spends most of the episode connecting cables so he can wipe out most of the human race, in order to wipe out the Daleks (which are also, in fact, human beings, pulped, filleted, etc). And he doesn’t know whether the Daleks ALSO have colonies and outposts, where they too will survive out there in space. Did they put all their eggs in one basket? He doesn’t know. But he carries on, building a machine that he will eventually wimp out from using in any case.
OK, so Russell disses the Doctor.
And we have Rose sent back in time. Nice touch. Nice speech. And then she decides to come back. And she tries to open up the TARDIS with a car. Nope, doesn’t work. It’s a piece of alien technology, the apes in 2001 may as well have hit the monolith with the jawbone of an antelope. So she tries something clever, like, oh, asking it? She perhaps finds some key, some clue she left herself from the future (the password to open the TARDIS is “Bad Wolf,” perhaps?)
No, she uses a tow truck. Nice one. First Russell disses the Daleks, then the Doctor, and now the TARDIS.
Meanwhile, back at Satellite 5, Jack gets to make a rousing speech: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war” etc.
And the Daleks finally get to look menacing for a while, as they blast away everyone in sight. Just like in Dalek, the only thing that makes them into even a shadow of their former selves is blowing away extras. No cunning, no other forms of ruthlessness. Plus we get the same “overkill” that turns up again in Doomsday: namely, Russell can’t make a few Daleks threatening – we have to have millions. So you know there’s got to be some sort of deus ex machina to remove them all, whether it’s an extra-dimensional vacuum cleaner or “Vortex Rose” (which also sounds like a vacuum cleaner, come to think of it).
Oh, and I almost forgot, the Daleks have got religion.
What? But, the Daleks have always had religion. Their creed has never changed: “we are the supreme beings, everyone else is scum to be used and lied to as necessary, and then exterminated.” Why do they need to dress it up any other way, or try to force other “inferior” beings to “Worship him! Worship him!”? Well, because it’s sledgehammer time (again). Because Russell is moralising (again), showing how bad religion is. Never mind whether it makes sense, helps the story, contradicts characterisation, or not, he’s got to get that soapbox stuff in somehow.
So, the Daleks invade. Everyone dies, heroically or otherwise. There is a steal from Destiny of the Daleks – “My vision is impaired!” – and finally, with a merry quip, Jack is exterminated, the Doctor is surrounded, there is a showdown with the Emperor, the Doctor wimps out, and . . .
Enter Jennifer Saunders, singing: “With a wave of my magic wand, your troubles will soon be gone…”
Sorry, what I meant to say was, enter Billie Piper and lots of glowing ectoplasm, to save the day.
Now, that’s a nice trick. We can use it next time the universe is threatened, surely? Cybermen? No problem. Just get someone to gaze into the heart of the TARDIS, and zap ’em into atoms.
But wait. The Doctor tells us: “No-one’s supposed to do that!”
Why not? It appears to work. Is it illegal, immoral, fattening, or just dangerous? Apparently the latter, but this is not explained, and NO REASON IS GIVEN AS TO WHY the Time Lords didn’t do the very same thing at any point in the Time War! Couldn’t a volunteer have been found to look into the heart of a TARDIS and save Gallifrey, to save all the Time Lords, to save Susan and Romana and the Master and the Meddling Monk and all the others? And whoever did it wouldn’t even have to die, because Time Lords can regenerate.
D’uh.
This is incredibly, inexcusably lazy writing. Worse than the earlier miraculous rescue of Rose, worse than the tow truck.
What else? Well, the Doctor continues to prove he’s a wimp by not saving the world, as he’d promised to do earlier. So the Earth remains in ruins, presumably. And Jack is resurrected, but no one else is, as far as we know, even though millions of people must have been wiped out.
And what about the “Bad Wolf” business? Gosh, talk about coitus interruptus. We were built up slowly, week by week, to expect something truly wonderful, something utterly brilliant. And then the climax was so . . . pointless. I know Russell can’t resolve a plot sensibly to save his life (see The Second Coming, The End of the World, Boom Town, Doomsday etc, etc). But honestly, he could have just read some of the speculation on Outpost Gallifrey and come up with a better idea. Even my “password to enter the heart of the TARDIS” idea would have been better than “Oh yes, must send myself a reminder to rescue the Doctor from certain death.”
(Incidentally, speaking of resolutions that didn’t quite make it, wouldn’t New Earth have been great if only Cassandra had, at the last moment, and unnoticed by anyone else, leapt out of Chip and possessed her younger self, thereby becoming an immortal time loop being? Wouldn’t that have been just SO Doctor Who? That’s just a random example of how Russell has let down my expectations. I actually think New Earth is his best script so far, except for the Sarah Jane Adventure).
Someone give the man another BAFTA, and tell him he’s a genius.
Well, anybody can make sense 