Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

Chapter The 98th, in which it's only a game show, so put up a real good fight...

Plot: 
The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack each arrive separately in twisted year 200,100 versions of dated (even in 2005) game shows, not knowing exactly how they got there. The Doctor is in the Big Brother house; Rose is on The Weakest Link; Jack is on What Not to Wear... I think; is that what it was called? The Trinny and Susannah one? Whatever. Anyway, the twist is that contestants get killed. Both Jack and the Doctor escape their shows, the latter alongside another Big Brother contestant Lynda (with a Y). They find they are on a space station that the Doctor and Rose visited 100 years earlier, and the Doctor's actions back then seem to have made things much worse, allowing unseen parties to stage these vicious competitions for a docile viewing population on Earth. Meeting up with Jack, they track Rose, but are not quick enough to save her - she is seemingly zapped by an Android version of Anne Robinson. Investigating, the Doctor discovers that the Controller of the station has brought them here, to defeat "her Masters", who turn out to be a new race of Daleks.

Rose has been transmattted to a Dalek saucer in the middle of a fleet containing half a million Daleks led by the Emperor, who has rebuilt his disciples using the cells of humans; this has turned them religious and mad. The Doctor rescues Rose, and the Dalek fleet attacks the space station. Captain Jack leads the remaining humans aboard the station to mount a defence. The Doctor tricks Rose into the TARDIS, and sends her back home to Jackie and Mickey, while he works to build the station's transmitters into a weapon that he can use to destroy the Daleks. There's only one problem: because of the lack of time to prepare it, it will destroy humans and Daleks alike. With the Daleks closing in, the Doctor faces a terrible choice, just like he did during the Time War: kill innocent people or let the Daleks live to terrorise the universe. Meanwhile, Rose uses brute force to open the TARDIS console, looks into the time-vortex and flies the ship telepathically back to the Doctor. Surrounded by Daleks, with everyone else including Captain Jack killed, the Doctor cannot bring himself to pull the trigger on his mega-weapon and is just about to be exterminated. But Rose arrives, changed into a superbeing having absorbed the time-vortex. She destroys the Emperor and all the Daleks, and resurrects Jack; but too long holding the time vortex within is lethal, so the Doctor snogs it all out of her, and thereby regenerates into David Tennant.

Context:

For the first time in a while, the randomiser has been overridden, and this story was specifically selected for viewing by yours truly. The weekend of my birthday, my lovely family asked what sort of things I would like to do, and knowing me as they do, one thing they offered was to sit down and watch a Doctor Who, all together as a family. I thought about my selection very carefully, like any list-making obsessive would (more on that below), and chose this particular two-parter, which we watched on DVD. The children (boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) were captivated throughout despite not recognising any of the game shows being referenced; the Better Half was pretty captivated too, though she did comment several times on how thick a layer of make-up Billie Piper was caked in, so that must have been distracting. We left a couple of hours' gap between the episodes, as the second part benefits from a bit of time for anticipation to build; nobody could have waited a week, though.

First-time round:
During a brief period when we were living in our newlywed pad in Gillingham, myself and the Better Half watched both episodes together live on BBC1 broadcast. There are a few solid contenders for best individual series or season of Doctor Who; in my humble opinion, Christopher Eccleston's 2005 run is the best. No other individual season had to be built to work so hard; in William Hartnell's first year, episodes were being made much closer to broadcast, so they knew they had a hit as early as production on the the fourth story in. But 99% of footage of all thirteen 2005 episodes, including this two-part finale, was in the can before the series started on BBC1. Nobody knew how it would go down with viewers; one could make a persuasive case that, had it tanked, Doctor Who would have been dead for a very long time, if not for ever.

Consequently, everybody involved in its making, a lot of whom were fans of the show, has clearly given their all. It's the set of stories with most to prove, and it rises to that challenge. That the show is still going more than a decade later is testament to this. So, the finale of that year was aiming to be something very special. The marketing hoopla certainly went into overdrive, with a new trailer every day in the period between the two parts counting down the days until we saw the final episode, and afterwards on Doctor Who Confidential a very nice montage of Eccleston's best bits to some slightly uplifting Coldplay-a-like tune. Even though it had only lasted a few months, it did feel like the end of an era.

Reaction

Despite the high camp sampling of popular game shows of the time, it's clear from even before the pre-credit scene that this story is taking things seriously: the selection of clips in the 'Previously' montage, the magnificently ominous music cue by Murray Gold, and that caption "100 years later", left hanging for a pregnant pause, all set the scene - this isn't necessarily going to be an easy ride. The game show idea, which there's evidence that writer Russell T Davies had been thinking of as a one-off for a long time, is then introduced with a joke and a cheeky wink. A lot of people hated the idea, and I can see why to a certain extent, but such criticism misses the point: it's been cleverly deployed as a feint, a distraction, to fool the unaware into thinking they're just watching another high-concept one-parter, to heighten the surprise and impact when the Daleks are revealed. The title of the first episode also clued in those that had been paying attention: Bad Wolf is finally going to be explained after verbal and visual clues throughout the preceding episodes. A lot of people hated that device too, but I was there and the level of enthusiastic speculation as to what it all might mean was phenomenal.

If you are the sort of person who can get behind the game show bits and the Bad Wolf concept, then I can't see how you won't think everything else in the story is as good as Doctor Who can be. Years ago, Doctor Who Magazine ran an article "Twenty Moments when you know you're watching the greatest TV series ever made"*, choosing their score from every era of the programme. I could pick at least twenty moments just in Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. In fact, screw it, that's what I'm going to do. This is a contender for my favourite ever Doctor Who story (more on that below), so this was only ever going to be a rave anyway; I may as well give it some structure. Let's begin:

1. Starting at the end, my first magic moment to list would be the confidence of the "Doctor Who will return in The Christmas Invasion" caption, proving that this story keeps the pleasures going beyond the very end.
2. Captain Jack's scenes with the Trinny and Susannah droids "Your viewing figures just went up", the reveal of his compact laser deluxe, and the gag about where he'd been hiding it, etc. Trinny and Susannah are great actually, as are the other non-actor guest voice artists.
3. The Doctor's scene of realisation that all that's happening is his fault from his visit 100 years earlier, "I made this world", part of the story's overall pulling together of the year's themes and making The Long Game (weakest story of the season) worthwhile at last.
4. All Paterson Joseph's scenes as Roderick, but particularly his return in the second episode, obsessed with getting his winnings from a corrupt system that's collapsing all around him.
5. The Doctor's defiant speech at the end of Bad Wolf, folding his arms and saying "No" to half a million Daleks, ending with "Rose, I'm coming to get you!".
6. The follow up to that, a week on, when he flexes his muscles rescuing Rose in the first two minutes of the programme, the wonderful materialisation of the TARDIS around a Dalek, and the thrill of seeing one in the TARDIS control room for the first time.
7. The scene between the two programmers just before they die.
8. The confrontation between the Doctor and the Emperor Dalek, with the slow reveal of their new religious fundamentalist nature, including a nice in-joke: "...half human?" "Those words are blasphemy!"
9. The moment of Eccleston leaning with his head against the TARDIS door after confronting the Daleks, where we realise - if we hadn't already - that his gurning chappie persona is just a front masking his survivor guilt.
10. The conversation between the Controller and the Doctor during solar flare activity: "But speak of you. My masters, they fear the Doctor." Joe Ahearne's direction here, and everywhere, is exemplary - he can shoot Daleks so well.
11. The reveal that Rose is still alive with a suddenly familiar control room noise, and a hint of a reflection as unseen Daleks advance. Joe Ahearne, I love you!
12. Lynda with a Y's death: the clever echoes of Rose and the Doctor's meetings to lead up to it, making us subconsciously see her as the new companion. The economy of doing a call back in-joke of the Daleks cutting through the door, only for it to be misdirection when Lynda's shot through the window instead. The silent floating Dalek's head lights flashing "Ex-term-in-ate" is way cool too.
13. Rose suddenly realising she's surrounded by Bad Wolf graffiti, including the large words written on the ground.
14. Rose telling Jackie that she went back in time to meet her father, and was with him when he died.
15. The sequence where the Doctor, Jack and Lynda are arrested, silent and stony faced while their photographs are taken, then the Doctor turns to Jack, says "Let's do it" and they break out effortlessly, leading to the wonderful confrontation in floor 500, where the Doctor instantly gives up the gun. "Don't be so thick, like I was ever gonna shoot".
16.  The Doctor replaying the Time War in miniature: "What are you - coward or killer?" "Coward. Any day!" The Day of the Doctor later stretched an entire feature length story out of this one moment; just sayin'.
17. The wonderful escalating tension as Rose loses the final round of The Weakest Link, while the others rush to save her but arrive just too late. The scene playing just on Eccleston's face, almost motionless, as he contemplates the loss of Rose while the background tussles drift away, quieter and quieter.
18. Cheesy, I know, but the kiss: "My head is killing me" "Come 'ere, I think you need a Doctor."
19. Eccleston's farewell speech, the first ever standing-up regeneration and Tennant's first lines.
20. And finally and best of all, one of the greatest moments in Doctor Who's long history: the emergency programme one hologram of the Doctor that plays to Rose in the TARDIS as she is whisked off to safety. Most of this is shown sideways on until the spine-tingling moment when the hologram turns to face her. Magic.

* A few months later, the magazine followed the article up with another ten moments. I reckon I could come up with ten more moments just in Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. But not today.

Connectivity:

Both stories contain foes created by Terry Nation, and both appear in the first ever season of different phases of Doctor Who production.

Deeper Thoughts:
Playing favourites.  So, it's all downhill from here: I've now watched and blogged the story I think is the best one ever. Well, yes and no: it's definitely my favourite right now, but I could quite easily have picked another. If my birthday had been the following week, I would have given the matter the same amount of thought, but could have come up with a completely different favourite. I might even have chosen another story from 2005: The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, for example, is bloomin' excellent, but I have already covered it for the blog here. If I hadn't, would I have picked it over the same year's finale? It would have been a close run thing. Of the stories I haven't blogged yet there are some crackers too: Talons, of course, but I did do a thing only last week about it being offensive and borderline racist: has that put me off? Robots of Death, Kinda, Caves of Androzani, Inferno, The Web of Fear. The only sane thing to do would be not to try to pick a favourite at all, and appreciate them all. But I'm not quite sane about this, and I can't help myself.

I'm not alone either; it tends to come with the territory of Doctor Who fans that they are inveterate list-making obsessives to a greater or lesser degree. But anyone who has read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity will know, it's not restricted to Doctor Who. I have shared offices or pubs with many a fellow sufferer (my people!) and made and remade lists of favourite films (Casablanca, Brazil, Chinatown, Three Colours Blue, Godfather Part 2, Annie Hall, Bicycle Thieves, Monty Python and the Holy Grail...), favourite songs (A Day in the Life, Life on Mars, Graceland, Being Boring, Old Red Eyes is Back, All Apologies (Unplugged version)...). There's no point saying to oneself that art isn't a competition - of course it is! People make Doctor Who so you watch it rather than what's on the other side, to pretend otherwise is silly. Still, one can take things too far.

By one measure, Doctor Who might not even be my favourite show at all. I mentioned in passing this time last year that I have yet to indulge in any audio Doctor Who stories from the many available made by the company Big Finish; this has not changed in a year. But I have indulged in a recent purchase from them, and pre-ordered the next one in the series too; it's just not Doctor Who - it's the opening releases from their recently started Star Cops range. Does that mean I like Star Cops more than Doctor Who, at least in audio form? Or is it just that there's plenty of Doctor Who in any form, but Star Cops only ever had 9 televisual episodes, and is crying out to be continued somehow. I've only listened to the first audio story so far, so I'm not in a position to pick favourites there, but my top three of the TV ones would be Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits, Other People's Secrets, and An Instinct for Murder. Or maybe I'd sneak Intelligent Listening for Beginners in at number 3, actually. Or maybe Little Green Men and other Martians. You see, I really can't help myself...

In Summary:

Really rather good wolf.