Whowatch Part 8
Happy new year to one and all! As I send this out I'm a few hours away from my viewing of Shin Ultraman, but in the meantime:
The Three Doctors
The Next Doctor
Planet of the Dead
The Waters of Mars
The End of Time
David: Sean, thus far I’ve been a backseat enjoyer of the ride as you and a couple peers brought aboard the journey sail me through well-mapped territory. But I’m afraid I’m steering us into the uncharted waters I feared were waiting the moment anyone first suggested to me “Hey you should watch Doctor Who”:
CONTROVERSIAL OPINIONS
Sean: Oh boy, I wasn’t expecting that to happen. Truly, a shocking turn of events.
David: That’s why I never wanted to watch this stupid nerd show, now I finally have takes to be raked over the coals for.
Sean: I mean, you like Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks. You already have takes.’
David: By my understanding that was small potatoes.
Sean: You also were largely bored by Genesis of the Daleks, bar Davros.
David: Most things are boring compared to Davros tbf. But that’s a fine segue, as we can skip right past 4 to 3…2…1, with the first-ever cross-Who crossover in The Three Doctors, with Jon Pewtree’s Third, Patrick Troughton’s Second, and kind of sort of William Hartnell’s First.
Sean: To explain that last part, we’ll have to tackle something that turns out to be a running bit within Doctor Who both past and present: Using old actors what used to be in Doctor Who at a time when they really shouldn’t be on television. You see, William Hartnell left Doctor Who in the middle of season four. By which I mean the second serial of Season Four. Now, in the start of Season Ten, he was brought back with the intention of him bouncing off his two relatively younger successors. However, in the time since then, he had gotten senile. Such that he couldn’t be as active a participant as Pertwee and Troughten. As a result, he was taken to a black box theatre and had his lines appear on cue cards.
All things considered, not the worst of the “We Brought Back An Old Man What Used To Be In Doctor Who” moves the series would take. But… I’ll explain later.
David: I actually did hear about some big-time sketchy shit in the recent finale, wouldn’t be surprised if those weren’t the only times. That’s certainly how showbusiness tends to conduct itself.
Sean: Anyways, The Three Doctors. An extremely charming story about Doctor Who, Doctor Who, and the Branch of the English Army What Fights Aliens are all dealing with the anti-matter universe invading England!
David: I’ve had a fluctuating relationship at best with these past Whos, but Three Doctors uncomplicatedly rules. Starting in a delightfully odd tonal space of cozy little mysteries with ‘Bessie’ where even firefights feel amusingly low-key, and escalating into Lee/Kirby-esque booming space hero opera.
Sean: The Third Doctor era is very much what many have referred to as dandy James Bond vs Aliens, but I’d argue is probably closer to Quatermass. And the Three Doctors only highlights this comparison. An intergalactic blob is trying to consume the English.
David: The blob I initially thought was a surprisingly interesting visualization of a higher-dimensional entity we’re only seeing in segments (a recurring notion in the works of among others Grant Morrison, who I’ll be mentioning against imminently), but I quickly realized that nah it’s just a funny blob. Not that that, some obvious ADRing, or a visible mic at one point could diminish my enthusiasm mind you.
Sean: CRC effects are a delight, alongside color. Of course, the main draw of the story is the return of previous Doctor Who Patrick Troughten. Troughten, for a good long while, was my favorite Doctor Who. A cosmic hobo traveling the stars while being mischievous and weird. And then there’s Jon Pertwee, who is quite charming in the role, albeit clearly playing the straight man (as relative as the glam nature of this era would allow) to Troughten, and their double act would go on even outside of the anniversaries. One notable one being a water pistol fight at a convention.
David: So here’s maybe an initial hot take: did not like Pertwee much at all in this. I can see why he was Morrison’s favorite growing up, the Dandy Doctor exiled from the stars who knows mind judo and drives around in a cool car. And conceivably I’d enjoy him in different contexts; the little “Nothing you do surprises me anymore.” “Thank you for the compliment.” exchange is solid. But the guy’s such a stiff that even when he does a magic trick it just feels like an attempt at reasserting how important and in-control he is, and not in a charmingly insecure way like the others. He’s your stick in the mud dad next to Troughton’s fun uncle and Hartnell’s lovable shit-talker granddad.
Sean: Wait, that’s the hot take? I thought it was going to be something like ‘Jo Grant is crap.’
David: I only have an idea of what constitutes hot takes for the modern batch! No strong feelings on Jo Grant from what I saw.
Sean: Pertwee hating, while not my brand, is completely understandable. Other than Colin Baker and Paul McGahnn, Pertwee is arguably the most obvious Doctor Who to hate. He’s very much the stick in the mud, though fans have been much meaner than that. Paul Cornell, for example, infamously wrote (while he was writing for Doctor Who) about how his Doctor was a Tory.
From his review of Terror of the Autons, “it was also designed to smooth over the cracks, particularly the cracks that Holmes enjoyed, Hence the po-faced reaction to his jokes, and the way that Pertwee stops trying to put any emotion into his character at all. While the Brigadier is given his last shreds of decent dialogue (recognizing the Doctor doesn't need a scientist but a bimbo) even in this story he has to be told to search the plastics factories. If final proof were needed that the production is fighting Holmes, look at the scene where McDermot is wallowed by the chair. Rather than milk the Master's failing to trap him because of his Irish garrulousness (it's probably a blessing that this wasn't as played-up as Holmes would want) and then having to order him to sit down, it's all treated as terribly serious drama. Perhaps there's been some tinkering with the script.”
So yeah, not the worst company to be in. (Though Cornell would come to terms with Pertwee, writing a short miniseries with his Doctor Who for Titan.)
David: Not the worst company at all! I do see what you mean about his rapport with Troughton though, even if only in providing a sufficient contrast. Plus “Let’s toss, shall we?” “What’d be the point?” is a perfect bit. And along with them, I enjoyed Clyde Pollitt’s Time Lord Chancellor, something about him just gave off weirdo vibes in a good way.
Sean: Early Time Lord stories always had an air of ‘this is seriously weird and not what things should be like’ while the post Invasion of Time ones opted for more generic humanoid aliens. One notable one being a Time Lord dressed as a dapper young man in a bowler hat floating in the air. Of course, speaking of weird Time Lords, we have the great ham that is OMEGA!!!! The sort of Doctor Who baddie who feels like he came out of a Kirby comic, complete with Kirby dialogue.
David: OMEGA, or as everyone pronounces it in here, OMEH-GHA. Honestly I’ve been stalling with the rest of this, I really just want to talk about how amazing Stephen Thorne’s Omega is. The best live-action Doctor Doom we will ever get. That perfect balance of cartoon maliciousness, soaring regality, righteously-earned bitterness, and just enough deeply broken humanity that you can believe this is somehow a real person. He even has a dramatic, horrifying unmasking scene!
Sean: Ah yes, Stephen Thorne. Most known for me as being the voice of Aslan in an animated adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe that I would watch a lot as a kid. Such a booming, powerful voice that commands awe, horror, and pity with a simply shift in modulation. He would have a fantastic career as a voice actor, not only playing God, but also Treebeard, DEATH, and Thor.
David: I feel like the writers’ plans with Omega changed partway through as his goal shifts from destroying the universe to reentering it but I don’t really care, I could watch that guy sulk around in a black hole all day. A dude so hard a matter-antimatter explosion is created not itself to destroy him, but to be shocking enough to slightly relax his iron will for a microsecond after eons of concentration. Up there with Davros, Midnight’s nameless monstrosity, or the Family of Blood as the best villain either incarnation of the series has offered to date.
Sean: Again, the production of this one is rather infamously messy. Among other things, Troughton’s Doctor Who was supposed to be accompanied by his companion, Jamie. But, due to scheduling conflicts, he was unavailable.
But egads, the madness of this episode is truly a delight. It’s one of those stories that truly highlights what you can do with Doctor Who (as opposed to simply devolving into a nostalgia laden mess of fan pandering that would be shot into the sun for being so crap, as The Five Doctors, Zagreus, and The Power of the Doctor would demonstrate).
David: I believe this is the first past-Who you’ve shown me that didn’t directly connect to the events of that Whowatch’s slate of episodes, and I appreciate you lobbing one my way that was simply good as hell.
Sean: Heheheheheh…
Anyways, The Waters of Mars.
(David, do you really have anything to say about ‘Giant Steampunk Cybermen attack Victorian London while the guy who isn’t the Next Doctor Who prances around doing a David Tennant Impression’ and ‘Gareth Roberts gets a Paycheck Because It’s Technically a Remake of One of His Novels?’)
David: Dang, Roberts still has some episodes coming up even after this, huh.
Sean: Yes. The same episode three times.
David: So The Next Doctor is a stone-cold classic and what the hell is wrong with all of you.
Sean: …Are you taking the piss?
David: See that was more or less MY response to former guest Eliza Edwards when she informed me most people don’t care about this one.
Sean: This is The Impossible Planet all over again.
David: No this is way worse, at least for me, because this time everyone’s gonna be on your side.
Sean: Ok, what’s your case?
David: It’s difficult to MAKE a case because it feels so self-evident, but having put on my thinking cap and mulled it over, I can recognize the episode probably plays wildly differently watching it a decade later than at the time. It has a sheen of Lore Importance that it ultimately goes about disabusing to reveal itself to be ‘just’ a fun Doctor Who adventure, but. But Sean. But everyone. It’s SUCH a goddamn good Doctor Who adventure. David Morrissey is playing what feels like some sort of primordial 0th Doctor from a universe where the character began in film serials before making the leap to television, and his arc is almost a reverse of Human Nature: rather than the first wonder and then tragedy of a man learning he’s The Doctor, it’s the tragedy and then wonder of ‘The Doctor’ realizing he’s a man. And Tennant’s having such a blast too! 10 is having a ball being a companion up against stagecoach-piloting Cyber Gorillas, declaring “I’M A DEVIL WITH A CUTLASS”, swinging from a rope away from an explosion to hand his counterpart the one thing he can never have with a Merry Christmas. It felt like RTD trying in the time he had left to rise to Moffat’s challenge and if it’s nowhere near that kind of technically remarkable, the pure emotional register it hits is absolutely comparable. Moreover, this is the one time so far the Cybermen have been good, largely because they have someone to play off of properly in Dervla Kirwan’s wonderfully cruel Mercy Hartigan.
Sean: I should note that “primordial 0th Doctor from a universe where the character began in film serials before making the leap to television” is basically just Peter Cushing. At the same time, I’m reminded of a conversation we had recently with fellow critic Ritesh Babu about “Rock Solid Superhero Comics” and how we should expect better of things lest we settle for mediocrity. As they put it “I am of the 'straight up don't publish unless it's gonna be a banger or a failure worth reading.' The 'yeah it exists, it’s pretty good?' Who the fuck wants that? Who needs MCU Movie Comics?”
This is the Dan Jurgens of Doctor Who stories. (80s Jurgens, but still) Besides, The Crimson Terror is a much better version of this kind of story.
David: “This is the Dan Jurgens of Doctor Who stories” bite your tongue, this one’s a banger, and I would like to attest that stunned by my glowing appraisal since she barely recalled it herself, Eliza rewatched it and would like to add that I’m right and it rules. If this is disposable Doctor Who, Klaus is disposable Morrison.
Sean: If Klaus was drawn by someone who wasn’t of the skill of Dan Mora, maybe it would be disposable Morrison. Still, I’ll give it a rewatch at some point. Unless you have a similar hot take regarding Planet of the Dead being a hidden masterpiece, can we move on to the one people think is the best Davies era story?
David: That’s all I ask! And pfft, definitely not on Planet of the Dead. Aside from another ‘oh dang that person before they were a thing!’ appearance in Daniel Kaluuya, the only real item of note is that the interplay with Michelle Ryan is the closest Tennant’s Doctor has ever seemed to horny. Its status as a ‘special’ seems to be based solely on being a story that requires The Doctor to not currently have a companion.
Sean: Among the many contrasts between Davies era Who and Moffat era Who is their approach to sexuality. We’ll have a lot of… conversations about that later. Anyways, Waters of Mars. The one where Doctor Who’s ego goes too far and he rejects the sci-fi mumbo jumbo in favor of saving people and is deemed a bastard for doing so.
David: So.
Waters of Mars:
50 excellent minutes of horror, 9 minutes of excellent climax and gut-twisting denouement.
1 minute that the entire episode turns on that is such a nothingburger it kinda kills the whole thing for me.
Sean: This really is the hot takes edition of WhoWatch!
David using a Montage voice: Hey remember how the Time Lords were a thing but are now not a thing?
David Tennant: Oh dang Montage voice, you’re so right! I guess I’m a dipshit now! This’ll definitely last for more than several minutes!
David: Right on, other David. Anyway I’m sorry I 100% do not buy it. At the moment the danger is at its least visceral, we bring up Lore crap that gets sporadically brought up and that’s the big character turning point we’ve spent the whole RTD era waiting on. It’s not contextualized in the sweep of this mini-season - the last two episodes were pure ‘ain’t The Doctor grand?’ - and having it all come down to time ‘paradox’ nonsense when that’s generously 5% of what Doctor Who is actually about feels so out of left field and so deeply cheap when there are a million valid ways to have The Doctor fully become a bastard. And then it doesn’t even have any consequences going directly into the finale! Tennant plays it perfectly as him fully lost on his own raging self-righteousness because of course he does, but in an episode that otherwise plays the viewer’s emotional register artfully, it’s the bluntest pivot of things now happening because it’s time for things to happen. Hell, you could have just had him go ‘Davros was right that I turn people into weapons who die for me, well I’m done hiding behind them and I’m done losing.’ Same idea directly playing out of a recent dramatic turning point instead of vague time law nonsense he screams about being better than. Shit, we get ‘let’s dig up Time Lords baggage’ immediately after this and that does it better!
Sean: Yeah, for all that Waters of Mars is lauded as being a high point of Modern Doctor Who… I’ve never rated it. The ending feels a bit forced, what with Doctor Who being condemned for doing Doctor Who things. As El Sandifer notes in her TARDIS Eruditorum of the episode, “for all that the idea here is in part ‘the Doctor needs companions to stop him,’ it’s worth conducting the thought experiment of asking what would happen if Donna were present in The Waters of Mars. Surely nobody would seriously suggest that Donna would let the Doctor walk away from Bowie Base One without saving people. Or that Martha would, or that Rose would, or that Ace would.” It’s a thrilling story, but one whose thrills are built on a moral dilemma I just don’t buy.
David: I guess maybe they’d have suggested some nebulous other way with that fabulous human perspective and whatnot, but whatever. I do think most of the episode is a solid monster horror thing, and the ending brings it, but I just…just cannot be assed for the conceptual buy-in on this one.
Sean: The moral ethics of ‘should we change history’ on a show about changing history are always suspect at best.
So, I guess that leaves us with THE END OF TIME ITSELF!!!
Timothy Dalton, everybody!
David: Wait THAT’S who that was??? I was busy going ‘hey, that’s Martian Manhunter from CW Supergirl’ at the other guy like a chump.
Sean: Everybody appears in Doctor Who at some point or another, David.
David: This isn’t in my opinion one of the episodes another former guest in Veronica Jane likes to talk about where it sucks until the last few minutes and then those are fun enough to make everybody remember it as good, but it did make me think of that description. The first 2/3rds of The End of Time is perfectly serviceable Doctor Who adventure material, even if the shaky-faces manage to cross the line of too corny even for Who in the same way as the guy screaming about The Doctor taking control of his robot in the previous episode. Nice to see The Master again, and with an appropriately messed-up Master version of ‘everyone works together in the name of The Doctor to save the day’ ploy, but until we get to Tennant and Cribbins on the space station it’s no more or less than decent. Also after all the made-up show-specific prime ministers and presidents it’s weird when Obama ‘cameos’.
Sean: I actually rewatched the story earlier today since it’s been a while. And I have to agree with you. It’s a lot of fun seeing Timothy Dalton chew the scenery and The Master eating people, but it’s perfectly ok for a season finale. Certainly around the highs of the other Master story we’ve seen rather than, say, The Parting of the Ways. It’s weird seeing Obama’s actual voice in a Doctor Who story. Like having Ronald Reagan appear in a Marvel Comic after only implying Nixon was the baddie.
It’s charming to see Tennant and Cribbins doing a team up (though I’m still not sure after all these years how to feel about Minnie the Minx), but there’s something small about this story up until things suddenly don’t feel small. Not in the deliberate sense a future story will do this. But rather like it wants to be bigger than it is. We have all this talk about the END OF TIME ITSELF and the Nightmare King Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like bad things are happening that hurt everyone. But it doesn’t feel like THIS IS THE DEATH OF DOCTOR WHO!
David: Like I said, once we get the scene on the space station and the Time Lords really hit it starts firing on all cylinders for me and I get swept up in it, but until then it’s a ‘The Master comes back!’ story that only feels like it could possibly be a finale post-revival when THE MASTER COMES BACK is inherently a huge deal.
Sean: Yeah, The Master has always been the… crap one. Even when contextualized with the whole of the Classic Series, he’s the one who no one ever figures out how to make work after a while. There are some good Master stories (Survival, for example), but often he’s just regulated to ‘The One Time Lord What Hates Doctor Who.’
Though, on the note of the Time Lords returning, I should note that the plan is, in some ways, a mirror of Omega’s plan in The Three Doctors. Where he tried to take people (and Time Lords) from Earth and send them into his Dimension (after attempting to escape his dimension), the Time Lords here are trying to escape their own demise, which is tearing the universe apart.
David: Fair point! Similar motif as well of the past and buried sins of the ‘great’ people finding them out and causing shit for our hero in the present. Still, this is the True Finale that you get from someone who’s already done four Ultimate Finales and so simply draws the last card that’s obviously available. And it’s a good card! But you can tell RTD is done as hell, and while that makes the last chunk of this with 10’s final ‘tour’ (glad Martha and Mickey can be happy as screwed-over ostensible core characters together, but whatever happened to Doctor Fiance played by Lucifer from Lucifer?) as perfect and heartbreaking as you want it to be, it enervates most of what builds up to it.
Sean: I can answer that: According to a TORCHWOOD audio drama… I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten everything I was going to say. Tends to happen when I’m talking about Big Finish post 2005.
Though there was some controversy surrounding Mickey and Martha ending up together as the two sole main black characters from the Davies era ending up together. So naturally, Moffat got the blame. (Oh god, I’m going to have to explain that at some point, aren’t I?)
So The Farewell Parade of Death. A return to all the previous companions living happy lives, having adventures after their time with Doctor Who. In some regards it goes on for a bit too long (did we really need to give John Barrowman another paycheck?), but there’s a hedonistic thrill to the whole thing. A sense of excess that could’ve caused the story to keel over its own weight were it even longer, revisiting all the guest stars and not just the main cast and also the lady from The Family of Blood’s granddaughter. (Who is named Verity for one of the major people behind early Doctor Who, Verity Lambert.)
David: Apparently ‘The Next Doctor’ himself Jackson Lake was considered for showing up in that sequence, but defender of that episode though I now am I’ll obviously say they made the right choice of the one single non-recurring character to center in that sequence. And I love that it’s not enough! He knows it’s his time, he gets a ludicrously extended dead man walking phase to tie up every conceivable loose end and a special song from the universe to sing him off, but come the last moment still not enough. Never enough. Small and selfish in a way no one could be blamed for. And then we’ve got a whole new guy birthing from it with all the joy yet to be ground out of him.
Sean: Said scene being the first script Moffat wrote for the 11th Doctor. But we’ll see more of him next time.
But before we close things out, there are two small things I’d like to share with you and David before we move on to the controversial Moffat era.
The first is a musical number created by the people behind Doctor Who telling the story of the production up to this point.
David: Jesus Christ the Barrowman line, folks what are we doing
Sean: Yeah, it turns out making ‘John Barrowman likes to whip his cock out without consulting other people’ a running gag was a mistake.
The second is an animation made by a fan for a Doctor Who themed band that I quite enjoy.
David: Well that was lovely! And that calls it on the RTD era; in the rear view there were a ton of macro-scale problems such that I think everything with Rose is the only arc that fully worked, but episode-by-episode, he put together a hell of a show.
Sean: Geronimo!!!
Next Time: I thought I should tell you, because one day, even here, in the future, men will turn to each other and say, Binro was right. Why did you say five minutes! And then I find a new name, because I won't be the Doctor any more. I am your soldier. Then give me your gun.