Bad Wolf & The Parting of the Ways (Joint review)Bookmark and Share

Wednesday, 22 June 2005 - Reviewed by Adam Kintopf

It seems like a screechingly bad idea – Earth, hundreds of thousands of years in the future, dominated by . . . turn of the 21st Century reality-TV shows? OK, so maybe it doesn’t just *seem* like a bad idea. On paper, this story really couldn’t be more ludicrous, and from hearing about it beforehand I was frankly dreading it. And while I wouldn’t call this two-parter a classic story, or even a great one, ultimately it is a surprisingly watchable one, and considering the mess of a plot we’re asked to swallow, that is accomplishment enough in itself. The key to the success of this story, apart from the obvious crowd-pleasing plot points, might be Joe Ahearne’s straight-faced approach to the material – when the Anne Droid is brought out, it isn’t presented as a joke (even though the script works hard to make it one), and Ahearne’s unwillingness to wink at the audience helps us to believe it (or to try to, anyway, which is always enough in ‘Doctor Who’).

The idea of TV shows being tied in to a hideous conspiracy is hardly the freshest at this point – in fact, even in the context of this new series, the enslaved-by-television-fads concept is basically a reworking of ideas from this story’s prequel, ‘The Long Game.’ Russell T. Davies really doesn’t take his satire anywhere new here – but still, his point is certainly more relevant than ever. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about it is that he chose to use *real* TV shows as the butt of his jokes instead of inventing his own – not only would this have allowed him to satirize a little more freely, it also would have diminished the story’s high gimme-a-break factor. But he made the choice that he did, and for the most part it’s not too irritating. The ‘What Not to Wear’ segments are perhaps overly broad, but John Barrowman plays them so lightly that it seems at worst a silly distraction. And perhaps the most successful element of this story is the Controller, who works as a sad and terrifying symbol for the modern television viewer: literally tuned in to hundreds of channels, ostensibly controlling which ones get accessed, but imprisoned and blinded by her viewing habits at the same time. A smart, very scary idea.

This story abruptly drops the satire to bring back the Daleks, of course, and they look great in their new gold livery. Personally, I was relieved that the rumored ‘spider Daleks’ never actually surfaced – as someone mentioned, the Daleks are actually the most genuinely futuristic-looking of the new series’ monsters, and despite decades of pepperpot jokes, this is a real testament to the genius of Ray Cusick’s design. But the Daleks themselves aren’t used too well by the script – they’re presented as traditional ‘Remembrance’-style Daleks: i.e., mindless tanks with annoying voices. There was all sorts of speculation about whether Davros would or would not appear in this story; we got the Emperor Dalek instead, but it might as well have been Davros, and the series’ continuing concept of the Daleks as dependent on these ‘Super-Daleks’ for orders just doesn’t show them at their best, in my view. Still, the script makes them imposing enough – only one gets blown up, and when the Daleks appear at the space station window to kill Lynda (whilst flashing a four-syllable word, a lovely touch), it’s a great moment. And of course there are the requisite (and fun) nods to the past (“MY VISION IS IMPAIRED! I CANNOT SEE!”). But, again, Nicholas Briggs’s voices are a touch self-conscious, and the Daleks are so bloody *slow*! Honestly, I think my vacuum cleaner could outrun all half a million of them and not break a sweat.

As for the Doctor, some have convincingly argued that the character wouldn’t hesitate to wipe out life on Earth by using the Delta Wave against the Daleks, especially since he didn’t shrink from destroying Skaro in ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ and, it may be inferred, from doing the same to Gallifrey itself during the Time War. But to me it actually seems quite consistent with the Doctor’s character – not only has he often shown himself unable to single-handedly take life to achieve his aims (he most often prefers to let others do it for him, as Blon Slitheen rightly points out in ‘Boom Town!’), it can also be argued that by this point the Earth is more his real home than Gallifrey anyway, and is therefore the *only* thing that could stand in his way of destroying an enemy forever – even the Daleks. I think it works perfectly, in fact.

As for the explanation of the ‘Bad Wolf’ mystery, and the deus ex machina of Rose’s final solution of the Dalek problem, they have been much reviled by some fans, and, indeed, they are kind of crazy. The use of the TARDIS as a talisman to magically save the day at the eleventh hour is always somewhat unfair; it doesn’t help that Davies already did the same thing in the previous story, ‘Boom Town!’ But it’s obvious that Davies wanted this first series of the restored ‘Doctor Who’ to go out with a big bang, and these two story elements certainly provide that, even if they don’t work as nicely as some fans would hope. The story also achieves a sort of large scale in that it sees the shocking (if ultimately unreal) deaths of two companions, as well as the (real) one of the likeable semi-assistant Lynda. The floodlit finale is slightly melodramatic, but it works, allowing Rose to sacrifice herself to save the Doctor, and then allowing him to do the same thing for her – which is nice. And the regeneration scene itself is just lovely – for all his bluffed arrogance throughout the season, this Doctor is particularly aware of his own faults, and his self-deprecating jokes as he changes (“Can you imagine that, me with no head? Don’t say it’d be an improvement.”), make this perhaps most fallible and sad of all the Doctor’s incarnations seem terribly human for a moment. And then, the sudden change – for a moment the series really *is* brand-new again, and even those of us who have seen many regenerations past experience the shock of it as if for the first time.

In the end, this may not be the smartest ‘Doctor Who’ story ever, but it’s tasteful enough, and magical at the end – a fitting finale to a new age.





FILTER: - Series 1/27 - Ninth Doctor - Television