Rose

Right, here’s the conundrum: how to review the rebirth of Doctor Who without descending into the usual lame clichйs and without saying exactly the same as a million and one other amateur columnists? Well, I got through that first sentence without saying the series has ‘regenerated’, so I may be safe…

Can I get my gripes out of the way first? I hate the fact that the Doctor is listed as ‘Doctor Who’ in the end credits, as was the case in the bad old days until the dawn of the Fifth Doctor’s tenure. HATE it. His name is The Doctor for heaven’s sake; seeing him erroneously named otherwise invariably sets my teeth on edge, and regrettably taking a big backward step is what the producers of the new series have decided to do. Dammit. One black mark. Secondly, the closing music only features the classic main motif repeating and entirely leaves out the euphoric higher-key ‘middle eight’ that was always my favourite part of that magical theme tune. Two black marks.

Two black marks. And that’s it. Not bad going in the grand scheme of things, when I have to scrape such a barrel of pedantry to find negatives to comment on. As for the rest, a whole hatful of gold stars is to be handed out to all departments as far as I’m concerned. The performance of Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor was everything one could have hoped for: human, yet definitely alien; wise, yet silly and on one occasion extremely and hilariously dense; calm, then angry, then comic by turns. He bounds through the direst danger with a ready joke and a dazzlingly broad grin upon his face (strangely reminiscent of an illustrious predecessor) that make it all the more affecting on the occasions when he abruptly sobers up, such as his spine-tingling monologue about feeling the turn of the Earth beneath him. It’s good to see Billie Piper matching him in this regard: her Rose convinces as a bored 19-year-old who accepts the Doctor barrelling into her life in full flow as he does ours, doesn’t flinch when the world threatens to collapse around her ears, and suddenly sees there could be so much more to life than a dead-end retail job – and she leaves the fretting and screaming to others.

For, of course, this is a thoroughly 21st century update to the series we knew and loved. Rose was never going to be a helpless accessory to the Doctor’s mad schemes in this liberated age, but then again that’s old news – the same was true of Ace seventeen years ago. What has changed is the overall look and feel of the programme; considering its age, Doctor Who has never looked better or moved faster. The visual scope has suddenly, dramatically broadened: with immeasurable advances in CGI and bigger budgets to work with the effects are now terrific, the TARDIS interior has had a striking industrial-organic makeover, and a long-overdue emancipation from studio-bound claustrophobia has finally released Who into the great outdoors for a large proportion of the action – literally a breath of fresh air. It was odd, as someone who knows Cardiff well, to see shots of the city centre masquerading as London intercut with views of the real London, but I’ll let that slide. The rate of said action is breakneck: the self-contained format of the new 45-minute instalments will leave no room for the oft-maligned ‘Episode 3 lag’ factor of the old stories, and from the opening zoom into London from Earth orbit to the final shot of Rose running for the TARDIS the berserk pace never lets up. You’re literally gasping for breath on occasion, not least because the programme is surprisingly and enchantingly laugh-out-loud funny at numerous points. All credit to Russell T. Davies for his sparkling script that gives the Doctor and Rose several excellent exchanges, with a cast of memorable supporting characters including a plastic version of Rose’s boyfriend Mickey, her mouthy, flirty mother, and a conspiracy theorist tracking the Doctor’s trail through history while maintaining a website that is a neat nod to the geekier edges of fandom.

Shepherding his baby into the limelight is a task that Russell T. has to undertake while walking a tightrope. On the one hand there is that very base of fandom, established in the forty prior years of the programme’s existence; on the other the new audiences just waiting to be tapped, today’s generation of eight-year-olds sitting down with their parents ready to have their minds opened if the new Who is only good enough to do it. If he can please both camps without toppling too far to one side or the other then he’ll be able to feel very proud of himself. This first roll of the dice was a good indicator: by bringing back the Autons (although they are never referred to as such) he is using a familiar but not too familiar foe that can translate to scaring anew the modern audience whilst being inherently, well, crap enough to be a subtle dig at former production values. Talking of which, the BBC sound error that briefly threatened to turn the opening scenes into Terror of the Nortons was an amusing reminder that nothing is entirely sleek and well-oiled in the Whoniverse… Yet, for the first time in years, the BBC are treating this venerable institution with the respect it deserves. They took it off the air when I was ten years old just as I was starting to really get into it, so my appreciation has until now been almost entirely retrospective, in that almost-shameful, slightly culty way many find themselves adoring Doctor Who. Here and now, though, following a lengthy buildup and mouthwatering selection of trailers there was a palpable sense on Saturday teatime of sitting down as a nation to be transported together to another world, one lost to us for far too long but that is suddenly and joyfully here again to be explored once more.

Coupled with the aforementioned catalogue of plus points, Mr. Davies appears to be successfully out onto the tightrope. If anyone can traverse it, he’s probably the man: he loves this baby, it’s extremely plain to see – and he’s got the whole of time and space to let it play in.

Long may it play.

8.5/10