Rose

A bit of self-intro to begin: I’m a die-hard Doctor Who fan. Ever since first watching the final half-hour episode of “Robot” as a six-year-old in 1979 on my local Chicago PBS station, I have been captivated by the adventures of the strangely-dressed man who traveled in a blue telephone booth. Even as I aged through adolescence and into adulthood, with my entertainments expanding and growing in sophistication to include the science fiction writings of Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Frank Herbert, movies such as Terry Gillium’s Brazil and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Yukio Mishima novels, Frank Miller comics, and nights at the theater, Doctor Who has not ceased to hold my attention with its deft mixture of intriguing concepts, fantastic storytelling and childlike wonder, blended with a dash of dry wit, cynical humor and brusque anti-establishmentarianism. 

It was never a perfect show, by any means. It’s sheer length (some 26 years) and the host of different writers and producers working on it meant that the travels of the good Doctor were marked by often jarring variations of tone and style (from good-natured family escapism to grand guignol horror to “hard” science fiction), not to mention inconsistencies in the ongoing narrative (From what I recall, there are two conflicting explanations for the sinking of Atlantis, two reasons given for the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the mythologies for Time Lord founders Omega and Rassilon don’t quite gel with each other). The acting occasionally descended into unforgivable camp, the studio-bound BBC locales were wobbly and rarely convincingly exotic (let’s not forget those endless quarry-pit alien planets), and the special effects could be (especially for my fellow US viewers) laughably garish and cheap.

Despite all that, Doctor Who, for me, has remained a remarkable television achievement. I’d dare say that no other show ever displayed such a daring and far-reaching sense of imagination. Name one other program that ever juxtaposed Avengers-style thrills with slapstick and melodramatic cliffhangers, against a backdrop of alien monsters, supernatural forces, and sometimes even the vast stretch of eternity itself? Not the interminable iterations of Star Trek, not even the spooky X-Files. No wonder the BBC management didn’t know what to do with it. The show (like the Doctor) was audacious and indefinable.

And now, after a prolonged absence (and the ill-fated 1996 Doctor Who TV-movie), the good Doctor has returned to our screens. How does he fare?

Judging from Episode One, “Rose,” I see a series that holds the promise of successfully carrying the mantel of the original Doctor Who. In Christopher Eccleston, we have a Time Lord who suitably fits into the pantheon of regenerations that preceded him, capturing the puck, intelligence and idiosyncratic nature that defined the character to previous audiences. I was initially put off by new leather-jacketed look, so distant it was from the Victorian frock coats and hats of the past, but Eccleston is so at home, so committed to his performance, it no longer bothered me. I’m quite impressed by the conviction of his performance, going into action-hero mode, challenging marauding plastic drones in the form of department store dummies, and then fearlessly plunging into a slapstick comic moment wrestling with a disembodied killer arm while new assistance Rose Tyler (actress Billie Piper) obliviously prattles on. That last bit could have felt painfully camp, but Eccleston pulls if off skillfully.

Billie Piper fared well as the companion, serving as proxy for the newcomers in the audience. It’s through her eyes that we are first (re)introduced to the world of the Doctor, his dimensionally-transcendental TARDIS, and invading extraterrestrial meanies, so I’ll forgive her for this round if character development felt a bit minimal and rushed. As a Stateside viewer, I didn’t have any baggage about her career as a singer, nor did I notice anything about her accent, which left only her performance for my judgment. As such, I found her thoroughly believable as a normal, modern girl thrust into fantastic situations. Nice that she had hints of having more of a background than the previous companions (We meet her Mom and boyfriend Mickey, plus get a glimpse of her mundane pre-Doctor life at home and work), and that she wasn’t a girlish screamer like some of her predecessors. 

Getting down to the story, “Rose” isn’t particularly memorable in terms of either Doctor Who or other televised fantasy fare. It’s basically a rehash of the 1970s episodes “Spearhead from Space” and “Terror of the Autons” with the invading Nestene Consciousness and their killer plastic soldiers the Autons, and as such, is actually quite inferior. “Rose” lacks the slow build-up of menace of those old episodes, a fact partly attributable to having to cram in exposition for the Doctor and Rose, and partly to the new 45-minute episode length. In addition, for dedicated fans of the series, it’s a very sloppy episode with respect to the show’s details and history. In writer Robert Holmes’ original Auton stories, the Nestene were a disembodied form of energy that initially transported itself to Earth encased in plastic meteorites (unlike the “warp shunt technology” Eccleston’s Doctor references). Their invasion was methodical and carefully planned out, brainwashing key human allies, then taking over plastic factories that allowed them to build their murderous mannequins and then have them shipped out to London stores. Very Quatermass. When the Nestene finally did manifest themselves for the purposes of invasion, they took the form of an octopoidal mass of tentacles, not the molten living plastic vat that the new Doc ends up chatting with. I also found the Doctor’s dispatching of the Nestene with the handy test tube of “antiplastic” in his pocket a weak deus ex machina (especially since we never saw how he came about this miracle substance). 

I’m hoping that the reason that new series creator Russell T. Davies chose to re-use an old enemy and make the story simplistic was deliberate; an attempt to allow the audience to put most of their focus on Rose and the new Doctor. As an American, I have never had the opportunity to sample Davies other works for TV, but based on the articles I have been reading these past few months, his reputation as a writer is absolutely stellar, with the original UK “Queer as Folk” and “The Second Coming.” Therefore, I’m assuming that future stories will have a bit more dramatic and conceptual meat to them. I read another online review of “Rose” that absolutely hated it and felt it was a bit thin. I don’t go so far myself, but they did have a point.

In terms of production values, I was mightily impressed. Some viewers disliked the look of the film (done on some form of high-def video?) and the lighting chosen, but I felt it worked well and did not distract. I thought the CGI effects for the Autons and Nestene worked well, though a bit cartoony (Buffy-esque?) at points, but that seemed to fit the tone that Russell T. Davies and company were aiming at. The highlight for me was the interior design of the TARDIS. It seemed to be a combination of aspects of the 1996 TV-movie (the floor-to-ceiling time rotor, for example) and the control room that appeared in the 1990s Doctor Who comic strips (slanted walls, dark lighting). I thought it had a wonderfully alien quality, with its organic lines and unearthly shadows. Also fun to watch was the final gun-toting assault of the Autons, which basically was a remake of the climax of “Spearhead from Space” done on a bigger budget (this time we actually SEE the dummies smash through the windows, an effect that was conspicuously handled offscreen in more modestly-budgeted times).

The title sequence may have been a trifle unoriginal, quoting from the time-tunnel effect of the 1970s era, but I actually found its simplicity appropriate, as was replacing the hyper-synth versions of the theme from the 80s with a throwback remix of the original tune. The incidental music, on the other hand, was simply too loud and intrusive. Instead of commenting on the onscreen action, it seemed to overwhelm, making even a simple shot of the Doctor and Rose run across a bridge tiresome. 

The technical details are the least of my concerns for the future of the series, as what always attracted me to Doctor Who was the writing and acting. Plus, even Who’s bigger-budgeted US competition such as Star Trek: The Next Generation had its fare share of mediocre design and effects in its incipient episodes. 

What’s very interesting to note is how much the new Doctor Who reflects changes in our popular culture since the original show left the airways in 1989. There’s the new 45-minute format, as mentioned before, plus the fast pace we’ve come to expect with our modern comedies and cop shows, not to mention the MTV-induced attention spans of youngsters. Davies and his team are also obviously clued into what’s been going on in popular science fiction and fantasy lately. Although it can be argued that irreverently mixing humor and horror have always been part of Doctor Who, there’s definitely signs of influence from American shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, such as the scene in which Rose’s boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke) is eaten by a plastic garbage can, followed by a now-infamous burp which has made some viewers cry foul. Another Buffy-ish series of events unfolds as the plastic duplicate of Mickey the Nestenes send in comically attempts to deliver “romantic” dialogue to Rose, followed by a hands-on fight with the Doctor. Also present is an X-Files-type conspiracy theorist (Mark Benton) who has been researching the Doctor’s escapades through history.

With “Rose” I saw the seeds of potential. Doctor Who may have been reborn, Phoenix-like, but there’s still some ash that needs to be shaken off its wings before it really soars. Let’s hope that Davies and company have some real aces waiting to be released onscreen, and that, like Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Stracynski, they’re media aware enough to pay attention to fan complaints on the web and elsewhere, and rectify the parts of the show that aren’t working. For those fans put off by “Rose,” I’d like to remind everyone that Babylon 5 had a weak pilot, the original Star Trek went through two pilots before getting on the air, ST: The Next Generation had a first and second season many consider awful, and the popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer started with a critically-savaged movie that bombed at the box office.