Father's Day

And so the familiar patterns re-asserts itself after the rather rushed and lightweight The Long Game (which, however, was certainly RTD's best so far in my opinion): once again RTD's Doctor Who writing is called into question as his latest offering was sandwiched between two brilliant episodes by other writers, Dalek by Rob Shearman (the best episode so far) and Father's Day by Paul Cornell (quite possibly the second best so far, in joint place with Unquiet Dead (what a coincidence, another writer) by Mark Gatiss, or possibly an all out second place, reviewing will help me decide this).
The key improvement here from The Long Game was in the writing for the Doctor and Eccleston's related interpretation of the character: here we have the Doctor almost exactly as he should be, fairly cerebral, quite remote, a slightly understated, shadowy figure of mystery mingled with reassuring humanity, and gravitas of presence. All these qualities almost lacked completely from The Long Game's version of the Doctor, who was frankly just irritating. The character is, after all, a Doctor, which means his chief function is to heal and mend, and I'm reminded of the one good line in the otherwise shambolic Meglos in which a character alldues to him as a strange traveller who takes up the broken threads of time and puts them together again, or something along those lines. And in Father's Day (shame about the bathetic title) the Doctor is given the prime opportunity to act as a custodian of time intervention and most refreshingly, to act literally as a time doctor and mend time's broken fabric, incurred by Rose saving her father's life. This plot scenario, together with admirably subtle and fairly haunting direction in parts, created a welcome echo of that superbly mysterious and atmospheric series of the early 80s, Sapphire and Steel, and here we have a Doctor pretty much fulfilling both those characters functions in one persona, which is pretty much how I think the Doctor should be: an investigator and mender of time disturbances. In particular, the continual shot of the car appearing and reappearing in a time loop outside the church for me harked back vividly to the final Sapphire and Steel story when the characters can constantly hear the engine of a car in a sort of repetitive loop somewhere beyond the isolated garage they are trapped in. Other aspects of the direction in this episode were also rather Sapphire and Steel-esque: the beautifully haunting shot of a leafless tree creaking in the breeze of an eerily silent townscape, hinting of the oncoming intervention from the Reapers; the Doctor and Rose re-visiting the scene of the crash and watching themselves watching it. I was worried about this episode, chiefly because it was going to place much more emphasis on Rose and her family background. However, this time, and despite Jackie's still rather grating presence in the episode, the scenario was handled intelligently, subtly and with much emotional substance which was genuinely convincing and moving. It was so much the actual protagonists who really mattered here: it was the very profound and compelling scenario of enacting one's emotional wishes in bringing a loved one back to life on having the extraordinary opportunity of being able to travel back in time and do so; more particularly in this case, of a girl who had never even met her father seizing this one-off chance to get to know him by disobeying the first rule of time travel. This sort of subject should have come up much more often in the old series but very rarely, if ever, did (to my memory). So here we have for perhaps the first substantial time, an emotionally charged look at the possibilities of time travel in a series which traditionally, and puzzlingly, mostly eschewed this kind of very human realism regarding time travel's possibilities (bar The Curse of Fenric and Ace's inadvertantly saving the life of her baby mother and thus ensuring her own future). In this sense, as with Dalek's newly emotional and intellectual analysis of the nature of a humanised Kaled mutant inside the Dalek's casing, Father's Day too has improved on the original series (these are, however, the only senses in which New Who has dones so).Father's Day's biggest debt however is to the companion-based emotional time journeys of Season 26, in which a similarly Sapphire-and-Steel-esque, metaphysically mysterious and Jehovah-style manipulative Doctor takes his troubled young companion on a series of time travelling behavioural therapy sessions, making her confront her inner fears and unresolved emotional issues. The Ninth, as with the Seventh Doctor, have questionable motives in doing this, and as in The Long Game when the Doctor deliberately dangled the fruits of future knowledge before Adam as if to will him to fall into temptation, only to berate him afterwards, in Father's Day he once again puts his companion, this time the more reliable Rose, in a position of almost unbearable temptation when she has the chance to save her dead father's life. He must know she is going to do this. Is there some sort of plan of his in facilitating such situations for his companions? Is he trying to teach them lessons? So, Ghost Light comes to mind a little in the Doctor taking Ace back to face her deepest fears relating to a haunted house she once firebombed, but the most obvious comparison is Ace's creation of her own future in Curse of Fenric; particularly, that story's emotionally cathartic climax has much in common with the plot direction of Father's Day, which too is a catharsis for Rose. There is also something of Survival in Father's Day, more superficially but in the late 80's suburban location used in both stories and also in the brilliant shots in both of playgrounds being spied on by the eyes of unseen aliens (re the cats in suburban Perrivale in Survival and the Reapers in another sunny London suburb in 1987). So Cornell, perhaps deliberately, has managed to produce a story which quite nicely follows on in genre to the final story of the old cannon which, looking back at the time, seemed strikingly down-to-earth and mundane in its suburban scenario as does Father's Day. The trend for more human-based, emotionally driven suburban-set Doctor Who was starting to creep in at Season 26's end, so in that there is little new, except New Who's propensity to concentrate in detail on the companion's contemporary home life intermittently, and - with exception to Cornell's very moving and well-realised visit in this episode - rather gratingly in the other episodes so far.The Reapers are fairly impressive and the shots of them galumphing past the stained glass windows were impressively handled, with appropriately ominous shadows falling in on the church inside. When they finally cavort around the church you could feel their size and weight as they swooped in between the cloisters. However, I do take on board the Radio Times preview of the episode which praised it but said it could have been equally as good without the monsters in it. I agree, and think the cleansers of the time disturbance could have been realised far more subtly, not actually fully manifest, and perhaps just suggested as shadows as was often done in Sapphire and Steel.The whole episode would have fallen down with a bad or inappropriate actor playing Rose's father; fortunately we had a stirring performance from this actor in the part, who played it convincingly and showed genuine power when confronting the truth of the situation; as did Billie Piper, this being a best performance yet without a doubt.Most importantly, as previously mentioned, this was the most satisfyingly Doctorish performance from Christopher Eccleston to date.My only criticisms of this episode are: the first ten minutes or so in which there were more inappropriate allusions to a possible romance between the Doctor and Rose via the father's assumptions; the Doctor storming off like a boyfriend in a huff on Rose saying 'just because you're not the most important man in my life for a change'. I was also slightly disturbed by the Doctor saying his 'family are all dead': it was always implied before in the old series that the Doctor's family were long gone: notably a reference to this by Troughton, with appropriate wisftulness and gravitas, in the night scene in Tomb of the Cybermen (one of the greatest scenes ever in which he whispers to Victoria about how only they can do what they do regarding time travel) and again much later in Curse of Fenric when McCoy mumbles 'I don't know' on being asked by Ace's grandmother whether he knew anything about his family's whereabouts re the war. Add to that Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter at the very beginning of the series, and frequent hint at the end of Planet of Fire that the Master was actually the Doctor's brother ('how could you do this to your own...?') - however, the Ninth could mean the term 'family' as referring to his race.Otherwise, no other criticisms. Overall a very good episode, joint-second (with Unquiet Dead) to Dalek, and a classic of its kind and in the subtler and more profound genre of Sapphire and Steel's existential take on time travel. Well done Mr Cornell. 8/10.If only New Who could keep up this standard of emotional intelligence and genuine mystery regarding the main character and the nature of time travel, it could evolve into a genuinely compelling reworking of the old series which could stand on its own in the future. We need more episodes of this type, more dissections of time travel and its possibilities, more gravitas and alienness from the Doctor - Gatiss, Shearman and Cornell have set the new standards. If the show keeps up these sorts of scripts it will survive and prosper. If, however, it stays with inordinately frequent and far inferior contributions from its producer RTD, then I fear the truly excellent episodes will not be sufficient in number to ensure the programme's longevity and critical credibility. They must keep up the standards of Father's Day, Dalek and Unquiet Dead. Fortunately the next two episodes look as if they are going to do just that.