Bad Wolf
Before I begin, I'd like to thank each and every reviewer who mentioned "Daleks" in their review of Boomtown for spoiling a major part of this episode for me. I purposefully avoided watching the trailer because I was told it contained a major spoiler, only to have that spoiler revealed for me in the reviews. I guess I should have known better than to read a review with the potential to contain a spoiler I was purposely trying not to see, and the blame should also be placed squarely on the Beeb for their shoddy trailer-making in the first place, but I'm still very disappointed that the seminal, climactic surprise of the entire season of Doctor Who was spoiled for me by people who weren't careful enough in how they wrote their reviews. I wish I could have seen this episode without knowing what was coming.
Yes, I put spoilers in this review, but I only spoil the episode itself, not the trailers for the next episode; people are mature enough to choose whether or not to read a review before they see the episode in question, and they know going in that any review is going to spoil something. But it's also their choice whether or not to watch the trailers, and I don't think they should be spoiled for an episode they haven't even had the chance to see yet.
Now that I've gotten that off my chest: "Bad Wolf" is an exercise in how, if you get enough stuff right, the audience will blithely ignore everything else. Never mind the many, many, many points on which this episode strains suspension of disbelief; it's so witty and clever and suspenseful that we shove our disbelief into that elevator, wave goodbye, and send it to floor 500.
Let me just hit the highlights of the things that could have sunk this episode if they hadn't done everything exactly right:
If this episode had been any less deft than it was, any one or two of the above would have been enough to knock this down into the realm of pure cheese. It would have been so easy to make this episode into an utter camp-fest. Instead, they played it straight (well, mostly straight, anyway) and it became so much more spooky and atmospheric that people just forgot to nitpick while they were watching it. It works so well as its own story that so far only one other Outpost Gallifrey reviewer has compared it to its predecessor in game-show-for-your-life satire, the Arnold Schwartzenegger vehicle The Running Man—which, like "Bad Wolf," used a real-life gameshow host as a villain. (Though the show itself does seem to be conscious of the link, dropping in a "President Schwartzenegger" reference along the way.)
"Bad Wolf," being the first part of the season finale two-parter, exemplifies something about this new Doctor Who that is substantially different from the older flavors: storyline. None of the Doctor Who series that I've seen (which would be the third through early sixth Doctors) had arcs that were so closely bound together thematically as this newer Doctor. Sure, there were recurring villains (such as the third Doctor's nemesis, the Master), and a few multi-part story arcs ("Key to Time" comes to mind), and there may have been some continuing storylines in the later Doctor seasons than I got to see (such as "Trial of a Time Lord") but those were more on the nature of an overall story split into chunks. This new season has had mostly self-contained stories tied together with thematic elements. It's Doctor Who a la Babylon Five, and I think it's very effective.
In fact, this episode is the culmination of several themes that have been interwoven through earlier episodes of the season. Aside from the obvious repeating "Bad Wolf" motif and the introduction of Satellite Five in "The Long Game," there are also: the Doctor's responsibility for his actions ("The Unquiet Dead" "Father's Day" "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" "Boomtown"), the Time War with the Daleks ("The End of the World" "Dalek"), and the Doctor's relationship to/responsibility for his companions ("Aliens of London" "The Long Game" "Father's Day" "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" "Boomtown"). Coming so soon after the Doctor had his morality called into question by the Slythene in "Boomtown," the scene where the Doctor looks down on earth and Linda fills him in on the last hundred years is particularly effective. The Doctor is shaken to the core by realizing that he had made this world with his flippant refusal to stick around for a while after taking out the Jagrafess. But I wonder, will the fact that the Daleks were really behind it allow him to put aside his share of the blame for leaving since they were the ones who "really" caused it? Will he find it so easy to leave again this time?
Themes aren't the only nods to past continuity, though. "Bad Wolf" also has Rose managing to recall the Face of Boe as the answer to a question, Captain Jack locating the Doctor because he was the only one in the station with two hearts, and the flashback that ties this episode back to "Boomtown". Also, the robot hosts' head designs seemed to be a clear stylistic reference to the Doctor's other great humanoid robot foes of yore, the Cybermen. It was nice to see the offhand mention of an unrecorded adventure, in 13th century Japan, taking place within the flashback; as in the planet-with-the-frozen-sea reference from "Boomtown," it reminds us that the Doctor and his companions have other adventures which we don't get to see on the TV screen. It's nice, too, to finally get an explanation of what the title "The Long Game" meant. I wonder if that line about a "long game" was originally part of the script to the earlier episode, then moved to this one because it made more sense that way, but too late to change the title?
The episode was very nicely put together, managing to hide all traces of the Daleks until the last ten minutes. (If only it hadn't been for that damn trailer last week, grrr!) Nicely directed, too; as an example, the in media res opening with the rotating shot of The Doctor and the raucas music served very effectively to punch up the sense of disorientation the Doctor was feeling after his transmat arrival. In just forty-five minutes, "Bad Wolf" runs the gamut from confusion, to laughter, a gradually dawning sense of horror, the excitement of the Doctor's and Jack's breakout, the suspense of Rose's impending execution (another nice touch was the way the fellow next to her went from sympathetic helper to self-centered git over the course of the show), the shock of her "death"...and then the shivery fear of the unknown "bad wolves" themselves, growing and growing until the climactic revelation at the end. I've seen many feature films that were less well-directed.
One thing that "Bad Wolf" had that its predecessor The Running Man did not was the use of actual, recognizable real-life TV show franchises and personalities instead of generic broad genre parody shows. Paradoxically (and what's Doctor Who without a paradox?), the use of the actual shows and personalities serves to "sell" the parody in one way even as (as previously mentioned) it makes it a little harder to suspend disbelief in another. Big Brother, The Weakest Link, What Not to Wear...these are icons with which we're familiar as viewers, and the surrealism of a distorted mirror image of something we know is much more effective than a less direct parody would be. Using the voices and names of the actual personalities is an especially clever touch (even though it was a little hard to recognize Mrs. Robinson's voice through the android filters), as is the way the AnneDroid's disintegrator is in its mouth—talk about your lethal torrent of verbal abuse! I'll just bet all the personalities involved had a wicked time doing the self-parody. And let's not forget the best scene in the entire episode, where the naked Captain Jack literally pulls a solution out of...well, you know.
Captain Jack has quickly become one of my favorite characters from the entire series. He's a lot like the Doctor in some ways—clever, well-versed in the ways of time travel, able to make sense of the Doctor's technology, and not averse to taking action when the need arises. Combining the gung-ho predilection toward action of Leela or Ace with the expertise of Adric or Romana, he's the perfect counterpoint and foil to the Doctor. Their scenes together, starting in "The Empty Child" and continuing through the episode thus far, have always worked well. Look at the scenes where he and the Doctor work together to try to find Rose, or where he demonstrates the not-really-a-disintegrator-beam to the Doctor—even when they're at odds (the "comparing sonics" scene from "The Empty Child" for instance) they've got some great chemistry. It's a pity they've had so few episodes together before it comes time for the Doctor to change actors again.
In fact, everyone seems to be acting on all cylinders during this episode; all the regulars turn in strong performances, and there are decent turns from almost every guest star (especially the members of the Big Brother and The Weakest Link casts who lose) with the possible exception of Lynda. Eccleston shows a great emotional range here; this man really is the Doctor—a battered, wounded, angry Doctor, last member of his race, with nothing left to lose.
Just one more episode to go in this season of Doctor Who, and there are so many unanswered questions. Will it resolve all the questions brought up over the course of this season? Will it wrap things up, or end in a cliffhanger (perhaps with the Doctor "dying" and regenerating in the next season's premiere)? Will we find out how and why the "Bad Wolf" motif has propagated through space and time, even into the unconscious minds of otherwise unrelated people? Will the Daleks survive and scuttle away like the little metal cockroaches they are? (Well, they'd sort of have to, given that there's no way they won't keep bringing the Daleks back as long as the Doctor is around.) Exactly whose "ways" will get "parted"? I had thought I'd heard that Rose was going to be in at least a few episodes next season. At any rate, I'm eagerly anticipating the chance to find out. Sunday cannot come soon enough for me.
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