Love & Monsters

There's been something missing in this first David Tennant season up until now, which was present in the Eccleston one. Last season, there was a sense of daring about the whole idea of bringing back "Doctor Who" to mainstream audiences and making them love it again. Last year they weren't content to just do original series ideas with today's money and techniques... they wisely also used some of the writing tricks and innovations that the writers of the books and the audios developed in the wilderness years, like featuring Rose's extended family and seeing the consequences of her TARDIS travelling on them, or of her going back to meet her dead father, or getting rid of Gallifrey and the consequences on the Doctor, and so on. While the majority of the stories this year have been very good, as a whole, this year has felt like just more of the same of last year... until "Love & Monsters," where Russell T. Davies has chosen to go out on a limb and do one of the "rad" styles seen in the books and the audios at least a few times every year. It's been shocking to a lot of hardcore fans, who perhaps gave up on supporting the series when it was off TV and didn't pay any attention to the books and the audios in the wilderness years, or else they would've seen innovative material like this before. Fans with a narrow focus on what they think "Doctor Who" should be (like, say, the Troughton or early Tom Baker years) and should always be are not going to enjoy this story. Fans with a more eclectic and open-minded range of tastes of the sort the Doctor himself would probably have will, I hope, agree with me and have had a lot of real fun while watching this very successful experiment.

When you think about it, it's actually not that much of an innovation; seeing the world of "Doctor Who" through the point-of-view of one of those ordinary people who get caught in the background of the Doctor's adventures. It's been done in other genre TV series, and it's really just something this TV series has never done before, and it's high time it did, if you ask me. The really clever part is in writing these formerly background characters so even-handedly and well-balanced... never making Elton seem too geeky, or else he'd just be a Clive-from-"Rose" clone and not very sympathetic to the at-large audience...never making the others in LINDA too obsessive either and in fact having them get more interested in each other than they are in the Doctor. Until our villain turns up, they're very close to being a "Doctor Who" fan club, and I'm sure the regular gatherings so many of us around the world have were Russell's starting point. It's only when the fat collector who wants to absorb the Doctor himself turns up that it stops being fun, which again is a parallel to fan groups... there's often that one who joins who ruins it for everyone else out of his own greed, when everyone else just wanted to have a good time talking about how weird it all is. Sure, he introduces you to the lost sound file of the TARDIS you've never heard before, but he's done it for his own ends, not to help you, and didn't you have a lot more fun making your own crap music (for this read "amateur fan video")? Russell's found the truth behind the best and the worst of we our communities and dramatized it in "Doctor Who" itself, and that's the really original part that I can't recall anyone doing before.

I think this was the best guest cast the series has assembled yet, which was quite important since Tennant and Piper are on a 60s-era-style almost-not-in-the-episode schedule. It's hard to pick a favorite, and the only reason I'm going to single out Shirley Henderson as Ursula Blake here is because I love her so much in the "Harry Potter" movies, and she brings much the same "strong wallflower" energy to this part here. She's fantastic. Our main protagonist and antagonists were excellent as well, them being Marc Warren as Elton and Peter Kay as Victor Kennedy and the Absorbaloff. Warren's got a sort of vulnerable intensity about his face, particularly in his eyes, and he reminds me a lot in looks of Mark Strickson (Turlough from the Davison era). So he was fun to watch, as was Kay the Absorbaloff. Again, I'm American, and Kay's act that's so well-known in the UK hasn't reached me over here, but I can see how he's so successful as a comedy actor because he's clearly a talented actor first and foremost, and knows exactly how to time and pace a scene for maximum effect. I loved watching the glances he'd throw in concert with the gestures from his cane when telling people not to touch him.

I'm also in that corner of people who love the idea of the Absorbaloff, and especially how the faces of his victims are not only visible but still active (and Ursula's complete with her glasses!). He's also a bit rubbish and easy for the Doctor to defeat, which in a comedy episode is exactly what you want, and his comeuppance is quite amusing, but also touching at the same time as LINDA unites to fight back against him.

Now, some of you undoubtedly are so attached to the Doctor and Rose that you're a bit upset that they're not in this very much. This is true, and there shouldn't ever be a steady diet of that, but this once is very interesting, and in any case their effects on the story are everywhere. Rose is present through her connection with her mum, and how she and Jackie defend each other from what they think are Elton's less-than-noble advances into their circle. Jackie had quite a bit of time, and while it started out with the typical almost sitcom-style humor from lusty Jackie, it turned 180 degrees to her genuine love for Rose after she phones, and to her protective instincts of both her and the Doctor now when she finds that photo in Elton's pocket. Again, there's touching truth hidden here behind the humor, and I should add that Camille Coduri in these sequences gave what was by far her best performance in the series to date. And I love that when Rose does finally turn up, she's so ticked with what Elton did in upsetting her mum that she has a go at him before she even acknowledges the Absorbaloff is there. And then there's the Doctor's more direct influence on Elton's life... his failure to save Elton's mum when he was a child and how that memory has been blocked out of Elton's mind, until finally the Doctor tells him all about it and we get that tear-jerking home film footage set to what I assume is another ELO song. There must be countless people like Elton who were affected by the things going on around the Doctor, and it was long past time we saw the situation through one of their eyes. But best of all was the lesson that Elton took from all of this, which is that although the Doctor's life (and life in general) is so much darker and so much madder than we're ever taught, he also thinks it's so much better than we're taught as well. I think Russell just wrote what he's going to have on his own tombstone when he wrote this line. Intellectually, I'm not at all sure I can agree with it. People who get caught up in historical events usually get literally trodden on... ask a war refugee, a tsunami victim, an amputee from a bomb attack, or Ursula-the-paving-slab at the end. Emotionally, I would really like to believe in this "isn't it exciting" philosophy again, the way I could when I was a child. Elton also tells us that "we forget because we must" and quotes Stephen King saying "salvation and damnation are the same thing," and these are my problems these days... there's too many things I can't simply forget anymore, and I can't often ignore the damnation for the salvation. But I do know this... I was smarter as a child than I am as an adult, and every great "Doctor Who" episode reminds me of that, and with every one of these that we get, it gets easier for me to listen to my smarter, younger self.

Other random observations... I love that the twin planet of Raxacorocofallipatorius is simply named Klom. I've never listened to ELO before and am now thinking I should start... Ursula-the-paving-slab is a very funny idea, so much so I'll forgive the obvious science problems. I loved the little flashbacks to the three alien invasions we've seen in the present day since "Rose," and how Elton tried to portray these as him being in on the big secret, even though most everyone in the world must have heard of at least the last two. The TARDIS sound effect truly is the most beautiful sound in the world.

I do have one small niggle with this episode which will prevent me giving it a full 10 out of 10... how did the Doctor know where to find Elton at the end? I'm sure there are many ways to explain this, but we need at least a clue as to how this happened. I will say 9.5 out of 10 for "Love & Monsters." More like this please, Russell... just plug that plot hole next time.