Love & Monsters

I just want to say how absolutely В‘funВ’ that episode was. Completely left-field and a total change of pace and most importantly Russell T Davies demonstrating how important the flexibility of the format is in its ability to accommodate entirely different modes of storytelling within one series.

This was a В‘Doctor WhoВ’ story from a new perspective. This is the adventures of the Doctor and Rose told from the view of the outsider В– not just Elton, Ursula and the gang but also, quite crucially, from JackieВ’s point of view. Look at what this whole experience does to Jackie for starters and you will begin to understand what this episode is about. Camille Coduri was quite marvellous in showing us a parent so cut off from her own child that she desperately reaches out for relationships that are destined to fail and she is completely self-aware that they will. Her seduction and rejection of Elton was credible and touching. Her maternal protection of Rose and the Doctor shows us that she isnВ’t just some В‘cockney EastendВ’ cipher. This is a woman in pain, frightened and alone and, finally, able to comprehend just what happens to human lives when they come into contact with the Doctor. IВ’m glad Russell gave us this as it really does add layers to the character and fixes her place in the narrative once and for all. And it is done with so much love for the character that it is cleverly poignant.

From the outset let me say that this would not work without the brilliant central performance of Marc Warren as Elton. A smashing tour de force that took us from a kind of grinning understanding of his need to meet like minded people to the sad revelation about his childhood and the death of his mother. Funny, often breathlessly exhilarating, often sexy, and then deeply touching. The majority of the performance being played out via a webcam was a fantastic device that immediately provided a one to one relationship with the viewer. How many television shows in prime time would face the viewer and tell their story so directly? And how many lead characters end up in a relationship with a paving slab?

The editing also must be praised as this is an integral mechanism that enables this first person narrative to work so well. It also justifies some of the more risible elements in the episode. Looking at the opening В‘comedy chaseВ’ it could be seen as rather silly and farcical. But the viewer must understand that we are seeing events through someone elseВ’s eyes whilst Russell T Davies is also turning the whole В‘corridor chase with monstersВ’ trope, so indicative of В‘classicВ’ Doctor Who, on its head in a surreal, slightly mocking, homage.

We could approach the whole episode as a complete love-letter to the series and its fans. The LINDA organisation is fandom. A fandom not governed by rules, a fandom that not only understands its primary function ( e.g. enjoying Doctor Who as a group/connecting with other humans who know about the Doctor) but also by dint of that association socialising, eating together, forming a band as secondary functions. These В‘fansВ’ enjoy themselves. And then uber-fan Victor Kennedy arrives and suddenly there are rules, goals, expectations thrust upon the group. The original group lose sight of why they got together in the first place. Victor Kennedy is a creature with no complexes. He is absent of complexes and where they are repressed, life is vacuous, lonely and empty. The complexes that make us human are about our centres of feeling, they are the inner source of relating to other people and making contact with the outside world. Victor Kennedy is about stifling those desires.

LINDA was a group of normal people who were aware of slightly extraordinary things going on in the world around them. This emphasis is important because if they are representative of fandom then what Russell is saying, and which is neatly summed up by EltonВ’s final speech, is that these people understand that the world is exciting, different and challenging and that their mutual quest for the Doctor is instrumental but not exclusive in their realisation of this. Is he saying В‘fansВ’ have got lives too?

When we recognise these complexes and feelings we often transform them into helpful archetypal figures (Mr. Skinner seems to be doing a lecture on the Doctor as an archetypal figure in the episode) and the archetypal figure helps the individual to fulfil his/her potential. Hence, not only is the Doctor a figure around which individuals can articulate their complexes (Bridget grieving about a child lost to drugs) the Doctor also explains to Elton about his presence at the death of EltonВ’s mother and thus allows him to properly grieve and move on and close that expectation in favour of some other life affirming action.

The strength of a group is also apparent when the absorbed members of LINDA make one final effort to vanquish the Abzorbaloff. They are representative of that continuous tension between social disintegration and dissolution, the tension between your distinction from society as an individual and your relation to the human race as a whole. Without that effort to group together, the victims of the Abzorbaloff are just simply the by-product of a self-destructive urge where no one individual has managed to make a stand. Is Victor Kennedy representative of another kind of 'fan' of the Doctor?

Peter Kay as Victor/the Abzorbaloff pitched this about right. I feared it would end up as another В‘Ken DoddВ’ but found the performance worked well. The prosthetics veered between being really quite excellent, particularly the articulation of the faces on the body, to being В‘rubber suit of the weekВ’. However, I do think that there was an inherent playfulness in the episode that actually acknowledged that this was В‘rubber suit of the weekВ’ because in the past thatВ’s what Doctor Who was perceived as. My view was that Davies was taking this and playing with our perceptions a bit. KayВ’s performance helped sell this idea and there were some genuinely laugh out loud moments. Was Davies saying that we all know this is an actor in a rubber suit but actually itВ’s symbolic and has some interesting things to say about our perceptions?

Musically, I thought the use of ELO was inspired and the re-use of certain motifs by Murray Gold was also welcomed. The remounting of the Auton attack and the Christmas Invasion from EltonВ’s point of view were also very amusing and served as another way of bringing the viewer into his world view. It would be churlish to quibble about the re-use of sequences from previous episodes to flesh this out. Only the Aliens In London flashbask depended more or less on existing footage.

A daring episode, not entirely successful, but not the disaster some were predicting. In fact, it has probably a lot more to say about the Doctor and his world, Rose and JackieВ’s world, and the implications when those collide, than many other episodes in this series as a whole. And EltonВ’s prediction about the fate of Rose and Jackie is a subext so very clearly underlined by the events of this episode too.