Doctor Who: Turn Left

“You’re not gonna make the world any better by shouting at it.”

Right. This is me back. The final push starts now. Still, it looks as though Series Three of The Sarah Jane Adventures won’t be out on DVD till November 1st, so there would have had to have been a hiatus, and it’s all worked out quite well.

Er, that’s the best excuse I can think of, anyway. Back to Turn Left…

It’s the pre-titles sequence, and the Doctor and Donna are nosing about on the Planet Of The Ever So Slightly Dodgy Ethnic Stereotypes. Donna sees a fortune teller (ever so slightly dodgy ethnic stereotyping within slightly dodgy ethnic stereotyping?), who seems uncannily similar to our late friend Chantho. Said fortune teller proceeds to use her alien reality-warping powers to force Donna to re-enact scenes from Planet of the Spiders. So that’s what all the “something on your back” foreshadowing was about.

Billie Piper’s name is in the credits. Ooh! And then it’s straight into that old TV sci-fi stand-by; the alternate universe. This is a trope which never fails, although sadly nothing can ever trump the example of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had Evil Willow in it. Mmm… Evil Willow…

The episode is of course all about Donna, and thus reliant on Catherine Tate to put in a good performance. She really comes up trumps; this is probably the finest individual performance of any member of the regular cast in Doctor Who ever, even after Tennant’s stellar performance last episode. It’s also the Doctor-lite story, of course, and by far the most successful, being about the Doctor’s absence in a way no previous example has been.

We get to see a parade of recent episodes, starting with the appearance of the Racnoss star, except that this time Donna has been promoted, and so is both materially more successful- for now- and shallower than she would have been. She isn’t there to stop the Doctor, and so he dies. This is what we alternate history geeks (*cough* Alternatehistory.com *cough*) call the “point of departure” or “POD”, and it’s interesting to consider this story as an example of this sub-genre. Because, on the one hand, the world changes entirely because of one apparently minor decision by an apparently ordinary person, yet there is also an awful lot of convergence as regards the alien invasions. It looks as though the butterfly effect hasn’t spread as far as the Adipose or the planet Sto. It’s a nice touch how the Doctors could-have-been companions (especially Martha) all get noble deaths. Of course, the Master never gives his pocket watch a second thought in this reality! It isn’t Harold Saxon who order’s the destruction of the Racnoss ship, I notice.

Oh, and how come the satellite pictures of the falling Titanic seem to be looking from the ground up? Ahem.

This is a very different Donna, at least on the surface: her reaction to being laid off does not present her in a good light, and she shows no interest in Wilf’s alien obsession. But this is the last point in the story in which she’s relatively untested by adversity. And Sylvia’s casually delivered “To be honest, I’ve given up on you” hits like a punch.

Donna is visited a number of times by a very Doctorish Rose, and her reaction is a little more accepting each time, showing how the hardships she suffers bring out her resourcefulness. Things start to get very dark, giving us a glimpse into the bleak world view that lurks behind RTD’s light touch, as also seen last episode (interesting comment by Nuallain on Midnight about RTD using his last chance to write the sort of crowd-pleasing episode which Moffat has so far had the luxury of writing- we seem to have another example of this here). The inhabitants of radiation-soaked southern England become refugees, France has closed its borders, people are billeted, dozens to a property, in the residential streets of northern cities while the army patrols outside; there’s some kind of “emergency government”; and finally the obvious foreigners, including a rather likeable example of the ever so slightly dodgy ethnic stereotypes, are sent off to “labour camps”. It’s not spelled out for the kids, but Wilf knows exactly what’s going on.

Sylvia, by this point, is quite horribly, cripplingly depressed; Jacqueline King portrays this brilliantly. Her final scene with Donna (“I suppose I’ve always been a disappointment.” “…Yeah…”) is understated and utterly heartbreaking.

It’s clear something is coming; not only is Rose warning of “The Darkness” that’s coming. We seem to have heard this before; a very similar phrasing was used in They Keep Killing Suzie. But far more effective is Wilf’s realisation that the stars are going out. So on we zoom towards the final scenes, with a Rose so Doctorish she might as well start calling herself Romana, a dying TARDIS, and a nice little re-enactment of the mirrors scene from Kinda. Catherine Tate really is sublime here in her delivery of every line- I love her desperate denial of her own certain death. Well, sort of certain. It’s a bit timey-wimey.

Everything returns to normal with Donna’s sacrifice, the Doctor notes all the odd coincidences surrounding Donna’s life, and the phrase “Bad Wolf” suddenly appears everywhere for no obvious reason. That’ll be a season finale coming up, then.

Brilliant. Something that could only be attempted once, so it’s great that it was done well. The amount of fanwank was nicely judged, nice but not excessive, and there was just the right amount of dystopian pessimism. And then there’s Catherine Tate. Wow. Best actress in Doctor Who ever. 5/5.

Doctor Who: Aliens of London / World War Three

Aliens of London



“I’m shaking my booty!”

We begin with another reprise, this time of Rose, and the TARDIS arrives back in the Powell Estate. And… Rose has been gone a whole year. Oops. That’s quite a pre-titles sequence.

Hang on, what’s that the little kid is writing on the side of the TARDIS with is spray can? Never mind. This whole set-up is great: once more RTD finally does something that’s never been done before but must have been speculated about by the viewers. In exploring the consequences of travelling with the Doctor on those left behind RTD once more deconstructs the Doctor / companion relationship, to brilliant effect. There are some funny moments- Jackie slapping the Doctor; the Doctor and Rose replying “NO!” in unison as the policeman asks if they’re in a sexual relationship- but these moments are needed to prevent things getting too dark. Because for Jackie things really have been horrible, and Rose really is very uncaring to her mother. Both these things are wisely kept subtle but they’re there.

Things then slow down a bit as Rose and the Doctor go outside for a chat. They start getting all philosophical, and the Doctor casually mentions he’s 900 years old (he’s lost at least 53 years since Time and the Rani, then). But just as Rose is musing on how no one else around her knows that spaceships exist, a bloody great big one proceeds to crash land above them, in the most dramatic way possible. So what should the Doctor and Rose do but watch it on telly, just as we‘re doing? I love it when things get all postmodern.

The montage we get of different TV programmes (including Blue Peter!) and their reaction to the events is another superb touch, and yet another example of both RTD’s effortless grasp of things you can do with the narrative in television and the much greater degree of TV literacy viewers are credited with compared to earlier eras. Plus, we get Andrew Marr as himself, and he’s great.

On a less positive note, RTD clearly has a rubbish grasp of how British politics works, something I’ll be whinging about quite a bit as I’m a bit of a politics junkie, but this time round it doesn’t loom as large as it did at the time, and I think I may have overreacted originally. But there’s no denying it’s absurd for a parliamentary committee chief on sugar standards or whatever- and thus a backbencher- to suddenly become Acting Prime Minister just because the Cabinet are all conveniently outside London.

The Doctor goes for a wander, but to reassure Rose he gives Rose a TARDIS key of her own; big moment, that. He sneaks off to the TARDIS, where Mickey (who no one’s bothered to tell) spots him…

We meet the tenacious, decent and dull (in a good way) member for Flydale North, with her commendable continued interest in the kind of boring details that proper politics is all about in the face of a ruddy great spaceship that’s just landed in London. And it’s through her eyes that we see something is very strange in Downing Street.

The Doctor, meanwhile, lands near the place where the alien has been taken to, and discusses things with one “Dr Sato”. They don’t tell us what her first name is. I’m guessing something like Toshiko.

Bizarrely, the alien turns out to be a cute little piggy- something which just seemed tonally wrong at the time but no longer does. Perhaps I’m more used to RTD’s style. Even more bizarrely, the whole thing turns out to be a joke, an alien hoax concocted by aliens. And if that’s not enough to tell us that the baddies in this story are very silly aliens, we see our three obvious baddies behaving in a most silly fashion.

Mickey’s shocked to see Rose; no one bothered to tell him that she’s back. Worse, he’s spent the last year being thought of as Rose’s murderer; the character was a buffoon in Rose but now he’s suddenly a very sympathetic figure, a casual victim of the Doctor’s and Rose’s lifestyle who’s genuinely suffered in their wake.

The Doctor returns in the TARDIS- and Jackie sees. Oops. Jackie can’t take this, or the shock of the TARDIS interior, and just runs away, her whole world falling apart. Once back inside she reports the Doctor as an alien- and all sorts of alarms go off. The Doctor is a known figure.

We’ve not had much in the way of explicit continuity from previous series thus far, but here we get a mention of UNIT! And Mickey’s been looking up the Doctor online; there are an awful lot of myths and legends that have built up about him. For the first time in the “new” series, we get explicit acknowledgement of previous incarnations.

Troops surround the Doctor and Rose and they’re put into the back of a police car. But they’re not being arrested but rather conscripted; the Doctor is able to smugly inform Rose that he’s well known in government circles as an expert on alien invasions. And that “Lloyd George used to drink me under the table.”

Unfortunately, it’s a trap, set by the aliens, and we get an excellent triple cliffhanger, with aliens- Slitheen- also advancing on both Rose and Jackie…






World War Three



“I need to be naked!”

“Rejoice in it. Your body is magnificent!”

The Doctor saves the day- but unfortunately one of the Slitheen is disguised as someone who seems to be accepted as Prime Minister for some reason; all the forces at the state’s disposal are now out to get the Doctor. Still, he’s brilliant, and manages to manoeuvre himself into the Cabinet Room with Rose and Harriet Jones.

Apparently “Slitheen” is the aliens’ surname, not their species- nice bit of wrong-footing there. And it’s not an invasion, just a family business who somehow wants to make money.

Nice conversation between Jackie and Mickey. It’s hard to argue with Mickey when he says that “This is what he does, that Doctor. Everywhere he goes- death and destruction.” It’s also nice that he bonds with Jackie, sort of (You saved my life. God, that’s embarrassing.”

The bit with the nuclear codes being held by the UN drove me mad with its implausibility when this was originally shown. I’ve now seen Robot, so I understand it’s a nod to continuity (and by far the biggest so far), but in isolation it’s quite absurd that a nuclear power should give up its arsenal so easily, and here it’s far more than the throwaway line than it was in Robot, and no longer supposedly in a “near future” to boot. Even so, it didn’t annoy me so much this time.

It’s great to see that, after his portrayal in Rose, we now see a different side of Mickey, with the trapped Doctor and Rose suddenly reliant on his computer hacking skills. He could get into trouble for that if he’s not careful. And it’s a great moment when Jackie asks the Doctor “Is my daughter safe?” and he can’t answer.

Probably the heart of the episode is the Slitheen attacking Mickey and Jackie while the Doctor “narrows it down”. It seems the Slitheen are from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius and vulnerable to vinegar.

The line from the “Prime Minister” about “massive weapons of destruction, capable of being deployed within 45 seconds” is even funnier now than it was then, and shows how you can get away with a lot more satirically in a drama if you include elements of the fantastic.

Mickey, of course, saves the world at the climax, guiding the missile which destroys the Slitheen (“Oh, boll…”). And the episode concludes with the Doctor actually inviting him aboard the TARDIS. The offer is turned down, of course, but it’s a nice bit of character development.

Jackie is finally forced to accept the Doctor, if only because she fears losing contact with her daughter if she doesn’t. But the Doctor refuses to stay and have a meal, as though he’s somehow afraid of domesticity. This is an interesting part of the Doctor’s character; this Doctor wouldn’t have cooked supper at the end of Battlefield.



I’m rather surprised to be rating this two-parter a 5/5 after not liking it way back when, but perhaps I’m lightening up a bit in my old(er) age. Once again RTD has a good play with the fundamental building blocks of the series, and it’s great.