The relationships of Doctor Who

It is Valentine’s Day, which I’m reliably informed has something to do with the emotional exchange, commonly referred to as ‘love’.

As such, I thought today would be a great day to evaluate what a group of science fiction writers think love is, as they’re really the best people to judge, because…shut up.

Rose and the Tenth Doctor.

Starting us off for this one is the relationship that got young girls and mums all around the country into this new show called Doctor Who. This relationship shows us that love is a process of pairing off by which, one man and one woman screw over another man with whom she was already paired and embark on a trip which involves a lot of talking to each other with no sexual tension whatsoever. It should also be noted that once this initial pairing has occurred the man is barred from speaking to or saving the lives of any other creature that possesses a uterus, on penalty of angry pouting. So this relationship shows us that love is a simple process of finding a mate, leaving that mate for a more interesting one (without telling the original mate, so as to keep him in reserve) and then becoming jealous of any other female that has the audacity to talk to the new mate.

Amy and Rory

This relationship tells us a lot about love; namely that the male partner in the relationship will never be able to live up to the female’s expectations. Should she, for example, find out she is unable to conceive children (something the male wants) she will take out her frustrations on him and expel him from the family home. A silly male, for whom the relationship (due to time travel and “science”) has been going on for over 2000 years may expect her to be willing to share her insecurities with a man who she married, following an intimate relationship that lasted a number of years. This is a massive miscalculation on the male’s part, given that (as the who writers will tell you) it is well known that women do not like to share their emotions with their husbands, preferring instead to think of convoluted ways that her strange and hurtful behaviour can be his fault.

Anybody experiencing problems like this in their marriage should seek to be kidnapped together (along with a mutual time travelling friend) and placed in immediate peril. This will cause the female to explain her specious reasoning and somehow convince the male that it is indeed his fault. While silly readers of this post will try to point out that that makes no sense, you can rest assured that it will in fact work because…shut up.

Lessons to take about love from this relationship:

No gesture of love by the male (even spending 2000 years waiting and fighting for the female) will ever encourage the female to have conversation with the male in lieu of kicking him out of the house, when she starts to feel a bit insecure.

It is also perfectly permissible for the female to abandon the male the night before their wedding and then return without any form of apology. If the male should feel hurt by this, he is simply being stupid and deserves to be erased from history, brought back in the form of a plastic Roman soldier and then killed in various new ways after that.

Vastra and Jenny.

This relationship…is actually pretty good. I mean we don’t see a lot of it, but the bits we do see actually make a good case for love. For example, the normally calm Vastra will tend to openly panic when Jenny is placed in peril. She also takes note when she’s been insensitive and apologises for it. She also has the exchange with Strax that best sums up love, in that she says that it’s not simple. This line came from the same man who penned most of the Amy and Rory love story, which is weird, as in that story it was simple. There was a simple overriding rule that Amy was in the right no matter what she was saying or doing and Rory was just being slow on the uptake. Any problems they had (even those instigated by Amy) were Rory’s fault. There was no possibility of anyone ever turning around and pointing out how emotionally abusive Amy was as a person.

The Tenth Doctor and Rose had a rule too; they were two attractive people in close proximity; therefore they were in love. Well there is a place where you can find an example of them acting like a couple…in a deleted scene from series 2. Yes the only good example of intimacy between them was cut out of the show to allow more time for the comic relief of Rose’s mother talking.

So what can we take from these lessons in love from the writing staff of Doctor Who?

Well…ultimately if you want to have a successful and decent relationship , one of you should be a giant lizard and the other a servant.

Back in Times Doctor Who Series 4: Journey's End Review

Once again, I am bored and in the mood to get annoyed with someone who writes on screen stuff. And this time, my target is Russell T. Davies, the former head writer of Doctor Who.


Ok, so we begin Journey’s End, with some background information already in our minds, from the previous episode: firstly, the Earth has been stolen and lined up with lots of other planets, by the Daleks, who have been brought back again…I’d like to say that when I saw that they’d been brought back, my first instinct was to stop watching, out of protest to the fact that T. Davies can’t go one series without dragging back the Doc Who safety net that is his floating dustbin nemesis’. It just seems slightly unimaginative to end all but one of the series’ he’s managed with the same villain. In fact the, the only thing that really encouraged me to keep watching was thinking back to that one series (series 3) that had had a Dalek-free ending. This gave me hope for Journey’s End, as it demonstrated Davies’ immense skills as a writer, not only was I not expecting the ending of series 3, I was astonished by the villain (The Master) and I found him to be ten times the villains of the previous series…right, where was I? Secondly, Davros (lord and creator of the Daleks) is also back…and Dalek KAAN!!!! [William Shatner voice] is also with him. For those of who: don’t remember, don’t watch Doctor Who or have lives, Kaan was one of the Daleks form the abysmal final episode of series two and that one episode from series three that would’ve turned the whole thing into a shit-box, had it not been for the application of a decent ending…anyway…err…thirdly, the Doctor’s been shot and is in the process of regenerating.
Ok, on with the show.


We open to the Doctor regenerating, he’s changing, but then he pours off the…changy part of regeneration stuff into his spare hand, which he keeps in a jar in the TARDIS – you know, I want to try and explain this for the non-doc who fans, but I can’t be bothered. So he doesn’t change like he normally would.


Meanwhile, Sarah-Jane – I hate Sarah-Jane – is being shot and killed by Daleks…wait, no that’s not what happened, that was just wishful thinking on my part. The particular Daleks, who were going to shoot her at the end of the previous episode, have decided to reduce their killing speed for the convenience of the plot. 


That’s when Jackie and Mickey show up and blast the hell out of them, with some ray-guns…so we now know that that the Daleks have stolen the earth, but it’s alright because the Doctor is here and Rose is here and Captain Jack is here and Donna is here and Martha is here and Mickey is here and Jackie is here and Gwen is here and Ianto is here and Paul Daniels is here and Mr. Spock is here – ok, I got carried away, Mr. Spock and Paul Daniels don’t actually make an appearance, but it wouldn’t have been a surprise if they had. Normally, this sort of overcrowding would worry me, but I was sure Russell T. Davies and had perfectly good story arcs written for all these characters…I mean, I was sure that we wouldn’t end up in a situation where…I don’t know something stupid – like the majority of the cast spending most of the episode sitting around doing nothing.


Anyhow, after Mickey and Jackie are done reminding the audience who they are, we cut back to the TARDIS where the Doctor is busy explaining all the stuff about why he isn’t different and stuff…something to do with his hand that he keeps in a jar…anyway, he and Rose share big teletubbie hug and then the Doctor promptly starts working on a way to beat the Daleks, by utilizing the advantages of his time machine – oh wait no that’s not what happened…although the Doctor would normally do this, for the purposes of the plot, he decides to act completely out of character.


So instead of getting insight into the Doctor’s world saving plan (because he doesn’t have one) we cut away to Gwen and Ianto, who, like Sarah-Jane, were about to be shot at the end of the last episode…turns out that their Torchwood base was equipt with and emergency time lock which froze the Dalek that was attacking them. They can’t leave the base without unlocking the Dalek, so they’re going to have to spend the majority of the episode…sitting around doing nothing.


So, we then go back to the TARDIS, which has been located by the Daleks, who establish a ring thing around it, which disables its main power. The Doctor was too busy hugging Rose and probably trying to think of a good way to ask her for a quickie to actually think of moving it or turning it’s shields on or something like that. 


So the TARDIS and all its passengers get pulled up into the sky and whisked off to the Dalek base thing, just in time to be witnessed by the Sarah-Jane…I hate Sarah-Jane...and Mickey and Jackie, who promptly decide to get captured in order to follow it…this will allow them to…err…sit around and do nothing for while.


We then have to cut away to Martha…because when you’ve overcrowded the cast this much the one thing you need to do is put another cast member into the mix. We know from the previous episode that she has the Osterhagen Key…whatever the hell that is. She teleports herself to Germany, at the angst of her mother, who, in my mind, is kinda on a par with Sarah-Jane.


Meanwhile, the captured TARDIS touches down at the Dalek cruciform thing and the Doctor informs the crew that they’re screwed and the TARDIS is completely disabled. So, he concludes that the best course of action is for them all to go outside and face the Daleks.


This plan is going well, until the TARDIS gets pissy about letting Donna leave and slams the door locking her in. The Daleks aren’t too thrilled about this, so they drop the TARDIS into the heart of their base which is made of stuff that will make it burn, with Donna trapped inside. Everyone starts to panic and shout about this, while down in the TARDIS, everything’s on fire and Donna’s crying. But then she hears a heartbeat from the Doctor’s hand in jar and decides to touch it…it then explodes out and turns into…the Doctor…because that’s what you do when your cast is really overcrowded…you duplicate one of them…


Since Rose isn’t on board, this new Doctor doesn’t have to hug and seek a quickie from her, which provides him with the clairvoyance to utilize his time machine to escape. So he makes it disappear at the precise moment it was supposed to be destroyed, so the Daleks think it’s been destroyed. He and Donna then switch the TARDIS to silent running mode and…sit around doing nothing for a while.
So, meanwhile, the Daleks shoot Captain Jack (who is immortal – but they don’t know that). He feigns death, which allows him to enter a state of not doing anything for a while.


Anyway, back on the TARDIS, we get an explanation of what happened to make another Doctor. Donna gave some DNA, which allowed the Doctor’s spare hand to grow into another Doctor, who’s half-human and sometimes talks like Donna. Once we’ve got that out of the way, they promptly sit around and do nothing.

We the go back to Martha’s story. I’m gonna go through this quickly, because it’s boring. She goes to a castle, meets a German woman who doesn’t like what Martha’s planning to do. Martha uses the age-old tactic of not really giving a shit and doing whatever it is she’s doing anyway.


Up in the Dalek place, Jack escapes from a waste disposal, so that he can run around the Dalek place doing nothing. At the same time, Sarah-Jane…I hate Sarah-Jane…Jackie and Mickey are being brought into a hanger. They escape to a nearby door, which is easily opened by Sarah-Jane’s sonic lipstic. They then witness, as do the Doctor and Rose, the disassembling of the other prisoners, via the REALITY BOMB. This is where it becomes evident what the Dalek plan is. They’re going to use the 27 planets they’ve stolen as an engine and transmitter to destroy reality itself. Because that’s not a dumb idea at all. It is briefly explained by one line of dialogue from a Dalek who says that they’re about to become the only species inexistence, which would be true if they had an “inexistence bomb.”
It is painful how unintelligent this weapon is. Apply common sense, if reality isn’t there then nothing real can be there. Therefore, there is no way to survive the destruction of reality, so the Daleks’ motivation seems to be borrowed from an episode of Star Trek Voyager [geek laugh].


After witnessing the reality bomb in action Sarah-Jane, Mickey and Jackie are preparing to do nothing for a little bit longer, when Jack shows up and deals out some hugs and flirtatious looks. Then Sarah-Jane announces that she has piece of jewelry that doubles up as big explosion. They decide to use to fight the Daleks…after a sufficient period of sitting around doing nothing.


On Earth, Martha’s got all she needs to get the German thing working. She announces that she needs to make a call before she goes any further. And this is where Martha’s story arc starts to really take 
the piss. 


So, up on the Dalek cruciform, they get a phone call from Martha, who explains that she has the Osterhagen Key and then she explains what it does. You see, it’s an extremely sophisticated intergalactic warfare device which has been designed – oh wait…sorry that the wishful thinking getting involved again. No, what it actually is, is essentially a nuclear self-destruct button for the planet, which was sanctioned by UNIT. Now for those who aren’t who-fans, UNIT is the organization that stands in place to protect Earth from alien invasion and threat. And this organization, which is here to protect the Earth, has a policy of blowing it up, if things get a bit too much for them to handle. That is contrived and completely implausible. To use an analogy, I want to protect my house from you (an evil person who wants to burn it down). You come to my house with full intention to burn it down, so I opt to burn it down myself, so that you won’t be able to… what the fuck? The plan defeats the purpose of UNIT.
UNIT are retards and they join Sarah-Jane and Martha’s mother on the hatred par.


Ok, back to the show, Daleks get another phone call, this one from Jack, who presents the threat of blowing everything up, while the hated one stands in the background with Mickey and Jackie.
The Daleks then proceed to beat both of them, by transmatting everyone to where the doctor is. Again, for the non-who fans transmatting is like teleporting, except its called transmatting.


So, Dalek Kaan, giggles a bit and the Doctor looks anxious and Davros reminds everyone that they’re all utter failures and now he’s going to destroy reality…well at least if the Doctor stops him, he’s got the kind of thinking process that could get him a job at UNIT.


Anyway, just as Davros is explaining for the forth time that nothing can stop the detonation of the reality bomb, the half-human Doctor, whose fashioned himself gun thing, slams the TARDIS into full power and lands it the vault thing where Davros and the gang are all chilling.


Rather than designing a gun that fires things, the half-human Doctor has opted for a weapon that will require him to be right next to Davros. So he runs at Davros and get his ass kicked, by his electricity shooting hand. Then Donna runs out and gets shocked too…moron.


So everyone’s been neutralized and Davros feels it’s appropriate to remind them again that he’s about to destroy the whole of reality, because after that two seconds of excitement, the audience would have forgotten that.


Then, the day gets saved by Donna, turns out she got a copy of the Doctor’s brain from his hand, which needed an electricity shooting hand of Davros to activate. She is now effectively a female version of the Doctor. At this point the audience go “ah” at the remembrance of the line of dialogue given to Dalek Kaan in the previous episode, when he described the Doctor as the “three-fold man,” as there are now effectively three version of the Doctor present. It now becomes evident that while Dalek Kaan is the one who rescued Davros, he is also the one who betrayed him and manipulated time such that three Doctors would be here to kick his ass. Kaan’s reasoning for this, is that at soon as he shifted himself back into the time war and saw the whole of time and space, he realized that his own species was evil and therefore he opted to save Davros and manipulate him into getting to here and being beaten by the Doctor…rather than just leaving Davros in the time war to die there instead. This reasoning really doesn’t make much sense, but then again, this is a race who believe that destroying reality will give them the edge in the Universe, so it probably made sense to him.
So the three Doctors go about disabling the Daleks and sending the planets home and what not. Donna deals with the Daleks via some techno stuff that makes them spin around.


Then the big Dalek, who shot Jack, decides to come down and start shooting. Jack blast him with a ray gun that he retrieved from the TARDIS, but not before the big Dalek has smashed up the send-planets-home machine, so the Time Lord Doctor, goes to rig the TARDIS for planet towing… 


While this is going on, the half-human Doctor, encouraged by Kaan, decides to kill all the Daleks, which he proceeds to do via some more techno stuff. This pisses off the Time Lord Doctor, as it doesn’t match his plan of doing shit all about them and then being surprised when they come back in the next series.


So, the Dalek cruciform starts falling apart and the overcrowded cast all get in the TARDIS. Then they tow the Earth home, with some lovely halleluiah music playing. 


Now we get to the ending, the last chance to rescue this overlong, overcrowded pile of excrement.
The Time Lord Doc takes, Rose, Jackie and human doc to the parallel universe, in which Jackie and Rose were locked away in series two. This is where the Doctor’s reasoning starts to piss me off. He says that the human Doctor must remain with Rose so that her love can make him stop being the genocidal maniac, who saved the universe, by actually doing something about the Daleks.


The human Doctor is just like the Time Lord Doctor was, when he first met Rose and he requires her to improve his appreciation for life…ahh…isn’t that nice and romantic…let’s validate that statement, by looking back at Rose and the Doctor and seeing the point at which she made him so much better.
Series one in 2005, in which the Doctor (who regarded Rose as his best friend) couldn’t kill the Daleks, because he considered it too evil to commit genocide, even if it saved the Earth. And series two, where the Doctor (who was by this point in love with Rose) casually committed double-genocide, killing both the Daleks and the Cybermen. Then series three, in which the Doctor (having had two Rose-free years) forgave the Master for enslaving the Earth and trying to take over the universe.
Hate to brake it to you there, Doctor but there seems to be some sort of relationship between Rose not being there and whether or not you commit genocide. In fact as the evidence goes, by your own reasoning, leaving the crazy Doctor with Rose, is just gonna make him worse…of course, this is not really the Doctor’s stupidity, it’s just T. Davies’ writing, because you can’t really expect him to remember the stuff he’s written in the past.


This has gone on for a bit longer than I thought it would, but, as I mentioned, the episode itself is unnecessarily long.

Ten’s Era wasn’t all that good.

With the return of David Tennant to the role of the Tenth Doctor this November the revised fandom is started to really pick up speed. I’ve seen a pretty good fan made trailer for the 50^th anniversary episode and a whole load of Facebook posts about it and particularly about how awesome things were during the tenth Doctor’s run.

Thing is, things really weren’t awesome during the tenth Doctor’s run. They were pretty crappy to be honest. The love story with Rose was clichéd and over the top and a great chunk of the episodes (across the whole run) lacked inspiration or any essence of new ideas.

There have been a couple of crappy episodes since Eleven took over (that one the pirates, that one with the plastic people, that one with the Dinosaurs  - seriously, what were they thinking with that episode?), but overall Matt Smith’s run has been fairly consistent in terms of quality.

The Tenth Doc’s era was host to one series that I would be willing to sit through again (that being series 3) and even at that I’d choose any of the Eleventh era series’ over that.

Getting on to the elephant in the room, Ten’s exit, while being the pinnacle of sadness for some, was, as far as I’m concerned a boring, over the top and slightly self-indulgent trudge fest.

The only thing that got any kind of emotion out of me from “The End of Time” was the Tenth Doctor miserable musings about regeneration. And the emotion that that happened to evoke in me was a mixture of anger and annoyance. It seemed to me that Russell T Davies was using the opportunity to tell fans; “the new Who isn’t going to half as good as this one.” You’d think from it, that David Tennat was the first person to play the Doctor and that Davies was the first person to run the show.

The entire self-indulgent, somewhat confrontational monologue is not I the spirit of this show that has been constantly changing for the best part of 50 years.

There you have it, Ten’s run wasn’t all that good ad the series under Moffat is much better.

Doctor Who Thoughts...

So Doctor who’s back soon so I thought I’d throw some thoughts out about where I think it should and shouldn’t go.

So let’s start with some reflection going back first to the 2006 final episode of the second series of revived who; David Tennant’s first finale in the role of the Doctor… it was so bad. The central problem wasn’t even the over crowdedness in the villain department; as stupid as having two villains who (at their core) are the same villain could have been saved by some inventiveness. I mean it wasn’t, but it could have been.

The problem lay with the fact that Russell T Davies loved the character of Rose Tyler too much. Now I’m not saying his failure to actually kill her like he said he would is what drags this episode from bad to downright awful, but the fact that he drummed her up as the Doctor’s one true love when there was really nothing to make her such.

Other than a capacity for getting irrationally jealous of every other woman that the Doctor spoke to and a belief that he had got to 901 years old and hadn’t made any other friends in his lifetime, Rose didn't really have anything to make her different for any other companion. The only thing that made her different was that T Davies made her and considered her better. And rather than build anything into her story or character to make her better, he thought he’d just tell us that she was better.

I raise this only because a similar thing seems to be happening with River Song. Now I like Alex Kingstone’s performance, but Moffatt is kind of making her take over the show the same way that Rose took over the T Davies series. This is a big DON'T; This can’t become the River Song Show; the centrality of the Doctor cannot be overridden.

Surely there’s enough left in 11^th Doctor that we don’t need to rely on other characters for all the development.

Also the exit of Amy and Rory can't be like the exit of Rose. Please Moffatt. I know you’re not T Davies but just in case; no slow motion falling, no extended screaming for twenty minutes and absolutely no last minute teleporting parents (good fucking god that was a terrible ending). The death of the Fourth Doctor’s companion Adric was 100 times more effective than the “death” of Rose, so something along those lines would be awesome.

Other than that the writers of Doctor Who can go wild!