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Tag: Specials

Starting Sweet, But a Bitter Finish

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Review of The Star Beast
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Going into this run of 60th Anniversary Specials, it had been a full thirteen months since the last new episode of Doctor Who aired. Such a gap is enough to whet any fan’s appetite, but add in the return of a hugely popular lead actor to the role of the Doctor, a well-regarded but hard-done-by Companion, and the first modern-era showrunner, and you have a recipe for ratings records.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

But was the episode really that great? As always, it’s a matter of opinion. But for my money (and yes, this time that’s literal, since I had to overcome my four-year resistance to giving The Mouse any of my money for streaming), there was a lot more in the positive column than the negative. I’m calling it a win.

The biggest element of this special is having a Tennant Doctor and Donna Noble back together. On one hand, that’s great—I adore Donna and was really crossing my fingers they’d finally do right by her after the terrible, awful, no good, very bad way they ended her time on the TARDIS. (More on that later.) On the other hand…

Okay. Time for an unscheduled (though not new) Confession: I’m one of those fans who doesn’t care for the idea of Tennant returning as the Doctor outside of a multi-Doctor scenario. To me it smacks of pandering in a way that bringing back former Companions or creatures or what-have-you does not. I suppose my reaction stems in part from the sense that fans from one of those No One Will Ever Be As Good As My Doctor camps are being appeased, such that future objections to some new “not right” Doctor will be all the louder. “They brought Tennant back; why not My Doctor?”

We don’t know yet why the Doctor’s old face has returned—that’s the story-arc mystery that will presumably be revealed before Ncuti Gatwa finally makes his entrance—so I guess we can’t answer that hypothetical future Entitled Fan’s question. And I continue to reserve judgement on Tennant’s lead actor status until I learn the in-universe reason. (I recently learned that the production reason was that Gatwa’s shooting schedule didn’t allow him to begin in time for the 60th, and so this was the stop-gap. Somehow I’m more willing to accept it all, knowing that.)

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Confession #162: I Barely Remember Series Four

My kids’ birthday is coming up. Birthdays often make me think of the old game where Whovians gauge each others’ age by what episode aired the week they were born (mine was in the Pertwee era, but my kids had Tennant’s Doctor). Then I got to thinking about what modern era stories aired “this week in history.”

As I looked through the Wikipedia article listing episodes, I had lots of “Oh yeah, that one!” moments. It was like a rusty old door opening in the architecture of my memory. Sadly, I think that door only opens partway now.

There was a time when I could just rattle off the episodes in any given “new Who” series—in order—with barely any pause for thought. That time has long since passed. If I hadn’t had the page open in front of me, as I looked over the dates and associated them with episode titles, I wouldn’t have been sure what position in the series any of those episodes held.

I found that oddly distressing, in particular for Series Four. That series has been on my mind a fair bit lately (more so than other RTD-era series, for sure), with the impending return of Donna and a Tennant Doctor. (I am going to be fighting calling that one the “Fourteenth Doctor” for a long time, I can tell.)

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The Power of Fan Service

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Review of The Power of the Doctor
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

There was nothing subtle about The Power of the Doctor. It was pure fan service, from start to finish. Some of it we knew about beforehand, and some of it came as a surprise—again and again—but it was blatantly obvious that showrunner Chris Chibnall wanted to check off every single item on his bucket list on the way out.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2022 BBC

For the most part, I was happy to go along for the ride. Only in the final thirty seconds or so did I balk. (Yes, we’ll talk about that more, but under the cut.) It made me want to use my full-on Mom Voice: I’m not upset with you; just disappointed.

But let’s back up for a while, and leave that moment for later. First, let’s talk about the bonkers hour-and-a-half of Jodie Whittaker’s last episode in the lead role. This was Chris Chibnall’s ultimate fanfic moment; he threw in every plot thread and character he could think of (and book), and wrote a huge fix-it fic.

For those who may not be familiar with fanfic (I am only peripherally so, as I don’t read fic myself, though my kids do), the biggest purpose of the genre—as far as I can tell—is to tell the stories with beloved characters that the fan writer really wanted to see/read in the original media property, but was never given. (In other words, all of modern Who is basically fanfic of Classic Who, show-run by Classic fans.) And one sub-genre of fanfic is the “fix-it fic,” in which the fan writer fixes something that they felt was inherently wrong with the original.

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Ships and Shipping

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Review of Legend of the Sea Devils
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The middle installment of Jodie Whittaker’s last hurrah of three specials, one that thankfully has nothing to do with Easter or any other holiday despite the timing of its broadcast, Legend of the Sea Devils is enjoyable nonsense. Although certain details of the plot don’t make a whole lot of sense (par for the course), it had a great soundtrack, fantastic costuming, and impressive effects—just the sort of thing one needs for a fun one-off episode.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2022 BBC

I had really, really been looking forward to finally getting a story set in historical Asia—something I think we could use a whole lot more of; anything outside of Britain/Europe, really—and I think this episode proved that it’s possible to do that respectfully within the Doctor Who format. But I had to laugh at myself for how, after more than two years of soaking in Asian dramas, I just couldn’t make sense of the panicked villagers shouting to each other in English in the opening scene. (Yes, yes—TARDIS translation circuits. That’s just not what my brain was expecting in that setting.)

There was a lot to love here (and a fair amount to decide not to look at too closely). Having Madame Ching herself on screen was fabulous (though I felt they could’ve done more with her; after all, at her height she commanded hundreds of ships). The rebooted Sea Devils looked fantastic (though we never really got an answer as to why this particular individual had such extreme views or how they rose to power). And the cast all did a fantastic job with what they were given (though I might personally have given some of the guest characters something different/more to do).

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Nu-View #18: Special Surprise

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Planet of the Dead (Series Four Special; 2009)
Viewed 03 Jun 2014

Doctor/Companion: Ten, Lady Christina de Souza
Stars: David Tennant, Michelle Ryan
Preceding Story: The Next Doctor (Ten, Jackson Lake)
Succeeding Story: The Waters of Mars (Ten, Adelaide Brooke)

Having finished the Ninth Doctor’s tenure last time, the Ladies and I are ready to leap into the Tenth Doctor’s debut. Fate is, however, against us.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2009 BBC

It turns out that my Doctor Who evangelism is as disorganized as the rest of my life right now. Around New Year’s I’d loaned my DVDs of Series Two to a friend whose kids were just getting into Who, and never asked for them back. I only discover this oversight for our WhoFest viewing plans as the Ladies are setting themselves up with wine and snacks.

Not to waste one of our increasingly rare opportunities to spend time together with each other and the Doctor, we decide to postpone our watch-in-order exercise for another time and select an episode that we collectively know less well, at jE’s request. It’s an unexpectedly good choice; not only has jE seen it only once, but we discover that jA has never seen it at all! (I’m not sure how this egregious error came about; it’s good we’re correcting it now!)

So off we go on the Lonely God’s last “romp.” First we meet our bored, aristocratic cat burglar as she takes advantage of the “worst security system ever” (as jA puts it). For someone who’s meant to be so clever, Christina’s a bit of a dullard for ripping off her identity-concealing mask whilst still inside the museum she’s in the process of robbing.

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Confession #61: I Want a 50th Boxed Set

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Over the weekend, reports surfaced that The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot; the unofficial-but-officially-sanctioned half-hour special written and directed by Fifth Doctor Peter Davison and co-starring Colin Baker (Six), Sylvester McCoy (Seven), and (briefly) Paul McGann (Eight); would at some point be released on DVD. The source of this information is apparently C. Baker himself, sharing the news at a Doctor Who Appreciation Society event. Details are ridiculously sketchy, pretty much only including the fact that it’s slated to happen and that it will be part of a “special set” focused on Matt Smith.

Folks are already speculating wildly about what will be on this rumored set, though most (like me) seem to have settled on the idea that it will be something 50th anniversary-related. My favorite overly enthusiastic and admittedly too optimistic list of items that might be included encompassed everything from the Proms to Hurt interviews to a specially created farewell to Eleven.

Admittedly, if it does turn out to be an anniversary set, there is a lot of material from which to choose. A lot of material was only available in one part of the world or another (e.g., the aforementioned Proms, or the Doctors Revisited series which didn’t make it to the UK until mere weeks before the anniversary). But how likely do we really think it is that BBC Worldwide would include videos of panel interviews, for instance? Realistically, there’s a pretty short list of what they’re likely to use.

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Retcon of the Doctor

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Review of The Day of the Doctor
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I said recently that I could forgive Moffat almost anything about this anniversary special; I knew not everything on my personal wishlist would make the cut. And as it turned out, plenty I’d have liked to see happen didn’t. Overall, though, there wasn’t much to forgive.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

From the get-go, there were plenty of nods to the past. Starting with the original opening credits—down to the policeman strolling by Totter’s Lane—certainly set the right tone. I could go on for pages listing all those little moments, but I’m sure someone else will write up a definitive list you can find, if that’s your cup of tea. I’ll just say that I personally loved the reference to the UNIT dating controversy and one of the Brigadier’s reactions to the events of The Three Doctors (“Codename: Cromer”—and I really do recommend watching that tenth anniversary special if you’ve not seen it.)

So much happened in these seventy-five minutes that it could be a little difficult to wrap one’s brain around it all on a single viewing; I agree with others who have commented that it’s all clearer the second time around. The things I liked the first time, I still liked, and the things I didn’t… well, they didn’t irritate me quite so much when I knew they were coming.

The entire Zygon gambit felt secondary—and honestly, I quite think it was there simply as a way for the meeting of these three Doctors not to be boring as all get-out—but made surprising sense by the end. It was at least self-consistent, which is more than I can say for some episodes. The entire idea of the Zygons is great, too; they’re a well-loved adversary that was long overdue a return. As executed, they were proper scary, even if the change from human back to Zygon form was too CGI to be believable. At least it was gross.

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Best “Night” of My Life

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It may be an exaggeration, but saying that “Night of the Doctor” is the best thing Doctor Who has produced in years isn’t far off the truth. This seven-minute minisode has the online world of Who fandom in a tizzy, and rightly so. Before I go on, just watch it yourself:

 

There was only one thing I really wanted out of the 50th anniversary episode, and while I now know I won’t get it in the actual special, I’ve received it here. I couldn’t be happier. Well, I could, but not bloody much! They even managed to work in an explanation for the awful new glow-y regeneration mechanism. Now that’s good ret-con.

Thank you, Mr. Moffat!

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Meanwhile, In an Alternate Universe…

Review of Scream of the Shalka (webcast)

DVD Release Date: 17 Sep 13
Original Air Date: [online webcast] 13 Nov – 18 Dec 2003
Doctor/Companion: Alternate Ninth, Alison, the Master
Stars: Richard E. Grant, Sophie Okonedo, Derek Jacobi
Preceding Story: Shada [webcast] (Eight, Romana II)
Succeeding Story: N/A

In the year or two leading up to the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who, fans knew not to expect much. The Movie had made a brave effort at reviving the flagging franchise, and now everyone just knew it was deader than a proverbial doornail. Nothing official was being done to commemorate the milestone, and the future of the show seemed to be relegated to alternative media.

Enter webcasts. The Web seemed to be where everything was at these days. Naturally, the BBC decided that if it were to continue the Doctor Who storyline at all, it would be online. Thus was born the idea of a series of webcasts, to star an entirely new, Ninth Doctor.

As we know by now, things went wahooney-shaped when it was announced in September 2003 that the show would be returning to television proper. Richard E. Grant’s stellar Ninth Doctor became obsolete before he’d even made a proper appearance. But somewhere, in some alternate universe, the show didn’t make it back to tellie, and we all know and love Grant as the Ninth Doctor instead of Eccleston.

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