This one is a modern classic. The reflective personal, funereal mood at
the beginning of this story is very believable. The premise is a little
bit Star Trek but that's not completely unwelcome.
The 'earthquake' in DW lore at the end (see the last 10 minutes or so, I
won't ruin it for anyone here) is quite phenomenal. The classic DW fan
in me was rebelling against the Time Lord victorious idea but the true
DW fan in me was stamping my feet and cheering. This episode was just
amazing.
The only thing I regret is (like Turn Left the series before) it doesn't
really get followed up in the next episode. It could have set the scene
for a truly remarkable climax for David Tennant's Doctorship. But it's
like the scriptwriters just forgot what happened.... oh well, can't have
everything.
Well this is another Xmas episode, so try to remember that as the
plotholes and the cliches sail majestically before your eyes. David T is
effortlessly good as the Doctor now roaring confidently into his third
year in the role. Kylie is actually a bit wooden but anyone who actually
seen her in a movie before will probably be expecting this. Some of the
characters are fun, some a excruitiating. The moment when some
unidentified occupant of Buckingham Palace sticks her head out of the
window and waves at the retreating Starship Titanic with a pythonesque
silly laugh is likely to interfere with your dramatic tension buildup
(or something).
All in all a jolly harmless little romp through what Russell T thinks
Xmas is all about, but not to be taken too seriously even by the fans.
On the other hand by the time Season 4 climaxes, you'd better have been
paying attention or else you might miss something....... ;-)
Another example of an RTD 'special': telling the story by clips of fictional TV news and making up plenty of ahistorical politics and politicians. This is obviously a personal trait of RTD as a writer: I'll cite Years and Years (2017) as another example of it which is quite apart from any DW example.
There are some cameo clips of real politicians which makes it dated and confusing. (That awful Tory who turned Brexit.. frumpy humourless old bat.. I've forgotten her name, thankfully...)
Apart from that there's an effective atmosphere of modern snoopy security state generated and some weirdness.
The fictional US President is looking a little dated in 2020 mainly because the current one makes him look too ordinary too normal. Weird that he drives around in a Land Rover too...
John Simm as the Master is intense and mad. At the time it was new and sparkled. Previous Masters were vaudeviliean and moustache twirling (kinda conventional). The new Master is an out of control madman.
MASTER: (muffled) It's a gas mask.
DUMFRIES: I beg your pardon?
MASTER: It's a gas mask.
DUMFRIES: Yes, but, er, why are you wearing it?
MASTER: (muffled) Well, because of the gas.
DUMFRIES: I'm sorry?
MASTER: Because of the gas.
DUMFRIES: What gas?
MASTER: (muffled) This gas.
(The conference telephone sets pop up and squirt gas at the Cabinet and
officials.)
DUMFRIES: You're insane!
(The Master gives the thumbs up sign as Dumfries and the rest of his
colleagues die, then starts tapping out that famous rhythm on the
table.)
In the second ep the story goes to the incredible end of the spectrum. (It is DW not a documentary...)
There are a few controversial moments. Lucy Saxon is shown as suffering some form of relationship abuse (strong stuff for a kid's show) but it a signal that the Master is a "baddie" character. I think a question remains about whether it's exploitive. The details are suppressed: we never see what happened or how or why. We're presented with hints. The denouement where she fires the gunshot that finishes him off is cathartic but there's lots of parts missing from the story
The Doctor as humanist christ figure powered by the power of positive thinking is a conceptual mistake in my view. The Ky of Solos like powers that the super aged 'Dobbie Doctor' suddenly acquires and uses to vanquish the Toclafane and the Master is fantasy unfettered by actual Sci Fi sense. On paper it must have looked nuts. On screen it looks contrived.
I long for a dream sequence explanation. But there isn't one. Ep loses half a point from me for this.
Great stuff to watch but ultimately there are some 'headscratcher' elements.
Utopia is exciting and tense and builds up to amazing climax.
I Claudius star Derek J is amazing as the bumbly old idiot Professor Yana and the turn at the end where he murders his assistant Chan to and becomes the Master is legendary.
This is the archetypal 'rewards the long term viewer' sequence since the 'Yana' name and the purpose of the fobwatch are plot elements that probably would just sail right over the heads of a casual viewer. (I've never met any... )
Watched 15-Aug off a networked xvid file of the original BBC broadcast.
This is it. This is the pinnacle of DW.
This first new number 1 ranked story in 32 years.
Weirdly it is meant to be a bottle episode i.e. one where the regular cast are minimised to free them up for leave or work on other eps.
It becomes a showcase for the very cute and highly talented Carey Mulligan (21 yo at the time of production) who has since become a famous international film star. Sally Sparrow is smart and sassy. She's not ambitious or mean or slow and dopey. She's great. One odd question I have is I wonder who she is and what her job/purpose actually is? It's revealing of how good the character is that the answer to that question just invites delicious speculation.
If anyone ever tells me that a female Doctor can't work then Blink is a fairly devastating argument against that nonsense.
Odd thing I noticed on this rewatch about Blink is how different to normal the incidental music is. Typically DW incidental music of this period time was loud, stirring chords and fast, triumphant crescendoes. In this the music's lonely oboe, slow and mournful punctuated by throbbing power chords. It's not a bad move.
The direction is bloody good too. In most revews of Blink it doesn't get enough praise. Hettie MacDonald provides plenty of thoughtful and poignant storytelling sequences. I'll cite the death scene of Billy. He asks about the rain, Sally says it's the same rain, there's a cross fade to a hospital room with an empty bed and Sally strides on to the next scene in a purposeful way. That's a death scene without a hammy death and the sound of your mind being stimulated.... Hettie will be back for The Magician's Apprentice (2015)
In typical Steven Moffat style the story centres on clues hiding in plain sight (what links the 17 DVD's?) , inventive delivery of narrative dialogue (the Doctor's speech on the DVD extras is presented as a mysterious monologue ("it's as if he's having half a conversation") and later it just clicks together with Sally Sparrow in Wester Drumlins seemingly for no reason and Robert Holmes style world building with throwaway lines (try this.)
SALLY: My God, it's you. It really is you. Oh, you don't remember me,
do you?
(Martha is carrying a quiver of arrows, and the Doctor has a long bow.)
MARTHA: Doctor, we haven't have time for this. The migration's started.
DOCTOR: Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't
always happen to me in quite the right order.
Unlke the heavy Human Nature layered symbolism this is merely intricate and has terrifying new, high concept monsters (Angels)
Winner of the third in a row annual Hugo Short Form Dramatic presentation for Doctor Who. Stemo scored BAFTAS, Carey won a Constellation award (Canadian) for Best Performance.
The very best episodes of DW are often not series finales or regenerations or Daleks,Daleks,Daleks. They're often seemingly run of the mill mid series "bottles".
This one is near to perfect. What ever could possibly beat this?
This line of dialogue near the end of p2 sums it up.
JOAN: Answer me this. Just one question, that's all. If the Doctor had
never visited us, if he'd never chosen this place on a whim, would
anybody here have died? (no answer) You can go.
(The Doctor leaves. Joan clutches the journal to her bosom and cries.)
Apart from the story and the performances and the direction this story amounts to a surgical deconstruction of the concepts of Doctor Who stories. That is literary levels of layered meaning.
Whether we choose to agree or not this sets the character of the Doctor as amoral and reckless. We get to see the show in a new way (well new to DW on TV.) I guess that some modern novels address this concept at least to some degree.
The bit is where the Doctor as the Doctor pretends to be John Smith to the alien Family and slyly sets off their feedback compensators.
[Spaceship]
BAINES: We'll blast them into dust, then fuse the
dust into glass, then shatter them all over again.
(The spaceship door opens to admit -)
DOCTOR: Just
(A boom rocks the ship, and he lurches against a column of
switches.)
DOCTOR: Just stop the bombardment. That's all I'm asking. I'll do
anything you want, just, just stop.
BAINES: Say please.
DOCTOR: Please.
(Jenny activates a control.)
JENNY: Wait a minute. (sniff) Still human.
DOCTOR: Now I can't, I can't pretend to understand, not for a second,
but I want you to know I'm innocent in all this. He made me John Smith.
It's not like I had any control over it.
(He runs his hands over more switches.)
JENNY: He didn't just make himself human. He made himself an idiot.
BAINES: Same thing, isn't it?
DOCTOR: I don't care about this Doctor and your family. I just want you
to go. So I've made my choice. You can have him. Just take it, please!
Take him away.
(The Doctor holds out the watch.)
BAINES: At last.
(Baines takes the watch with one hand, and the Doctor's lapels by the
other.)
BAINES: Don't think that saved your life.
(He pushes the Doctor away. More switches get activated as the Doctor
falls against the wall.)
BAINES: Family of Mine, now we shall have the lives of a Time Lord.
(Baines opens the watch and they all sniff deeply.)
BAINES: It's empty!
DOCTOR: Where's it gone?
BAINES: You tell me.
(Baines throws the watch to the Doctor, who catches it without
looking.)
DOCTOR: Oh, I think the explanation might be you've been fooled by a
simple olfactory misdirection. Little bit like ventriloquism of the
nose. It's an elementary trick in certain parts of the galaxy. But it
has got to be said, I don't like the looks of that hydroconometer. It
seems to be indicating you've got energy feedback all the way through
the retrostabilisers feeding back into the primary heat converters. Oh.
Because if there's one thing you shouldn't have done, you shouldn't
have let me press all those buttons. But, in fairness, I will give you
one word of advice. Run.
(The Doctor runs out of the ship as alarms start to sound.)
BAINES: Get out! Get out!
This is probably David Tennant's best moment in the show.
The plot summary reads: While investigating reports of ghostly music, Jack and Tosh find themselves stranded in a packed dance hall in 1941. As Gwen, Owen and Ianto
work to rescue their colleagues, Jack and Tosh meet a handsome young
American squadron leader by the name of Captain Jack Harkness.
That's fair enough (but spoiler alert) it turns gay from there.
It's fantasy. It's a tragedy. But it doesn't feel relatable (not to me anyway.)
This episode has the most exciting preview reel on the end of the previosu reel.
The first part is pretty damn good. Dramatic backdrop, conflict between Mr Big and the construction workers, scary unde rthe theatre in the sewers monster stuff with the Pig Men.
In the second ep it falls apart like a bicycle made of licorice. Mainly because the plot hangs on some very poor misunderstanding of genetics and mutation and is resolved by some absolutely ludicrous crap about solar flare/lightning and Time Lord DNA (or something). The only way Mr Big could merge with a Dalek and become a 'hybrid' is if he 'bred" (hatched actual children somehow) with the Dalek (vomit...) It goes downhill, concept-wise, from there.
The production design is amazing. The location work is thrilling and they get away with some cheap cutaway shots (apparently taken on a scam weekend 'holiday' to New York taken by Phil Collinson, I think). Miranda Raison is v. good as the Showgirl Tallulah (Three l's and an h.)
A sequel that is so much better. Many characters in this are reused from 201 New Earth.
The best bit is the confession scene at the end. Tennant is very Doctor Who in this.
DOCTOR: Doesn't matter. Back to the Tardis, off we go.
(Martha straightens up a chair and sits down, arms and legs crossed.)
DOCTOR: All right, are you staying?
MARTHA: Till you talk to me properly, yes. He said last of your kind.
What does that mean?
DOCTOR: It really doesn't matter.
MARTHA: You don't talk. You never say. Why not?
CHOIR: (singing) Fast falls the eventide.
MARTHA: It's the city.
CHOIR: The darkness deepens
MARTHA: They're singing.
CHOIR: Lord, with me abide. When other helpers fail
DOCTOR: I lied to you, because I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a
bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange
sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face
of Boe was wrong. There's no one else.
MARTHA: What happened?
CHOIR: Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day.
DOCTOR: There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people
fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they
lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my
friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet.
The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine.
The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light
every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came,
the breeze would blow through the branches like a song.
CHOIR: The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide.
The title is derived from the novel and film "The Da Vinci Code" which was popular at the time and is now fading rapidly from popular consciousness.
Christina Cole looks like a sensible witch. If you could do magic you should magick up good hair and a cute nose too. Her mates Mother Doomfinger and Harold are much siller in this regard.
There's a feeling that this is meant to annoy traditionalists. Shakespeare is presented as a young-ish northern accented yobbo, the Globe actors complain about learning lines, there is more than one black face among the extras. Have you heard any of the racist wankery about how this is "unrealistic"? It is **totally** realistic that race politics of the late 16th early/17th century in Britain was NOT tainted by slavery and supremacy tropes.
Apart from that this is a lot of fun.
The plot is weak and so is the sci-fi (witches and spells are real-ish, hmm)
David is breezing through this now and Freema looks, sounds, acts like she's been doing it for years.
Freema Agyeman as Martha makes a breezy and impressive debut. Where do they find these great DW girls?
The plot is usual RTD ODTAA (one damn thing after another). The events are lacking any credibility... again.
The characters are soap (Martha's fam) and campy (Stoker especially). Anne Reid (out of Curse of Fenric) makes a solid reappearance. The Judoon are good original monster suit aliens.
It's a very competent serial adventure ep. Good enough to open a new series and memorable too.
David T is actually hamming some of this up. The ruse with Anne about the bunions was delightful. The submission to "strawing" was less than satisfactory.
That way we can avoid the worst/silliest eps (Cyberwoman, Countrycide, the fairy one) and get a better impresion.
This one has (sorry, had) a reputation as a bit better than the rest. It's basically three stories of people who fell through a time warp from 1953.
One chick bonks her way to the point she wants to get in her aeroplane and get away from Owen go back. One struggles to cope with modern manners but fights back and is left up-in-the-air about will-she/won't-she?
The third one (the older guy) has a meltdown and tops himself.
Straight out of the blocks Catherine Tate as Donna Noble is outrageously good here. The woman was great as an outrage comedienne in Wild West and The Catherine Tate Show.
The lesson of Billie's casting should have been do not underestimate Casting Director Andy Pryor's casting ability.
Euros Lyn's direction is very good too.
But up to a point.
In the first half of this is the "What" scene and the "I'm in my wedding dress" fun and then there's the freeway chase scene with the TARDIS and the Robot Santa taxi. Exhilarating stuff.
Then it crashes like a dropped pie when the Racnoss turns up. The story seems to metamorphose from a shouty, confrontational action packed chase to a mundane and frankly ridiculous Earth origin due to aliens tale involving bullsh*t about Huons (I keep thinking of Tasmanian pine trees whenever it's mentioned) and segways.
This is an example of RTD "writes great dialogue" but plots seem like afterthoughts.
Tennant and Tate are amazing together and it's not hard to see why they put them together for the next series.
First volume of the 2007 series (not counting the 2006 Xmas Special)
introduces the new companion Martha Jones, a medical student. Stories
are set first in the present day, then the middle ages then the very far
future.
The pace is cracking, David Tennant is on form as the Doctor.
This dvd does not contain episodes that are too scary for the little
ones. The worst images are the witches in the Shakespeare Code, the
crablike Macra in Gridlock and the rhino like Judoon in Smith and
Jones.
Modern DW for a modern audience. Top stuff, non dud/ You'll be pleased
you rented it!!
The starting premise is just ridiculous. Why would modern people in an exciting forward looking universe think mysterious apparitions are ghosts of their recently dead relatives?
They don't look, sound or act like them. Even a bit. it's not credible.
The Torchwood Institute arrives and it isn't very credible. A mix of Van Statten and weird neo-colonialism.
Tracey Ann Obermann as Mrs "I did my duty' is OTT and wrought from very strange posh stuff.
The Cybs' arrival seems inevitable.
The parallel worlds hyperjumping is kinda handwavey and the Genesis Arc is an obvious plot contrivance.
The Daleks jumping out was an effective surprise at the time but this excitement has dimmed more than somewhat in 14 years. Pete, and Mickey and Jake (the blonde guy) were surprising too but boil down to cameos.
The fall of Rose is the story. It intro's both eps and its resolution takes something like a quarter of the screen time in the 2nd ep. Billie Piper makes her (first) exit from the show in a blaze of (not really) deathly glory. She is rightly remembered as an archetypal modern DW girl. Unlike more than a few of her predecessors her career has gone on.
As far as real Earth goes she and Jackie T and Mickey are all goners.
David Tennant as the Doctor is finishing his first season with good points. To me he's like a show-off Doctor. He shouts, he makes his hair spiky and he talks loud... and then goes straight to the sincerity angst. There is something like credibility lacking in his portrayal but I can't work out what it is. His jokes aren't very good. He has little of the patrician attitude of Pertwee or Baker, T. The gentle charm of Troughton is absent.
A direct comparison with Chris E at this point is fair. I think Chris had shown a great deal more depth and range in his series. David T has mastered the cool though. (Spoiler: he gets better...)
I think this works well as soap opera but it fails a little as either SF or DW because of the hand waving explanations and the comic-ky action.
But it does the business and draws in the viewers, so stop yer whinging.
The first few minutes establish the plot , the 'threat', the 'big bad' by means of ludicrous standing about in the street, unreal conversations between undeveloped characters. The Trish and Chloe characters seem like minor and distant at this early stage and do not get introduced in a sympatico fashion.
The action then seems to move to show the Doctor and Rose engaging in at first pretend police detective work, then some kind of weird mix of social work and hypnotism before it goes full "Exorcist homage". These scenes are uncomfortable to watch since they normalise a grown man interfering with a young child in a domestic "I'm saving her" setting. When Catholic Priests do this there's (sometimes) a Royal Commission... yuck!
Then the last reel is full of vomit dripping "this is a great day for humanity" unbelievable Olympic stadium/torch relay antics which would be barely credible if they were some kind of dream sequence.
The plot is alien tries to take over people by transmatting them 'somewhere' and using them for I'm not sure what. Then when the alien is discovered it submits when the Doctor and Rose rescue the 'egg' thing and burn it in a burning Olympic torch relay. (Could they have simply barbequed it?)
The whole episode is grating and lacking in the kind of thing DW should be. It's not relatable (except to middle class property weirdoes, maybe) and the climax is terrible.
I feel Matthew Graham (famous for Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes) is unsuited to the task of DW scripting. That he will be asked back to do another is hard to understand. Wikipedia claims that this episode was written quickly at a late stage to replace an script from Stephen Fry that failed to complete.
There are two worthwhile moments. The Doctor admitting, casually dropped into a conversation, that he "was a father... once." This is played by Billie as the sequel hunting bombshell it is... but sadly this has never really been followed up on. And of course the final scene which presages the dramatic tear at Rose's complacency in the following two episodes. Neither of these justify the whole running time.
Apart from that this is easily the worst episode of new Who and vies with the worst of old Who. A stunning and disappointing mistake.
This has a few innovative things in it. The narrative is flashback style. The story centres on some other character than the Doctor or his assistant. The villain is up to something other than power, domination or taking over/destruction.
The plot style is tedious and looks like an attempt at needless 'cleverness'.
The performances are moronic, particularly Peter Kay who is miscast as a DW villain. He's an "I'm crappier than you' style of comedian, not a dramatic actor.
The costume is risible, particularly the hair. And his main motivation appears to be hunger? Why bother with all the pretence?
This is the first bottle episode of the new series. It's a very rare occurrence in DW history. Perhaps Mission to the Unknown is the *only* precedent.
It fails to be entertaining... and it's got very, very little to commend it indeed.
The worst bit for mine is in the climax when Elton reveals his Mother's forgotten demise in his childhood. This seems to have been chucked in post plot in an attempt at dramatic heft. It comes across as soapy and unbelievable.
It's an appealing hard edged SF base under siege story with a coterie of sexy, ugly, smart, dumb characters wearing overalls and bitching at each other. There's "cute" aliens (Oods) and scary aliens (Oods) and an entertaining big bad.
But where it succeeds best (and this is mostly in the second ep) is when the 'devil' starts promptig characters to
question their own beliefs. The reveals are fascinating and counter to expectations.
I like the line from Rose about space being tough not glam. It's a sober dash of realness.
The black hole physics are ok without being stunning. The concept of orbiting a black hole is perfectly valid. But the falling in without relativistic effects (time dilation, mass dilation, dimension dilation(aka spaghettification) is a thing which disappoints me. (Subsequent efforts such as The Doctor Falls are not perfect either.)
The plot is nuts. Some vaguely defined alien who lives in the telly is sucking people's faces/brains to 'feast'... on what?
Apart from the "how does that work then?" question, the "big audience" is key to this.
If they waited 5 years then the general TV audience would have grown by 5 times, if they had waited 20 years the TV audience would be nearer 95% of the populace.
If they had attacked the general TV audience in California or Japan AT THE SAME TIME they would have reached much larger audiences.
So why Britain?
Ummm... and what the hell is the climax thing about. It's shouty and exciting but the drama isn't there because of the handwaving explanations...
The actual story and the direction, dialogue, are pretty good.
There's an anti cyclic side plot about the Dad character's hypocritical bullying and toadying which presages his being kicked out of the house.
But the main plot is weak and there's an obvious attempt to conceal this by some kind of facile, aesthetic cover up.
I'll cite:
The Police interview with the DI and the Doctor (which starts and ends with the same police procedural cliche....).
Dropping a Kylie quote
The copper guy's reaction to first a portable TV and then a colour TV...
The use of a Betamax cassette and the technobabble about wiping it... (Mark Gatiss knows full well that wiping a Beta tape would not be necessary since because it's Beta no one will be able to play it ever again.)
This story is DT's first 2 parter and achieves an epic status.
It succeeds as a high impact action thriller. The Cybs are impressive and the synchronised stomping is now obvious but was new at the time.
Some of the scenes might be just a little overwrought. I'm thinking of the confrontation between GB President Don and the house party invading Cybs late in p1, not to mention any of the Ricky/Mickey scenes.
But hey it's a ride. Sometimes the story does not need to be complicated..
Graeme Harper makes a bang with his return to DW. (He directed Revelation and Caves about a million years ago and was PA to some guy called Camfield working on Seeds, Invasion and others. Suffice to say he knows what he's doing alright.... and it shows.
Billie and Sean (as Rose and Pete) are tight and pull the strings. The Rose is a toy dog in the alternative reality is a great joke. The Cuba Gooding Junior reference is more and more obscure with each passing second decade.
This one has probably been played too many times in this house as it's getting hard to tell where the story starts and where it goes.
After a slightly bumpy start the 10th Doctor is starting to get good.
It has a complex but clear plot, great performances (Tennant and Sophia Myles are great), the effects are solid and serve the plot (think the horse jump through the time portal).
Specially important is the incidental music... Murray Gold has been scoring goals since the start of the new series but here the music steps up in a way that makes this even better.
The story is interesting and personal and emotional. There is little space opera in this. There's a spaceship but it's not on a 'mission' or anything just broken down... The minor casting is colourblind (yet perfectly acceptable).
The dialogue is noticeably better written than RTD eps. The quips are great but so is the prose...
There is a vessel in your world where the days of my life are pressed together like the chapters of a book, so that he may step from one to the other without increase of age, while I, weary traveller, must always take the slower path.
— Reinette
The best bits are where the celebrity historical figure puts aside internal (imagined) prejudice and ignorance and simply becomes curious and discover-ish. When she does discover that the spaceship really exists and she enters it and discovers her voice from the future she reacts with curiosity and simple fear not disgust or disbelief. Neither does she jump to a disastrous conclusion. That's open mind inquiry right there. It is the Enlightenment in a few sentences: the notion that there is a universe which is unknown and waiting to be discovered and that possibility is not impossible.
King Louis (Ben Turner): We are under attack. There are creatures—I don’t even think they’re human. We can’t stop them. Reinette (Sophia Myles): The clock is broken. He’s coming. King Louis: Did you hear what I said? Reinette (Sophia Myles): Listen to me. There is a man coming to Versailles. He has watched over me my whole life and he will not desert me tonight. King Louis: What are you talking about? What man? Reinette (Sophia Myles): The only man—save you—I have ever loved. 3000 Years Later
Mickey: It’s a spaceship. Brilliant! I got a spaceship on my first go. Rose: It looks kind of abandoned. Anyone on board? The Doctor: Nah. Nothing here. Well, nothing dangerous. Well, not that dangerous. Know what, I’ll just have a quick scan. In case of something dangerous.
The Doctor: Dear me. Got some cowboys in here. There’s a ton of repair work going on.
Rose: Where’d all the crew go? The Doctor: Good question. No life readings on board. Rose: Well. We’re in deep space. They didn’t just nip out for a quick fag. The Doctor: Nope. Checked all the smoking pods.
Reinette: Monsieur, what are you doing in my fireplace? The Doctor: Oh it’s just a… routine fire check. Can you tell me what year it is? Reinette: Of course I can. Seventeen hundred and twenty-seven. The Doctor: Right. Lovely. One of my favorites. August is rubbish though. Stay indoors.
Mickey: You said this was the 51st century. The Doctor: I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the Universe. I think we just found the hole. Must be a spaceship with a temporal hyperlink. Mickey: What’s that? The Doctor: No idea. Just made it up. Didn’t want to say “Magic Door”.
The Doctor: Okay, that’s scary. Reinette: You’re scared of a broken clock? The Doctor: Just a bit scared, yeah. Just a little tiny bit. ‘Cause you see, if this clock’s broken—and it’s the only clock in the room… {the ticking gets louder.} Then what’s that? ‘Cause you see, that’s not a clock. You can tell by the resonance. Too big. Six feet I’d say. Size of a man.
Reinette: Monsieur, be careful! The Doctor: Just a nightmare, Reinette. Don’t worry about it. Everyone has nightmares. Even monsters from under the bed have nightmares. Don’t you, monster? Reinette: What do monsters have nightmares about? The Doctor: Me!
Mickey: Excellent! Ice gun. The Doctor: Fire extinguisher.
Reinette: It is customary, I think, to have an imaginary friend only during one’s childhood. You are to be congratulated on your persistence. The Doctor: Reinette. Well. Goodness how you’ve grown. Reinette: And you do not appear to have aged a single day. That is tremendously impolite of you.
Reinette: How could you be a stranger to me? I’ve known you since I was seven years old. The Doctor: Yeah. I suppose you have. I came the quick route.
Reinette: You seem to be flesh and blood at any rate, but this is absurd. Reason tells me you cannot be real. The Doctor: Oh, you never want to listen to reason.
Manservant (Gareth Griffiths): Who the hell are you? The Doctor: I’m the Doctor. And I just snogged Madame de Pompadour.
The Doctor: Rose? Mickey? Every time! Every time! It’s rule one. “Don’t wander off.” I tell them, I do. Rule one. There could be anything on this ship. {sees the horse}
Katherine (Angel Coulby): Speaking of wicked, I hear Madame de Châteauroux is ill and close to death. Reinette: Yes. I am devastated. Katherine: Oh, indeed. I myself am frequently inconsolable. The King will therefore be requiring a new mistress. You love the King, of course. Reinette: He is the king. And I love him with all my heart. And I look forward to meeting him.
Mickey: What’s a horse doing on a spaceship? The Doctor: Mickey, what’s pre-Revolutionary France doing on a spaceship? Get a little perspective.
Rose: We found a camera with an eye in it. And there was a heart wired into the machinery. The Doctor: It’s just doing what it was programmed to do. Repairing the ship any way it can with whatever it can find. No one told it the crew weren’t on the menu. What did you say the flight deck smelled of? Rose: Someone cooking. The Doctor: Flesh plus heat. Barbeque.
Rose: Why her? You’ve got all of history to choose from. Why specifically her? Clockwork Woman (Ellen Thomas): We are the same. Reinette: We are not the same. We are in no sense the same.
The Doctor: It’s back on the ship. Rose, take Mickey and Arthur, get after it, follow it. Don’t approach it, just watch where it goes. Rose: Arthur? The Doctor: Good name for a horse. Rose: No, you’re not keeping the horse. The Doctor: I let you keep Mickey. Now go go go!
Reinette: Fireplace Man. You are in my mind. The Doctor: Oh dear, Reinette. You’ve had some cowboys in here.
Reinette: Doctor. So lonely. So very very alone. The Doctor: What do you mean, alone? You’ve never been alone in your life. {realizing} When did you start calling me Doctor? Reinette: Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now. How can you bear it? The Doctor: How did you do that? Reinette: A door once opened may be stepped through in either direction. Oh Doctor. My lonely Doctor. Dance with me. The Doctor: I can’t. Reinette: Dance with me. The Doctor: This is the night you dance with the King. Reinette: Then first I shall make him jealous. The Doctor: I can’t. Reinette: Doctor. Doctor who? It’s more than just a secret, isn’t it? The Doctor: What did you see? Reinette: That there comes a time, Time Lord, when every lonely little boy must learn how to dance.
Clockwork Man (Paul Kasey): You are compatible. Rose: Well, you might want to think about that. You really really might. Because me and Mickey, we didn’t come here alone. Oh no. And trust me, you wouldn’t want to mess with our designated driver.
Rose: Oh, look at what the cat dragged in. The Oncoming Storm. The Doctor: Mm. You sound just like your mother. Rose: What have you been doing? Where have you been? The Doctor: Well… among other things I think I just invented the banana daiquiri a couple of centuries early. Do you know they’d never even seen a banana before. Always take a banana to a party, Rose. Bananas are good.
The Doctor: Oh ho ho… brilliant! It’s you! You’re my favorite, you are. You are the best. You know why? ‘Cause you’re so thick! You’re Mr. Thick Thick Thickety Thickface from Thicktown. Thickania! … And so’s your dad.
The Doctor: Multi-grade Anti-oil. If it moves, it doesn’t.
The Doctor: Alright. Many things about this are not good.
Reinette: The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other. Rose: Tell me about it. The thing is, you weren’t supposed to have either. Those creatures are messing with history. None of this was ever supposed to happen to you. Reinette: “Supposed to happen”. What does that mean? It happened, child. And I would not have it any other way. One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.
Reinette: Those screams. Is that my future? Rose: Yeah. I’m sorry. Reinette: Then I must take the slower path.
Rose: Are you okay? Reinette: No. I’m very afraid. But you and I know—don’t we, Rose—the Doctor is worth the monsters.
Reinette: I have made a decision. And my decision is no. I shall not be going with you today. I have seen your world and I have no desire to set foot there again. Clockwork Man: We do not require your feet.
Reinette: You think I fear you. But I do not fear you even now. You are merely the nightmare of my childhood. The monster from under my bed. And if my nightmare can return to plague me then rest assured, so will yours.
King Louis: What the hell is going on? Reinette: Oh. This is my lover, the King of France. The Doctor: Yeah? Well I’m the Lord of Time.
The Doctor: It’s over. Accept that. I’m not winding you up.
Reinette: So here you are, my lonely angel. Stuck on the slow path with me.
The Doctor: Give me two minutes. Pack a bag. Reinette: Am I going somewhere? The Doctor: Go to the window. Pick a star. Any star.
King Louis: And there she goes. Leaving Versailles for the last time.
Rose: You all right? The Doctor: I’m always all right.
Reinette: My Dear Doctor, The path has never seemed so slow, and yet I fear I am nearing its end. Reason tells me that you and I are unlikely to meet again, but I think I shall not listen to reason. I have seen the world inside your head and know that all things are possible. Hurry though, my love. My days grow shorter now and I am so very weak. God speed, my lonely angel.
‘Doctor Who’: 10 Things You May Not Know About ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ | BBC America
By Fraser McAlpine
8-10 minutes
“The Girl in the Fireplace” began as an idea Russell T Davies had while working on Casanova, to somehow include the character of Jeanne Antoinette Poisson,
otherwise known as Reinette (“little queen”) or Madame de Pompadour, in
a story that showcased The Turk, a mechanical wonder of the age.
The Turk was an animatronic man (head, arms and torso) that appeared
to possess the uncanny ability to play chess. It toured the royal courts
of Europe, confounding onlookers by beating them in every game. It was
eventually discovered that this was no super-intelligent proto-robot, as
there was a human grandmaster hidden inside The Turk’s workings. But
Davies wanted to retell part of that story, giving the clockwork
automaton a more sinister motive.
(Incidentally, Neil Gaiman made a more explicit use of The Turk in “Nightmare in Silver,” although in that story he was a Cyberman.)
Here are a few other things that you should keep an eye out for, the next time you watch.
(The episode is available on iTunes and Amazon.) Early on, as the Doctor explores the spaceship with Rose and Mickey,
he notes, “Dear me, had some cowboys in here! Got a ton of repair work
going on,” then uses the same phrase as he scans Reinette’s mind. The
phrase “had some cowboys in here,” always said with a disapproving sigh,
is a British idiom as used by builders and car mechanics alike. The
“cowboy” in question isn’t a fellow on a horse with a hat; it’s a
disapproving term for a sloppy workman. The inference being that your
previous repair was badly done, and this craftsman (who would never do
such a poor job) will have to fix their errors as well as sorting out
whatever your actual problem is. Sometimes it’s a genuine response to
shoddy work, but it can also be used to gouge up the price of labor.
As if to illustrate this point, the phrase appears again, out of the
mouth of the Eleventh Doctor as he pokes around Amelia Pond’s bedroom
looking at the crack in her wall. The original intention with the clockwork androids—actual working props designed by Neill Gorton of Millennium Effects and constructed by Richard Darwen and Gustav Hoegan—was
that they would be hidden in plain sight, dressed in the same style as
everyone else, but that their wigs would cast a shadow across their
faces until the time came for their big reveal. In a conversation with
producer Phil Collinson the production team realized
there would be very few camera angles that would consistently hide their
faces and not those of everyone else, hence the carnival masks. Alternative titles considered for the episode include
“Madame de Pompadour,” “Every Tick of My Heart,” “Reinette and the
Lonely Angel” and “Loose Connection.” This story had been planned as the
second in Season Two, replacing “Tooth and Claw” as the historical
counterpart to the extreme future depicted in “New Earth.” However the
episode order was changed when it became clear Steven Moffat had written
a script that took the Doctor into new areas, emotionally speaking. The
story was moved to the spot after “School Reunion,” in which Sarah Jane
Smith makes her return, to quell any fears about the Tenth Doctor
departing too far from fan expectations. Paul Cornell deserves credit for creating two items of Doctor Who mythology cited here by Steven Moffat, both of which made their first appearance in his 1992 Doctor Who: The New Adventures novel Love and War.
This was the source for the nickname “the Oncoming Storm,” as used by
the Draconians in the novel, but by the Daleks in the TV series. It is
also the source of a gag Steven Moffat seems to be exceptionally fond
of. Young Reinette asks the Doctor what monsters have nightmares about,
and he replies “Me!” and laughs. That joke also appeared in a short
story called “Continuity Errors” that Steven wrote for the Doctor Who fiction collection Decalog 3: Consequences. Another aspect of the story that didn’t make the final edit
was that of the “Choleric Man” (played by Philip Harries), the owner of
the horse that the Doctor rides through the mirror. He threatens whip
his steed for running off, and the Doctor intervenes.
<noscript><iframe width="500" height="281"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Oj9IpD9BM_w?feature=oembed"
frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"
allowfullscreen></noscript> The gowns worn by Sophia Myles in this episode all
have a fine history within the British television and film industry.
Some of her dresses have appeared in, for example, the movies Aristocrats and The Madness of King George. One particular gown (as seem below when Reinette walks the grounds with her consort Catherine, played by Merlin star Angel Coulby)
has the finest pedigree of all, having been first made for the 1982
Fifth Doctor adventure “Black Orchid.” It later appeared on one of the
extras in the video for Annie Lennox‘s song “Walking on Broken Glass.” ‘Black Orchid’ / ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ (Photos: BBC)There were some problems with filming the horse jumping through the mirror,
in that the crew could not bring an actual horse into Ragley Hall,
Alcester (the location of the ballroom scene), and the stunt itself was
initially considered too expensive to film. At first, this caused a
rewrite for Steven Moffat in which he came up with two alternatives; the
Doctor mounting the horse and being thrown off, thereby falling through
the mirror (rejected for undermining the Doctor’s heroic moment of
self-sacrifice) and the Doctor smashing through the glass on his own,
while the horse wanders off. Neither seemed satisfactory, so in the end,
in order to make the horse jump happen, all the separate elements of
the stunt—the horse, the mirror breaking and the background—were filmed
in isolation and then edited together, with David Tennant’s head being
digitally jammed onto that of a stunt rider.
<noscript><iframe width="500" height="281"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I23kzao3EnQ?feature=oembed"
frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"
allowfullscreen></noscript> The Doctor’s parting shot to the androids is “It’s
over. Accept that. I’m not winding you up”—an excellent pun, based on
the clockwork nature of his adversaries and the British slang term
“wind-up,” meaning a deception or a trick. “I’m not winding you up” in
this context means both “I refuse to recoil your spring” and “I’m not
kidding.” Other rejected script ideas include a script rewrite
that saw Reinette and the Doctor meet out of sequence, as would later
happen with River Song. She would remember having met him at her convent
school, and he would go there after the TARDIS leaves the spaceship
that bears her name. This idea came from Audrey Niffenegger‘s novel The Time-Traveler’s Wife,
in which a man gifted with the power of time travel meets a woman and
falls in love, but their various liaisons are chronologically out of
synch. There was a second plot thread in which the androids were first
attracted to Reinette’s mind by the Doctor scanning it. Rose then offers
her a gem that would erase the Doctor from her memory, leaving her
safe, but she refuses, as she couldn’t bear to forget him.
<noscript><iframe width="500" height="281"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3ao9-22T3d0?feature=oembed"
frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"
allowfullscreen></noscript> One thing to look out for is the decoration in the
room in which Reinette has placed the fireplace for her home. When she’s
alive and the fire is lit, the room is bathed with a yellow glow and
the panels look white and sky blue. After she dies and the room is dark,
those blue panels take on a darker hue, and the whole wall starts to
resemble the front of the TARDIS. Reinette must have come to appreciate
the significance of blue and white squares from her reading of the
Doctor’s memories.
