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.
Bluray actually helps this one cos there's some nice location filming.
Again good direction and action, good characters and good performances, high production values (the cgi werewolf is very good.) The monk-y kung fu stuff is reminiscent of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Kill Bill or AbFab or something. (So what?)
But the script is tedious. Somehow werewolves are both activated by moonlight and repelled by belief in holly but destroyed by shining concentrated moonlight through a telescope and a whacking great diamond (the world famous Ko-i-noor which Queen Victoria conveniently just happens to have about her person for some reason...)
There's an underused hint of a back story but it isn't used in the plot.
The rest of the story is escape/fight/escape/fight/escape some more... That's pretty much it.
There's mention of Torchwood and almost a call-back to bad wolf (but not quite...)
This is a vehicle for a new Doctor and it isn't great. Tennant himself is good but the plot and the story are a bit ho hum.
Dramatically it struggles. Performances are unconvincing.
The plot is just silly. Killer Xmas trees, "pilot fish", "blood" control, this new hand is a fightin' hand, the marauding bunch of aliens who just follow on from the 'pilot fish' Santas and just give in after a bit of swordfighting on the patio of their giant spaceship.
The end is reminiscent of Thatcher and the possibly/probably retreating ship ARA General Belgrano in the 1982 Falklands War. (Link here)
Whatever its dramatic merits the climax cuts right across the rest of the piece, tonally.
