Story #170 - School Reunion (2006)

Sarah -
I'm not really the sort of person who cries a lot while watching Doctor Who, but I have to admit that "School Reunion" makes me cry every time. Every damn time. It's definitely my favorite story in Series 2 and one of my favorites of the entire Tennant era. I also have to admit that I watched it three times for this discussion.


Harry -
This is one of my most-watched stories of New Who. I'm always eager to watch it again, knowing full well I'll be blobbing like an idiot throughout.


Sarah -
Bringing back Elisabeth Sladen was a brilliant move by RTD. She connects the current series to the show's past and gives us (and Rose) a picture of what it's like to be a former companion.


Harry -
Definitely some sparks between the two ladies early on, but the friction turns to friendship as each soon realizes that the other has enjoyed the same opportunity to travel with the Doctor, see the universe and discover his amusing personal quirks. It’s not about rivalry, it’s about appreciating the experiences.


Sarah -
Once again, RTD pitched it just right. Many first-time viewers would have had no idea who Sarah Jane was or why she was important to the Doctor. While we were losing our minds, newbies were learning that there had been other Doctors and companions before the Ninth Doctor and Rose. No need for a continuity dump when you’re telling the story of a relationship.


Harry -
This is certainly "The Sarah Jane Episode", but it's got so much more going for it. There's K-9, there's Anthony Head, and there’s the Krillitane, the newest monsters of the RTD era.

Toby Whithouse wrote an absolutely cracking story. From the cold open, the Headmaster brings a cold menace to the school where the action takes place. I know you have had a special appreciation for Mr. Head for some time. When we first see him, he encounters a female student waiting for the school nurse. He remembers that she is an orphan, and despite her being a "thin child", he invites her into his office. Behind the closed door, the first of many horrors takes place.


Sarah -
That’s the coldest cold open of all. “No one to miss you?” It’s just heartbreaking.

I remember giving a little cheer on first broadcast when Tony Head turned up in Doctor Who and my two favorite fandoms collided! He’s wonderfully alien and properly scary.


Harry -
As the Krillitane leader he gives coldness a whole new meaning.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rose have infiltrated the school, based on intelligence provided by Mickey who has used his newfound computer skills to detect strange, alien-like activity there.


Sarah -
Go Mickey! This is a great story for Mickey and he deserved it after all the abuse he put up with in series one.


Harry -
Definitely good to see Mickey, even though he gets relegated to "tin dog" status in the cruel circle of RTD's character relationships.


Sarah -
There is that, but in the end he saves the day by getting Kenny and the rest of the kids out of the school. Never underestimate the tin dog! (Even if he can’t find a way to hack into Torchwood’s database.)


Harry -
In addition to Team TARDIS's activity, a local journalist has also arrived. She noticed a spike in performances at the school just three months after this new headmaster took over. She’s there to interview him for a profile, and he clearly couldn’t be more delighted with himself. Ha!


Sarah -
Do you remember your reaction when she turned up? I shouted something incomprehensible and then tried to explain to Mr. Smith, while being barely able to think straight. I didn’t know Lis would be coming back and had to pause the episode to compose myself.

The look on the Doctor’s face when he sees Sarah Jane for the first time rips my heart out and starts the waterworks. She, of course, has no idea who this awkward teacher, who introduces himself as John Smith, is -- so timey-wimey. “John Smith. I used to have a friend who sometimes went by that name.”


Harry -
Back in ancient times (aka 2006 and Season Two), I seem to recall that American broadcasts cut out the "Next Time" trailers for some insane reason. We did get them with the Canadian broadcasts, so I was aware of Lis Sladen's coming appearance. Still, the Doctor's wide eyed, fumbling hello was perfect. I was squeeing all out.

All of these threads - Team TARDIS, Sarah Jane, and the Krillitane - will converge long after the home bell, when darkness has set in and the real investigating begins.


Sarah -
The Doctor, Mickey, and Rose show up at school, as does our intrepid reporter. When Sarah ducks into a storage room, she finds herself facing the TARDIS and backs out of the room -- only to find herself facing the Doctor. Cue the tears, again!


Harry -
"Hello Sarah Jane."

Total waterworks.

Their reunion could not have been written or acted any better. This was still the early days of New Who and seeing classic monsters and classic characters return was cause for massive excitement. None was more exciting than seeing our beloved Sarah Jane once again.

And she gave him shit right away, haha! Knucklehead dropped her off in Aberdeen. That must have been an awkward train ride home, with tennis racket in one hand and owl doll in the other.


Sarah -
He’ll be apologizing for that for several regenerations.


Harry -
More importantly, she waited for him but he never reappeared, which is heartbreaking.


Sarah -
This is the one thing about the story that bothers me. I don’t imagine Sarah Jane sitting around, wasting her life, waiting for the Doctor to show up again. That’s not the Sarah Jane we know. In my head cannon, she’s been fighting the good fight ever since and this conversation is her chance to give the Doctor some hell for not coming back for her.


Harry -
Yeah, I doubt she spent 30 years pining. She definitely moved on, as demonstrated by her polite refusal when invited aboard the TARDIS again.


Sarah -
That’s our Sarah! Don’t you kind of wish the Doctor had introduced her to Rose with, “Have you met Miss Smith? She’s my best friend.”


Harry -
It's no wonder the school drew the attention of our friends. Not only have the students been exhibiting superhuman computer skills, but it turns out their teachers are giant bat-like aliens who sleep there at night, hanging from the ceiling of the headmaster's office. Creepy!


Sarah -
I love the bat-teachers. That’s proper behind-the-sofa stuff! (This also reminds me why we chose to not watch Doctor Who with the kids when they were so young. In 2006 they were being fed a steady diet of much-less-scary Tom Baker stories.)


Harry -
The Doctor figures out that the cafeteria chips have been affecting the students, and he wants to perform an analysis on the oil in the deep fryers. Sarah Jane has just the tool for that: K-9! 

Only, K-9 has become a little worse for wear over the years. The Doctor takes some time to give his old friend a tune up, before he's ready for action. It was great to hear John Leeson's voice again.


Sarah -
The Doctor looks like a kid on Christmas morning when he sees K-9. Watching it this time, I thought his defense of K-9 to Mickey and Rose sounded a lot like old school Whovians defending dodgy monsters and wobbly sets.


Harry -
It's the first and only time I've ever heard "that's so disco" used as an insult. Oy!


Sarah -
I would totally take that as a compliment!


Harry -
For all these reunions, the story becomes a veritable super-friends episode with almost a half-dozen goodies assembled to deal with the Krillitane. The plot is pretty bog standard. Aliens arrive on Earth, looking to harness a local resource for their own benefit, laying waste to the planet without a care before they move on. The Doctor will have none of it, and his confrontation with the headmaster is one of the best scenes of the story, each one daring the other to cross a line.


Sarah -
The standoff at the swimming pool is spectacular. Tennant and Head are perfect as they face each other down. In the end Team TARDIS saves the day when K-9 blows up the school and himself.


Harry -
What a damn good shooty dog thing. Best doggie in the universe!


Sarah -
The kids celebrate while Sarah mourns the loss of her tin dog.


Harry -
...until the Doctor rolls out another model. I've always wondered how he managed to keep replacing K-9 after each departure. I guess he zips back in the TARDIS to that far future space colony to pick up and reboot a new model.


Sarah -
Or does he have a whole storeroom filled with boxed K-9 kits that he completely forgot about over the past few centuries? 

We’ve touched on the conflict between Sarah and Rose, but I really think that scene is the heart of the story. Series one made it possible to view the Doctor and Rose as either traveling companions or a couple. Series two is just shy of full-out shipping.


Harry -
The shipping is only going to get worse. We should think about restocking the drinks cabinet.


Sarah -
Please don’t remind me. This is going to be rough. More than once, Rose has declared her intention of being with the Doctor forever, while not really understanding what that means. 

Meeting Sarah Jane brings this fantasy crashing down. She starts out being jealous and hostile to Sarah, but they both get over that and realize that they’ve got more in common than they wanted to admit. I love their final scene together:

ROSE: What do I do? Do I stay with him? 
SARAH: Yes. Some things are worth getting your heart broken for. Find me, if you need to, one day. Find me.

It’s a pity Rose wouldn’t be able to find Sarah after leaving the TARDIS. Rose could have benefited from a strong mentor to get her through the loss.


Harry -
For now, Rose has the Doctor... and Mickey! He's decided to come aboard and join the TARDIS crew.

I said at the start that this is one of my most-rewatched Who stories, and it will always rank highly. Not so much for the story, but for the array of actors who came together at this moment in time. Everyone gave a tremendous performance.

It was wonderful to see Lis Sladen back in action, and to hear John Leeson's voice, and even better that their return spawned another spinoff in The Sarah Jane Adventures.


Sarah -
Maybe we can add that to our list of things to watch when our marathon inevitably catches up to the current series. I haven’t seen all of the episodes and it would be wonderful to catch up with our dear Sarah Jane. 

Until then, let’s set off to 18th century Versailles, shall we?


Harry -
Mais oui!


Sarah -
Best Line: This one goes to Mickey -- “Ho, ho, mate. The missus and the ex. Welcome to every man's worst nightmare.”

Favorite Moment: The Doctor coming into the room when Sarah and Rose are laughing about him.

Lasting Image: The look on Sarah’s face when she sees the TARDIS.

9/10


Harry -
Best Line: "Affirmative!" I love K-9's enthusiastic reply when the Headmaster calls him a "bad dog."

Favourite Moment: Sarah Jane's reunion with the Doctor.

Lasting Image: The Doctor's farewell hug with Sarah.

9/10

Our marathon continues with Story #171: The Girl in the Fireplace...

Story #169 - Tooth and Claw (2006)

Sarah - 
What a relief! After "New Earth", I was worried that my recollections of all of the series two stories would be wrong. I enjoyed "Tooth and Claw" just as much as I remembered.


Harry -
Hopefully we can write off "New Earth" as an isolated clunker. One thing I appreciate about our marathon re-viewing of every Doctor Who story ever is that we are now over a decade removed from the beginning of the David Tennant era. Back then, I'm sure we loved every story because there was nothing else to compare them to.   We really, really wanted to love them and make sure everyone else in the world loved them so the show could go on. Today we have over a decade's worth of New Who canon that enables us to give these stories a more comparative review.

All that to say, I still really like "Tooth and Claw"!

How could I not? It's got the Doctor and Rose having fun, it's got Scottish Officers and Gentlemen, it's got a terrifying monster, and it's got one of my own personal squees, a Victorian setting and Queen Victoria herself. PERMISSION TO SQUEEEEE?!?!


Sarah -
Squee away! My happy thing was the fact that Victoria is played by the lovely Pauline Collins, "the companion who almost was" when she portrayed Samantha in "The Faceless Ones". Unfortunately for us, she turned down the offer of becoming a companion upon the departures of Polly and Ben. Outside of Doctor Who, Collins will always have a place in my heart for her portrayal of Sarah on Upstairs, Downstairs. She makes a smashing Victoria.


Harry -
She's also one of the first people to have appeared in both classic and new Who. She was beaten to that honour by only Nisha Nayar, who played the female programmer on Satellite 5 in "Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways". Previous to that, Nayar was a Red Kang. Red Kangs are best!


Sarah -
Red Kangs are always the best! I love Victoria’s first meeting with the Doctor and Rose, especially when he introduces himself as Doctor James McCrimmon. My heart melts!


Harry -
Tennant got to use his natural accent for a couple of scenes.


Sarah -
I’m still sad that he was made to use an English accent for the series.


Harry -
Very glad the same decision was not made by (or for) Peter Capaldi.


Sarah -
The horror! I don't even want to contemplate that. I like that the story makes use of the false accent, giving us the moment when his accent slips back to English, which the Queen catches immediately. She never fully trusts the Doctor after that.


Harry -
The Doctor botched the TARDIS landing by a hundred years, but it was worth it to meet the Queen! They could always try for that Ian Dury concert some other time. I wonder if RTD had a personal connection to that particular concert in 1979. He would have been 16 years old at the time. Look at me being all Toby in this review!


Sarah -
Watch out, Toby! 

Speaking of Dury, my daughter and I just heard "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" on the radio the other day. She was enchanted and wanted to know more about him. This story was perfect timing.


Harry -
The Queen is travelling via coach to Balmoral because the railway was blocked by a fallen tree. Her party is en route to the manor house of Sir Robert MacLeish to stay for the night. The Queen finds Rose and the Doctor a curious pair, and invites them along.

Now, in the cold opener of "Tooth and Claw", we saw strange happenings going on at the MacLeish estate. The place has been invaded by a group of monks who used martial arts to subdue the staff and lock them away with a wheeled cage. Inside the cage sits a strange figure who terrifies everyone.


Sarah -
What’s your take on the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" monks? I find it a bit silly and I’m not sure we’re ever given an explanation for their kung fu skills. We don’t even see much of them after the cold open.


Harry -
The kung fu monks -- who turned from God to worship the wolf -- felt very out of place in a setting like Scotland. The purpose of their martial arts proficiency seemed to be to give director Euros Lyn the opportunity to film a stylish action scene.


Sarah -
I guess there is that.


Harry -
Sir Robert attempts to dissuade the royal party from entering his home, but the Queen does not hesitate and leads the TARDIS team inside. I was initially amused by their "we are not amused" wager, but I thought RTD overplayed the gag, as he did with Harriet Jones in "The Christmas Invasion".


Sarah -
That got really old really fast. I often find the Doctor and Rose irritating, but in Tooth and Claw they're not as annoying as they can be. Fortunately, the story gives both of them the opportunity to rise above their childish behavior.


Harry -
The wager could have been wrapped up during the scene when they were looking at the large telescope built by Sir Robert's father, but no.


Sarah -
While the Doctor dines with Sir Robert and The Queen, Rose is abducted and chained up with Lady Isobel, Sir Robert’s wife, and the household staff in the cellar, facing down a monk in the wheeled cage. Rose is the only one brave enough to address the monk, asking why they should be afraid when he’s the one in a cage. The monk reveals that he is possessed by an alien presence and plans to infect Victoria, creating the Empire of the Wolf...and then he begins to transform into a wolf. Always quick on her feet, Rose comes up with a plan to get everyone out of the cellar.


Harry -
Rose rallies everyone to pull down the chain that everyone is shackled to, just as the Doctor arrives. As everyone flees, he pauses to admire the beauty of the creature before legging it himself.


Sarah -
I laughed at Rose’s “Where have you been?” when the Doctor finally showed up. It sounded so much like a Jackie line.


Harry -
This story has always stood out for me because of the monster. The werewolf is unlike so many of the slow-shambling, easily-outwitted monsters of the Whoniverse. This beast is purely savage and cannot be reasoned with. At no moment in the story does it show any mercy to its victims, or show any sign of reasoning. Neither the Doctor nor anybody else can talk sense to it. It wants to kill, simple as that, and that is truly terrifying.


Sarah -
It wants the queen and nothing else matters. The scenes of the wolf rampaging through the house are genuinely scary.


Harry -
Faithful to the wolf, the monks attempt to seize the queen. Having been the target of multiple assassination attempts over the course of her reign, she is prepared to defend herself. Cornered by the monks' leader, she calmly draws a pistol from her purse and shoots him. Good on ya, yer majesty!


Sarah -
No messing with this queen, Wolfie.


Harry -
Pauline Collins delivered a very steely portrayal of the monarch. Not once does she flinch or show distress as a chase around the manor ensues. 

The wolf terrorizes everyone, picking off residents of the house and trapping the Queen in the library with the Doctor, Rose and Sir Robert. What a fortuitous place to get cornered. "You want weapons," the Doctor asks, "We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have."


Sarah -
The Doctor has never spoken a truer truth.


Harry -
Having discovered that the library was lined with oil of mistletoe, a natural repellant to wolves, the Doctor suspects that Sir Robert's father knew about the threat and prepared the house for this eventual assault. His mind begins to whir.


Sarah -
The Doctor licking the mistletoe-oiled walls was brilliant. Tennant is at his best when he’s in his all-out Doctor mode.


Harry -
Unlike his "throw everything together to produce a miracle cure" solution in "New Earth", here he does some genuine deduction to formulate a plan.


Sarah -
He even gets in a pointed dig at Sir Robert, “Your father got all the brains, didn’t he?” Poor doomed Sir Robert. 

They escape from the room, only to encounter the wolf again. Fortunately, Lady Isobel is there to save the day. Having noticed that the monks are wearing mistletoe wreaths, she and her maid boil mistletoe in water, which they throw at the beast. She and Sir Robert have a touching moment before she and the maids head back to the kitchen and the rest of the crew head to the observatory. This will be the last time Lady Isobel and Sir Robert are together, as he sacrifices himself to buy time for the Queen to escape.

Earlier in the story, the Doctor had wondered about the telescope that wasn’t a proper telescope. This is where things get a little shaky, as it turns out Sir Robert’s father and Prince Albert designed the telescope as a trap for the wolf -- and the missing piece is the huge diamond the Queen is carrying in her bag. (Finally, we know what the queens are carrying in their purses!)


Harry -
Diamonds and pistols!


Sarah -
They're a queen's best friends! The diamond is fitted and the wolf, which has been terrorizing the area for 300 years is vanquished. It returns to human form and the poor boy who had been possessed asked to be released. The infection of the wolf has been eliminated without passing itself onto the Queen...or has it? The Doctor notices blood on Victoria’s wrist and is concerned she may have been bitten. She brushes it off as having been caused by a splinter from the door. 

The next morning they are dubbed Sir Doctor of TARDIS and Dame Rose of the Powell Estate -- and then promptly banished from the Empire. Really, its surprising it hasn’t happened before now. Having gotten Victoria to say, “I am not amused,” the Doctor and Rose saunter back to the TARDIS, speculating on the royal family’s status as werewolves.


Harry -
Entirely plausible in the Whoniverse.


Sarah -
It really would explain a lot. Meanwhile, Victoria has her own plans. When Lady Isobel says she will no longer live at the Torchwood Estate, the Queen declares that she will charter the Torchwood Institute, which will research and fight enemies of the Empire, including the Doctor. Should he return, Torchwood will be waiting.


Harry -
I'm surprised there haven't been any series of written or audio stories about Torchwood in the Victorian era. I would buy!


Sarah -
Coming from Big Finish in 2019, no doubt. And we will continue to give them all our money.


Harry -
Well, overall this was a merrie historical romp and a true chiller. Pauline Collins was the star, and she will even return for a quiet cameo as the Queen in the Capaldi era.


Sarah -
And we will all cheer!


Harry -
The wolf was the best new monsters in a long while, probably helped by the fact that it remained a one off and hasn't been hauled back for increasingly-weaker return engagements. 

Sarah, I literally want to stop typing right now so we can get to the next story!


Sarah -
I have been waiting for this moment since we started this project. Let's go see a dear old friend! 

Best Line: The Doctor to Sir Robert on the presence of the monks in his house: “They were bald, athletic, your wife was away. I thought you were happy.”

Favorite Moment: The Doctor extolling the virtues of the library.

Lasting Image: The rampaging wolf.

7/10


Harry -
Best Line: the Doctor's ode to books.

Favourite Moment: the Queen calmly shoots her would-be captor.

Lasting Image: Pauline Collins as Queen Victoria of course!

8/10

Our marathon continues with Story #170: School Reunion...

Story #168 - New Earth (2006)

Harry -
"So where we going?"

"Further than we've ever gone before."

...and the TARDIS lands on a futuristic, Earth-like planet. It's the year 5,000,000,023 and this is New Earth, built in a rush of nostalgia after the original was burnt to ashes by the sun. It's not a bad knock off. The grass smells like apples, but the architecture is familiar. This chill opening scene lasts long enough for the Doctor and Rose to sprawl out and watch flying cars pass overhead. Then the psychic paper acts up, with a message telling the Doctor that someone in a nearby hospital would like to see him.


Sarah -
The first visit to an alien planet in NuWho! I hadn't thought about how Earth-bound Series 1 is until I read this factoid. The alien planet, of course, is New Earth, so maybe it's not quite a proper alien planet. 

It's also David Tennant's first full episode and he finally has the opportunity to do all the Doctory things he had probably been practicing for the previous thirty years. On a side note, doesn’t Tennant look impossibly young? He’s a baby Doctor here!


Harry -
And he delivers some familiar lines right away. His very first "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." as well as his very first "I'm the Doctor." We'll be hearing those again throughout this era.


Sarah -
New Earth is one of the episodes in Series 2 that I was especially looking forward to watching again. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my memories of the story.


Harry -
This story helped get me over my initial bad reaction to the Tenth Doctor. It was great that he was way more chill here.

It's a curious start to season two, in that "New Earth" is billed as a sequel to "The End of the World".


Sarah -
Which we’re reminded of when Rose mentions the events of “The End of the World” as their first date. Oh, ick. This is going to be a long season, Old Boy.


Harry -
Yes, it's the era of the Doctor having a girlfriend. Some folks love it, others don't and I'm sure we are both among the latter. 

Rather than a sequel, I found "New Earth" to be more or less a repeat of "The End of the World". The Doctor takes Rose deep into the future to see the Earth as never imagined. We meet some new aliens, in this case a curious group of patients in hospital ward 26 and their caregivers, the Sisters of Plenitude. The Doctor will rage at their moral crimes later in the story, but the first villain to be revealed, almost immediately, is once again Cassandra, the "last human" from "The End of the World". It's all very samey.


Sarah -
I remember being amused by the return of Cassandra when this first aired. This time, I found her much less charming.


Harry -
I forgot how cruel and elitist she was. Back in a new slice of skin, Cassandra has designs on possessing a full human body again, and with the help of her clone servant Chip she lures Rose to her hiding place beneath the hospital. Rose got separated from the Doctor on the ground floor. The Doctor had gone up to ward 26 and Rose hopped in the next available elevator thinking to follow, only hers was programmed to descend. After an amusing disinfectant shower scene, our friends emerge.


Sarah -
The shower scene is memorable. Rose is startled by the spray and starts feeling the walls for an off button. By the end, she’s enjoying the dry-off. The Doctor, meanwhile, takes it all in stride.


Harry -
The Doctor observes several patients who are near death, before finding the Face of Boe having a nap. One of the feline nurses is keeping him company and she shares some legends about her patient with the Doctor: how he has lived hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, waiting to impart his final secret to a lone wanderer. Gee, emotes the Doctor, that could be me!


Sarah -
If anyone should have his disembodied head popped into a tank, it’s the Tenth Doctor -- the Lonely God.


Harry -
Meanwhile, Rose comes face to flesh with Cassandra, and is tricked into stepping through a device that allows Cassandra to take over her body.


Sarah -
Apparently, Billie Piper asked RTD to let her do some comedy after all the heavy drama of Series 1, which leads us to the body swapping. Piper gives a great performance as Cassandra-in-Rose’s-body, but it’s at the expense of Rose. Cassandra playing with Rose’s body (Oh, baby, it's like living inside a bouncy castle!) is really creepy. It feels like Rose is being violated the whole time Cassandra is inside. And don’t even get me started on the kiss.


Harry -
"Goodbye trampoline and hello blondie!" Cassandra's swap into the body of a "chav" was played for humour, but it was another example of her selfishly exploiting people to satisfy her own ego and self-image. She meets up with the Doctor, who has discovered that the previously incurable patients are experiencing miraculous recoveries. They go down to the intensive care unit deep below the hospital. There, they discover thousands of pods containing infected human bodies -- test subjects for the Sisters of Plenitude. "Lab rats," the Doctor fumes, disgusted to learn that the miracle cures upstairs are coming at the expense of so many human lives. 

There's a lot of rampant misuse of human bodies in this story, whether it's the hospital creating and destroying lives on a mass scale, to Cassandra kidnapping someone else's body. 


Sarah -
The nurse’s decision to incinerate the conscious human in the pod is horrifying. The pod people are terrifying, but the nurses deserve everything that happens to them.


Harry -
Based on her behaviour at the pods, the Doctor sees that something is wrong with Rose.


Sarah -
I love the moment when the Doctor confronts the cat nurses about what has happened to Rose. Up until then, he’s played along with Cassandra’s game, not knowing with whom he’s dealing. He catches her out because Rose would have cared about the humans in the pods.


Harry -
Cassandra fesses up, and shoots over into his body. Cue another comedic body swap.


Sarah -
The body swapping got old really, really fast.


Harry -
This time, Tennant gets to play Cassandra for laughs. While that's going on, the pod people break loose and begin a zombie-like rampage, killing anyone with their touch. It got a bit tedious as our heroes fled for safety and Cassandra kept jumping between Rose and the Doctor's bodies.


Sarah -
SO tedious and overindulgent. Yes, we get it, they’re talented actors. Move the story along, already.


Harry -
It got worse when the Doctor realized that just by mixing all the different kinds of medicines together, he would create a miracle cure that would expel all the illnesses from the infected humans. Sure! That's how it works! If they hadn't spent so much time on having Cassandra jumping between bodies, we might have had a more credible solution to the story.


Sarah -
What a crap, hand-wavey solution.


Harry -
Medicines don't work that way, dammit! 

Anyway, everyone's cured, huzzah! The Doctor pops up to see the Face of Boe again. Now awake and seemingly cheerful, the Face tells the Doctor that he will reveal to him a great secret... some other day. Okay then!


Sarah -
What the WHAT? What a fucking pointless story. It can’t seem to decide if it’s a serious story about medical ethics or a wacky body-swapping romp. What a mess.


Harry -
Time to sort out Cassandra. At first, she refuses to back down, but when Chip-of-the-weak-heart-and-short-lifespan collapses, she enters his body to live out her final few minutes. Strangely, the Doctor takes her back in time to a party, at a time before her surgical procedures ran out of control. There, Chip-Cassandra tells Human-Cassandra that she's beautiful -- a final act of self-consumed love before dying. 

I guess because Chip-Cassandra was in a different body, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect did not occur. And so the story ends without a bang, just one more death, and the Doctor and Rose quietly slipping away.


Sarah -
Why, after all she’s done, would the Doctor show mercy towards Cassandra? She’s an absolute monster and doesn’t deserve this moment.  At least the story is mercifully over.


Harry -
Yeah, that was so weak.


Sarah -
Best Line: The Face of Boe: “There are better things to do today. Dying can wait.”

Favorite Moment: The Duke of Manhattan's assistant issuing disclaimers after his every statement. 

Lasting Image: The cat nurses. 

4/10


Harry -
Best Line:
CASSANDRA-ROSE: "You're not exactly Nuns with Guns. You're not even armed." 
NURSE CASP: "Who needs arms when we have claws?" 

Favourite Moment: the disinfectant showers.

Lasting Image: Rose and the Doctor gazing at New New New New (etc.) New York.

6/10

Our marathon continues with Story #169: Tooth and Claw...

Story #167 - The Christmas Invasion (2005)

Harry -
"Did you miss me?"

We hardly had the time to miss the Doctor, as our marathon took us straight from "The Parting of the Ways" to the Children in Need Doctor Who Special, first broadcast in November, 2005. The brief episode shows Rose reacting to the newly regenerated Doctor as he bounces around the TARDIS console. I don't remember ever seeing this, but it's been so long and the scene is so short there's not much to remember. It was a sweet little scene though, wasn't it?

Sarah -
It's a nice fill-in between "The Parting of the Ways" and "The Christmas Invasion". I only saw the special for the first time a few years ago. It always felt like something was missing from the beginning of "The Christmas Invasion", and apparently there was!


Harry -
No sooner has the Doctor convinced Rose that he's still the Doctor, and no sooner has Rose agreed to stay aboard the TARDIS, than the newly regenerated Time Lord lurches over in pain and his ship spins out of control. Returning to Earth, it ricochets off a couple of buildings at the Powell Estate before landing with a thud before Jackie and Mickey, who came running at the familiar TARDIS sound.


Sarah -
Would that be the Jackie and Mickey who SAVED THE DAY when the Doctor needed them most? The kind and lovely people who put their own feelings aside to help Rose save the Doctor? That Jackie and Mickey? Hell Yeah!


Harry -
Still dressed in his leather and blacks, the Doctor stumbles out the door and collapses. There's confusion all around before Rose informs them that this man is the Doctor. "Doctor who?" Jackie demands. That gag never gets old and I'm sure RTD loved writing it in.


Sarah -
I believe I heard a bit of an eye roll coming from Ms. 15 on the other end of the sofa.


Harry -
And just like that, Rose is back home and it's Christmas Eve. In the spirit of the season, no one brings up her horrendous behaviour the last time the TARDIS dropped her off. Everyone is busy hauling the unconscious Doctor up to Jackie's flat, where he remains bedridden. Echoes of Jon Pertwee's Doctor, post-regeneration. He'll surely be up and fussing about for his shoes in no time, right?


Sarah -
It also made me think of Peter Davison, being carried around in the zero cabinet. Nothing like a regeneration crisis to get things going.


Harry -
This one dragged on as long as the Fifth Doctor's did, minus the do-it-yourself casket.


Sarah -
Who needs a zero cabinet when you have Jackie’s beau Howard’s bathrobe and jim-jams?


Harry -
The Doctor being out of service left Rose, Jackie and Mickey to face a barrage of violent threats from a band of homicidal Father Christmases and a killer Christmas tree. Some residual regeneration energy emitted by the Doctor got picked up by aliens, who sent probably the least subtle scouting mission ever to check it out. The Doctor awakens long enough to shoo the "pilot fish" away, but he warns his friends that something far more dangerous is coming. Then he conks out again.


Sarah -
The killer Santas and deadly Christmas tree are two of my favorite things in this story. They’re both so wonderfully creepy. Jackie shouting, “I’m gonna get killed by a Christmas tree!” makes me laugh every time.

Jackie has a lot to do in this story and has some nice moments, but the Doctor still manages to be a jerk to her. When he’s suffering from a neuron implosion and ends up stuttering, “I need” over and over, Jackie offers various suggestions of things he might need. The Doctor concludes with, “I need you to shut up.” Jackie is unfazed -- “Oh, he hasn't changed that much, has he?” 

Back to bed for the Doctor and Mickey wastes no time in searching for more information about pilot fish. He and Rose figure out quickly that something much larger is on its way. Meanwhile, the TV news is covering the Guinevere One space probe, which is just about to broadcast the first-ever images of Mars.


Harry -
It's the first-ever glimpse of an alien race, and they don't seem friendly. No one knows what to do, but have no fear: Harriet Jones, Prime Minister is on top of it!


Sarah -
Go Harriet Jones!


Harry -
It was no surprise to see the MP for Flydale North elevated to head of government since we last saw her. It was good to see her back in charge, and even better to see her at UNIT HQ, located in the Tower of London.


Sarah -
UNIT in the Tower! Twelve years on, it still gives me chills. We saw UNIT members in series one, but this feels like proper UNIT, doesn’t it? And we get our first Torchwood mention.

I could have done without the constant showing her ID card and saying, “Harriet Jones, Prime Minister.” I know it’s a Harriet thing, but it makes her look so incompetent. It just gets embarrassing when everyone replies, “I know” with a pained expression.


Harry -
Unlike the gag of repeatedly finding fruit in Harold's bathrobe, Harriet's gag was overdone.


Sarah -
Her mention of an act of Parliament banning her autobiography, almost makes up for it.


Harry -
Through a sketchy translation, the Sycorax demand that the Earth surrender. Harriet sends a reply, telling them absolutely not, so they respond with a startling act of hostility -- taking over the minds of one-third the planet's population, and forcing them to the closest rooftops. There, they pause. Unless the alien demand is met, they will be sent to their deaths. There was a lot of bluster going on here, some unintentionally amusing like the translated line "Sycorax strong, Sycorax mighty, Sycorax rock, as in the modern sense, they rock."


Sarah -
The sight of all the affected people tromping out of their houses and onto roofs, while being followed by their pleading relatives is one of the most terrifying moments in Doctor Who for me. It’s bad enough watching this one group, let alone imagining it happening all over the world! It turns out everyone with A+ blood has been affected because that’s the blood type included on the probe. The horror!


Harry -
With one-third of the planet's population standing literally on the brink of death, Harriet broadcasts an emergency message pleading for help from the Doctor. But there is no sign of him as the Sycorax ship arrives over London. Although it was massive in size, it looked like crap. Literally, it was a pale brown lump that looked like a week-old dog turd.


Sarah -
Ha! It totally does!


Harry -
Rose, Jackie and Mickey drag the Doctor to the TARDIS, as Rose believes it's the only safe place they can hide. 

More bluster from the Sycorax, as they identify Harriet as the individual who speaks for the planet. She, an aide, the UNIT commander and the head of the Guinevere program are beamed aboard the alien ship and the latter two are immediately killed. The Sycorax then pick up sounds coming from the TARDIS -- alien technology -- and they beam it aboard as well... just as Rose steps outside.


Sarah -
Unfortunately, Jackie is left behind. Again.


Harry -
Bluster bluster bluster from the Sycorax leader! As we'll soon see, this race are great at putting on a show and scaring the pants off of people, but in the end, they are just bullies and cowards.


Sarah -
And suddenly, in the middle of the bluster, Rose realizes she can understand the Sycorax. The Doctor is awake, thanks to the power of tea! Rule, Britannia! There’s nothing a cuppa can’t solve!

And, now, 40 minutes into the episode, we get our first real glimpse of the Tenth Doctor. It starts off so well, doesn’t it?


Harry -
And now, a confession. I hated this Doctor! At first, in December 2005 anyway. He stepped out of the TARDIS and was so silly and clownish that my reaction was "I don't like it! Change it back!". The transition from Eccleston's cool brashness to Tennant's bouncy energy was jarring and he took some getting used to.

By "New Earth", I was used to him.


Sarah -
Look at you, a proper grumpy old fan! 

Coming to terms with being rude and not ginger, the Doctor takes control of the situation, challenging the Sycorax leader to a duel for the planet. With the help of a satsuma in Howard’s dressing gown, the Doctor wins the duel and saves the day.


Harry -
This was a great action sequence and once and for all ripped the façade of ferocity from the Sycorax for good. If their leader couldn't outduel a Time Lord who just came out of a regeneration coma, on his own ship, surrounded by hundreds of his own, then what good was he?


Sarah -
Not good for much, it seems. The Doctor loses a hand along the way, but it’s early enough in the regeneration process that he grows a new one. Watching this for the first time, I loved this moment. Now, it just makes me angry about what’s to come. But that’s a discussion for another day...


Harry -
I was probably as overwhelmed as the Sycorax leader by Tennant's opening performance. Anyway.


Sarah -
It's a wee bit expansive, isn't it?

Back on the Powell Estate, everyone is happy and the Doctor even has a hug for Jackie. Harriet asks if there are more aliens out there, and the Doctor explains that Earth is starting to draw attention to itself and more aliens can be expected. She reluctantly gives the order for Torchwood (remember the time when we didn’t know what that meant?) to fire and five beams converge, destroying the Sycorax ship. The Doctor, having made an agreement with Sycorax, is livid -- “I gave them the wrong warning. I should've told them to run as fast as they can, run and hide because the monsters are coming. The human race.”

Oh, Harriet. What have you done?


Harry -
In a surprise heel turn, Harriet proves herself the biggest bully of them all. In destroying the ship, she draws the Doctor's ire and we get our first flash of this new incarnation's rage. But he quickly cools down and proceeds to knock the prime minister off her perch with those six memorable words.


Sarah -
“Don’t you think she looks tired?” While I understand and agree with the Doctor's anger, I have to say this line really bothered me. Does anyone ever say a male politician looks tired? And if they did, would anyone care? I was back on #TeamHarriet by the end of that scene.


Harry -
I think it's one of those British sayings that rivals trot out when they are politically intriguing against each other. Could be wrong.

Remember back in Victorian Cardiff, when the Doctor told Rose he doesn't do Christmases? Hah! He joins Rose's gang for dinner at the first opportunity. Perhaps it was his way of showing thanks, appreciation and respect for the people who support his friend, even though he can treat them like mud.


Sarah -
Or he's just killing time before whisking Rose away again.


Harry -
So! Here's our new Doctor. He's had a rummage through the TARDIS wardrobe and picked out a very Doctory set of threads, probably the most iconic look of the new era.


Sarah -
There's nothing I love more than a good TARDIS wardrobe scene!


Harry -
I already described my initial reaction to him, and I'm glad it was short-lived. I got used to his "hyper cutie" style soon enough, as we move past the post-regeneration drama. Out of all of New Who, the Tennant era is the one that I have rewatched the most, especially as the DVD sets started rolling out. There are things I remember fondly, and things that make me cringe just thinking about them. I'm interested to see what our take will be as we watch it again together.


Sarah -
I'm interested to see how I end up feeling about this era by the end of our rewatch. From this vantage, I remember all the things that pissed me off much more vividly than the things I liked. We'll see if the balance shifts in the coming months.


Harry -
Shall we strike out for New Earth?


Sarah -
Let's!


Harry -
Best line: 
Another good one from Mickey: "Tea. Like we're having a picnic while the world comes to an end. Very British."

Favourite moment: the Doctor references Arthur Dent.

Lasting image: the swordfight.

7/10


Sarah -
Best line: "Ah, not bad for a man in his jim-jams." 

Favorite Moment: Rose realizes she can understand the Sycorax, which means the Doctor is awake.

Lasting Image: The killer Father Christmases.

6/10

Our marathon continues with Story #168: New Earth...