Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways
review

Holistic Review: Some troublesome plot holes mar a story that is otherwise alternately fun and very tense, with some great emotional moments.

Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways are the first pair of episodes that I don't have as much difficulty separating in my mind. As the latter title was the first to be announced, I still sort of want to use it as the umbrella title, but the fact is that despite forming a single narrative, the two episodes are quite distinct in terms of both tone and plot. In Bad Wolf, we have a largely amusing (and chilling) riff on reality TV; it's basically Vengeance on Varos meets The Celestial Toymaker. It's overall fun, but there's an undercurrent of menace running throughout (particularly in the Weakest Link segments) which really blossoms in part 2. The Parting of the Ways is permeated by a feeling of dread, which is appropriate given that it's following in a long tradition of stories like Logopolis and The Caves of Androzani. This episode moves along so quickly, and is so engrossing, that I found myself really irritated by the commercial that CBC inserted around the twenty-minute mark. It's full of twists and surprises, with an epic feeling, and so much bedazzlement that even though some aspects of the plot may niggle at the back of your mind, it's easy enough to ignore them and just enjoy the show, as it were.

So here we have the end of an era already, as Christopher Eccleston's time in the TARDIS comes to an end. I'm sad to see him go, because I give him a lot of credit for helping to resurrect Doctor Who so gloriously. He has great moments throughout: his friendly rapport with Lynda, his pledge to Rose ("I'm coming to get you.") and subsequent trickery to get her safely home, and the wonderful emergency-protocol hologram that turns to look at Rose (whoa!) and asks her to "Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life." Sniffle, sniffle! He also gets to save his companion's life at the cost of his own, although - as I will discuss further down - it's not a patch on how this same theme played out in Androzani. I do, however, have a slight problem with the Doctor's character in episode 2, or at least I think I do. The Doctor has a wonderful moral dilemma when he manages to construct a device that will wipe out the whole Dalek fleet, but will also take out all the humans on board Satellite Five - including Jack, Lynda, and all the humans fighting with them - and the entire human population of the Earth. This dilemma, however, is completely resolved when the Daleks kill Jack, Lynda and all the humans fighting with them, and they bomb the continents on Earth to such an extent that they become deformed. There's a vague suggestion that there are still human beings alive on the Earth, but it seems unlikely (the Daleks may well have been referring to the other human colonies) - or if they are, life can hardly be good. So by this point, what does the Doctor have to lose by setting off the weapon? Only his own life, and since he seems to regard it as a necessary sacrifice (and with Tennant waiting in the wings), that doesn't seem to be a stumbling block. But then the Daleks throw up their pièce de résistance: by killing their fleet, the Doctor will become just as terrible a murderer as the Daleks are. So the Doctor elects to be a coward over a killer, and stands aside to let the Daleks do their thing. My acceptance of this hinges entirely on my belief that the Doctor is an angel who cannot bear to bring himself to kill another living being, or at least so many living beings (a dilemma which was raised most strongly in Genesis of the Daleks). While I truly appreciate this sentiment, and I love the idea of the Doctor as a pacifist who always uses words over weapons, I unfortunately don't buy it. The Doctor has never had a problem killing monsters before - to take one of the most relevant counterexamples, see the Vervoids. And in this case, by doing nothing, the Doctor not only condemns the human race to death as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself, he also allows them to be used and manipulated into furthering the Daleks' dreams of universal conquest and makes Jack and Lynda's deaths utterly meaningless. While watching the Doctor sacrifice the human race to defeat the Daleks would have been shocking (and perhaps fitting, for this incarnation, as well as being a suitable end), it's more shocking to watch him give up at the last minute. So although Eccleston gave a thoroughly enjoyable final performance, I'm sorry that this is the way we had to see his Doctor off.

But really, this story belongs to Billie Piper, who demonstrates to us just how very much Rose has grown since the Doctor whisked her away from her London council block. By this point, Rose has really evolved into the perfect companion. For one, she's just about as enthusiastic about time travel as I've always wanted the companions to be. In addition, the Doctor points out that escaping in the TARDIS and leaving humanity to the Daleks "never even occurred to you, did it?" Rose's selflessness is put into even sharper relief when she finds herself stuck in her own time, unable to help the Doctor, and is so determined to return to fight by his side, even though it will almost certainly mean her own death, that she nearly goes out of her mind with frustration. This is especially nice because her frustration is completely understandable - it's easy to see why she would now be utterly bored with the mundane existence of her previous life, and Billie gives a wonderful performance when Rose realizes that the Doctor has duped her, and screams at the TARDIS to take her back while desperately fiddling with buttons. I also really liked the subtle contrast that Davies draws using chips; in The End of the World, Rose saw them as a symbol of home and a reassuring comfort; here, they symbolize the dreary existence of living day-to-day without really making a difference in the world. Rose doesn't view "normality" as reassuring any more; now she sees it as stifling. Billie also gets some great individual scenes; her face-off with the Anne Droid is great, as she goes from confused to amused to horrified to terrified (her delivery of "Reykjavik?" is great). In part 2, she looks very convincingly disgusted as she listens to the Daleks' mad scheme, and she has some wonderful scenes with Jackie, both expressing her frustration about her situation (great delivery on "I didn't mean that!") and, in one of those moments that I always loved in Buffy, the revelation that she met her dad. Her performance at the end is also stunning; she radiates godhood in the way she enunciates her lines, and she packs one simple line ("My head.") with so much emotion and pain. I like the fact that she gets carried away with her newfound powers and does good deed after good deed, with only the Doctor realizing that it might not be in her (or the universe's) best interests. I get the impression that if Rose had known what was going to happen, she would happily have let the power consume her rather than letting the Doctor suffer its effects (although then he really would have suffered from survivor guilt), so although I may not be pleased with how the Doctor was treated in the final scenes, I think they were quite good for Rose.

Amid all this emotion and drama, John Barrowman gets to be the reliable core of the story. Jack is still his usual good-humored, funny self - his scenes with the two droids are great, plus he wins the award for First Companion with On-Screen Nude Scene (only beaten out by Pertwee for the First Regular award). Once he rejoins the Doctor, though, we realize that he's changed too - in the time since he first met the Doctor, he has apparently come to embrace bravery and trust him with his life, and so gets to utter lots of great "I have faith in you, Doctor" type lines. Jack is now willing to do anything the Doctor asks, up to and including putting his own life on the line. Even though I knew Barrowman was coming back for most of next year, it was still a shock to see Jack get shot by the Daleks (although I had to wonder why it took them so long to decide to do so). And poor Jack ends up doing a Tegan, although in his case, at least he has the "they thought I was dead" excuse. His farewell scene with the Doctor and Rose is great, and Barrowman also gets a couple of really funny scenes, first with his not-uneager attitude toward being naked in front of millions of television viewers, and then his retrieval of the compact laser deluxe from areas unseen - it's the sort of thing that should make me roll my eyes and groan, but somehow it works. Maybe it's because it seems relatively true to Jack's character, but I think a lot of it is the way Barrowman plays him.

And then we have our would-be new companion, Lynda Moss, as played by the cute Jo Joyner. She and Eccleston immediately have good chemistry together, and I found myself surprised and excited when he asked her to accompany him out of the Big Brother house, and she then accepted. As soon as she asked if she could travel with him, I found myself really liking her character... and then, of course, came the worry. The nice thing about the season finale is that I was pretty much completely unspoiled on it, with not much idea what was going to happen afterwards, either. So for all I knew, it was perfectly possible that Lynda survived the episode and joined the crew next season; but, knowing Doctor Who, it was rather more likely that I had been set up to like a character who was about to buy the farm. So I spent the next couple of episodes biting my knuckles hoping she would survive. Interestingly, when Rose gets to witness the interaction between Lynda and the Doctor, her clear disapproval actually swayed my opinion a little. I wasn't really sure I wanted Lynda to travel in the TARDIS if she was going to make Rose jealous. I'm kind of surprised I felt that way... I'm all for harmony between companions, but I liked Lynda so much, it's odd that a little frown from Rose would make me change my mind. I lay the blame at the feet of Billie Piper, for making Rose so likeable (even though Lynda, as a sweet little innocent character, is much more my kind of companion). Naturally, the Daleks end up finding Lynda, and my momentary hope when Lynda glanced away from the door (had she found a means of protection?) turned to horror as the other Daleks ascended into view on the other side of the window. It was one of those "why didn't we think of that possibility?" moments. Her (apparent?) death was very distressing and I'm really sorry she didn't get to join the Doctor in his travels - even though I know three companions is usually too many, particularly with an incipient regeneration. As for general Lynda impressions, for some reason she reminded me a bit of Alicia Silverstone - I think it was the smile. And in a lot of ways, she seemed like a substitute Rose (particularly when Rose apparently died and it seemed that Lynda had been groomed to fill her shoes) - particularly the way she dresses (very modern, very non-200,100). Lynda turns out to have the right stuff for a companion, encouraging the Doctor to do whatever it takes to win and volunteering to help him monitor the Dalek positions (although it's a shame she doesn't really help with the prison breakout). Her reaction to the massacre is great, desperately trying to turn off the sounds of people dying en masse as her emotions threaten to overwhelm her. And Lynda would have been such a cool name for a companion. Sigh. Oh well, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that she's been resurrected and will be re-appearing with Jack down the line!

I can't kick off a discussion of the other actors without mentioning how fantastic it is that Davina McCall, Trinny Woodall, Susannah Constantine and especially Anne Robinson agreed to voice android versions of themselves. I think it was brilliant and they're all great sports - and they did a fantastic job! It's got to be more difficult acting the android version of your character, no matter how similar the lines are to what you say every week on your show, but all four of them were great. (I only wish I had actually seen the shows in question, even the American equivalents, aside from one or two episodes of Weakest Link!) Karren Winchester, who plays poor doomed Fitch, is fantastic - she's clearly terrified for her life and is almost singlehandedly responsible for the tension generated during the early moments of the Weakest Link segment. Paterson Joseph also does a nice job as Rodrick, who looks initially like he's going to turn out to be a good guy, only to reveal his true self-preservation colors (and who can blame him, really) and then turn into Mr Bull-Headed Disbeliever who gets all the humans on floor 0 futilely exterminated. Martha Cope is good as the Controller, desperate for the Doctor's help and defiantly turning on her masters (and I like that it was her who brought the Doctor into the situation; that makes much more sense than his enemies having done it). I really grew to like Jo Stone-Fewings as Davitch Pavale (at least, I think that's how it's spelled - he's officially credited, irritatingly, as "Male Programmer"), who rather sweetly tries to win the affections of his female co-worker and seems like quite a nice guy, to boot. (Jack's attempt to flirt with him was very funny indeed!) I was also really sad to see him die, although the moment that his would-be beloved winked at him, Nick observed, "They're gonna die." And, alas, he was right. It's also nice to see Coduri and Clarke again, and both turn in very good performances; Jackie is happy to see her daughter back, but willing to support her even though she's not totally happy about Rose's decision, while Mickey seems to have decided to patch things up with Rose, and comes running right back to her, only to find out that she doesn't consider him worth sticking around for. I particularly liked the look on Coduri's face right after she tells Rose, "It's exactly what he would have done" - you can tell she's remembering Pete, and feeling a little sad about him. It's a sweet moment.

The Daleks are a lot of fun in this story; I don't think they're written quite as well as they were by Rob Shearman, but while the previous adventure showed us in detail just how dangerous one Dalek could be, here we get to see the grand picture of how dangerous a whole fleet of them can be. And I must say, I am so glad that the very early Dalek rumors (that we'd have one 'classic' Dalek in Dalek but redesigned Daleks, including spider-Daleks, in the finale) turned out not to be true. As cool as spider-Daleks probably would have been, I think they work just fine as they are, particularly after their rehabilitation in Dalek. Even though I knew well in advance that there were going to be Daleks in the finale, it was really thrilling watching all the little clues appear. When Rose awoke in their spaceship, the (very cool!) background noise was immediately recognizable (Gray and I both went "Cool!" while the uninitiated in the room looked at each other with bewilderment). Then we had the Dalek-eye-view shot, the really nice distorted Dalek reflection in the wall panel, and the extermination effect. All very thrilling! And it was also quite exciting to see a whole shipful of Daleks ranting evilly, lights flashing everywhere like killer fireflies.

The Dalek menace is conveyed here really well. They seem like unstoppable killing machines, just as they always should have. However, they do get a few rather odd lines at the start of part two, namely "What is the meaning of this negative?" (to which the appropriate response would be, "what part of the word 'no' don't you understand?"), their oddly diplomatic way of trying to persuade the Doctor with "But she will be destroyed!" and the very Buffyesque "But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan." Are Daleks usually this chatty? Then we've got the Emperor, who is a very cool idea executed very well (perhaps his appearance is what inspired the spider-Dalek rumors?). On the negative side, it doesn't talk like a Dalek (too much inflection, I think - it sounds more like Davros) and, after finally giving the Daleks back their ability to be more than just foot soldiers, RTD then largely takes it away again by using the Emperor as the mouthpiece for all of them. However, I still can't find it in me to dislike the Emperor, because it is admittedly a very good character. And, delightfully, for the first time since I don't know when, a Dalek gets to say, "My vision is impaired! I cannot see!"

There are lots of great effects on display here, almost enough to rival The End of the World. The Dalek fleet hanging in space looks both amazing and delightfully retro (I was put in mind of Mars Attacks, which has much the same feel). The Emperor Dalek, as I've mentioned, looks very impressive and huge. All the vortex effects look great, too, from it streaming into Rose's eyes to it undoing the Dalek fleet. Whoever designed the What Not to Wear droids did a great job - they look both futuristic and retro, and overall very cool. I love Zu-Zana's hair and face, in particular. The sets are also great and nicely distinct; the Big Brother house is bright and riotously colorful, What Not to Wear is stark white and brightly lit, and The Weakest Link is, accurately and appropriately, very dark with flashes of blue light; then we've got the dingy Satellite Five with its blue or red lighting, and it's all just very atmospheric and distinct. On the makeup side, I love what they did with the Controller - she looks very pale and eerie, and with the tubes removed, the holes running down both sides of her body looked totally convincing. The only effect I'm not quite thrilled with is Crosbie's disintegration, which I think could have looked more interesting; they've got both side walls to play with, so why use a boring old floor-to-ceiling beam? (I'd criticize her folding away into nothing, rather than being turned to dust, except that since it wasn't an actual disintegration beam, that may have been intentional.) Then there's music. I really like the music in the pre-teaser sequence, which starts out just plain loud and disorienting but is actually foot-tappingly catchy! It was also an excellent choice to set the scenes of the Dalek fleet to a nice operatic score. On the side of sound effects, I'm really really fond of the sound that the flash makes when they take the Doctor's picture. It's so stark and piercing that it really conveys the apparent hopelessness of the situation well... I'm just astonished by how appropriate it is. In fact, it's such a good sound effect that I really wish they'd saved it to use for some fantastic alien weapon!

Directing is just great; Joe Ahearne continues to live up to his high standard. The very first scene, with the camera spinning around a small mirrored cubicle, followed by the Doctor looking bewildered as he stumbles around a flat that assults the senses with loud music and garishly bright decorations, is a masterpiece that pulls the audience right in, particularly since we don't know what on earth is going on either. There's a really beautiful shot toward the end of Rose staring into the heart of the TARDIS as the wind blows her hair back. The only choice he makes that I don't think works is his revelation of "Bad Wolf" written on the asphalt. By the time the camera has gotten to B-A-..., we already know what's coming, so the revelation of the rest is a bit tedious. Then we get a rather nice quick cut to a shot of the whole playground, where we can see it in all its glory. And then... we get a cut to further back... and then another cut to even further back. The only time something like that really works is when we're moving further back to take in the enormity of something (like the Dalek fleet); here, it just makes the "shocking" graffiti get smaller and smaller on screen, and as such I don't know what Ahearne wanted me to feel, aside from maybe "look, here is this message right in the middle of... a city!!!" But that's a lot of blather about a very minor point.

The other part of this episode that I think deserves a fuller discussion is the ending. I've already discussed, at length, my overall dissatisfaction with how Eccleston doesn't regenerate; let's talk about how he does. First of all, it's interesting that the heart of the TARDIS apparently responds to your heart's desire; that explains why Blaine turned into an egg (she really did want to be given a chance to start over) and Rose doesn't (her wish is to return to save the Doctor). This may also be the reason why Blaine doesn't absorb the time vortex but Rose does, as that is, after all, the method of her victory. So, aboard the Game Station, the Doctor has just decided to call it quits and let the Daleks kill him and conquer the universe, when, ta-da! The TARDIS materializes and out comes Rose, who (with her very cool glowy eyes) now looks and acts a lot like Dark Willow, only good. This is actually jaw-droppingly cool; I wasn't expecting it at all. And, hooray, it turns out that Rose has enough power and enough lack of moral compunction to do what the Doctor wasn't willing to do; namely, to destroy the Daleks and save both the Doctor and all of humanity. The twist that Rose is the Bad Wolf is actually a pretty neat one, although I'm still really not sure that I get how this message is supposed to make any sense to her (but the important thing, I think, is that Rose gets it, so it really doesn't matter whether or not I understand why). Then things start to turn a bit funny. Rose starts to play God and revives Jack, but - despite having plenty of time in which to do so - does not apparently choose to revive Lynda or any of the others, or to put the Earth back right again. Then we get the odd dilemma of why Rose, who is a human and should not be able to withstand the vortex at all, is able to utilize it successfully for several minutes with only a bit of memory loss as a side effect, whereas the Doctor, who is a Time Lord and should theoretically be more equipped to handle it, is poisoned when he serves as a conduit for a few seconds to suck it out of Rose and spit it back into the TARDIS, and is forced to regenerate as a result. A line of dialogue explaining why the vortex is particularly deadly to Time Lords, or why the Doctor was only able to siphon part of it back out of his body, might have helped; but I'm still not sure I buy the fact that Rose is completely unharmed whereas the Doctor is killed. It's like Time and the Rani all over again.

Having said all that, I do like the regeneration scene a lot. I wasn't sure, at first, that I liked the Doctor explaining everything to Rose - in my opinion, it would have been more of a shock for the audience (and more traditional) if the Doctor had gone ahead and annihilated the Daleks, then Rose had arrived in time to help him into the TARDIS and watch him change. However: I love that the Doctor cares so much for Rose that he tries to make his final moments lighthearted, and explain to her what's about to happen. It reminds me of those movies you see where a parent or grandparent knows they're about to die, and tries to explain it to a child. His line "And I'm not gonna see you again. Not like this, not with this daft old face" is really sweet, and made me miss him already. And then it happens, and the effect is very interesting... it looks like the energy that the Doctor absorbed gets released from his body, causing him to change in the process. I wish there had been a line to explain that; it's hard to reconcile with the shot of the Doctor spewing vortex energy back into the TARDIS. But anyway, then we have a brand new Doctor in the TARDIS. It's funny, two weeks before this episode, I went back home to visit my parents, and one night my mother and I stayed up to watch Bright Young Things, which we had rented from the local Blockbuster. In it, to my surprise and delight, was David Tennant, looking weaselly in a horrible moustache ("I don't know if I'm going to like him as much as this Doctor," my mother said dubiously), and causing me to ponder that Eccleston : ears :: Tennant : eyes. I watched 28 Days Later partly with the deliberate purpose of checking out Eccleston before his début, so it was nice that I accidentally managed to do the same thing with Tennant. Although we've only seen a few seconds of him so far, I'm extremely optimistic about the tenth Doctor. Tennant is already displaying a wonderfully expressive face (and a very big, warm and genuine smile), and his line "New teeth. That's weird." is half classic post-regeneration moment (cf. Pertwee and his nose) and half new spin on an old topic (it's such a minor detail, but exactly the sort of thing you probably would notice on finding yourself in a new body). I really can't wait to see his first outing in The Christmas Invasion, and now I finally know how all you Brits felt, only getting a glimpse of the new Doctor and then having to wait nearly a year to see more of him! Bravo and thanks for a great year, Eccleston! Long live Tennant!

Minor points:

So, it's certainly not a perfect episode, but it's got a great final (for now) confrontation between the Doctor and the Daleks, a great role for Rose, and one of my favorite almost-companions yet. It's an epic end to a triumphant first series for Russell, Chris and Billie, and I for one have very much enjoyed the ride. I leave this season feeling breathless, amazed that it happened in the first place, delighted that I've had the opportunity to be along for the experience, and deeply contented about how well it's all turned out. Bring on next year! And a big thank-you to Christopher Eccleston for helping to make this first year so successful.

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