TV Review - Dr. Who, What, Why and When

Hello my blogic problems.

This week, I am coming to you from the past. Yes, lucky for me, I have managed to find a little zip in the corner of time itself. Actually, it looked more like a corner that hadn't been properly stuck down and, my curiosity piqued, I decided to peel at the fabric of time like a child picking at a lose scab in the bath. This means that I have secret knowledge of the future but unfortunately, my every action can only be played out to you in real time and the ability to re-write history has evaded me. Of course.

Obviously, this is a power not to be messed with, or misused to smite my growing list of hapless enemies. The fact that I lack the ability to prove that I am in the past, sending this message forwards through time, would to some hardened cynics, sound like an almighty contrivance. Luckily, before I caught (catching? catch? ...ooh, time travel plays right havoc with your tenses) up with the present again, I was able to track down and sell my story to Russell T Davies while he was still in the draft stages for his last and final Dr. Who script, due to be aired over Christmas. I was able to assure him that despite the fact that everything I have just told you is ridiculous, false and, in a screenplay, would contain enough plot holes for you to wrap the script around loose leaf tea and brew yourself a lovely cup o char I had every confidence that, in his hands, my tale of time slippage would make perfect, logical and inspirational sense.

So with this in mind, I settled in to watch the second half of the 2 part 'The End of Time' episode of Dr. Who on New Years Day, knowing that a genius like Rusty T would be able to iron out these problems in the second and third draft of the script allowing a confident and meaningful segway from David Tenant's ubiquitous portrayal of the time lord to Matt Smith's Who: Version 11.0.

Looking at the show as a whole, you have to admire both RTD and the BBC for bringing a 'bigger than life' sense of spectacle back to the Christmas schedules. Immediately, the philharmonic opening credit score soars out of the TV (which still includes the timeless, almost ethereal theme music) and the image of the Tardis sailing through time comes bursting onto the screen with such effect that even a Who idiot like me can feel a ping of excitement fluttering through my Quality Street infested bowels.

It has long been a universally accepted Christmas gripe that there will be 'nothing on' over Christmas, much like 'there wont be any snow' and 'it starts earlier every year', we Brits seem to have decided that Christmas, much like the weather, is worthy of small talk derision. I'm not sure when this imagined 'golden age' of Christmas TV started or ended and although true that, whenever it was, it was unlikely to include 'Celebrity Family Fortunes' (ITV1), 'Ant and Dec's Christmas Show (ITV1) and 'The All Star Impressions Show' (IT.... oh, you get the picture) I still can't really remember a time when there wasn't a collective groan once the Queen had done the biz and before 'The Italian Job' came on. The thick slice of real Christmas afternoon and New Year spectacle offered by Dr. Who is welcome, inviting and refreshing.

However, once the excitement of the credits had died down, the programme itself had me scratching my head and rubbing my chin with a sort of otherworldly incomprehension of what my eye holes and ear sockets were squawking towards my moist brain worms. I thought I had a vague realisation of what was going on in the Whoniverse, but the thing kept jumping from plot point to plot point like a child on a burning mattress. The script almost resisted comprehension from anyone without a doctorate in Doctor: "Who are these noodle faced aliens? What are they going on about? Oh, the master? That's John Simm isn't it? I liked him in that thing that had a policeman what did a swear. Oh, he was a lark wasn't he, all hitting people and misogynist, with his boiled ham face. Wait, what now? Who's this old guy? Is it Bernard Cribbins? Off Jakanory? Off dictionary corner? What's he doing? That's not Susie Dent. Oh, wait, there's John Simm. Why's he got a weird face? Why's he done his hair so he looks like H from Steps' borstal educated older brother?" ...and on and on and on.

It was so densely packed with what I can only describe as 'stuff' that by the time James Bond (not Daniel Craig, one of the 'dirt' Bond's) rocked up wearing his smoking jacket and carrying a planet, I was in a kind of trance, not really getting why I was still watching, but feeling like a rubber necker at a railway disaster: enjoying the spectacle, but unable to fully grasp that it all must mean.... something. You were pummeled into shock by the famous faces, the special effects, the teary confessions of regret and a knowing acceptance of what was to come (namely the Dr's death and regeneration) until I reached a point where the quality of the script or acting was redundant to my experience, completely arbitrary to the sensory melee.

When the end finally came, David Tenant, obviously learning from his stint in the RSC, took about half an hour to actually feel the 'pinch' and shuffle himself loose the mortal coil. The final sequence was a sort of 'Match of the Day' round up of all the loose ends, hanging plot points and previously seen characters that probably made sense to somebody, but not to bloody me matey. In fact, by that stage, we had heard so many times that it was the 'end' for Dr. 10 that they didn't even attempt to suspend disbelief and showed us a fatally irradiated and therefore 'dying' Dr. simply wandering around, looking a bit grim and back slapping with everyone he'd ever met - including John 'Any dream will do, so long as there's a cheque involved' Barrowman, Belle de Jour, a warewolf and Catherine bleedin' Tate.

Sadly for me, it seems that despite all the hype, the wailing and the nostalgia, the conclusion to this Dr's incarnation lacks the awe inspiring, jaw dropping sense of finale that was intimated by both the title of the episode and the finality that the departure of RTD and David Tenant from the show implied. Perhaps the best news of all is for Matt Smith, the potentially ill fated 11th Dr. Despite promising the end, what this final show was really about was proving that the format still retains the scope and the landscape for an entirely new beginning.

Byesebye. x