ORBzine - "Dr Who (2005+)" July 2005
[Season 1 !Season 2 ]
recurring characters:
Season 1
[Season 1, Episode 1]
Rose
Shown 26th March 2005 [Saturday]
The story starts simply enough. London High-school dropout Rose Tyler [ Billie Piper ] goes to work at her dead-end job in a department store. Unfortunately, as she closes up shop at the end of the day, the shop-window dummies come to life ...
This is an exciting start to the new season of the show. Because it's been almost 2 decades since the last one, it has to cater for a new generation. But SPFX are far superior now to what they were back then, especially when you consider the costs involved.
Piper and Eccleston are great, and will hold together as the centre of the Season. The supporting cast are a bit cheesy, but we don't have to put up with them much so it's no great loss. And the script? Squeezed into an American-format 45 minutes, we're bombarded with witty lines and a few great visual set-ups. Billie goes a bit Ace at the climax, but that's standard in TV shows these days.
All in all, a great start to the new-look BBC. Hopefully they'll bring back Blake's Seven too! :-)
[Season 1, Episode 2]
The End of the World
Shown 2nd April 2005 [Saturday]
This is a direct continuation of Episode One. The Doc takes Rose 5 billion years into the future, to the end of the Earth. They join a lot of dignitaries on a space station, like Milliways without the food. There are lots of aliens - great prosthetics and SPFX. Of note is Cassandra [ Zoe Wanamaker ], the last human.
Robot spiders are on the loose - sabotage! Rose is too caught up in her own problems to worry about that. She gets homesick, and now queries the sanity in starting to time travel with a complete stranger!
The Doc is now an action hero [smart and brave], to rescue the girl and save the day. However, he also displays a very dark, disturbing side.
Of note, the soundtrack includes Tainted Love and Toxic!
[Season 1, Episode 3]
The Unquiet Dead
Shown 9th April 2005 [Saturday]
An undead Granny is on the loose in Cardiff, 1869. The undertaker and his psychic housemaid search for her, and they find her at a lecture given by Charles Dickens!
The Doctor and Rose drop by to celebrate Xmas. Rose gets to compare her life with the housemaid's. The Doctor, meanwhile, wants to help some alien refugees from The War. He feels guilty or something ...
Of note, this was written by Mark Gattis [League of Gentlemen].
[Season 1, Episode 4]
Aliens of London (1)
Shown 16th April 2005 [Saturday]
The Doctor takes Rose home, to tie up loose ends from the first episode. Then a spaceship crashes into Big Ben. We meet its occupant, in a hilarious and poigniant parody of a certain 1970s TV show.
The PM is MIA, so a low-level MP is his stand-in. Unfortunately, Aliens have infiltrated the UK Government, and plot world domination. Surprise, surprise.
The Doctor and UNIT meet [they get a brief mention, not in depth], and we get a great cliff-hanger!
[Season 1, Episode 5]
World War Three (2)
Shown 23rd April 2005 [Saturday]
Most of the ep is a continuation of the cliffhanger. We get the resolution of the Jackie-Micky conflict - though they may be back in future episodes. The MP woman may reappear too.
Does the UN control the UK's nuclear deterrent? Certainly not in reality, but in the Doctor's universe?. Also, in Battlefield the Brigadier is brought out of retirement for UNIT, and that appears to be in our future. This would mean that Winifred was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq in 2002, not 1992!
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[Season 1, Episode 6]
Dalek
Shown 30th April 2005 [Saturday]
The Doctor and Rose get a distress signal from a secret bunker in Utah, 2012. Unfortunately they're captured by the guards [a SWAT team]. Rose meets a new friend [an English boy, abou 20-years old, ex-Coronation St actor].
The owner [a mediocre American actor] and his aide [a babe from Stargate SG-1 ???] are torturing a mysterious alien - hmm ... What's the episode title again? Last week's trailer gave it away, but there's great suspense built up.
The alien escapes and goes on a kill-crazy rampage. It's far more hi-tech than previous versions. And the Doctor's new incarnation is a good match for it in a war of words.
There's a sappy ending, but lots of background on the Temporal Wars.
[Season 1, Episode 7]
The Long Game
Shown 7th May 2005 [Saturday]
The Doctor takes Rose and Adam to a Space Staion in the year 200k CE. Adam goes exploring, to ae the maximum info home. Tamsin Geig [Black Books] is a nurse who oversees his surgery ...
The Doctor and Rose dscover something's wrong. The Editor [Simon Pegg - Black Books, Shaun of the Dead ] is up to no good.
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[Season 1, Episode 8]
Father's Day
Shown 14th May 2005 [Saturday]
The Doctor takes Rose to 1987, when her Father died. Before she was even born! Luckily he gets it exactly right the first time round. Unfortunately, she saves her dad and creates a paradox.
Rose and the Doctor have nothing better to do than hang around with her dad. She gets to know the father she never knew, and learns unpleasant truths about him. Rose's mum is 20 years younger, while we learn Micky is older than Rose [he's a toddler].
The paradox weakens the interdimensional walls, and reapers [CGI monsters] fly in and eat everyone on Earth. The Time Lords used to keep them at bay ...
The rule you can't touch yourself is used. It goes back to Mawdryn Undead, a Peter Davidson ep, and predates Timecop by ten years.
[Season 1, Episode 9]
The Empty Child (1)
Shown 21st May 2005 [Saturday]
1941, London .. The Blitz! The Doctor teams up with local urchins, while Rose finds Cap'n Jack [a Love Interest!], a time-travelling con-man who hinks she's a temporal agent.
There's an alien ship and a strange plague. a Boy with a gas mask stalks the urchins, spreading the plague.
The explanation is obvious at the end of the episode, but it's a 2-parter!
[Season 1, Episode 10]
The Doctor Dances (2)
Shown 28th May 2005 [Saturday]
Can the Doctor save the world? Hmm.
There are lots of sonic screwdriver jokes. Cap'n Jack's a great character, but that doesn't mean he'll be around forever.
The Doctor's relationship with Rose is very strange. He seems jealous of Jack!?
[Season 1, Episode 11]
Boom Town
Shown 4th June 2005 [Saturday]
The TARDIS lands in Cardiff, 2005, where there's been a temporal rift since the Victorian era. This allows Micky to meet the competition - Cap'n jack!
Unfortunately the Slyveen female is still around, and is going to destroy the world again. Will the Doctor send the Slyveen home to face the death penalty? Since the TARDIS is refuelling it's an overnight stay, which gives her time to play mind games on the good guys. The Doctor treats her to dinner in a Carfiff restuarant, allowing for a nice duel of words and wits.
The Doctor is very cold-hearted in this regeneration. Luckily we get a Deus Ex Machina ending ...
[Season 1, Episode 12]
Bad Wolf (1)
Shown 11th June 2005 [Saturday]
The Doc, Rose and Jack find themselves inside a parody of 3 contemporary TV shows - Weakest Link, Makeover, Big Brother [with Channel 4's consent!]. The twist - robots and executions! This is not unlike the Simon Pegg ep - which is a deliberate reference!
The TV company is the Bad Wolf Corporation, causing the Doctor to list the other references ... The Victorian maid mentioned the Big bad wolf, in the Dalek episode the chopper callsign was Bad Wolf One and the Slyveen's project in Cardiff was Bad Wolf in Welsh. Are the words stalking the TARDIS through time?
We get more clues to who's behind it [the BBC trailer at the end of each ep ruins the suspense and cliffhangers]. Apart from that, nice how the Season has a story arc. Also ... Cap'n Jack is humorously heroic, smart ... and bisexual!
[Season 1, Episode 13]
The Parting of the Ways (2)
Shown 18th June 2005 [Saturday]
The Doctor sends Rose home. He and Cap'n Jack, along with a few others, stage a last stand against the attackers.
Rose, meanwhile, finds out who the Bad Wolf is. Ad the conclusion? All the foreshadowing in the world can't disguise a Deus Ex Machina. Worse, this is ripped from a pevious [much-derided] Doctor Who story!
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Dr Who [Inter-Season]
Children in Need
This is a special teaser - a single scene, really. But it's better than nothing. And it's for charity.
The new Doctor [David Tennant] introduces himself to Billie Piper/Rose. She doesn't trust him!
To calm her he sets the TARDIS to take her somewhere safe - her mum's flat, on Xmas Eve. Unfortunately, just then something bad happens ...
Dr Who [Inter-Season]
The Christmas Invasion
Following on from the Children in Need clip, the new Doctor takes Rose to her mum's for Xmas. Mickey's apparently back with Rose again, all flings forgotten. Unfortunately, some Aliens have decided to invade Earth.
The Doctor is recovering from a traumatic regeneration, so Rose and Mickey must do what they can to save the world. Luckily for the plot, he recovers in time to have a swordfight!
The climax is a bit predictable. However, the real twist is after the climax. It asks more questions than it answers. What happened 10 yrs ago?
Season 2
[Season 2, Episode 1]
New Earth
Shown 15th April 2006 [Saturday]
Yes, the Doctor is back! The return of the show, much awaited since the Xmas Special, has been somewhat downplayed by the BBC. Not by the UK newspapers, however - they gave away half the plot!
Rose and the Doc [in his new costume, a nice suit in the mid-20th Century style] arrive on New Earth, the planet used as Humanity's new homeworld after the events of Season 1, Episode 2 The End of the World.
Their arrival is not unnoticed. A familar-looking spider-robot, and the voice of Zoe Wanamaker , give us some idea of what we are in for.
The Doctor and Rose visit a nearby hospital, run by cat-faced nuns. The Doc states he isn't fond of hospitals, perhaps a reference to Season 1, Episode 10 The Doctor Dances (2) . These nuns can cure any disease, but naturally they conceal a terrible secret.
The ep is in some ways a rehash of a couple of eps from the previous Season. But there are some nice touches to it. There's a lot of development for the new Doctor - he's very stubborn, but a lot more forgiving and humane than the previous incarnation.
[Season 2, Episode 2]
Tooth and Claw
Shown 22nd April 2006 [Saturday]
1879, Scotland, and a country mansion is taken over by mysterious monks. They're caucasian and bald, and they know kung-fu!
The Doc and Rose, full of buddy-buddy banter, encounter Queen Victoria. She's en route to Balmoral with a military escort. The Doc and Rose tag along, pretending to be from Balamory, and spend the night with her at the monks' mansion ...
The monks have a caged beastie. It is the survivor of a crashed alien ship. A lot of that seems to have happened - a Sontaran, an Terraleptil and Julian Glover all ended up on Earth in similar stories.
The ending is quite dramatic. Queen Vic sets up the Torchwood Institute to defend the Empire from hostile aliens ... such as the Doctor!
[Season 2, Episode 3]
School Reunion
Shown 29th April 2006 [Saturday]
There are suspicious goings-on at a London school. Tony Head [ Buffy the Vampire Slayer ] is a creepy school employee who manipulates the kids for supernatural reasons. Unlike Rupert Giles, he's Headmaster instead of Head Librarian!
The Doctor gets a job there as Physics teacher, while Rose is a Dinner lady. Mickey does tech support. He discovers that 3 months previously, at the time the new teachers arrived, there were UFO sightings. There are classified photos, but nobody is investigating. Not UNIT, not Torchwood ...
The kids get fish and chips for lunch. It seems to work - some of them are super-intelligent, and nobody at school has ring-tones or ASBOs! How terrible, a school that teaches children something. They even have freeze-dried rats in the biology labs, while Rose claims that A-level candidates haven't dissected rats in years. Am I out of date, or is Rose just BSing? After all, she's a chav who dropped out of school and never amounted to anything.
Sarah Jane Smith arrives as a journalist. She was the Doctor's Assistant - 30 years ago! The IMDB reveals she is 58 years old, though she looks 20 younger. However, she and Rose have some issues ... And when K9 is re-activated, it's obvious that his modern counterpart is Mickey! Both these pairings lead on to some excellent dialogue scenes!
[Season 2, Episode 4]
The Girl in the Fireplace
Shown 6th May 2006 [Saturday]
After seeing Sarah Jane Smith looking 20 years younger, we get guest star Sophia Myles . She's the UK's newest genre star, perhaps best known for being 20 years too young to convincingly play Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds . Here, she is Madame La Pompadour, from the ages of 22 through 37!
The Doc, Rose and Mickey land on a crippled spaceship in the year 5000. The clockwork repair robots harvest human organs to repair their ship, and have opened time-windows into 18th Century France.
The Doc's back to the creepy genius with kick-ass tendencies that we were introduced to in the Xmas Special.
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[Season 2, Episode 5]
Rise of the Cybermen (1)
Shown 13th May 2006 [Saturday]
The Tardis accidentally flips through a hole in space-time. The team end up trapped on a parallel Earth. Great Britain has a President - a corrupt politician, of course. Strangely no mention of the UK ... presumably NI was nationalised. No mention of the EU either!
Rose's mum is a shallow bitch - like she usually is, but with more cash. Rose's dad is still alive. He's a wheeler-dealer made good, on close terms with the Prez. By incredible coincidence, Ricky [the parallel Mickey] is a gun-toting revolutionary! Totally unlike the normally spineless Mickey!
Everyone in GB has upgraded their mobile phone to earplugs that download info into the brain. The next upgrade is to turn humans into ... Cybermen!
The Cybermen have been revamped with a nice retro look. They have a Dalek-style war-cry ... Delete!
[Season 2, Episode 6]
Rise of the Cybermen (2)
Shown 20th May 2006 [Saturday]
Our heroes have to escape certain death, then somehow defeat the Cybermen.
Mickey bears the brunt of this ep. It's important in his character arc - and the behind-the-scenes bit shown afterwards is all about him.
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[Season 2, Episode 7]
The Idiot's Lantern
Shown 27th May 2006 [Saturday]
1953, the run-up to the Queen's coronation. Everyone rushes out to buy a TV so they can watch it. But creepy TV presenter Maureen Lipman is sucking peoples' faces through the screen.
This was written by Mark Gatiss, who also did the Dickins ep last year.
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[Season 2, Episode 8]
The Satan Pit (1)
Shown 3rd June 2006 [Saturday]
Rose and the Doc appear on a space station. It's on an asteroid in the orbit of a black hole!
They're trapped beyond time, and the asteroid's core was once inhabited by an alien race so powerful it could withstand the black hole, and so old that the Tardis can't translate its writing.
Worse, an ancient evil from within the asteroid has been woken. Like in Event Horizon . Only they're actually ON an Event Horizon!
This is a wonderfully dramatic ep, with amazing SPFX. And a cliffhanger ending!
[Season 2, Episode 10]
The Satan Pit (2)
Shown 10th June 2006 [Saturday]
The Doctor is trapped down the mineshaft. With only an hours worth of air, he has no option but to keep exploring. Of course, everyone forgets that he went to find the TARDIS - so his imminent survival is obvious to the viewers!
Rose keeps things together on the surface, taking command of the military crew. Well, they're part of Torchwood rather than the SAS, but the point still stands. Last ep started as The Black Hole , but here it becomes Aliens .
The Beast, when discovered, looks like Eddie - mascottfor Iron Maiden! Great CGI, great production values, great plan and great conclusion.
The Beast claims precognition, and says Rose will die in battle soon. Presumably this is just blather, and it intends to kill her itself ...
[Season 2, Episode 10]
Love and Monsters
Shown 17th June 2006 [Saturday]
This is told from the perspective of a 20-something Londoner named Elton. He's an amateur UFO-hunter who keeps a video-diary, and recounts his encounters with the Doctor.
Elton's UFO-Watcher group, LINDA, is taken over by a control-freak who vaguely resembles the guy from the pilot ep, Rose. He orders Elton to go undercover and seduce Rose's mum, Jackie!
This is an unusual ep - a lot of it is cliche, but it manages to avoid the usual Eastenders-In-Space feel to the Jackie eps. And we don't feel the loss of Mickey, which is quite nice.
There's yet more death of Rose foreshadowing ...
[Season 2, Episode 11]
Fear Her
Shown 24th June 2006 [Saturday]
In 1953, around the time of the Coronation, London people were sucked into TV sets. In 2012, at the time of the Olympics, London people are sucked into a child's drawings.
The child is daughter of a single parent, played by Tennant's co-star fromCasanova.
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[Season 2, Episode 12]
Army of Ghosts (1)
Shown 1st July 2006 [Saturday]
Rose tells us she's going to die. Of course, this has been foreshadowed in previous eps, and the UK tabloids were full of spoilers, so this is no surprise.
The Doctor and Rose arrive in London, which is now full of ghosts. This is part of popular culture, meaning that there are cameos by other BBC TV shows [Eastenders, ironically].
The problem stems from the Torchwood Institute, which is running experiments using unknown alien tech. Worse, their HQ's lack of security means that there are evil aliens running around it!
There are a couple of surprises which weren't ruined by the trailer, though. One is an unexpected ally, another is an old enemy!
[Season 2, Episode 13]
Doomsday (2)
Shown 8th July 2006 [Saturday]
This is an incredible climaxx to the season, and involves 2 alien races having a planet-wide battle!
The resolution comes at a terrible cost. The whole Eastenders in Space bit comes to an end, as Billie Piper's 2-Season contract expires. But it's actually well-written, and worth watching.
Torchwood's a bit crap, though. The soldiers may have cool guns [not SA80s or MP5s, oddly enough] but despite a bit of shoot-em-up on the streets there's no actual military stuff done by Torchwood itself. An organisation supposed to be over 100 years old, significantly older than UNIT, yet they have no idea how to deal with Cybermen!
Hopefully they'll do things better in their own show, especially if they keep the patriotic Cyber-person!
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