REVIEW: THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR (THE 3D CINEMA EXPERIENCE)

 

I have to admit, I wasn't really that bothered about going to see the 50th anniversary episode at the cinema. I hadn't followed the past few series, so it didn't make much sense for me to rush out and get a ticket to see the latest episode. I could have just watched it on TV. But there's something about the shared experience of viewing something at the cinema, especially for a show which we normally only get to see at home. So I decided to go and watch it on the 'big screen'. In 3D.

Even though I was a bit wary about the whole thing to begin with, I soon found myself immersed in what was going on. Sure, the storyline was upside down and inside out in places, but if you switched off your brain and didn't look for plot holes, then you could just enjoy it for the entertainment factor alone. It had several 'Doctors' in it, for a start. I think many people were thrilled to see David Tennant back, as he seems to be a favourite among many fans. Myself included.

But for me, it was John Hurt that really made the episode. A fine actor, who made the role of the War Doctor convincing and believable. A much different character than the other Doctor's incarnations, but all three personalities worked well together in the context of the story.

I thought it was interesting how they chose to bring in Rose Tyler, albeit as the interface to the Moment weapon. The brief appearance of Tom Baker at the end is sure to have pleased a lot of fans too. There was certainly some cheering in the audience, anyway.

 So, was this a perfect, outstanding, unmissable episode? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes! I definitely think that watching it at the cinema is the reason though, purely for the atmosphere and shared laughs and cheers with all the fans there. You just don't get that at home. So, to me, it was worth the price of a cinema ticket just as a one-off event.

 

Steve Upham - Editor of Screaming Dreams Publishing

REVIEW: AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME

Image Copyright BBC 2013

As a man who has never really dabbled much in Doctor Who, I was somewhat unsure about how to feel about the madness surrounding the 50^th anniversary episode. Was it to be something exclusively for the fans, or a possible invitation for newcomers such as myself to join the party? Or maybe even both? Either way, my knowledge of the programme was insufficient. I needed a way to feel educated about the universe of Doctor Who without necessarily watching through the hundreds of available episodes. Thankfully, An Adventure in Space and Time serves this purpose nicely.

The story chronicles the birth of the show and its various production troubles, from William Hartnell’s (David Bradley) ailing health and struggles as a typecast actor, to Verity Lambert’s (Jessica Raine) own trouble as one of the early female figures in British television. It becomes clear from the very first scene that this is not necessarily the smooth and obstacle-free ride that one might initially think.

With a keen sense of nostalgia, particular effort has been put into replicating both the context of 1960s Britain in all its gloomy-weather glory, and the harsh realities that come with working from within the BBC – a place not often associated with second chances. As a result, I was immediately drawn towards Hartnell, played with excellent cynicism and humanity by David Bradley. As an actor with very little direction in his career, Hartnell’s only desire was to steer clear of the authority figures he became so often associated with. Yet with the show’s aim to inform and educate as well as to thrill and terrify, the role was understandably irresistible.

What follows is an intense, but often fun series of events that follow Hartnell and Lambert as they both fight desperately to keep Doctor Who alive, regardless of whether it came from artistic integrity or something to pay the bills. Yet in a bizarre twist, I found the story’s finest moments were the ones that distanced themselves from Doctor Who. Such moments include Hartnell’s often adorable interaction with his granddaughter and wife, reminding us that he was still a human being, with familial concerns and constant reminders of his growing age in an industry that was constantly seeking to modernise itself.

Naturally, the references to the series itself are littered throughout the script. Some are impossible to miss, while others will no doubt be detected by only the most hardened of fans. But as the story reached its conclusion, I couldn’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount that was being thrown at me. Of course, there exists five whole decades of history behind Doctor Who, and it would be a missed opportunity not to acknowledge it through various nods and winks, but at times, it felt just a little too much.

Regardless, this was easily outweighed by the positives. Every actor gave an outstanding performance, in particular Brian Cox’s dominating presence as the iconic Sydney Newman – a role he clearly had incredible fun playing. But at its very core, An Adventure in Space and Time was a very human story about a very otherworldly concept. It provided an informative but touching look at both a man desperately looking to push past his own ‘grumpy old man’ persona, as well as the now cemented position Doctor Who holds as a key part to our history and culture.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Bryn Lloyd

REVIEW: THE LIGHT AT THE END

 

The first step of the anniversary for me began when Big Finish released their multi-Doctor anniversary adventure, The Light at the End. Now I have to confess that I’m not a huge fan of Big Finish’s main range of Doctor Who adventures – I stopped listening to them when the TV series returned. Might seem a little unfair of me, but I easily tire of the over-reliance on returning monsters and companions that started to litter the releases from that point. Truly original pieces of drama seemed to diminish bit by bit, which is fine since, in my view, Big Finish needed to cater for the core group of fans – those who wanted Doctor Who as it used to be. I like my Doctor Who to continue to grow with the audience, with the social development of our culture. For me during the Wilderness Years (when there was no TV Who) Virgin Books, BBC Books  and Big Finish provided us with a Doctor Who that continued to grow, to echo the decade in which it existed, as it always did on TV. Then, in 2005, Doctor Who returned home to BBC One and the books and audio adventures seemed to lose a lot of their ambition, their originality. Which is a shame. There were some true classics produced between 1991 and 2005 – not to say that Big Finish haven’t produced some sterling stuff since, but usually it’s in their spin-off series’, like the Gallifrey series, or the I, Davros plays and, primarily, through the ongoing series of adventures for the Eighth Doctor that were being produced for transmission on BBC Radio. So, The Light at the End would be my first, for fun, look at a Big Finish play in a long while. (Bearing in mind I had to scour all of the Big Finish releases when researching my anniversary book, so it’s not like I haven’t heard the majority of them.) At the time it seemed that the official anniversary story, Day of the Doctor, was not celebrating the classic series but rather focussing on the mythos and characters introduced since 2005. The BBC insisted that no old Doctors would be appearing! To me, and so many other fans, this seemed to be a slap in the face. It was the anniversary of  fifty years of Doctor Who, not just Nu Who (as the series from 2005 to present is affectionately called), and so the cast list of The Light at the End decided me on getting that story. This seemed to me to be a true celebration with countless characters from the old series returning. For the old fans an anniversary story was an excuse to bring back as many old faces as possible – the strength of the story was secondary. We wanted something like The Five Doctors, which is not a terribly interesting story – it’s not known for its complexity, but it is known for the pure fun and nostalgia of seeing so many old friends return. And so The Light at the End…

 

Hmm. How quickly one’s view can change.

 

It took me a while to work out why I left The Light at the End feeling so blah. The story was straight forward enough, although possibly not the most well-structured. It certainly brought back a whole host of old friends, every Doctor from the first to eighth made an appearance, countless companions. Essentially all one could want from an anniversary story. At least that’s what I had always thought. but upon reflection I came to realise the problem – for me, at least. Ever since Virgin got the licence to publish original Doctor Who fiction the guest appearance of old Doctors and companions had become something of a regular occurrence. Indeed, the very first novel, Timewyrm: Genesys, featured guest appearances by the Third and Fourth Doctors. Later stories saw the return of all kinds of companions from Peri to Liz to Susan, and featured all sorts of multi-Doctor stories (although none topped Lance Parkin’s Cold Fusion which featured a bona-fide reason for two Doctors being in the right place, and a wonderful spin on how the Seventh Doctor did not recall the events already, since his fifth self was also involved – the answer was simple, he did remember!). Big Finish have also featured various versions on the multi-Doctor story over the years, everything from The Sirens of Time (their very first release! Much like Virgin and BBC Books did before them), to The Four Doctors, Project: Lazurus and The Wormery. Even companions got their own stories with releases like The Five Companions. And so the problem as I see it; The Five Doctors was a success because of the nostalgia. Characters we had not seen in years returned, Doctors joined forces for the first time in ten years (well, eleven really when you consider The Three Doctors was transmitted in 1972, almost a year before the tenth anniversary). In The Light of the End it’s essentially just more of the same. We hear all these actors so often throughout the year, hear these characters interact, heard the various Doctors team-up countless times. There’s no sense of anniversary or nostalgia. Linking it to 1963 didn’t do anything except offer a failed attempt to enforce a feeling of nostalgia. We can’t orchestrate such a thing; it comes from within, from the memories. Don’t get me wrong, hearing Tom Baker and Paul McGann together is fun (although the BBC were soon about to officially do something even better with these two!), but having actors come in to impersonate the first three Doctors is not. I can see what was being attempted, but it felt like an insult. It didn’t help that none of the three actors sounded anything like the characters they were supposed to be (something in common with the Patrick Troughton impersonator on the upcoming An Adventure in Space and Time). I left the story with a feeling of blah, of ‘yeah, seen it all before’, and I realised that it was no longer just enough to have loads of old actors return to Doctor Who. An anniversary, to me, needed to be something different. A good story, a development of the mythos of the show, and a sense of nostalgia.

 

Andy Frankham-Allen is the author of Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants

THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR REVIEW - SPOILERS AHEAD!

Image Copyright BBC 2013

Well... That was rather brilliant, wasn't it? As the title of this entry suggests, there will be spoilers in this review. As a series finale, and such an important story, it'd be almost impossible to review it without mentioning things that will spoil the episode for those who've yet to see it. If you're one of those, I suggest you turn away now - go to iPlayer and WATCH the episode. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.

Okay, so let's start at the beginning. What a pre-title sequence that was! A fans' dream come true. Although, I think, it was a bit overkill to show it all again near the end of the episode, but I'm not complaining too much. Seeing Clara almost meeting the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors was rather special, and was done in a rather clever way. Either by putting Jenna-Louise Coleman into footage of previous stories, or watching body doubles walk by her slightly out of focus. Of course, from a purely fan point of view, I must wonder what adventures she was interacting with. The corridor from which she views the Seventh Doctor never appeared in Dragonfire (the story from which the McCoy footage was lifted), and she appears to be looking through a window at the Fifth Doctor, even though he's in the Matrix ala Arc of Infinity. Minor quibble, but odd nonetheless. The most interesting part of this pre-title sequence, however, is Clara meeting the First Doctor on Gallifrey 'a very long time ago', as he ushers Susan into a TARDIS - the moment upon which every single episode of Doctor Who is based. It's amazingly well done, and confirms, for the first time on television, that the Doctor and Susan did leave Gallifrey together! (But there's a better twist to this scene coming up near the end of the episode - so we'll get there later.)

Despite these appearances of past Doctors, it takes a good ten minutes for the Doctor to actually get involved in the story-proper, since we have more screen time devoted to Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax. This, in itself, is no bad thing. I for one would love to see a spin-off series with these characters - a nice Victorian Gothic-comedy-detective series. Vastra learns that someone has discovered the Doctor's secret on Trenzalore, and so initiates a psychic conference call with both Clara and River Song. It's brilliant to see River back, and this time the River we last saw in 2008's Silence in the Library - yes, the one who died to save the Doctor! It works perfectly well, she is an echo of River's mind that was uploaded to the moon-sized hard drive orbiting the Library. It's another amazing performance by Alex Kingston, possibly her best yet, and it is nice to see her playing the more mature, and sad, River who we first met. There's some wonderful interaction between River and Clara, who is surprised to learn that River knows the Doctor's name, although River refuses to explain how she made him tell her.

Enter the Doctor. Another assured and reserved performance by Matt Smith - easily his best yet. He taps into the Doctor's soul-destroying sadness, but still carries the iron resolve one expects from the Doctor, when he determines to go to Trenzalore and face his own future. For it is on Trenzalore that the Doctor is buried. Or is he? It's a little complicated when he gets there, and we're shown the impressive monument in which the Doctor's future resides. The TARDIS! 

What a sight it is! The dimensional dams have broken down, and as a result the Police Box shell is now bigger on the outside, towering over the graveyard of Trenzalore. We follow the Doctor and Clara through this future TARDIS interior, with scenes that are by far more interesting than those shown a few weeks back in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, and Clara begins to remember what she forgot in that episode, including the conversation she had with the Doctor in which she discovered that he keeps on meeting her. The reason for this is finally revealed when they reach the console room of this future TARDIS - which is the current console room, only overgrown with foliage. This is a bit of a puzzle. If this is far in the Doctor's personal future, why is the console room still his current one? The Doctor goes through console rooms like most people go through socks, you'd expect this future console room to be something entirely new and previously unseen.

In this console room we see that, instead of his body ('bodies are boring...I've had loads of them'), the TARDIS tomb holds the Doctor's time stream, the 'scar tissue of my journey through space and time'. There the Great Intelligence (played with sinister panache by Richard E Grant) casts himself into the Doctor's timeline, to corrupt and destroy it - turning every victory of the Doctor into defeat. And it is here that we learn the truth about Clara. She comes to realise the reason for the echoes of her is because of this moment - that she has to cast herself into the Doctor's timeline and save him. It is at this point that we come to understand why she exists throughout time, always encountering the Doctor, and why she tells the Doctor to 'run, you clever boy. And remember me'. I do, however, have a little quibble here. Up until this point none of the Claras have known the Doctor when they met him - although they have all been compelled to help him. But when she's scattered and interacts with the past Doctors, she appears to know who he is, even to the point of telling the First Doctor that he should steal the TARDIS she's standing by, and not the one he just pushed Susan into. It may have a faulty directional unit, but it will be much more fun! Basically, it's Clara who sets the Doctor on his journey through time in his 'rackety old TARDIS'. This point does contradict what we learned in 2011's The Doctor's Wife, when the TARDIS tells the Doctor that she stole him, and not the other way around. A minor point, but still... It doesn't take away from the greatness of the moment, though, seeing the First Doctor on Gallifrey prior to the very first episode of Doctor Who fifty years ago.

The First Doctor steals the TARDIS from Gallifrey
(image copyright BBC 2013)

This sets the scene for the final moments of what, we discover, is actually the first of a two-part anniversary story. Set within the Doctor's time stream, Clara sees echoes of various Doctors, and every single Doctor is seen in some way or another, except the Eighth Doctor. Why this omission? The Doctor follows Clara into his own time stream, his 'every good day, every bad day'. Here Clara explains that she's seen ALL the Doctors, all eleven of him, so who is that man standing with his back to them? 

The surprise reveal is John Hurt - playing 'not the Doctor', despite the on screen credit. The Doctor makes a point of saying that this man is not the Doctor, but rather his secret, the one who broke the promise. Did everything that isn't the Doctor. It's a little vague, but enough to suggest that John Hurt's character is the truth behind the Doctor, the man he really is, the man he was, the identity hidden beneath the façade of 'the Doctor'...

So, my verdict? I have to confess I rather loved it. For the first time since Steven Moffat took over as executive producer, I've seen an episode I actually loved. I'm not saying it's perfect (name one episode of Who that is), but it's certainly something I can watch a few times without getting bored. The interaction with past Doctors was wonderfully handled, even to the point of adding grain to the screen to give it an old video-tape look, and we got to see River say her final goodbye to the Doctor. Plus the ever-entertaining Strax! But, here's my one big gripe: what secret was revealed? Other than John Hurt, we never got the Doctor's greatest secret revealed to us. No name was uttered (except by River out of earshot), no further clues as to Who the Doctor is. Just that we know he dies in battle on Trenzalore, and deep within his timeline exists the man behind the myth - the dark secret. We did, however, get a mention of the Valeyard ('every evil impulse of the Doctor' who appeared in 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord), which may be an important connection to this John Hurt not-Doctor.

Perhaps the second part of this story, in November, will be more enlightening?

Also, one last time, why no Eighth Doctor? I wonder...

Image Copyright BBC 2013

Andy Frankham-Allen