Doctor Who and the Empire of Death
And there we go! Thats a wrap on first season of New New Who.
Before we go any further, let’s check in with the target audience. Traditionally, and I think this is still the case, the BBC had separate departments for “Childrens’s shows” and “Adult Drama”, as you would expect. One of the reasons that Doctor Who has always been a bit of an odd duck content-wise is that it was, and is, a children’s show, but one made by the Drama department, not the Children’s department. This can spawn a lot of Tedious DiscourseTM about whether it’s “for kids” and if so what we can use that as an excuse for (see also: Star Wars), but the practical upshot is that the target audience has always been, essentially, Smart Tweens and their Parents. That 12-14 range has always been the show’s sweet spot in terms of how scary it is, the content, the kinds of complexity it has. And like all good children’s TV, it talks up to them rather than down, and as such tends to hang on to its audience as they age out of the tween sweet spot.
Well, as it happens, I have both a 12 and a 14-year old, and they absolutely loved it. My 14-year old was practically hovering the entire show as she vibrated from excitement, and as the credits rolled she declared this episode to be the “greatest Doctor Who ever!”
And you know what? That’s the review. Whatever us middle-aged former tweens thought about it, the core audience loved it. Mission accomplished.
Before we get to the finale proper, the folks in the UK got an appetizer—an amuse-bouche, if you will. BBC4 aired a surprise bonus episode of Tales of the Tardis featuring “Pyramids of Mars”. Recall that Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor was the surprisingly unrepresented Doctor when the other TotT episodes dropped back in November, now we know why.
The biggest disappointment is that Tom didn’t come back. But, he’s 90 now, and I think we’ve seen the last of his Doctor in live action. Instead we get Gatwa and Gibson in the Memory Tardis, with the Doctor telling the story of the first time he met Sutek.
“Pyramids of Mars” is, of course, a stone cold classic, one of best stories from one of the old show’s best periods with probably the best pair of leads the show ever had. For a long time, “Pyramids” was my pick for what to show someone whose never seen the show before; it may not be objectively The BestTM, but if you don’t like this one, Classic Doctor Who may not be the show for you.
There was some consternation in the usual parts when an unnamed TotT episode popped up on the schedule, because the time slot was 75 minutes, but any classic 4-parter clocks in at 96 or so. And look, I genuinely love that old show, but there isn’t a single 4-part story that couldn’t lose 20 minutes to its benefit. (Off the top of my head, I’m pretty sure I know what I’d chop out.)
The end result is a win all around. The trims were what you’d hope—the padding and explicit racism, in that order. Gatwa sets the tone from the get-go by describing the archeologists at the start as looters, his disgust palpable. (“I’m a time traveler. I point and laugh at archeologists.”) There’s some tastefully upgraded special effects, in keeping with the style of the blu-ray releases.
As aired, it’s placement was slightly puzzling; Ruby clearly knows who Sutek is, and they discuss how impossible he is to defeat, despite the fact that they’ve clearly escaped from the cliffhanger at the end of “Legend of Ruby Sunday”, implying this is all taking place during “Empire of Death?” Once EoD aired, it wasn’t explicit, but there was clearly a place where it was supposed to go, I suspect you could edit them together basically seamlessly.
As a teaser it works remarkably well: a rerun of a story from the old show, introduced and contextualized by the current cast, acting as an extended “previously on” flashback/table-setting for the finale? That’s a great idea. They should do this more often.
The show itself: it was a classic Davies season finale. As soon as the store-brand Thanos disintegration effects started, it was clear that this was going to be one of those stories where everything was undone at the end; it was going to be 30-ish minutes of moping, followed by 5 minutes of hand-waving. Or as I put it last week, some bullshit. As such, there’s no real stakes, it’s clear this is all going to un-happen as soon as the “minutes remaining” counter gets low enough. As such, it’s mostly sort of Diet Drama, empty calories and fake sweetener. Given Davies’ track record, it’s slightly disappointing, but not surprising.
That said, it wasn’t terrible. Gatwa and Gibson have enough raw charisma to make much worse TV than this work, Langford continues to prove how terribly misused she was in the 80s, and Redgrave lands the hell out of her two or three scenes, aware that she’s not playing a character in this one so much as a plot accelerant.
Davies likes to power these kinds of big stories on emotional connections and big feelings rather than police procedural–style plot logic; we’re in a space much closer to David Lynch’s dream worlds than we are to something like Columbo. This particular speed of maximalist-melodrama isn’t the my favorite speed for Doctor Who. I mean, bring death to death? Did the Doctor really use the Uno reverse card? Fine, sure. The only part I genuinely disliked was the “now I become a monster” bit, which is staggeringly unearned and also incredibly played out. This is the kind of plot structure that tends to get dismissed as “bad writing”, and it isn’t—this is very good writing making some very specific choices that I just don’t care for myself. But people like me are why they also made “Boom” and “Dot and Bubble.”
Why is Rose Noble in this? Not that it isn’t fun to have her there, and that “how’s your uncle” isn’t a fun zing, but… she just stands around and then gets dusted? Or really, most any of the guest cast? There’s a lot of actors who got paid to watch the episode from on set, and good for them, I guess?
I really, really liked the resolution to the mystery of Ruby’s parents. The basic resolution to the “mystery”, that people and things are important if we believe them to be, not because someone else declares them to be, I thought was a great basic statement of principles for the show. Apparently, on the commentary track, Davies says that her mom turning out to be just a regular person was at least partly inspired by Rise of Skywaker reconning that out of Rey’s backstory. I thought it was great— Doctor Who has always been a show where “what you do” is more important than “where you came from”, and this made that very literal in the text. Just some regular people caught up in something bigger than themselves: sounds like Doctor Who to me.
I have to admit to not having much else to say about it? It was fine. But, seeing as we’re at the end of the season, rather than picking at the threads of this one in particular, let’s pull out and see how we’re doing overall. What shape is this show in versus where it was back in May?
Let’s start with the Doctor themself. Gatwa has a really interesting take on the character, which I really like. We’ve talked about how he’s more scared than his predecessors, and that his emotions are always up at 120%, but the thing I think is the most interesting is that he plays the 15th Doctor as much more of just a regular guy. In this case, the comparison to “Pyramids of Mars” is fascinating, as it also invokes a comparison with Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor, who is many things, none of which are “regular guy.”
As one specific example: I’ve talked a lot about how scared this incarnation gets, and “Pyramids” is probably the most visibly scared Tom’s Doctor ever was. But Tom played “scared” by getting grimmer and grouchier, and without letting his opponent see it, a real “never let them see you bleed” approach. Gatwa is very visible about it. Both “Pyramids” and “Legend/Empire” have a scene where one of the humans snaps at the Doctor for their behavior, but in “Pyramids” it was Sarah reminding the Doctor that these are real people dying and don’t be so callus about it even if there’s a bigger picture, here it was Mel telling the Doctor to get his shit together and do something. A very different take on what a masculine hero looks like, and frankly, I’m enjoying the change.
A fun distinction you make make with the actors who have played the part is that a small but vocal subset of them grew up as fans of the show before they became actors—Davison, Colin Baker, Tennant, and Capaldi have all been very open about growing up as fans. And it’s not that the “fan Doctors” are better, but they do have an extra trick they can pull out of their back pocket when they need to; Davison would pretty obviously channel Troughton when he was stuck, and both Tennant and Capaldi would clearly start doing a Tom Baker impression when the script let them down. (The exception was Colin Baker, who I think correctly realized that the only way his version of the character was every going to work was if he started at 110% and kept going.) And look, “what would Tom Baker do here?” is a pretty solid backup plan for a script that isn’t firing on all cylinders.
But now we have a new category: Doctors who grew up as fans of the Revival show. Gatwa has been pretty clear about watching the Tennant years as a kid, and so I was curious to see if we were going to be able to spot any Tennant impressions. And I can’t actually say that I did, or rather, I can’t spot the different between Gatwa channeling his childhood versus the fact that Tennant’s portrayal is the new baseline for the character, replacing Troughton. It’s not an impression so much as “like David Tennant” is how the character acts now. So I suspect that it’s not that he falls back on an impression as that Gatwa really gets how that baseline works, so that leaves him a little more cognitive space to build things on top of that.
It’s a performance I really like, and kept being surprised by, and what else can you ask for with this show?
What about Ruby? The “companion” role in Doctor Who is a strange one; more than a sidekick, but not really a full co-lead. Mostly, the role exists so that the Doctor can deliver the exposition the audience needs via dialoge. This is why the show has settled on companions from the modern day, that way the companion needs the exact same set of exposition as the audience does.
(As the story goes, Clara was originally going to be the victorian version from “The Snowmen,” but then they realized that if, for example, you had an episode set on an 80s-era cold war submarine, if the character is from the modern day all you have to say is “cold war submarine!”, whereas if the character is from somewhere else you still have to tell the audience “cold war submarine!”, but then you also have to explain to the character what a submarine and a cold war is, and then explain to the audience why you’re explaining that, and when you have a fast-moving 45-minute show, that eats up a lot of time thats better spent on literally anything else. Back when you had 96 minutes to fill in the form of four 25-minute parts, that sort of thing gave you a free scene per episode to organically fill time with.)
But you also need a character that can step in and credibly take charge of the b-plot, so not someone helpless or just there to ask questions. My general belief is that the really successful companions are the ones that you can imagine starring in their own show. Even better, ones where you have a pretty good idea of what that show would be like, and then then upgraded to the better show. As some examples from the classic show, it’s really easy to imagine what a UNIT show held down by the Brigadier, or a freelance journalist show held down by Sarah Jane would look like (even before that one happened,) or a 90s teen angst show with Ace. For the new show, both Rose and Donna explicitly sketch in their respective shows before the Doctor crashes into them.
(And this is getting away from me a little, but what makes Amy fun is that she seems like she’s that kind of character, except her “home show” doesn’t make any sense. And Clara—the best modern companion—is the reverse, in that she does have her own show she makes sense in, but doesn’t get there until she leaves. But I digres.)
Ruby immediately presents as a character in the Rose/Donna mold, a quick sketch of her home show with her adoptive family and her band, and then the Doctor crashes in. Except it’s a little more generic than her predecessors, the show she actually starts in is a different show altogether, and then the bits around her, while effective, kind of float into the background behind The Mystery. However, as much as Ruby is a little generic, she held down an entire episode of “The Ruby Sunday Show”, so by that metric, she’s a big success. Like I said back in December, Ruby dones’t feel like anything so much as Davies looking at Clara and thinking “ooh, I’ll have one of those,” complete with a mystery where the resolution is that the Doctor was seeing secrets where there are none.
I’ve had a note here reading “science ‘fiction’ vs ‘fantasy’?” since the show started, assuming this season would give me an excuse to dig into that, but this is another case where the contrast with “Pyramids” is enlightening. Sure, that story had mummies that were really robots, but it also had a rocket that was able to fly because “it transposes with its projection. Pyramid power.” I can’t with a straight face say that there’s anything significantly different due to this “pivot”; in practice most of the differences here seem to be stylistic ones due to Von Däniken–esque Chariots of the Gods–style ancient aliens aren’t the hottest thing in pop culture anymore. And the Doctor spitting “cultural appropriation” was a more interesting take on the material than the old show ever managed. (or, for that matter, the entirety of Stargate.)
I’m kinda fascinated that they spent all that money on that new Tardis console room, and made a big deal out of the jukebox, and then just didn’t use either? They had to build a new one, since Whittaker’s salt lamp set didn’t exist anymore, but maybe you didn’t need to build all that if you weren’t really going to use it? The Tardis set that got the most time ended up being the Memory Tardis. That’s funny.
By any objective measure, this is the best shape the show has been in for a decade. Good reviews, solid cast, more chatter online than I’ve seen in years. It’s got a big spot on that top carousel on Disney+! It starts one of the Kens from Barbie!
There’s always a certain amount of hand-wringing from the more phlegmatic corners of the the fan base who are convinced that the show is doomed and about to be cancelled, again. Which is funny, since I’m not sure there’s any other media property that’s gotten the number of “second chances” or “new leases on life” that Doctor Who has. And inevitably, if you ask these people what the solution is, the answer is always to make the show exactly like it was when they we’re twelve, and, yeah. Between that and summoning the internet version of soccer hooligans—that is, Star Wars fans—by invoking TLJ, and the internet is in full froth this weekend. I read maybe six of the worst takes on any piece of media ever over the weekend. One guy I saw actually openly wished the show was more like Farscape, and I don’t know how to tell you this, fella, but you’re not nostalgic for that show, you’re nostalgic for being fifteen.
There’s also a lot of free-floating fan anxiety about whether it was a “good starting point”, which forms a feedback loop with the incredibly tedious is it season 1, 14, or 40 “discussion.” (It’s season one, deal with it.) People with a straight face telling newcomers that they can’t watch this season yet, they need to go watch a 20-year old show from 2005 first. There’s lots of “I enjoyed it but my wife who doesn’t really like the show and hasn’t seen the old show didn’t” and like, buddy, the show isn’t the problem there. You ever watch a show with her that she picked?
The right answer to “where do I start” is “what’s on now”. Go watch that episode Disney+ says is Season One, Episode One. “Shows with lore” is a thing that exists now, in a way it didn’t in 2005; plus, as much as this is a soft reboot, there is a reason why wikipedia refuses to call this anything other than season 14. There’s this charming but weird pathology amongst a certain set of terminally online fans that while THEY will read wikis non-stop, “regular people” need to have everything explained to them or they’re be lost and confused.
But it’s the other way around; normal people don’t watch every single episode of things, they’re used to using context clues to keep up—big evil death god dog, got it. It’s only that class of fan that needs absolutely everything explained or they go off the deep end about “canon violations” or “plot holes.” These aren’t documentaties about fake people, they’re stories. Grow some media literacy like those “regular people” you talk down about. These, of course, are the people who went absolutely berserk at the reveal of Ruby’s parents, because they can’t believe that all their paying attention to detail didn’t pay off. Like we said up at the top,Doctor Who is unique in that it’s a mostly sci-fi show where the “male, 18-25” demographic isn’t the core demographic, and that leads to some funny responses.
Anyway, the show’s back, it’s in good hands, it’s doing great, it’s really fun, and the core audience loves it. Glad you’re back, Doctor. Looking forward to Christmas.