Doctor Who Re-Watch: Series 1, Episode 8 (Father's Day)

FATHER’S DAY, the 8^th episode of Series 1 DOCTOR WHO is one of my all-time faves. Written by Paul Cornell (a veteran of a number of the DW novels), the episode is very self-contained and concerns an aspect briefly covered in the last episode, that of changing something in time, and what the effects of that are. The difference being that Adam had TRIED to change something in time and the Doctor stopped him, but this time it’s Rose who does it (albeit for completely understandable, if selfish, reasons) but she succeeds as well.

It all starts when Rose asks the Doctor for a favour. She wants to go back and see her father (Pete Tyler, who died when she was a baby), and so he takes her to see him when he married her mother Jackie. After that she begins to reminisce about how her mother used to talk about him when she was little and that he was killed by a hit and run driver on the way to the wedding of a couple friends on November 7^th, 1987. Jackie told her that no one was there with him, as he died. The more she thinks about it the more Rose wants to go to the day he died, and be there for him as he dies. The Doctor reluctantly agrees and the two travel to the time and place of the hit and run. The problem arises as she stands there and watches him get hit she is frozen and can’t make herself go to him. She asks the Doctor for another chance, so they watch themselves watching Pete get hit and Rose can’t help herself and runs to push him out of the way of the oncoming car and saves his life. Then all hell breaks loose. These huge gargoyle creatures start attacking and devouring people.

The Doctor is upset as he, Rose and Pete head back to  Pete’s  flat so he can change into the clothes for the wedding. When Pete is in the other room the Doctor has it out with Rose about changing something so significant, and the fact that he believes she only wanted to travel with him to come back and save her father, which she denies. The argument ends with the Doctor leaving her there and telling her goodbye, storming out. Pete and Rose head out to the church where Jackie has just arrived and her two parents get into a huge argument about how Jackie thinks Pete plays around on her and that he’s a useless inventor who will never succeed. This stuns Rose as she has always believed her parents were very much in love when he died as her mother says a bad word about him in the future. It’s a poignant moment in the story and one that delves deep into not only Rose as a character, but her family as well.

The Doctor meanwhile has discovered his TARDIS has no interior any longer and that time is wounded. The gigantic gargoyle creatures are bacteria attempting to seal the wound by eating everyone in it (this being a problem the Doctor explains that the Time Lords would have sorted out in the past, but without any around the gargoyles (Reapers) have to do it). Inside the Church where the wedding is supposed to take place it is safe since the event that created the death of Pete in that timeline took place near it.

This episode is the first time that showed me how brilliantly, and uncompromisingly emotional DOCTOR WHO could function as a TV show. Here we have a wound in time that Rose has created because she wants to save her father from his fate, and the Doctor’s subsequent efforts (though he is pissed with her for her choice) to make sure that he saving of Pete is able to stick and she will have her father back. Sadly, the paradoxical nature of the event has made it clear that healing such a wound is not easy. During all this Pete discovers that Rose is actually his grown daughter, and oh my god that scene makes me cry manly, manly tears. I can’t even fathom the depth in that scene, and as just he realizes and Rose’s tears are falling she calls him “daddy” and my heart just melts. How can you not feel that way? Here is a chance given that no one has, to have your father back from a death that meant you never knew him. The tumult of emotions would be staggering.

In what I deem as another step up the ladder/stairs of recovery from the Time War PTSD, the Doctor instead of feeding his anger about what Rose has done, he sympathizes and even goes so far as to try to make sure her act saves her father.  Sadly, in a moment that you can see coming, but is no less hard to watch, Pete realizes (through Rose telling him lies about things he does in the future that are out of personality for him) that he dies in his timeline and that his living is responsible. Imagine the sacrifice you’d have to make. Time is seriously messed up and people are dying, how easy or difficult would it be to make the decision to set the timeline right by dying when you need to? Pete shows himself to be a hero, and the story Jackie is telling Rose as a little girl from earlier (yet still in the future) changes and she says that no one knew why he ran outside the church, but that when he died they said an unknown girl stayed with him the whole time he laid there dying. I mean come on! I’m not made of stone. I’m not afraid to admit this episode makes me very emotional. It also impresses the hell out of me that RTD and Cornell didn’t shy away from the “some things in time MUST stay as they are” and that changing things is a tricky business.  This episode shows us that sometimes even the thing you want most you simply can’t have, and that some things are actually better for having been left as they were. Rose gets a few hours with her father and he gets to show her that although he is not exactly who she imagined him to be, he is still her hero and she gets to show him the strong person she grows up to be. It’s a wonderfully bittersweet episode, and one that I love to watch.

NEXT TIME: Oh the first of the Moffat-Excellence written eps with THE EMPTY CHILD and THE DOCTOR DANCES two-parter!

TV Review: Doctor Who - Let's Kill Hitler

On Saturday night I was happy like you would not believe. My favourite show, DOCTOR WHO, (that had been flagging a bit this series so far, and was capped off with a mid-season finale that was less than stellar to say the least) had returned after its hiatus.

Last week I spoke about how I felt that the decision to split Series 6 into two halves was a silly one, and on the weekend I was proven utterly, undeniably correct.

The 8^th episode of the series (and technically a mid-series premier as well) LET’S KILL HITLER was not only good, but it was in fact fantastic. It is no secret that I disliked the 7^th episode, A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR, and to have been left hanging on that mid-series finale for so long was torturous as it gave me time to voice my grumbles aloud and generally be frustrated. That said, had LET’S KILL HITLER run the very next week instead of nearly 3 months later I would never have had a chance to be upset because episode 8 was so entirely splendid throughout. 

At any rate, had you been worried about the show this Series, rest assured that LET’S KILL HITLER is WHO back in fine form and taking names.

At length, Chris and I previously babbled about Moffat’s writing skill at the quieter episodes (and that he wasn’t great at the big spectacle episodes), referencing the lackluster A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR…but I am pleased to say that Moffat has upped his game and in this episode he has managed the spectacle of a big set-piece (also period piece) episode, while also creating an inherently quiet and dramatic one. The script had excellent energy in it and so much to enjoy. It had fan nods, timeline trickery and fun, big explosions, creepy killer jellyfish machines, Nazi’s, Hitler, the Doctor’s new long green coat, the Doctor’s tuxedo, robot spacecraft, great fun info dumps of stuff about River Song and The Doctor both, but you want to know what it had above all else? ANSWERS. Yes you find out who River Song killed, yes you find out more about who she is, and you actually find out an answer about something people have wondered about since the Series 4 ep THE FOREST OF THE DEAD, you get more info about Amy and Rory’s childhood and also answers to things from the premier two-parter. We get mention of the Silence and what exactly it is and how that ties into Melody Pond (River) being wanted for murder and having been trained since birth for that. Lastly, yes there is a nod to the old companions and while it was quick and simple, it was heartfelt and compelling to who the Doctor is now and his emotions. This episode had a number of absolutely brilliant one-liners, a lot of which are uttered by both Rory and the Doctor.  One of Moffat’s skills as a writer is making an episode as dramatic or emotional as he wants and yet still keeping a bit of the lightheartedness this show is known for. Characters sling one-liners around like nobody’s business and they are always great.

The acting in LET'S KILL HITLER, it should be noted, is top notch. I think Arthur Darvill’s Rory especially (who I’ve never really warmed to before) came to the fore in this episode and made me pay attention, for many reasons not the least of which was punching two different people in the jaw. He was genuine, funny and stalwart. Dare I say it…I think we may have finally put Rory into the soldier role that Mickey eventually inhabited after his stint on the Cybermen-infested Alt-Earth in Series 2. He became badass and I think we are seeing Rory take up that mantle not a moment too soon. Amy gets to play herself and also a version of herself as a robot and that second version really showcase’s Karen Gillan’s acting skills. Watching her as a robot with only really her mouth opening and closing over lines was impressive…she LOOKED like a robot and not Amy at all and it was one of the most believable bits in the whole episode. I was really knocked over by that. Alex Kingston’s River Song was River Song. She doesn’t change much as a character, though here we DO get to see one of the earliest incarnations of her and she is rather fun as usual. I think she’s best when she’s interacting with the Doctor as their conversations simply always shine. Matt Smith. Well after episodes like THE DOCTOR’S WIFE we KNOW that Smith can play the Doctor with a significant amount of emotions and I was hoping beyond hope that in the next few episodes we’d see more of him emoting like he did there. We know he is a revelation in the role of The Doctor. He’s funny, spindly, manic, sometimes even completely madcap, and in LET’S KILL HITLER you will get that in spades. However, you will also get to see more emotion from Smith and it’s actually SO well done that I think he gives Tennant a run for his money on the emotional scenes. It was lovely, heartfelt, and blindingly well-acted. I’d love to see more and I really like that it’s a balanced thing and it’s not all one or the other. He plays the whole range and it really shows us all why he was chosen for the role in the first place. There’s a number of side characters in the episode and while I don’t want to talk much about them so as not to spoil anything plot-wise they are all well acted and I never felt like anything was hackneyed, or that anyone overacted their parts. I should also mention, however, that Caitlin Blackwood is back as young Amelia Pond and once again she absolutely steals her scenes. She embodies grown-up Amy so well, and was absolutely splendid yet again.

So like I said above, in LET'S KILL HITLER you have a big, spectacle episode, with a layer of quiet tones over-top of it and Moffat makes me shut my gob and retract what I’d said previously.

I will definitely buy this series on BluRay now based on this episode alone. That’s a big thing as previously I’d wondered whether I would or not. I think this one coheres what they had been attempting before and I can see why the split caused so much of my ire.

It was everything that WHO should be, scary, funny, light, dark, action-packed, informative and dramatic. It gave me plenty of answers to questions I had about characters and even about events earlier in this Series. It also throws part of the entire story-arc for Series 6 into a loop that I wasn’t expecting and makes for a new level of WTF-ery, but not one I am at all annoyed by. Moffat answered most of my major questions (ones I’d been bothered at having been teased about for so long) or at least gave me enough on them to move forward again. Now I have a whole fresh set of questions that are picking at my brain and it is wonderfully delicious feeling to have.

I feel totally sheepish. I should have had more faith. In Moff we trust right?

So there you have it folks, in one episode Moffat has restored my faith in DOCTOR WHO and made me be excited to watch next week (Mark Gatiss’ NIGHT TERRORS episode which looks significantly creepy). I haven’t felt like this since Series 5, and it’s such a great feeling!

Sidenote: The special effects in this episode were EXCEPTIONALLY well done. I think they are always pretty good, but I think they went above and beyond here and smaller aspects of the show’s effects are so patiently attended to that I was really blown away by it.

Stay Tuned for next week’s review.