Doctor Who Re-Watch: Series 2, Episode 2 Tooth & Claw

I’ve got more than one of these Re-Watch posts in the bag so I’ll be posting one today and you’ll see another one Monday, after that I will be caught up to the viewing sched properly as we’ve not moved onto the Cybermen two-part arc yet in our Re-Watch.

For today though…TOOTH AND CLAW!

RTD had a theme whenever he started a new Series of DW, he’d do one intro Companion ep, and the next ep would ALWAYS be one that took place in the past (Episode 2’s in Order: THE UNQUIET DEAD, TOOTH AND CLAW, THE SHAKESPEARE CODE, and THE FIRES OF POMPEII) It was just something he did. Now one might argue that of those eps, THE FIRES OF POMPEII is the best…but I think there is more at work in TOOTH AND CLAW than anyone gives it credit for. So let’s dig in shall we?

The Doctor tries to take Rose to a concert in the 1970’s…but miscalculates and they end up in the 1870’s Scotland, not only that but they stumble across a covered carriage that is transporting the Queen herself (Victoria)! I love the idea that the Doctor is like a tornado in time; he attracts big events, people and fixed points like a loadstone, and the Queen is no exception. What’s even more interesting is that they are heading to Balmoral Castle, but are waylaid by a train derailment and end up at a retreat in the wilds of northern Scotland that the Queen’s deceased husband used to frequent called…dun dun dun….TORCHWOOD! Yep, this is the genesis of the future organization and the eventual spin-off show.

Sidenote: Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who. Ding ding ding…the more you know!

So the Torchwood estate has, unbeknownst to the Doctor, Rose and the Queen and Co., been taken over by a band of fighting mystic monks set on releasing a creature upon the Queen when she arrives. The creature, revealed just after the credits roll is some type of Werewolf. Cue the best special effects shown in DOCTOR WHO so far, the wolf is wonderfully realized, scary and growly. When the company arrives at the estate the monks disguise themselves as staff and the staff are kept in a sub basement with the creature, who of course escapes and attacks.

 There is a lot of little things in this episode that I enjoy watching. Firstly Rose’s attempts to get the Queen to say her famous line (“We are not amused.”) start off ridiculous and get more hilarious as the ep goes on. It’s one of those moments where you realize just how much FUN Rose has while adventuring with the Doctor.

Sidenote 2: This is something I feel was missing from recent companions Amy and Rory. They never seem to be having fun on their adventures, it’s all business.

Anyways, the Queen eventually obliges and says the line, much to Rose’s enjoyment. There is also the fact that David Tennant gets to use his actual Scottish accent in this episode since he is posing as Scottish Doctor and that must have been great for him, and we certainly enjoyed it. Watching the genesis of Torchwood and why it exists (created by Victoria in the waning minutes of the episode since she realizes that the British Empire is threatened by non-terrestrial enemies as well as terrestrial ones) is always fun, especially knowing where it went down the line. What it began as and what Jack Harkness fashions it into are two different things, and RTD let himself play about in the sandbox history of that.

The dénouement of the episode concerns the fact that Prince Albert was aware of the werewolf threat and had Victoria's famed diamond cut down so it fit into a telescope device in an observatory on the estate as a key component that would send the werewolf (which was actually an alien creature of light who was trapped on earth) gracefully into death forever. The etsate was designed in the past by the Earls father as a trap to catch the beast and set it free. It also shows us that in the final battle with the Wolf before subduing it, Victoria was bitten and the Doctor explains that her line always and forever after that had a blood abnormality (this is a truth on historical record actually) that no one could figure out. RTD made Queen Victoria and the current line royalty…part werewolf. THAT is super cool.

One of the more emotional moments in the story is when the owner of the estate, Sir Robert, after having begrudgingly let the Monks trap the Queen in the house for fear of what they would do to his family, sacrifices himself to save them, buying them time in the observatory room and preparing the device. It’s a small moment, but I always love how RTD can help redeem people. Even though he wasn’t a villain, Sir Robert made a mistake in allowing the Monks to get as far as they did and that made him a touch cowardly. Well the redemption in death allows you to walk away from the episode and not think poorly of Robert for nearly betraying his monarch. That’s kind of a big feat for a paragraph in a script to accomplish, as he could have just as easily allowed Robert to live and written his transgression away by reason of needing to save his family, no matter the cost. RTD takes the tougher route in the narrative flow and makes it look easy. Bravo sir.

There’s lots of comedy, action and dramatics in this episode and it just seems like the cast and crew had a blast making it. Great ep!

Next Time: Buffy’s mentor Giles, it turns out, is actually a human drinking bat creature form Space in SCHOOL REUNION! Also, Sarah Jane returns after 35 years with everyone’s favourite metallic dog K-9. “Affirmative, master.”

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!