My, What A Big Budget You Have

Prefect SlogAll the better to dazzle you with, my dear. What the Big Bad Wolf really needed was a Big Bad Ending - where 'Bad' means good, kick-ass, plenty of pow and wow - and thankfully "The Parting of the Ways", grand finale of the new Doctor Who's first season, had all of that in spades. Unfortunately not quite enough spades to dig itself out of all the holes it made for itself, but on the other hand nowhere near enough to bury it either. The whole thing, it turns out, was a love story, both between the Doctor and Rose, and between the episode and the Paul McGann TV Movie; the former a resounding success, the latter a rather misguided affair that didn't do the story any favours. Way back when I saw the TVM for the first time, I remember being suitably impressed by the production values and the fx, but by no means sufficiently impressed to be blinded to the story's failings. And, for the record, I didn't mind the kiss at the end - I mean, it's all a bit Hollywood and unnecessary to have every hero go for the inevitable snog, but McGann's Doctor was a suitably romantic figure, so what the hell. No, what I objected to principally was the flimsy plot (as well as the flimsy Master) and the dreadful cop-out ending, with the TARDIS hitting a magical reset button to save the world and restore the dead people back to life so as to ensure a comforting zero dramatic cost and provide any subsequent adventures in the series with an all too easy Undo option on the Story menu. So if, out of some profound admiration for the TVM, you really feel the need to cut and paste elements from it, sure, borrow the kiss at the end, and have your Daleks mock the fans as they declare the infamous 'half-human' phrase to be blasphemy - but don't, please don't, give us a story that has more cops out (ahem) than The Blues Brothers. Cheap fx I can forgive - I used to watch Doctor Who, remember - but cheap storytelling is a little harder to overlook, I find. Before I get stuck on a thoroughly negative track though, let's be clear: I did, despite the various cheats and get-out clauses, manage to enjoy it all and there was a huge amount of really very very good stuff in there. It was, in point of fact, jam-packed with good bits. For starters, credit where it's due, it had answers to some of those questions that had been left hanging from the previous episode, and some of them were even satisfactory - e.g. what was happening to all the humans being transmatted from Satellite Five? Being turned into Daleks, mate, that's what. Ulp. On top of which, the whole thing was laced with brilliant drama as well as all the spectacle, backed up by a suitably epic score - once again resorting to a lot of choral overtones, as per "Dalek", building an effective sense of menace. The Dalek Emperor was appropriately chilling, and the additional religious aspect succeeds in rendering the Dalek race even more dangerous; and the scenes in the Dalek ship are enhanced wonderfully by noticing all the many Daleks scooting about in the background - there's attention to detail for you. The Doctor is driven inexorably into a corner, and we're treated to the superb and emotionally charged sequence where he tricks Rose into the TARDIS and packs her on her way, with a hologram message that turns to her and tells her to live a fantastic life. Wow. And the Dalek Emperor hails the Doctor as The Great Exterminator, something of a reprise of the individual Dalek's accusation in Episode Six that the Doctor "would make a good Dalek". Initially I wasn't sure when the action cut away to more domestic scenes with Rose, her Mum and Mickey (can we please be shot of him already?) on Earth, but they're played out so brilliantly that you can't help but be as involved in events there as much as at the forefront of the Dalek invasion. On the subject of which, well, it was all worth it (let's be honest and entirely superficial here) just to see those thousands of Daleks pouring out of the ships and being allowed to exterminate away to their hearts' content. Let a Dalek be a Dalek, I say, even more so when you've got an army of them. And Jack's death has genuine impact. (Lynda with a Y, not so much, since we saw that coming last week, all without the aid of a Next Week... BBC-brand spoiler-fest.) There's such a lot of outstanding character moments and cracking dialogue, there's such a lot of, quite simply, brilliance in evidence that I can't help feeling that it deserved a far better class of storytelling than it got, and as much as I enjoyed it, the niggles are more than mere niggles and they feel like they really let the side down. It starts with the Doctor whizzing over to the Dalek spaceship in the TARDIS, materialising around Rose in order to pull off the rescue, continues with a force field that appears to extend outside the TARDIS - even following the Doctor and companions around so that they can walk safely to greet the Emperor - and shield all concerned from the unwanted attentions of the Dalek death rays. Following that not so daring rescue, there's an unfortunate lull in the action as the Dalek ships advance, giving those on board Satellite Five plenty of time to prepare their defences. The force field that prevents the Daleks from just blowing the station away, well, I can just about forgive that, as we wouldn't have had much of an episode without the Dalek boarding action, but the fact that the boarding action is conducted so abysmally is particularly poor. The Daleks may be able to climb stairs but they aren't half slow. When they bumble up against the hastily erected barricades, they presumably endeavour to surprise the defenders by, well, sitting there and waiting for someone to hit an eyestalk and invoke the old "Vision is impaired" mantra from one of their brethren, before adopting the sounder military strategy of 'shooting the enemy'. Still, in their favour, they do blow away Anne Robinson - although technically, as far as I know, she was only transmatting them back to their own ship. Another slightly weak link there. The Doctor's Delta Wave, in itself a magic solution, is nonetheless one with a dreadful cost attached and therefore potentially loaded with drama, which does pay off in terms of that moment of choice - to press the lever or not to press the lever, that is the question, whether tis nobler - and all that. Such a shame then that the entire thing comes down to such a deus ex machina and ultimately, as if to echo one of the things that has been lacking in the majority of episode resolutions throughout the series, the Doctor does diddly. Fair enough, he doesn't want to commit mass murder - you have to admire the bloke for that - but effectively he's given up, he's Dalek fodder and at that point the Universe (which in this series amounts to dear old Earth) is there for the Daleks' taking. Lucky then that Rose is the Bad Wolf and, by the power vested in her by the TARDIS and the Vortex (courtesy of a bit of brute force - a truck - and ignorance - Mickey - to lever the console open), she turns back time. Cher would be so jealous. Ashes to ashes, Daleks to dust, there you go, Doctor, another solution handed to you on a plate, and by the way, for my next trick, I'll bring Jack back to life and so undermine the dramatic impact of that moment too. It's like the TVM all over again. Now how's about a kiss. Dear oh dear. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad Jack's survived, he's a great character, proactive and highly entertaining, he deserved to survive. Just not by being killed and then brought back to life. And I'm still left with questions about the whole Bad Wolf thing, not sure why Rose had to scatter the words everywhere along her timeline to quite that extent. For the record, I never guessed who Bad Wolf was - my theory was that it was the future Doctor, guiding his current incarnation; so the revelation came as a surprise, granted, but I have to wonder, at the end of it all, whether the future Doctor alternative might actually have been better. Briefly, on the subject of that future Doctor, I'm not in any position to offer any real opinions on the new fellow yet - I will say, he had a great opening line ("New teeth") and I just hope that, in contrast to the Eccleston Doctor who, with typical arrogance declares himself to have been "Fantastic!" when the sad truth is, Doctor, in the final analysis, you really didn't do very much at all, David Tennant proves himself a far more proactive Time Lord who resolves situations with more than a sonic screwdriver and someone else's last-minute heroics to save the day. So, DT, welcome aboard, and the world wants you to succeed. Thankfully the BBC have decided to back their new Doctor with a promise of Season 2 *and* 3, and I think that's the kind of support I'd like to see across the board for the Doctor Who brand. It inspires confidence and gives us something to look forward to, which is always nice and it's very reassuring that at the end of this fairy tale, this particular Bad Wolf doesn't get the axe.