Sunday, September 30, 2012

Diary of a Doctor Who newbie



Revival Series 1, Episode 2-The End of the World

And I’m back with the second episode of the series!

We start with Rose and The Doctor talking in the TARDIS, with Rose wanting to know what that sucker can do.

She first asks to go 100 years into the future, but that is small potatoes for The Doctor, so he brings them 10,000 years forward.  Rose lays the smackdown, and tries to knock some of that cockiness out of him, so The Doctor takes them 5 billion years into the future.

Rose is wondering why they went there, and The Doctor informs her that the earth is ending.  Sucks for humans, I guess.  We see a menagerie of different alien species, all aboard the observation station to watch the destruction of a planet.

There are standard meet and greets, until the last human comes on board, and boy, is she ugly.  As Rose would later describe her, she looks like a giant trampoline with a mouth. 

It’s soon after, and we have our conflict for the evening:  spider-bots are attempting to sabotage the observation ship.  First, it get really hot, then the sun filters go up, and finally, the solar shields go down, threatening the entire ship, and all it’s passengers.

The Doctor manages to figure everything out on his own with no assist from Rose tonight, though he did have help from a sentient tree named Jabe.  Unfortunately, the spider-bots were not the culprit, only the executioner. 

When The Doctor goes to find out who was really in charge of the takeover, he find it out to the Cassandra, the last human, and it was all for the money.  Of course.  She teleports away, and The Doctor and Jabe go to fix the mainframe before Earth is destroyed, destroying the ship with it.

They together manage to find the manual override, but in doing so, Jabe, who is composed fully of wood, gets blasted with extreme heat, and burns completely away.  This leaves us with a PO’d Doctor.

He returns to the rest of the guests, and knows exactly what to do.  He finds the transmitter, and recalls Cassandra back, without her precious team of moisturizers, and without whom she dries out and disintegrates in a matter of a couple of minutes.

Danger completely taken care of, The Doctor discusses, and Rose laments, the fact that the earth is gone, and no one was watching.  He brings her back to present time, giving her the option to stay there, but Rose puts on a cheeky grin, and says she’ll stay, if The Doctor will get her some chips.

I liked this episode.  The action was fast paced, but spread through the entire show, The various aliens had many different forms, though most did stick with the standard bipedal hominid, and I’m beginning to see the dynamic I’m assuming the show will go with for The Doctor and his companion. 

Rose will be our conduit, our way into this world that we have no way of knowing.  Kind of like Harry in Harry Potter, or Arthur in Hithchiker’s Guide.  If we don’t have a person that can ask our questions for us, the completely foreign world would be utterly inaccessible, so we get Rose.  But that’s not her only function.  She also exists to humanize The Doctor, who would be completely sterile, and subjective in his view if it weren’t for her.  She has already had to call him out several times in terms of him not thinking about the consequence of various actions on her, or those close to her.  I’m hoping/assuming she will continue to do that, and that he will start to get there on his own as well.

The Doctor, on the other hand, is our guide through the galaxy and through time, and with him, Rose, and in extension, we, will learn various things about herself and the universe.

I really enjoyed the campiness of the show as well.  It’s clear they have a budget, but it also seems like something a person could almost do on their own, with enough time an effort.  An example would be the slide through time mechanism:  a spinner set into the dashboard.  Simple, elegant, and awesome for the possibilities it gives to fans to play, cos or otherwise.

As always, feel free to comment below, but please avoid spoilers, thanks!  

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