Doctor Who Revisited: Series 1 (Part 1)

With the latest series of Doctor Who taking a summer holiday (and they talk about students…), here at The Yorker, we thought it would be the ideal time to revisit all (yes, all) 81 episodes of the Saturday night geek-fest. (I would like to stress again, I do mean all – even ‘Love and Monsters’!) So, as Julie Andrews once, famously, sang, let’s start at the very beginning…

Cast your mind back to March 2005 – a time before our lives were ruled by Facebook and Angry Birds – because this was the month when Doctor Who was making its eagerly anticipated return. But to say that everyone was excited would be a lie. After all, the head writer was a man who had written as much sci-fi as Jane Austen, and the lead roles were taken by a ‘serious’ actor (who told every interviewer that he barely watched the original series) and a blonde few-hit-wonder popstar. Nowadays, such a winning combination wouldn’t make it through the BBC’s front door. Little did anyone realise that it would go on to become one of the most significant British TV programmes of the last decade.

And so, on 26th March 2005, the series’ opening episode ‘Rose’ changed the face of Saturday night television! (I do love a good cliché.) Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper were just fantastic (!) in the lead roles, with Eccleston, surprisingly, bringing a sense of fun to the role, as well as effortlessly portraying the Doctor’s loneliness and inner turmoil, while Piper is still the most believable companion to date. The character of Rose is beautifully written – she’s a well-rounded human being, with a depth to her that is missing from the likes of Amy and Rory. Indeed, it is the believability of the whole episode that makes it stand out: Davies had not just revived a sci-fi show for the likes of people that have lived and breathed it since the sixties. Rather, he recreated it as a human drama, with a winning mix of sci-fi, comedy, action and, most impressively, an awful lot of heart(s).

The following 2 episodes ‘The End of the World’ and ‘The Unquiet Dead’ also impress, both being delightfully good fun, zipping along at a terrific pace. (And Eve Myles proves exactly why she became Torchwood’s leading lady.) Having said that, I don’t think it would be too unfair to say that they are like warm-up acts; high-quality warm-up acts, yes, but there is the sense that everyone is still settling in.

The same could be said of the subsequent two-parter, ‘Aliens of London’/ ‘World War Three’, but, for me, it’s so good that I don’t really care. Yes, it’s ridiculous and silly, and the tongue is so firmly in cheek that it’s fused with it, but it’s just so darn fun. While the Slitheen seem to be remembered as Doctor Who’s Jar Jar Binks, they’re pretty good, Scooby-Doo-esque adversaries, harking back to the days of old school Doctor Who. And how could anyone not love Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North?

I don’t really need to defend the quality of the next episode, but I’m going to anyway. ‘Dalek’ is the episode that basically said: ‘right the fun’s over, now it’s time to get serious’, and it works wonderfully. ‘Dalek’ is fast-moving, exciting and emotional, and it’s incredible just how much tension is created from a single Dalek ambling around a warehouse at 2mph. (It’s a pity that some of the more bombastic later episodes didn’t take note of how successful simplicity can be.) Furthermore, the continued development of the relationship between the Doctor and Rose continues to impress, with the scene in which she refuses to allow him to kill the Dalek being the stand-out scene of the entire episode.

‘Dalek’ therefore rounds off a very impressive start to the series, but there are even better things to come…

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