Doctor Who Revisited: Series 1 (Part 2)

“What are you captain of? The Innuendo Squad?”

This week, The Yorker TARDIS (painted a rather fetching shade of orange, I imagine) sends us hurtling further into the vortex of Series One of New Who. In this half: the Doctor gets grumpy, Rose gets weepy, and Margaret the Slitheen just doesn’t know when to give up… Onwards, companions! (insert TARDIS noise here).

Fortunately, while the previous episode, ‘Dalek,’ had left me sobbing pathetically into the sofa rather than cowering behind it, ‘The Long Game’ wasn’t as emotionally taxing. I’m not saying it wasn’t good: an evil Simon Pegg conversing with a gurgling, giant, toothy sock puppet puts a smile on my face any day, but it wasn’t a stand-out episode. Russell T Davies’ vision of a futuristic all-controlling news broadcasting service (sound familiar?), however, is downright chilling, as is the concept of humans downloading information straight into their heads. In fact, this stresses out the Doctor so much, he boots his new companion off the TARDIS; in a way, this is one of the scariest parts of the episode.

Popping back to present-day Earth, things aren’t any more cheerful when we encounter the episode ‘Father’s Day.’ Billie Piper shines in this story, which isn’t really about aliens, but serves the double purpose of exploring Rose’s background and also explaining the rules of time travel. Genius. Turns out if you muck about with time too much, you get eaten by narked-off batty things; they didn’t tell you that on Bernard’s Watch, did they? But it was an episode we could all relate to in some way or other - even the Doctor himself, who ranks higher up the intensity scale with every second. Truth is, if you hadn’t stifled even a little sob by the end, you had no soul.

Now, of course you can’t go time traveling without visiting The Blitz, and WW2 double-parter “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” was, quite possibly, the zenith of the series. Our first glimpse of Moffat in the writer’s seat was not to be easily forgotten. You could almost see the glee in his eyes as he fuelled children’s nightmares with scenes of Richard Wilson’s face morphing into a gas mask, and that haunting, recurring cry of “Are you my mummy?” And lest we forget, this episode also marked Captain Jack Harkness’ (John Barrowman’s) first appearance of many (although some may wish he had been bombed to smithereens the first time round), with a welcome sprinkling of campness. Yes, this episode had everything: aliens, space ships, Glenn Miller… and the jubilant Doctor’s cry of “Everybody lives!” after reuniting a teenage mother with her son was a truly heart-warming moment. Before I started crying again.

‘Boom Town’ saw the return of comic relief in the form of Mickey (Noel Clarke) and Margaret the Slitheen, now acting solo. Ridiculous and preposterous in equal measure, it was the calm before the storm, lulling us into a false sense of security for the series finale. This began with ‘Bad Wolf,’ which contained the biggest cliffhanger my 13-year-old self had ever seen. Like, ever. And OMG, DALEKS!

The pace of the story is superb, as it hurtles through comedy - with sneaky references to pop-culture icons, such as Big Brother - to tragedy, when Rose is disintegrated by the Anne-Droid. Ecclestone’s expression of true horror and loss is so poignant that at this moment in time, it’s impossible to imagine anybody else in the role. Okay, the kiss scene between Ecclestone and Piper in ‘The Parting of the Ways’ was a bit, er, squicky (inhaling time vortex energy, my foot), but it was a beautiful ending nonetheless.

And so, as big ears and big teeth morphed into floppy hair and even bigger teeth, Series One – easily one of my favourites – came to an end. It was fantastic, but with Tennant in the driving seat, would it ever be as good again?

See Part 1 of Doctor Who Revisited here.

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