With David Tennant at the TARDIS controls, Doctor Who seemed
unassailable, even critic proof. Every week, headline grabbing stories captured
the hearts of the nation. I think it’s fair to say that Doctor Who had not been
quite as big since the mid-60s and possibly never will be again. These were
golden days to be a fan and we had to keep pinching ourselves as the viewing
figures kept going up and up and up. Our show was, in short, a fabulous,
remarkable tearaway success as it always should have been. Looking back from a
distance, it’s easy to see that like most eras, the David Tennant years were as
full of good and bad stories as any other period in the show’s history. But one
thing is still certain. This programme knew what it wanted to be, where it was
heading and how it would get there. Series were constructed with confidence,
rigidity and skill, giving this old young franchise a robustness, a strength it
would rarely have again. Steven Moffat tended to switch the goalposts with
every series, taking us out of our comfort zones with every passing year.
Russell T Davies’s four and a half series are of a similar tone, trajectory and
hue but that’s no problem. Indeed, this version of Doctor Who is as
fully-formed and complete as it's possible for an era to be. In terms of its
public appeal, bravado of story-telling and relevance to all the family, 2005 –
2010 were the years of Doctor Who’s true greatness. Here are the Doctor Who
Vews rankings, from least to most favourite. Enjoy!
36. THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER
From its very conception, this story is wrong. The title says it
all. It’s slutty, mass appeal fodder - because this isn’t the story of The
Doctor’s Daughter. It’s the story of the Doctor finding himself very
suddenly and without warning in the company of a girl who just happens to have
been born using his DNA for sci-fi reasons. The promise of a dramatic
father-daughter reunion is wasted. Imagine if it had had the balls to really go
for it, to present an actual daughter, Susan’s mother perhaps, and see how that
fractured history played out. Instead, we’re watching Freema Agyeman and her
bubbling companion (whom she can – bizarrely – completely understand) arsing
about in a pond. And then we’ve got possibly the most earnest and clunking line
in the show’s history: “Make the foundation of this society a man who never
would.” The charismatic and assured David Tennant almost manages to sell it but
he’s on a hiding to nowhere because Jenny’s death isn’t felt. Because she
absolutely isn’t The Doctor’s Daughter.
35. THE IDIOT’S LANTERN
The shape of this story is right, the beats well-paced. The
imagery is beautiful. Some of the shots are artfully well composed: the
faceless ones in the cage, the tete-a-tete between the Doctor and the
Inspector, even Tennant running down some stairs. Sadly though, not much about
it works. It feels like a story missing the finesse. It’s workmanlike and by
the numbers: the spooky pre-titles sequence, the comedy TARDIS arrival, the
climax beginning to build ten minutes before the episode finishes. It’s very
difficult to care about the Doctor’s plight on the transmitter though because
it’s not made clear what he’s doing up there until the resolution in which he
reveals in a cheap gag that he’d “taped over” the Wire. Maureen Lipman wailing
“Hungry!” is even more annoying than Kroagnon wailing “Hungry!” and Jamie
Foreman’s Eddie Connolly delivers a shouty, one-note, blustery performance
which should feel frightening and masculine, but which ends up deeply
irritating instead. On paper, The Idiot’s Lantern should work. The 1953
coronation; something coming through the TV; the fight for Alexandra Palace –
it has it all. That it doesn’t hit home feels like a massive missed
opportunity.
34. PLANET OF THE DEAD
The camera creeps back from the depths of David
Tennant’s HD eyeball. The music goes synthy on our asses and then we pull back
to reveal the bus in the middle of the desert. It’s staggering and epic and
strange and very definitely Doctor Who. The only problem is, once we’ve reached
the world of San Helios, the story has played all its cards. There’s little to
do here aside from enjoy the bantz between the Doctor and Lady C, played
unambitiously by Michelle Ryan who should be far posher and more adoringly
dismissive. When the adventure closes and the Doctor asserts that both he and
Lady C were so good together, we’re left wondering, “Were they?” It’s all a bit
tepid and lacks a motor, despite the oncoming stingray storm and a funny turn
from Lee Evans. The problem is there’s no geography to a desert. The trip from
the bus to the crashed spaceship is a nebulous journey with no obstacles to
hinder our heroes, giving the show a languorous air. At an hour’s length, it
feels a bit like being out in the sun too long.
33. THE RUNAWAY BRIDE
So the first half is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Screwball
comedy with a car chase and gags about pockets. And then we reach the lair of
the spider. And we stay there or in the TARDIS for what feels like forever. The
Racnoss clearly can’t move, the vast set looks like it’s shot in more than two
different locations and it’s all so bloody grey. What’s happened to Christmas?
In fact, the Christmas stuff was all last year’s leftovers. The Santas and
Christmas trees feel grafted into a script made for the middle of Series 2
(coincidentally!) and sully The Christmas Invasion somewhat. I remember
wondering if we’d see these Santa guys every bloody year. Thankfully, that last
scene outside Donna’s house is where we’ve been heading and it almost saves The
Runaway Bride. Almost.
32. NEW EARTH
It’s an odd one to launch with, New Earth. Yes, it looks
fantastic – the apple grass sequences looking out at the city and the panoramas
from the hospital windows are gorgeous. But as the first adventure with the new
Doctor and Rose, it’s peculiar. They both spend much of the episode with
somebody else inhabiting their bodies and we don’t really get a feel for what
this relationship will be like. In fact, the scenes in which we do see them
together are a touch cloying. “We had chips,” says Rose almost sexually, and it
lends a nostalgic element to the first trip to the Year 5 Billion which wasn’t
there at the time. Something which was once dangerous and new is now comforting
and twee. Much of the comedy isn’t particularly funny and the location and
studio footage don’t fuse together as well as they might. (See the paper mill
from Rose cutting to a very differently lit CG interior shot, to a small
green corridor set. You don’t get the feeling we’re in the same place from shot
to shot.) It’s worth the effort though because the last ten minutes are
splendid. The Face of Boe gives his textbook enigmatic message before vanishing
and then we have a suddenly very moving scene with Cassandra, who for the last
time is told she is beautiful… tragically, by herself.
31. FEAR HER
It’s not nearly as detestable as fans make out. Indeed, I’d rather
watch Fear Her than Matthew Graham bulkier, more insipid entry in Matt
Smith’s era. It’s clearly the cheapie (There are no monsters, barely any CGI
and few characters.) but Graham doesn’t write it that way. He writes a story in
which the Doctor lights the Olympic torch in a stadium full of spectators.
Watching David Tennant try to sell that is hard. He smiles gleefully at the
absent crowd and because we can’t see them, there’s a vague feeling of
embarrassment, of Doctor Who pulling off more than it can chew, and indeed of –
wait for it – cheesiness. This ending is the ultimate in cheese. I can’t think
of another Doctor Who episode I’d describe as cheesy. But here we’ve got “Not
you too, Bob,” and the beacon of “hope and love.” The dialogue is so blunted,
it simply can’t avoid feeling like cliché. But then again, there’s the absent
father hiding in the cupboard, possibly the scariest idea that Doctor Who can
hope to engage with. Here, Graham actually succeeds and the shadow at the top
of the stairs is Fear Her’s stand-out moment. Perhaps, if the story had
contented itself in Chloe’s house, as Night Terrors did in George’s, it
might avoid trying to reach too high and be more kindly remembered too.
30. DALEKS IN MANHATTAN /
EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS
Poor Helen Raynor. She didn’t know what she was letting herself in
for when she went online and found the hateful messages railing against her
first two-part foray into the Who world. Sadly, the critics did have their
points. The first half of this New York – Skarosian caper is the stuff of the
very best Doctor Who. The scenes in the sewers are reminiscent of those in Revelation
and the theatre setting of Weng-Chiang. This is as rich a setting as any
for a Doctor Who story and despite the fact that (save a few plate shots) it’s
painfully obvious that this wasn’t shot in NY, the American city runs through
the veins of this script, from lowly actress Tallulah (“Three Ls and an H) to
the heights of the Empire State Building via the straights and narrows of Central
Park. Daleks in Manhattan has a profound sense of its own geography. In
Evolution of the Daleks, however, things fall apart fairly quickly. Hugh
Quarshie has a foot-in-mouth speech before he’s exterminated, followed by the
Doctor’s insane suggestion that the Daleks kill him there on the spot. Why?
Where’s the logic here? Then we cut to the Doctor again, who’s clearly had a
long journey from Central Park back to the Empire State but is nevertheless
still in a deadly rage, entering the scene screaming at the top of his voice.
It makes the viewer want to stick their fingers in their ears and ask Tennant
to politely dial it down a bit. By the time we get to lines of the class of “If
you choose death and destruction then death and destruction will choose you,”
you know we’re plumbing the depths. But I’d rather Doctor Who fail
spectacularly like this, with a bit of flair and balls, than offer up something
bland like Planet of the Dead. Everything about Daleks in Manhattan
is big, even its glorious failings.
29. THE SHAKESPEARE CODE
I must say that it’s very telling of this era that a show as well
put together as The Shakespeare Code is this low in the rankings. It
says something about the considerably high standards of these four years and
from now on, I can’t say there’s a bad show in this list. The Shakespeare
Code looks sumptuous, completely convincing in its 1599 setting. Gareth
Roberts’s script, like The Idiot’s Lantern, is well worked through, its
twists and revelations coming at precisely the right times. There are two big
problems though: the biggest is Dean Lennox Kelly (Shameless’s Kev) as
Shakespeare himself. It’s a one-note line reading, ironically illustrating
little understanding of text. He looks completely daft when possessed by
Lilith, crumpling his face into a ridiculous gurn. The second problem is a more
subtle one, but it’s in the setting itself. Yes, it looks gorgeous but it’s all
a bit dark and brown and there’s not much chance for action, as Martha can
certainly attest after struggling through the episode’s best scene in the
bedroom. To say this was a standard RTD-era episode feels like it could be a
compliment but episodes in this era are so rarely standard.
28. PARTNERS IN CRIME
As strangely desperate as he
was to include a scene in which the Doctor and companion engage with a
slow-moving window-cleaning lift, it makes for a relatively drab central
set-piece, given that in previous openers, we’ve seen the London Eye light up,
a hospital transported to the moon, and a trip to the Year 5 Billion. And that
sums up why this story doesn’t light any fires. It feels like something we’ve
seen before but done less well. As it happens, we haven’t really seen
this before: the Doctor and Companion are actively looking for one another,
rather than meeting for the first time; the aliens are cute and tiny and the
mime in the middle is sublime. But for the fourth season of RTD’s time, we’re
opening with yet another alien invasion story, meeting the companion’s family
and promising better to come. It feels like it’s lacking the wonder and
freshness that something like, say, The Eleventh Hour would bring the
next time a series began.
27. PLANET OF THE OOD
This one was butchered by the editing. The Doctor and Donna
arrive, do nothing, and become the Ood’s new Gods with hymns sung about them.
It’s a bit much for a story which feels relatively small and self-contained. Planet
of the Ood is all action and despite the giant one, very little brain. None
of the characters are sympathetic. We’re not gunning for anyone. Things happen
just because. “He has become Ood form,” intones Silas Carson’s Sigma casually,
as if he’s talking about something as innocuous as hair loss. There are bonus
points however for Tim McInnerny’s bizarre turn as Halpen. He chews his most
hokey lines: “We’re gonna blow it up,” he gleefully leers. “Enjoy your Ood,” he
demands, making the sentence feel as if it’s been badly Google-translated. Best
is his casual-not casual call for “drink” which gets funnier with each
exhortation. Daft, bull-headed but fun, Planet of the Ood is probably
best enjoyed with a beer. It’s so silly that when it drops the slave trade
message, it actually sits so badly that it starts to feel a little bit stupid
too.
26. THE NEXT DOCTOR
After Voyage of the Damned, The Next Doctor was
going to feel small. Despite a giant Cyberking striding its way through
history, for a Christmas Special there is something cheap about The Next
Doctor. The Cyber Wraths don’t work. There’s a lot of talk in town houses
and the Torchwood set gets redressed. Perhaps the reason why The Next
Doctor doesn’t really work is in the title. In the Court of the Cyber
King was a title suggested by RTD and perhaps it would have given a
stronger clue as to where this tale’s heart really lies. It’s not with Jackson
Lake; it’s with Mercy Hartigan. Neither are allowed the time to truly grow.
Once the mystery of Lake’s identity is revealed, David Morrissey is all but
surplus to requirements. Maybe, for once, Russell puts publicity over narrative
and ends up with a special that doesn’t really know who it’s about. The
Cybermen in the graveyard, though: now there’s a scene that has Classic Who
written straight through it.
25. THE FIRES OF POMPEII
Like The Shakespeare Code, this is extremely solid but
unspectacular. It’s Companion’s First Trip into History 101. There’s a stellar
cast: Peter Capaldi achingly charismatic at the story’s conclusion; Phil Davies
vicious and snarling. There’s that metaphorically fiery scene in which Lucius
drops his prophecies and that literally fiery shot later when the Doctor and
Donna can do nothing but run away from the erupting Vesuvius. Here, the show
really comes to life. But for the most part, The Fires of Pompeii feels
disappointingly underpowered. The sense of doom you might expect from such a
tale isn’t there. It’s all quite leisurely and static until those final few
minutes. And Catherine Tate’s acting – whatever her biggest fans would have you
believe – is over-mannered and showy. Her teary scenes in the TARDIS feel like
a cynical excuse to show that this actor turned comedienne can indeed act. It’s
a problem that would later be more cloying in her shouty scene at the close of Turn
Left. Again, like The Shakespeare Code, there's not anything
particularly wrong with The Fires of Pompeii. It just needs to use the
time bomb that is Vesuvius to propel things along a little more rapidly.
24. 42
Chris Chibnall’s debut Who script perhaps typifies what we have
come to expect of this future showrunner: solid but dependable. 42 isn’t
going to set the world burning but it’s narrative of a ship drawn ever closer
to the sun is a pleasing divergence of 42 minutes. It motors along, there’s a
very creepy villain and as McDonnell expresses her love for Korvin in her last
few moments of life, it's unexpectedly moving. From a production perspective
though, it’s purposefully building on the “tough” early space travel of The
Impossible Planet, even down to the red lighting and spacesuits. It all
brings to mind the earlier story which was something of a masterpiece and 42
resolutely isn’t; it’s a pub quiz in space. And while we all love standing
around a pub quiz machine, shouting at the screen, we struggle to remember a thing
about it when it’s all done. That might be an unkind simile; David Tennant is
astonishing here and the shots of him hanging from the spaceship airlock are
dangerous and brutal-looking. Still, they’re not enough to distract from the
fact that this feels like it’s all been done better before. Even the plot’s
just Planet of Evil.
23. THE STOLEN EARTH / JOURNEY’S
END
The first episode is a stunner. If you don’t punch the air every
few minutes, I don’t know what you’ve been watching. Seeing Torchwood, Sarah
Jane and UNIT come together to fight the Daleks feels like the perfect Doctor
Who party and all our heroes are here to share it with us. Even Davros, the
fellow we love to hate arrives, complete with a new metal hand. The thrill of
visiting the hitherto only mentioned Shadow Proclamation is itself one of the
many giddy thrills of The Stolen Earth. When Harriet Jones arrives, you
know that this really does not get any better. Until K9 shows up next week that
is. David Tennant’s last season finale though falls at the second hurdle. The
Doctor is imprisoned by Davros for a stupefyingly long time, the Doctor-Donna
feels like a cheat that doesn’t work and allows Rose her happy ending, sullying
that perfect conclusion in Doomsday. The replay on the beach brings to
mind the earlier, better farewell. Our regulars flying the TARDIS would be a
triumphant moment, but appallingly Freema Agyeman turns to camera and squees,
letting us know she’s loving it all a bit too much. Everything starts to feel a
touch cloying. Even Donna’s ending here would go on to prove hyperbolic. Why
didn’t the Doctor mention the safeguard he’d left her with? After an opening
episode that builds to a dramatic and unbeatable cliff-hanger, we’re left with
a second half which descends into so much disappointing nonsense.
22. HUMAN NATURE / THE FAMILY OF
BLOOD
OK, I realise the lowly position of Human Nature will sends
shivers up some spines but hear me out. I love the first half. It looks
gorgeous, Harry Lloyd is spectacular, David Tennant and Jessica Hynes are an
utterly adorable pair of sweethearts, the scene with the piano and the baby is
completely charming and the cliff-hanger an old-school dilemma-based affair.
There’s even a waltz. Human Nature can do no wrong for me. But The
Family of Blood drops the ball. As beauteous as the first half is, the
second becomes saccharine. Tennant – praised widely for his performance as John
Smith – turns on the tears too early and you quickly want him to go away and
cry somewhere else. The scene which ends the episode offers up the image of a
poppy to stir the heartstrings, but it’s a symbol and a symbol in itself can’t
move. It feels like a cheap trick. “Let’s present a poppy to get people
emoting.” We don’t know what Tim went through during the war so we can’t share
the sympathy of his plight. The Family of Blood reaches for metaphor. It
wants to be the story of what everyone went through during the First
World War, and it ends up being about no one. What’s more, it’s so desperate
for us to be on its side, it resorts to sledgehammer tactics, scene after scene
telling us to feel. If anything, it makes me want to turn off the telly.
21. SMITH AND JONES
The great cleverness of Smith and Jones is that it wears
its cleverness lightly. It’s a companion introduction story which literally
travels to the moon and back, adds in a nice little time travel trick and
introduces an army of rhino-headed policemen and a blood-sucking pensioner. A
lesser writer would surely have driven the audience away in cartloads but here,
everything feels disarmingly right. The humour sits skilfully alongside the
action and the heart. Martha’s family are introduced with supreme skill and we
leave them, as Martha does, at loggerheads. We know what she’s running from and
we know she understands the dangers of what’s to come. Sadly, those dangers
will ultimately lead straight back to her family. In hindsight, it’s sad to see
Martha, so optimistic and unaware of what’s to befall her and her loved ones. Smith
and Jones is the start of a great adventure, succinctly, cleverly and
rousingly told.
20. ARMY OF GHOSTS / DOOMSDAY
Doomsday
was the finale to end all finales. Cybermen Vs Daleks! Mickey, Jackie, Pete and
Rose. In hindsight, this was always the way RTD’s narrative was headed, with
Rose regaining her family. It’s only obvious when we get to the end that all
the pieces were there, cleverly shaped and positioned, all leading here. What
we couldn’t foresee, however, was that to get her family back, Rose would lose
the Doctor. It’s heart-rendingly tragic and Doomsday is a fast-paced,
exciting, set-piece-after-set-piece episode. The only problem is, we now know
she didn’t lose the Doctor, Journey’s End lessening the impact of Doomsday,
making it not the ending, but a middle chapter. It was better as an ending. In
fact, it was astonishingly powerful – a moment still talked about by the
public. Army of Ghosts, however, feels like a chunky, often drab,
trailer for the finale. It’s slow, the gags aren’t funny, Yvonne is irritating.
It only kicks into gear when Mickey turns up and we get the sudden feeling that
this is leading somewhere big. This is perhaps a rare example of when the
second episode of a finale far outstrips the first. Aside from the obvious
exception of The Parting of the Ways, it’s usually vice versa. Doomsday
is a definitive ending to the Rose Tyler story and should probably have stayed
that way.
19. TURN LEFT
If there is an oddball tale to be had in the RTD years, it’s Turn
Left. I’m not sure it quite makes sense. Why does Rose appear in this dream
version of reality? What’s the Bad Wolf thing all about? In fact, Rose’s return
is fairly fudged throughout. Once she’s run down that street gleefully in The
Stolen Earth, that’s pretty much her job done. But RTD’s vision of Doctor
Who is rarely about sense and more about feeling. Turn Left is a
disquieting story. It throws up junctures which disturb. The death of Martha as
reported on the news is hard-hitting. The mushroom cloud erupting from London
is a terrifying image. Most frightening of all though, is Wilfred Mott’s salute
to those being taken to the labour camps, quickly followed by Sylvia’s bitter,
tired stare at the camera. This is upsetting Doctor Who, showcasing the very
worst of humanity – as dark as it gets.
18. THE CHRISTMAS INVASION
Was ever a Doctor’s debut story greeted with such rapture? We’d
just had the comeback season, met by everyone, everyone with profound
joy. It could do no wrong. And then, Chris Eccleston quit. But strangely, it
didn’t seem to matter. Because here was an actor who truly got RTD’s
dialogue, who could speak its rhythms, who was genuinely funny. Here, in another
of Russell’s masterstrokes, the new Doctor only gets fifteen minutes at the end
of the hour to save the day and David Tennant is magnificently charming. He
rattles through his soliloquising with abandon, sometimes casual, sometimes out
and out funny (“I DON’T KNOW!”), sometimes steely. He goes through it all. It’s
a superb piece of writing and of playing. Tennant would go on to have more
disappointing moments but none here. He excels. After his short stint, we don’t
even miss Eccleston. Plus, we have killer Santas, shattering Gherkins, a
swordfight, mass suicide from the Tower of London and a Lion King reference. The
Christmas Invasion is a joy. If Series One was Doctor Who saying “Coming
into land!” this was Doctor Who saying “We’re here!”
17. THE LAZARUS EXPERIMENT
Massively underrated, The Lazarus Experiment is the perfect
example of how to do a monster story. It’s got a robust, powerful structure: we
start and end in Martha’s living room, visit a black tie event, and climax in
the belfry of Southwark Cathedral. The monster itself is grotesque and
terrifying. The action never stops. It’s like The Brain of Morbius meets
Earthshock. Even an exploding science lab is just another tiny obstacle
in the defeat of Lazarus, as the Doctor races onward to the next peril. The
elephant in the room is, of course, the miscast Mark Gatiss. He’s excellent
elsewhere in Doctor Who (and indeed, all over television) but here, he’s
written as the handsome young buck who Tish falls for very quickly after being
repulsed by his elder form. But Gatiss isn’t a young buck. He’s not even
particularly attractive in the traditional way. He needs to be Hugh Grant but
instead we get Nicholas Lyndhurst. However, he plays it for all it’s worth, in
a performance worthy of the Doctor Who villain stalwarts – your Philip Madocs
or Tony Beckleys. I love his mannered delivery of, “One lifetime’s been too
short for me to do everything I’d like. How much more would I get done with
two, or three, or four?” He makes four seem like the magic number. Three
– yeah, unimpressive. But four lifetimes? Well, now there’s something!
It’s an insane, arch, committed and brave endeavour. And I’d much rather have
this than a bland, handsome straight-out-of-drama-school stag. I love The
Lazarus Experiment. If Doctor Who is about monsters, then I can’t
understand why fans can’t seem to engage with this dark, extremely well-shot
story of perverting nature.
16. THE UNICORN AND THE WASP
Gareth Roberts’s best entry in the Russell T Davies era. The
Unicorn and the Wasp is that rare thing in Doctor Who – a murder mystery
which actually functions as a murder mystery. That should be its ticket to the
upper echelons of stories in itself but Roberts’s script is far more than that:
genuinely funny, subversive, bold and surprising. It looks gorgeous, the cast
are terrific. It excels in almost every department, that it’s success is almost
invisible. This is a production that works. That means we can’t be drawn
out of its reality. We can’t start thinking about effects or sets or costumes
because we’re too busy being wheeled through this zippy, fun, bounding script.
Look at the interrogation scenes for evidence of sheer writerly skill: each one
splices into the next seamlessly, revealing something about the suspects in
canny, economy and the flashbacks to what Christopher Benjamin was up to are
unexpectedly hilarious. “I was in me study,” he says plummily. Twice. That’s
enough for any Doctor Who story to be delightful.
15. THE END OF TIME
Overlong, plotless, at times rambling and utterly indulgent, this
is the full-fat, chocolatey desert after an already enormous meal. And it feels
good! Packed full of glorious moments (the best famously between Bernard
Cribbins and a world-weary, affected David Tennant in his best performance), The
End of Time lives up to its tone meeting description: The Best. The era’s
best director, alongside the best actors, the best designers, the best
prosthetics and the best sound and music. This feels like a culmination. For a
time, I thought Journey’s End would probably have made for David
Tennant’s strongest finale (everyone back, the Daleks, Davros, a regeneration,
Rose) but here, we have the apotheosis of all the thematic resonances of the
RTD years, meeting at last, the Time Lords! John Simm’s Master returns (and
Simm is utterly, magnificently wild) making him the definitive villain of the
Tennant era and that final curtain call for all the great, great characters
we’ve met over the last four years is well and truly earned. It feels like The
End of Time itself, Russell underlining his time on the show in a huge,
majestic flourish. As we approach the Matt Smith and Steven Moffat oligarchy,
all our thoughts of yesterday are put back in the box for the last time.
They’re finished with. It was grand and epic and we loved it. And here is the
ultimate goodbye.
14. SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY /
FOREST OF THE DEAD
If there were ever a story to signal what was coming, it’s Silence
in the Library: River Song, timey-wimey, over-elaborate plotting,
child-centred story-telling, the Doctor in Love, sentient computers and real
chills. This is bottled Moffat. And of course, it’s fantastic. Stealing from The
Ark in Space, Moffat allows his library to be the star of the show for
twenty minutes. Then the guest cast – or should that be shadow-fodder – arrive,
the faceless spacesuits frightening as they step through the smoke. Colin
Salmon’s Dr Moon is sinister, his advice to Chloe enough to send any child
screaming to bed. His visitations to Donna are foreboding and unpleasant. “And
then you forgot,” he smiles and Donna’s memory is invisibly wiped. Forest of
the Dead feels like Moffat unleashed. This style of mind-f**k story-telling
would of course become normal, but here in the middle of the RTD years, it’s
more arresting than usual. Catherine Tate delivers her best performance. I feel
I’ve been a little unfair on Tate throughout this article. I feel like the
moments when she is seemingly universally praised (The Fires of Pompeii,
Turn Left) she is actually just a bit shouty and teary, making little
sense of the lines. That moment in Turn Left when she cries, “But I
can’t die!” goes through me. However, here, when she loses her children, Tate’s
screams are coruscating and real. This is her at her best. She is so good and
makes Forest of the Dead even better than its already refined cleverness
would attest. Magnificent.
13. MIDNIGHT
It’s all a bit grey-looking. That’s the worst I can say about this
terrific Wednesday Play in which a group of bus passengers end up at
loggerheads, to the point where they’re ready to kill one another. Russell’s
script creeps up on the viewer as the tension inside the shuttle mounts.
Wisely, the characters are not all cardboard cut-out contrasts. They all feel
“normal” with humanity in common and then we discover - in their time of
greatest stress - who the cowards are, who can be trusted, what humanity can
do. Tennant is blisteringly good. Midnight to David Tennant is what Mummy
is to Peter Capaldi – they at the heart of things, driving the narrative and
then in Tennant’s bold statement that they should listen to him “because I’m
clever,” we realise he’s gone too far. He’s exposed his arrogance in
desperation and now, he’s going to pay the price. Even the Doctor isn’t immune
to the devastating effects of this haunting tale of the unknown.
12. BLINK
I must be the only fan in the world who didn’t greet Blink
with ecstatic lofty praise. Frankly, I’d already seen it (minus weeping angels)
in the 2006 Doctor Who Storybook, in which Steven Moffat recounted the tale of
Sally Sparrow and the message under the wallpaper. I felt like I was being
handed second-hand goods. But with the benefit of hindsight, Blink’s
greatness is obvious. Like Moffat himself would assert though, “The Doctor
isn’t even in it.” To my childish mind, too, the angels are hardly used. Doctor
Who without the Doctor and the monsters can’t really constitute the best of the
show. Where I want the thrill of the “Don’t blink, the angels are here” scenes,
I’m getting a chat in the backroom of a DVD shop. This is trite criticism,
however. Because Blink never stops entertaining. The gags are great,
Sally and Larry are the cutest couple, the music’s terrific, “the same rain”
scene is deeply sad. There are so many wonderful moments in Blink, it
feels increasingly foolish to criticise it. But then, it doesn’t feel quite
like Doctor Who in the same way that any of the other stories in Series
Three do because the monsters and the Doctor don’t show up until the end. Never
mind. Blink might not be typical Doctor Who, but it is brilliant
Doctor Who.
11. THE GIRL IN THE
FIREPLACE
Perhaps we’re so familiar with the idiosyncrasies of
Steven Moffat’s writing now that The Girl in the Fireplace is in danger
of being a little forgotten, over-written in fact. But this is a beautiful,
small tale of a love across time. Like its clockwork droids, the narrative cogs
at work in The Girl in the Fireplace are intricate, delicate and
immaculately positioned. Look at how Moffat cleverly introduces the horse which
will star in the episode’s climax – Arthur is a gag so we don’t realise his
significance because we’re too busy laughing. (He played the same trick with
the nanogenes the year before – introduced to show off how so much more
“up-tech” Captain Jack was.) The Doctor falling so quickly for Reinette and
then thoughtlessly abandoning his friends might seem out of character but
actually if we trace this Tenth Doctor across all these stories, he is capable
of supreme selfishness. (Look at the way he treats Mickey.) There are scares as
well as kisses: the scene of child Reinette in the middle of her bed as the
thing beneath it stirs is jumpy and affecting. The logic of the droids is
frightening in itself. “We do not require your feet,” is as chilling a
statement as they come. It takes one to be extremely unromantic not to be
unmoved by the story of the Doctor and Reinette’s romance though, and the words
of her dying letter are deeply moving as Sofia Myles narrates from beyond the
grave. Perhaps this is the only love story the Doctor can have, his lover on
the fast path, himself ever on the long one.
10. THE SONTARAN STRATAGEM / THE
POISON SKY
There are four multi-part stories in the Top Ten here. Each one
could be its own Doctor Who movie. In fact, call me a Philistine, but I’d love
to see these stories, cliff-hangers edited out on a big screen. They’d make for
such a fabulous film franchise. But that’s the thrill of Doctor Who in a
nutshell. Every week, we are gifted with something better than a movie,
something for the small screen which holds its greatness lightly. Television is
always seen as the lesser cousin of the movies, but the four feature-length
tales on offer here, illustrate that movies have a long way to go before they
even begin to match our brilliant little programme. This is the best Sontaran
story by a country mile. They have a reason to invade, a strong military plan
and they’re cruel, troll-like aggressors. UNIT are back and as strong as they
always were, although it would have been perfect had we seen the Brig again,
one last time in the parent show. Even the titles typify the best of the show.
This is bread and butter Who at its absolute best. The action sequences in the
second half are relentless, the Doctor’s first meeting with Rattigan is sizzling,
there’s a cheer-eliciting non-explosion and the cliff-hanger is fantastic. So
sure of itself is The Poison Sky that when it introduces the Valiant, it
knows how high we’re going to punch the air.
9. LOVE & MONSTERS
Reviled by many, Love & Monsters is the story of us
all. Perhaps it’s too close to the bone for some fans. Perhaps it just looks
like a comedy and some fans still don’t like Doctor Who comedy, turned off
instantly by the Scooby Doo chase sequence at the beginning. But it’s typical
of a story which breaks its own form over and over again. Is this a
presentation from Marc Warren or not? The scenes with the Abzorbaloff and the
Doctor and Rose are clearly happening in the now and are not framed in the same
way as the rest of the story. There are time jump cuts which work as a coming
soon trailer: the first mention of Ursula is followed by a terrifying shot of
Shirley Henderson screaming. Victor is introduced with Peter Kay exclaiming,
“You stupid man!” Half way through, we’re unexpectedly into the story of poor
Jackie Tyler which has vivid heart and surprising bite. Love& Monsters
is so many things, a heady hodgepodge of styles and emotions. It’s lovely and
sad and clever and scary. But my favourite oddball moment is that very funny
cut to Elton John.
8. RISE OF THE CYBERMEN / THE AGE
OF STEEL
Another movie here, the cliff-hanger a moment of jeopardy meaning
that the two episodes could be cut seamlessly together. This is Doctor Who and
the Cybermen on the Big Screen, closer than ever before. All its constituent
parts are formed from the very DNA of Doctor Who: the walk down the tunnels,
the Cybermen coming to life around our heroes, the smashing through the
windows, the showdown with the Controller. More than that though, what runs through
these two episodes are the hearts of Rose and Mickey, the young people most
affected by travel into this uncanny parallel world. Stand-out scenes include
Rose’s chat with her alt-mother on the bench, Mickey’s visit to his Grandmother
and the Doctor’s inflamed decision as to who to follow. “You don’t know
anything about me, do you?” says Mickey, cutting straight to the Doctor’s
selfishness. The Doctor has avoided Mickey, taken the piss out of him, and now,
he’s being called out on it by the lovely, patient mechanic. Character drives
this story, but by the time we’ve got to the zeppelin - the Doctor, Rose and
Pete climbing desperately away from the oncoming Cyber Controller – this is as
breath-taking as Doctor Who has ever been. Forget car chases, shoot-outs and
explosions, this tale is told vertically. We go from the tunnels beneath the
power station, to the factory floor, to the roof, to the skies. The geography
of action has never worked quite so well in Doctor Who as it does here.
7. THE WATERS OF MARS
This is the darkest David Tennant’s Doctor ever gets and it’s
nail-biting viewing. When he cries, “We’re fighting time itself and I’m
gonna win!” it’s delivered with such frightening ferocity that as
terrifying as the Flood monsters are, there’s even more fear posed by this Time
lord Victorious. The Waters of Mars is doom-laden from the get-go,
despite starting with a very funny feedline into the titles. We know that the
guest cast are destined to die and we spend the duration of the episode waiting
for that to happen. From the first unsettling, out-of-focus transformation, we
know things are going to go wrong and as the colonists of Bowie Base One start
to fall like dominoes, Murray Gold’s oppressive, unusually subtle score rolls
onwards – death after death punctuated by eerie, ethereal music. This is the
sort of story that can only be told at a very certain point in a Doctor’s
tenure. Perhaps even, this is the only time that The Waters of Mars
could be told. RTD sees the opportunity to plough headlong into the hubris of
the Time Lord, and alongside Phil Ford does so at full speed, unrestrained,
leading almost fatalistically into the horrors of regeneration to come…
6. SCHOOL REUNION
Perhaps the only issue with School Reunion and indeed, the
following Sarah Jane Adventures is that the eponymous heroine’s
relationship with the Doctor was never quite as intense and romantic as is made
out here. True, the heart of Doctor Who was never quite laid bare in the
classic series, emotions hinted at rather than explored. It’s also possible
that Sarah’s love for the Doctor has grown in his absence. Whatever the case,
her reunion with the Time Lord makes for tremendous television. It begins light
and summery, as the series miraculously managed yearly in the mid-00s. The
Krillitanes are frightening creatures, moving rapidly through the school
corridors anachronistically. The meeting by the pool sizzles with testosterone,
Anthony Head stepping in to the fold to show David Tennant how to do nothing
with bravado. It’s all quite exciting and jolly. And then K9 dies. In a
shattering, unexpected twist, the Doctor heralds the “good dog” before it
trundles pathetically off to its death. And that’s when we think School
Reunion has suddenly dug its teeth in. But then the Doctor has to say
goodbye properly to Sarah and by this time, it’s under our skin. Just when you
think you’ve got no tears left to shed, it’s revealed that K9 has been rebuilt!
Just when you were so happy that K9 was killed (sad is happy for deep people), you’re even happier
that he wasn’t. This is a tale of strong emotions, some contradictory, but all
incredibly strong.
5. UTOPIA / THE SOUND OF DRUMS /
LAST OF THE TIME LORDS
This is Russell T Davies’s Doctor Who in long-form. In a way, it
encompasses everything he would do with the show: its focus on family, its
outward relevance to the modern viewer (making the Master Prime Minister
indeed!) and showcasing the very best and very worst of the human race. We go
to the extreme end of creation, and in a neat paradox (machine) are pulled
straight back to the here and now. The ending of Utopia is as
edge-of-the-seat as Doctor Who gets. Indeed, I watched this at university and
for 15 minutes, I really was on the edge of my seat. Derek Jacobi excels as
both Yana and the Master and it’s lovely that he’s getting to showcase his
sarcastic, snarling manifestation with Big Finish currently. The realisation
that this demon of Time Lords is waking up is as exciting as television gets. The
Sound of Drums starts running and powers on through manically
(frighteningly killing the cabinet members, blowing up Martha’s flat and making
our heroes Britain’s most wanted – this is hitherto undiscovered territory for
the programme) ending with the most disturbing cliff-hanger in all of Doctor
Who, a situation impossible to imagine a way out of and a desiccated Doctor
forced to look on as the Earth burns. Last of the Time Lords was always
going to feel like a comedown but it’s another very different chapter in this
tale of two Gods playing in their garden. When the tiny Doctor emerges from his
shrivelled clothing, it’s heart-stopping. The Scissor Sisters dance is
disturbing and nightmarish. It feels right that after the outright turmoil of
the year that never was, Martha’s ending is the most mature exit a companion in
the new series has ever enjoyed.
4. GRIDLOCK
The last and greatest of the “New Earth Trilogy.” This time,
there’s no Cassandra, and we’re into the city itself, making New Earth’s
seeming resistance to go and find the bigger story less irritating. Again
though, Russell T Davies contents himself with a tale set in a few cars and an
empty hall. Because he knows that focussing on the characters is always wiser
the further away from Old Earth we get. These characters really live. Ardal
O’Hanlon’s Brannigan is a joy, his infectious lilt bringing that cat mask to
unpretentious life. Novice Hame, atoning for her sins, looking after the dying
Boe, comes into her own as she explains the scourge of Bliss to the Doctor. We
can’t quite believe a thing like this could have happened to such a thriving
city, but perhaps it is even more relevant in these troubling times. Best of
all though, this isn’t a tragedy. This is how the survivors come together to
rebuild. It’s a tale of how, in times of crisis, humanity sings hymns, holds
hands and sits inside waiting for things to get better. It’s a tale of hope.
How completely wonderful.
3. VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED
Why Voyage of the Damned is so vilified, I do not
understand. It is fundamentally brilliant Doctor Who. The Heavenly Host are
flying Voc Robots in a crashing Titanic. What’s not to love? There’s a talking
red conker, Buckingham Palace in jeopardy, a cast of terrific characters, a
song: it’s perhaps the ultimate, most fun and audacious Doctor Who Christmas
Special. (Although A Christmas Carol is probably the best by a whisker,
it’s got a different set of priorities.) Here, we have a Doctor Who movie in one
episode. It’s without Daleks, Cybermen, The Master or a regeneration. It just wants
to tell its own grand disaster story. I must also point out Mark Costigan's incredibly funny turn as Max Capricorn. He is deliciously knowing. Mr Copper goes skipping off into the
snow, it’s only the most cynical heart that can’t have enjoyed every last
morsel of this feast of an adventure. It’s such a joy and the spoilsports must
be all the more miserable for not seeing it for the great celebration that it
is. Doctor Who - at the height of its powers - Christmas 2007.
2. TOOTH AND CLAW
When I was a child, wolves scared me the most. They were in every
fairytale, every picture book, but I’d never seen one. Where exactly were these
wolves? For a time, I was convinced there was one in my bedroom that would come
creeping out at night. Tooth and Claw is the best werewolf story I could
ever have imagined. It’s thrillingly well directed by Euros Lyn, shot in dark
ebonies and mahogany, shafts of blue light casting shadows across the panelled
walls of Torchwood House. From the moment the horrific transformation in the
cage occurs, the action never ceases, deaths are savage and repulsive and the
tension unbearable. Every aspect of the plot set up wondrously in the first
fifteen minutes is paid off in the last fifteen: the Koh I Noor, the faulty telescope,
the dishonourable husband. The cast are amazing too: David Riddell, Pauline
Collins and Ian Hanmore put in thrilling performances. I watched this as an
adult human being. I was still frightened by this folkish country yarn of
wolves pinching boys from their sleep. It’s hauntingly good.
1. THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET / THE
SATAN PIT
Here’s what I think’s the best: a top story I am surprised is so
underrated. Actually I don’t suppose people dislike it. It’s often found to be
quite high on fan polls. But why isn’t it at the very top? It’s the story of
Doctor Who Vs The Devil, for goodness’s sake! Like Voyage of the Damned
it reeks of good Doctor Who. There are sequences in ventilation ducts,
people die horribly, men are possessed, and the Doctor has a face-off with the
biggest Big Bad there’s ever been. Just before broadcast, the BBC website put
out a “Fear Forecast” – a commentary write-up from a family who had watched the
upcoming episode with their children and allocated a score out of five to
indicate how scary the story would be. This one got 5+. It’s easy to see why. I
don’t think the modern era has put out a story so deliberately and relentlessly
frightening in its history. From the graffiti the Doctor and Rose come across
in the first few minutes, underscored by Murray Gold’s sloping chords to the
mighty cliff-hanger, the camera rising sinisterly from the darkness as the
music tells us “He’s free!” Murray Gold is just another star of this thrill
ride of a show. Just listen to those strangely moving strings as Toby Zed
stands on the planet’s surface, demonic and smiling. The final sequence on the
rocket feels dangerous and when Zed re-emerges, red-eyed and enraged, he’s
simply too close to Rose for her to be in any way safe. By the time he’s
breathing fire, we’re already well and truly behind the sofa, watching this
nightmare unbelievably play out. I could go on for hours. Danny Webb’s
Jefferson gets some terrific scenes; the Devil informing the crew of their most
innate fears by intercom is extremely disturbing (“The little boy who lied”).
Poor Scooti’s scene by Door 40. The Doctor offers up “the stuff of legend” as a
suitable epithet to describe Rose and himself. This is what The Satan Pit
is. Truly: the stuff of legend. The sort of tale that cements Doctor Who's
reputation as cultural icon.
JH
