Doctor Who: My First Foray

So, as I outlined in a recent post, I've decided I'm going to watch the Doctor Who reboot from the first season onward (i.e. from the beginning of the Ninth Doctor) and last night I began. I was told that it would take some getting used to, that I would probably have to stick with it for a few episodes, but eventually I'd like it.

Well... half of that was true. I loved it from the beginning!

"Rose" gives enough backstory to help even the newest of the n00bs. And I'm new. Now, I'll admit I cheated; my husband was sitting on the couch next to me and I was able to fire questions at him throughout. "What's that blue thing he's holding? What does it do? Why is the inside of the TARDIS bigger than the outside? What's the Doctor's name? Does he have a name? OH WAIT A MINUTE! Is that why he's called Doctor Who, because he says he's the Doctor and people say 'Doctor Who'?"

This episode begins in Rose's world. She's just a normal English girl, going to work in a department store until one day she has to drop something off in the basement and suddenly all of the mannequins in storage come to life and start walking toward her. Now, many people said my 6-year-old could watch this with me, but I watched that scene and just pictured her having nightmares for weeks, so I'm glad she wasn't watching with me. It was campy and over-the-top, but hey, Warren built a female robot on Buffy so he could have sex with it -- this wasn't exactly something I hadn't experienced before on TV.

The introduction to the Doctor was awesome; Eccleston is instantly charming and funny, "Nice to meet you, Rose... now run for your life!!!"

I saw the TARDIS for the first time, and heard the noise that my husband said was pretty true to the original series (that grinding noise it makes when it whirs away). We're introduced to Clive, a guy who has a website about the Doctor and seems like a zany conspiracy theorist... if we didn't know he was absolutely right. This is the way Russell T. Davies gets in all of the background on the Doctor to fill in the n00bs, and then we flash back outside to the garbage bin eating Rose's boyfriend. Or, as my husband said, "In order to get eaten by a garbage pail you've really got to do something dumb." (I loved the added effect of the pail burping afterward.)

At first I thought it was a little OTT that Rose doesn't notice her boyfriend is now plastic, but then I thought it was really funny... the guy's a tool, totally boring, and annoying. She almost dies in an explosion and he comes by to make sure she's ok before heading off to the pub to watch a football match. Winner.

Best line comes from Rose: "If you're an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North?" HAHA! Doctor responds: "Lots of planets have Norths!" Brilliant.

About three-quarters of the way through the ep (we were now in the warehouse with the giant goopy plastic gobby mess talking) my husband said, "This is campier than the original series." I just stared at him and said no, I didn't think so (from the minute here, minute there that I'd ever seen, this wasn't nearly as OTT) but he insists it is. What do you guys think?

My favourite moment was at the end, when the London Eye was starting to be filled with electricity and the Doctor yelled, "It's the end of the world!!" I just thought, ah... as a faithful Buffy viewer I heard that line about three times a season, and I cannot TELL you how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel to hear it again. I welcome, um, whatever the plural of apocalypse is. It feels like home again.

Episode 2, The End of the World, is where Rose finds out just how dangerous her new traveling companion is. He says, "Where do you want to go? Into the past or into the future?" I immediately looked at my husband and asked what he would do. Without a moment's hesitation he said, "I'd go to the 70s and see the Velvet Underground play in New York... then to the 80s to see the Smiths play a small place in Manchester." Meanwhile I'd been thinking I'd go to Bono's high school in 1976 and be there the moment U2 was formed.

God, sometimes I think we're just pathetic. I could go back in time and see one of history's great events or talk to Virginia Woolf or warn Oscar Wilde not to go through with the defamation trial or see my grandparents as children... but no, we just want to go see rock stars before they were famous.

Anyway.

So Rose says let's go into the future and show me something interesting, and he takes her 5 billion years into the future where they're going to watch the Earth come to an end once and for all. Wow. They're on an alien spaceship and she sees all of these creatures enter the place -- crazy music is playing and it feels like the Star Wars cantina -- and the episode was definitely filled with funny moments. They roll in a jukebox and say that humans called this an iPod, and it played the music of the greatest composers of the day... a record drops and it's Tainted Love (the second time I heard that song that day, actually, since it was also on Being Human when I'd been watching it earlier). Then as the Earth begins to crumble, one of them says, "Let us mourn the Earth with a traditional ballad," and Britney Spears' "Toxic" begins playing... HAHA!!! SO funny.

This episode begins the intrigue of where the Doctor came from. One of the tree people discovers he's a Time Lord, and he reveals that he's the last of his race after some sort of war. This was exciting. The special effects were better in this one, and while it had its funny moments (including a bad Michael Jackson joke about too much plastic surgery that just seemed to have lost something watching it now) and it's over-the-topness (the "last human" is one that's had 780 facelifts and is now nothing but a sheet of skin with some capillaries stretched out like a canvas), it ended with some profound thoughts of life and death, of mortality and leaving your mark on the world. We all want to be remembered, but some day this will all be gone. As Rose stands on the edge of oblivion, it suddenly makes her feel very small and insignificant. It was a very powerful ending.

So whoo!! I'm so glad I'm liking this, and now, on to the next one!!