Discovering Doctor Who: Season 2

I’ve been meaning to write up this blog for a couple of months now, ever since I finished S2 of Doctor Who, which feels like a lifetime ago. I made notes while I was watching it, but many of them had questions in it that have since been answered (since I’m now at the end of S4) so I’ll just talk about the season itself.

It began with Christmas Invasion, the first ep with the new Doctor, although he’s unconscious for most of the ep. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to think of the guy… I LOVED Eccleston, he was my first Doctor, so this Tennant guy was going to have a long way to go to convince me he was any good. When he first awakens and comes striding out, I thought he was a bit much. All pomp and too loud, nattery and excitable. But there was something I liked about him…

And then I watched New Earth, which links back to the S1 continuity through the End of the World episode. We again see the Face of Boe, who says he’ll impart a secret to him (and now I not only know what that secret it, but who the Face of Boe actually is!!). But the true awesome of this episode is Billie Piper playing Cassandra. She is BRILLIANT.

Now, before I go any further, I want to clarify something for the Rose fans out there who very easily get their knickers in a twist when someone says something against their fave companion. In the last rundown of season 1, I said that I liked Rose, but my husband didn’t, and he actually stopped watching S1 (despite being a big Classic Series fan) because of her, saying he’d rather stick a fork in his eye than listen to her blither on. I thought he was being a bit harsh, and I said that while I didn’t love her, I really liked her a lot, and maybe with a second season I’ll like her even more, but that the Doctor outshone her for me. What I did love about her was that she stood in for the viewer as the person through whose eyes we discover the Doctor, and she asks all the questions we need answered.

That is what I said. And then I got a flurry of comments saying, “Oh NIKKI how could you HATE Rose?” Er, I didn’t say that I… “She’s WONDERFUL and the Rose haters are terrible, and I can’t believe that you are one of them!” But… I’m not, I was just saying that… “You know what, Nikki? I COMPLETELY agree with you, I hated her too, she’s just horrible and Billie Piper and can eat dirt for all I…” No, no, I don’t think she should eat dirt, I never said that…

So just to be clear, I never hated Rose. I couldn’t quite get into her at the beginning of the season despite seeing her as our conduit, but I said by the end I liked her a lot more. (It’s my HUSBAND who hated her… attack HIM! Heehee…)

I can safely say that by the end of S2, I adored her. Many of you jumped on me for not embracing her fully, but you had two seasons with her and two Doctors to watch, AND you had the full S3 where he pines after her and makes the viewer love her even more. I didn’t have that when I watched S1, yet I still really liked her.

OK. So. I hope I’ve made it clear now that I’m not a Rose hater. At the end of S2, it’s quite the opposite, actually. I thought she was wonderful.

And now back to New Earth, where Rose is gone and has been taken over by Cassandra. The chemistry between Piper and Tennant is there from the get-go, and his confusion over her acting so strangely is hilarious. (I’ll never forget her looking in a mirror and saying, “Ugh, I’m a CHAV!” and me having to email my best friend, whose parents are British, and say, “What’s a chav?”) ;)

Tooth and Claw is the one where they go to the Torchwood Estate (oooohhh….) and see Queen Victoria. My daughter walked in during this one and I thought, “Okay, everyone also mentioned on the first season rundown that Doctor Who is perfect for 6-year-olds!” She watched, was interested… and then the TV was off by the time that beast thing in the cage came to life. This really isn’t the children’s show the Classic Series is. And she had a lot of questions about the moral quandaries during the show (more stories of my kids watching it with me to come in S3 and S4…)

My fave thing about Tooth and Claw was Rose betting the Doctor that she can get Vicks to say, “We are not amused.”

And on I move to the next episode that’s held in a school and OH MY GOD IT’S GILES!!!! No one told me Anthony Stewart Head was on Doctor Who!!! Now, I have to admit, when I saw him as the demon of some long name that I can’t quite recall (started with a K or something?) I was at once elated and saddened, because since the beginning I’ve been thinking he’d make a terrific Doctor Who, and now obviously he won’t because he’s played a villain.

And yet, he actually wasn’t my favourite part of this episode: Sarah Jane Smith was. Now, again, as y’all know, I’m not one of the ones who choked on their drink and said, “OMG, it’s my favourite companion!!!” In fact, I hadn’t a clue who she was. My husband wandered in during the episode and said, “Hey, it’s K-9!!” And I didn’t know what that was, either. But I can tell all of you who are Classic Series fans that you don’t have to be to have gotten that episode. We know by this point what Rose means to the Doctor and vice versa, but more importantly, what these adventures and this lifestyle means to Rose. If she’s the “chav” who got out of her staid life and was able to go around the world with this mysterious and exciting life, what happens when the Doctor needs to move on? Is she left behind?

The answers to those questions are in this episode, where the beautiful and slightly older Sarah Jane Smith comes face to face with the Doctor after having been left behind so many years ago. He’s wearing a different face, but it’s still the man she would have given her life for. (I saw this episode just a few weeks after the lady playing her passed away suddenly, so it was with some sadness that I saw her for the first time.) The Doctor explains to her how difficult it is staying the same age while others age and slip away, and that his is a very lonely existence. It was like so many of the vampire discussions I’d seen in other shows, and for the first time I realized that despite his aloofness, he’s filled with a lot of pain. Eccleston’s Doctor was a little surly at times, but generally seemed goofy and quite joyful. I got the feeling here that Tennant’s would be a little more emo. Brilliant ep.

The Girl in the Fireplace was next, with its V for Vendetta baddies, and the girl, then woman, in the fireplace. Again, another episode focusing on the idea of the Doctor coming and going from people’s lives and him having such a strong, grave impact on them that when he goes, they can’t stop thinking about him. He, on the other hand, emphasizes that he’s so alone and stays the same while others get older and leave him. So he leaves them before that can happen.

Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel was next: I figured these guys were Classic Series baddies because I remembered seeing one of their heads in that museum where Rose and the other Doctor went earlier in season 1. We’re introduced to the Fringe-like parallel universe where everyone has a doppelganger and whose lives have taken slightly different turns based on different decisions being made (see “Left Turn” in S4). The Cybermen have things downloaded directly into their heads, which I must admit, sounded very convenient to me! Imagine plugging in and getting all seasons of a series put right there! (Yes, in an apocalypse I’d be the first one assimilated by the machines.)

What was interesting is that in this universe, Mickey is Ricky, and in S1 the Doctor INSISTED his name was Ricky no matter what Mickey said. So now we see there’s an insinuation that the Doctor had been to the parallel universe and had met Ricky first, which is why he insisted that was, in fact, his name. And the President looked a lot like the guy who was in that show with Anthony Stewart Head… damn, the show’s name escapes me but it was like a Sex and the City for guys… Manchild! I think that’s what it was. Anyway, I think he was in that, too.

So where do the Cybermen fall in the Whoverse? Are they as important as Daleks? When we first saw the head in the museum in S1 my husband immediately said, “Cybermen!!” They don’t appear to have updated them much, given what I saw in the museum, and I liked that.

The Idiot’s Lantern was a fun episode for me; not the best of the season, but generally outside of the UK, anything that’s set in a different time period tends to be either war- or royalty-related, so it’s nice to get something from the 1950s for a change.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: I REALLY enjoyed this two-parter. There’s this quiet, dark, scene where the Doctor is dropping down into the pit slowly and talking about faith and science, how he’s gone to the ends of the universe to see things, and maybe he just keeps travelling to see if there’s anything out there left to see… it’s one of my favourite moments of the series. Faith is a new element that seems to have come to the fore in these episodes and recently: do you believe, don’t you, does it matter? The Doctor has seen everything and he has very little faith in anything he can’t see, or so he says, but sometimes his actions belie what he says here.

One question, though: How would Rose know what a black hole is? (Do we just assume the Doctor has told her about them?)

Love & Monsters is a fairly Doctor-less episode, and I understand that Tennant had a contract that allowed him to be away for most of one episode each season? (For a 13-episode season? Seems a bit much… but anyway…) I liked the episode, though, with Moaning Myrtle and the idea of a bunch of people who’ve had Doctor sightings and have joined forces to find more about him, something we haven’t seen much of since the first episode of the New Series, where we saw the websites about the Doctor. Again, playing on the S2 theme of the Doctor coming in and out of people’s lives and touching them deeply.

The next ep, Fear Her, is the one with the little girl and her drawings. I liked this episode a LOT and it was super-creepy… The 2012 Olympics was a nice touch; will it be odd this episode watch post-2012? I mean, if the shot-put competition turns out differently than the Doctor predicted and all… ;)

Army of Ghosts is the first part of the season ender, where people believe that ghosts of the people they’ve loved and lost have come back (at a certain point of the day), not knowing that they’re not ghosts at all, but the Cybermen. Jackie’s back, and there’s a hilarious scene when the Doctor begins running through all of the strange stuff that’s happened on Earth lately and Jackie’s been oblivious to all of it (this will continue to be played to great effect in future seasons with other people who are wilfully ignorant of the goings-on around them. As a one-time fan of EastEnders, the bit on the telly with Peggy screaming at the ghost in the Queen Vic – “I don’t care if you are just the ghost of Den Watts, GET OUT OF MY PUB!!!” – made me scream with laughter. Hahahahahahahahaha!

I LOVED having Mickey back, but not as much as I loved that ending, where Rose, Mickey, and the guy who used to be on EastEnders as the only cute guy in that really annoying family who moved onto the Square and then left right after… are all standing around waiting for the Sphere to open, anticipating Cyberman, only to get… Daleks!! LOVE.

Doomsday is the finale, and the Daleks suddenly become the funniest villains on TV since Spike on Buffy. Apparently coming back in droves has made them super snarky. Highlights include the Cybermen standing in the hall telling the Daleks to identify themselves, and the Daleks countering that the Cybermen identify themselves, and back and forth until Mickey says, “It’s like watching Stephen Hawking go up against a talking clock!” Hahaha! Ooh, ooh, and then when the Dalek shouts at the group to “Cease social interaction!!” Or when the Cybermen say they’re superior, and the Dalek says the only thing they’re superior in is dying?! BRILL.

Like on Buffy, Doctor Who knows how to pull off a thrilling and incredible finale. They’re two for two at the end of this season, and Doomsday was an episode that despite its humour, had a pallor of gloom hanging over it because of the beginning, where Rose’s voiceover says that she died. She doesn’t die, but she’s separated from the Doctor, and it’s heartbreaking. Like so many characters on TV before her, I didn’t know how much I liked her until she was gone, and then I just wanted her back. The Doctor clearly feels more than just a friendship for Rose… it’s a deep, deep love, and you can tell this is one of the hardest goodbyes he’s ever had to say.



By the end of the season, Tennant had proved himself worthy and I loved him. Of course, there were a few things that became a little annoying, like the way he always had his eureka moments. “So if Who is on first… and What is…. No No NO!!! Oh GOD,” head up in the air, arms out, spinning around, “NOW I GET IT!” stops spinning, turns to the person he’s talking to… “WHO IS THE NAME OF THE PERSON WHO IS STANDING ON FIRST BASE, DON’T YOU SEE?!” knocks himself in the forehead with his palm “OCH, I can’t believe I didn’t NOTICE this before!"

I may be exaggerating slightly, but this began to irk me by the end of the second season. By the third it became endearing, and by the fourth I would have been sad NOT to have seen it.

I thought Eccleston was a marvel, but Tennant is my new favourite Doctor.