Dan Owen reviews

Episode 1: "Rose"

Director:

Keith Boak (Holby City)

Screenplay:

Russell T. Davies (Bob & Rose, Casanova, Children's Ward, Cluedo, Doctor Who, The Grand, The House of Windsor, Linda Green, Mine All Mine, Queer as Folk, Revelations, The Second Coming, Springhill, Touching Evil)

Cast:

The Doctor: Christopher Eccleston
Rose Tyler: Billie Piper
Clive Finch: Mark Benton
Mickey: Noel Clarke
Jackie Tyler: Camille Cadouri

Before attempting any review of the BBC's world-famous science-fiction franchise, it's important you know my own personal viewpoint on the Doctor Who brand.

As a child growing up in the '80s, Doctor Who was a favourite TV show of mine - starting in the Peter Davidson era, through Colin Baker's turbulent run, until its demise at the hand of Sylvester McCoy.

I'm a fan, but mostly from a nostalgic standpoint. I don't attend conventions, I don't own any merchandise, I don't listen to the audio adventures, and I haven't campaigned since 1989 to get the show back on the air.

The things I love about Doctor Who are perhaps the core elements everyone loves - the premise of a time-travelling alien, the "inside-bigger-than-the-outside" TARDIS, the iconic design of The Daleks, and the fact Doctor Who remains one of the very few science-fiction horror TV shows in transmission.

What I've always hated about Doctor Who is that the BBC's production values could never do justice to the material. Wobbly sets, silly make-up, a propensity for alien cultures to resemble historical England, the wooden acting...

I was actually quite relieved when Doctor Who vanished from the airwaves back in 1989, because there was a new, more exciting, and more intelligent science-fiction series coming from America - Star Trek: The Next Generation - that made the BBC stalwart look decidedly old-hat.

So now, after a quarter-century, the Doctor is back again (well, just under a decade if you don't ignore the 1996 TV Movie with Paul McGann - but most people do), this time with acclaimed actor Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor and ex-popstar Billie Piper as his new companion Rose.

The new series kicks off on BBC One on Saturday 26 March but, thanks to an internet leak, the first episode can be reviewed weeks in advance. I wish I could drown the new series in plaudits, but the honest truth is that the new Who is incredibly disappointing.

"Rose" begins with a credit sequence similar to the '96 TVM mixed to the excellent theme tune (unchanged to evoke memories of the show in its '70s glory years). The lack of an effective 21st-Century update of the theme is somewhat indicative of the show in general - far too nervous to upset the fans by changing anything too much, thus leading to a show feeling old-fashioned and outdated.

A truly awful opening montage focuses on Billie Piper's Rose, leading a stereotyped teenaged existence with her boyfriend in London - edited with extreme incompetence. Things get worse when Rose finds herself attacked in the department store where she works. by a group of shop mannequins. Yes, in the very first episode this new series has already ripped-off The Autons from the classic Who canon. Couldn't Russell T Davies think up an original idea?

Anyway, our titular hero, The Doctor, arrives just in time (no pun intended) to whisk her away to safety before he destroys the homicidal dummies with a well-placed bomb. From here, the plot thrashes around the place without much focus, but at least the scenes are short and snappy. As you'd expect, The Doctor soon finds himself teamed-up with Rose after her boyfriend is eaten by a wheelie-bin (yes, you read that right) and they both set out to destroy this alien menace that wants to takeover the planet by controlling every plastic item on Earth. Oh dear...

This is a monumentally appalling first episode. The story is so hackneyed, silly, derivative and illogical it's galling that it was actually penned by the man responsible for the excellent Queer As Folk, and the flawed-yet-brave The Second Coming.

An entire decade of expensive and high-quality US science-fiction - from the likes of Star Trek and The X-Files - seems to have had little influence on this new Doctor Who. As a British viewer, you can't even drag up the age-old excuse that at least the plot and characters make up for the pathetic storyline - as they clearly don't.

The special-effects in the episode range from the incredibly inept (the wheelie-bin attack has to be seen to be believed!), through embarrassing (a conspiracy website's wholly unrealistic photographs of Doc throughout history), to just moderately passable (the sludgy alien in the finale).

The incidental music is awful; dire and incessant chords and inane ditties that actually make you wince while you watch. The story is far more concerned with introducing Rose as a character than doing anything interesting with The Doctor, or achieving any kind of dramatic thrust to the wasted alien threat.

Davies' script contains only a minimum of decent lines - one about the Doctor's accent being "Northern" and a good monologue about the Doctor being able to "feel" the planet spinning and falling through space. Beyond those diamonds in the rough, the rest makes kids TV series Goosebumps look intellectual!

On the plus side, Billie Piper isn't too bad after a shaky start and she fights bravely against the script's limitations. It's not much of a part, to be brutally frank, but she shines in her two-dimensional role.

Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor is... well, debatable. He's clearly acting on the same "grinning loon" character he employed in The Second Coming and can be quite irritating at times. His entire performance is basically like watching a prat rush around London and occasionally lapse into farcical moments - like wrestling with a "possessed" plastic arm.

Personally, on the evidence presented so far, I preferred Paul McGann's quirky-yet-calculating performance in the TVM. But perhaps it's too early to tell - the first two episodes were penned before Eccleston was cast, so final judgment can be reserved for now.

The TARDIS exterior remains quite rightly unchanged, while the interior looks to have achieved a lower-budget rehash of the '96 TVM spliced with a coral reef. The aesthetic doesn't have the high-tech feel the old shows aimed for, and has abandoned the gothic feel of the TVM, so instead goes for an inoffensive beige open-plan feel with curvy support struts. Never mind the Doctor, someone send in the Decorator!

I desperately wanted to like this first episode, I really did, but the pure naffness was unbearable to stomach. The majority of Whovians are now adults, and I find it hard to believe they'll actually enjoy this on any other level other than pure loyalty to the brand.

Potential new fans, weaned on slick, expensive and imagination US TV such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, are for more discerning than the young scamps of yesteryear, and I think they'll look at this with a kind of half-smirk. Probably with an over-excited dad sat next to them bullying them to like "proper British science-fiction". But this isn't science-fiction, it's science-farce.

The new series will be a big success for the BBC this Spring because of its "phoenix from the flames" novelty. Even I can't wait to see the beloved Daleks later on in the series - but this rebirth shouldn't need to be relying on nostalgia tactics. It should be reinvigorating the premise, taking an established show and giving it a unique 2005 spin that will please fans and drag in new audiences! But it doesn't. The producers are obviously too scared to do anything that might upset the fans, and have basically continued in the vein of McCoy's era with added CGI and a clear eye on the under-10 demographic.

To end on a more optimistic note - this is only the first episode, and it may be polished up before final transmission (it needs neater editing and an effects polish urgently!)

Interestingly, some hastily released publicity shots in the tabloids following the leak of "Rose" onto the internet have revealed some more imaginative villains we can look forward to meeting later in the series. Plus, I've never enjoyed most Dr Who episodes set in our present time - the series works much better on alien worlds or in our past, in my opinion... so, I hope I'll be proven wrong and come to love the new show in the weeks to come...

But, no matter how you look at it - the new-Who has gotten off to a bad start...

DIRECTION PERFORMANCES PLOT SOUND/MUSIC SPECIAL FX
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Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2005.