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Dom Robinson reviews
Broadcast on BBC1, Saturday March 26th, 2005
Director:
Screenplay:
Cast:
So, the first episode of the long-awaited series has now been broadcast, complete with all the special effects. Was it worth the wait? No. My first encounter with The Doctor was in the late '70s with Tom Baker, running into Peter Davison in 1981. However, I totally turned off when Colin Baker took over three years later as he was just bloody irritating. And like the first actor you see playing James Bond will be the definitive one for you (Roger Moore, in my case), Tom Baker will remain the definitive Doctor for me. I gave Sylvester McCoy's incarnation a brief try, but I couldn't get out of my head the fact he was on kids shows like Vision On, alongside Wilf Lunn and Tony Hart, so it just didn't ring true. The 1996 TV movie with Paul McGann was just a disappointment and then it disappeared from our screens until now. I didn't catch a bootleg version of the first 2005 episode when it was doing the rounds, as it became unavailable quite quickly. I didn't expect too much overall, but did look forward to an audio/visual treat nonetheless.
Rose is shown jumping off the back of a London bus, despite the fact that such buses have long since been discontinued, as I understand it, because they pose the health hazard that... people might fall off them(!) Still, like Marty McFly on his skateboard, it enables Rose to hot-foot it to her destination, working at Harrod's... sorry, Henrik's. Oh, those logos look so familiar - you'd think there isn't any kind of originality here at all. A brief introductoin encapsulates Rose's boyfriend, Mickey (Noel Clarke, last seen as Wayne in the last two series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet) and as the store closes for the night, Rose finds herself trapped in the basement with shop dummies (aka The Autons) that come to life. Suddenly, amid the atmosphere, we hear what sounds like a party taking place in the distance... Is this something surreal and ethereal like you'd expect from Sapphire and Steel? No, don't think Russell T Davies is that clever of late. It was a BBC fuck-up as they left the mic open from Graham "£3.5m BBC exclusive contract" Norton's one and only series to date (they paid extra for his US 'Effect' show), Strictly Dance Fever, soon to be disappearing faster than Natasha Kaplinsky's talent into the autocue, and this intrusion lasted for some time. So, after any tension has been diminished, what's next? Christopher Eccleston appeared to save Rose and escort her out of there, before blowing it up with unconvincing CGI, which was followed the next 'day' by dreadful attack by arm of mannequin. It wasn't funny, it was just shoddy and pointless. It's been 16 years since the last time we were promised a full series and this is the best they could come up with? Even Metal Mickey couldn't look more out-of-place in today's television. And the BBC News 24 broadcast that followed onscreen couldn't even spell the shop name right, calling it "Hendricks", but then they also think anyone gives a toss about a 92-year-old Labour duffer who died on the day of the broadcast, so they've really got their priorities arse-about-face. Camille Coduri goes from totty in 1989's Nuns on the Run to MILF-like quality as Rose's Mum, but she doesn't have much screen time so I'll comment no further.
In the ensuing chaos, as Rose realises her boyfriend is not the man he used to be, there's a few minutes of decent banter as she and the Doctor get to know each other, along with an introduction into what a TARDIS is all about, along with a way to get rid of the mannequin problem altogether. However, when they run into a spot of bother, which prevents them from sorting it out, Eccleston can't escape from a couple of lightweight shop dummy bouncers and it's left to Piper and her under 7 athletic award to save the day and knock the antiplastic solution into the latest piss-poor CGI to grace the screen, the Nestene Consciousness itself. As the day is saved, we've witnessed the cliche that is Rose's Mum getting caught up in the hullabaloo, Mickey not being dead after all, and Clive getting popped off by a mannequin. (Sigh) It could've been so better than this. Never mind 'Rose', I'd rather Russell T Davies had given more than one series of the engaging Manchester-based drama Bob & Rose. Couple the generally empty dialogue with the fact that no US TV companies bought it, the SciFi channel ignored it, the £10m cost of the series may be clawed back from eventual DVD sales this Christmas, but you can bet your life that there won't be any more beyond this 13-episode run. The only plus about this series is that there could be chemistry between buck-toothed Piper and Eccleston, and I could understand them going down the camp route if they can pull it off as relatively decent Saturday evening entertainment - something that's been missing from all channels for a long time. However, if the scripts are as bad as this, then the audience will disappear fast! Review copyright © Dom Robinson, 2005.The following is a list of all the Doctor Who content reviewed to date : 2008 Series 30, Episode 13 - "Journey's End", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 12 - "The Stolen Earth", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 11 - "Turn Left", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 10 - "Midnight", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 8 - "Silence in the Library" (part 1 of 2), by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 7 - "The Unicorn and The Wasp", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 6 - "The Doctor's Daughter", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 5 - "The Poison Sky" (Part 2 of 2), by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 4 - "The Sontaran Stratagem" (Part 1 of 2), by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 3 - "Planet of the Ood", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 2 - "The Fires of Pompeii", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 1 - "Partners In Crime", by Dan Owen And the Audio CDs : 2000 04: The Land of the Dead 2000 06: The Marian Conspiracy 2000 10: Winter for the Adept 2000 12: The Fires of Vulcan 2000 14: The Holy Terror 2000 15: The Mutant Phase 2001 16: Storm Warning 2001 18: The Stones of Venice 2002 28: The Chimes of Midnight 2002 30: Seasons of Fear 2002 31: Embrace the Darkness 2002 35: ...Ish 2002 39: ...Bang-Bang-A-Boom!
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier. PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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Following the opening credits, during which Paul Manners pointed out in his review that the new Doctor's
face doesn't appear, we're introduced to Rose (Billie Piper, right) in a way, with a load of speeded-up
film that panders to the MTv generation, even those they've since grown up.
In a bid to understand what's going on with the freaky occurences, Rose learns more about Doctor and his past,
by visiting internet nutter Clive Finch (one of the latest actors to turn up on absolutely everything, Mark
Benton), where she discovers Eccleston (right) was even present at the moment where JFK was murdered. Someone else
is about to get creamed as well, as dodgy CGI returns with Mickey being swallowed up by a misbeheaving wheelie
bin. Oh dear.