Pros: Eccleston and Piper, fabulous pilot episode, see three very different views of life on Earth
Cons: hints of a romance between the Doctor and Rose, third episode weaker, paranormal leanings
The Bottom Line: Despite a bit of a letdown in the third episode, the first three episodes of the new Doctor Who still make quite a positive impression.
quasar's Full Review: Doctor Who: Series 1 Volume 1
The single most expensive show purchased by PBS throughout most of my childhood was Doctor Who. One by one, American stations started cancelling the good doctor because of funding dry ups, but I was fortunate enough to live near Philadelphia which was one of the few stations that continued to buy the show throughout the majority of the 1980s. I used to sneak downstairs to watch each half hour segment from 11:30 - midnight on weekdays then watch them again all in one sitting on late night Saturday, then watch a third time on Sunday mornings. Then it dwindled down two showings a week, then one. I moved away before they stopped airing Doctor Who altogether, but the effect was the same because it didn't air anywhere else I lived until I moved to Boston and could catch a single half hour segment each Sunday morning on New Hampshire public television. I gave up on these shortly before they gave up on me because they were too haphazard and out of order to make much sense.
I greeted the news that a new Doctor Who was in the works with equal parts anticipation and dread. I decided to wait and watch it all at once on DVD because I didn't want to fall into the trap of catching episodes haphazardly and thus not get the most out of them. I finally bit the bullet and started watching Doctor Who: The First Series. The first episode blew me away.
Called "Rose" after the young woman obviously destined to become the first companion of the new Doctor, this episode provides a fantastic introduction to the world and characters of Doctor Who. Told from Rose's perspective, we get the full impact of the first meeting with the Doctor and the first hint that Rose has somehow landed herself into a somewhat extraordinary situation by witnessing it all firsthand. We don't know who this mysterious man she encounters is or what he's doing or why odd things are happening in London. We just know that this stranger (definitely stranger than most) is flitting in and out of her life amidst a series of explosions and impossible events without explaining a bloody thing. The story sets up both Rose and the Doctor well, sets up their attitudes and thought processes and inclinations. It also sets up but doesn't quite reveal the secret behind the Doctor, who he is, and some of the special things he can do. That comes later.
For those of you unfamiliar with Doctor Who (and if there are any of you out there, fix that immediately!), the good Doctor is a Time Lord. Generally Time Lords are just detached observers of history throughout the Universe, but this Time Lord believes in taking action [one noticeable difference between this series and the previous one is that here the Doctor seems most interested in saving his own neck first and that of the aliens he encounters second whereas in the past he had an almost sentimental appreciation for the sanctity of human life]. He travels through space and time [mostly time in these episodes] in a machine called the TARDIS with one or more companions (culled from the places and times he's visited) to assist his endeavors. The Doctor isn't immortal, but he effectively has multiple lives since Time Lords have the power to regenerate. The Doctor is in his ninth incarnation in these episodes.
Christopher Eccleston is a fabulous Doctor. An edgier Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor), he has an economy of movement and a stylish simplicity that doesn't fit the Baker comparison, but he has Baker's infectious grin, his sense of fun, his playful language, and his "cat that ate the canary, bursting at the seams to find out what happens next" facial expressions that propel the characters onward from one adventure to the next. He cares - maybe too much - but he's also pragmatic and cold-blooded when necessary, much more so than Baker ever managed to be. The whole package works, probably because he brings Baker to mind without becoming just a mimic.
Billie Piper as Rose is also a fabulous companion, perhaps my favorite of all time. She's competent, smart, and sassy yet not afraid to react to the strangeness around her or to indulge in a pity party now and again. She's very well matched to Eccleston's Doctor (some might say too well matched as there's definitely some sexual tension and romantic chemistry between them which is generally taboo).
The ongoing relationship and tension between Rose and the Doctor really comes to light in the second episode "The End of the World" where they travel 5 billion years into the future to watch the explosion of the planet Earth. This episode provides a cavalcade of interesting aliens and non-humanoids descended from other life on earth. The episode can get just a wee bit preachy at times, but it's held together nicely by a murder mystery and all of those interesting new species to look at. The Doctor is very obviously trying to impress Rose but at the same time seems a bit fed up with her; Rose is homesick and realizing that she knows nothing about this man she just walked off with into a hazy and unknown and very different future. The special effects here, unlike the other episodes, are top notch which helps give it a bit of a surrealistic feel, but all of that's secondary to the character and relationship growth.
The final episode on this disk, "The Unquiet Dead", sends us back to 1869 and a meeting with Charles Dickens and a haunted house at Christmastime. It's not an uninteresting setup, but in many ways Dickens is superfluous to the story and not well used at all. He becomes a distraction rather than an asset, someone we have to go through to get to the real story rather than an interesting and integral part of the action. As ghost stories go, this one was pretty decent and the episode showed the Doctor making a fairly serious mistake for which someone else paid the consequences which always makes for compelling storytelling.
The three episodes complement each other well, showing the past, the present, and the future. In general they rely more on the supernatural masquerading as alien life forms than on real science fiction themes or science fiction adventure which is a bit disconcerting, but they do work within the paranormal framework. I'd have preferred to play it a bit straighter, but I don't really have a big problem with the focus as it stands.
I mentioned the special effects in the second episode. In general, the special effects here are rather low key and amateurish in keeping with the cheesy "straight from my neighbor's garage" effects the original series used. This also contradicts the flashier and edgier look of the characters, but it feels nostalgic and I liked it. The only place the effects failed for me was with the TARDIS.
The time machine used for all of the travel in the show, the TARDIS looks like a blue police call box on the outside but is significantly larger on the inside. These episodes don't show much of the TARDIS interior, but most of what we do see is a mix of jungle chic around the control station and walls with floor to ceiling rows of portholes that made me think the TARDIS had last been decorated by a Dalek (a robotic enemy with a metal body full of round, windowed holes). It was really bizarre and completely wrong for the show.
Despite a bit of a letdown in the third episode, the first three episodes of the new Doctor Who still make quite a positive impression. Christopher Eccleston is a wonderful Doctor, Billie Piper's Rose is one of the best companions ever, and the three episodes presented three very different locales without ever leaving Earth including a daring far future setting. Purists might be upset about the hint of a further relationship between Rose and the Doctor and the lack of TARDIS time, but it works here. I can't wait to watch the rest of this show.
Christopher Eccleston SHALLOW GRAVE EXISTENZ plays the ninth incarnation of DOCTOR WHO in this collection of four episodes from the show. Together wit...More at Family Video
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