Doctor Who old and new Blog

Tom Baker as the doctor, his first episode. It is brilliant to see him and sad to see Jon Pertwee go.

The story line not only includes a brilliant costume change scene, whereby the Doctor tries to define his image, a crazed Robot and the brilliant Brigadier!

The entire story is about a group of scientist on Earth who are part of an organisation called ‘Think Tank’. They are to create a new world order based upon the leadership of the elite. The scientific elite.

The Robot element in this story arch is a Robot created by their founder who is the hunter and gather of the group and generally does all of the dirty work.

They try to take control of the Earth by steeling the codes to launch all of the Nuclear missiles and the Robot goes mad with the conflict as he has a intelligence and prime directive not to hurt Humans.

And it is created out of a living metal which enables it to grow to a size that makes it dwarf the other people following the Brigadier trying to destroy it with a Ray Gun.

The Doctor, now fully aware of himself, creates a solution that will attack the metal of the deranged Robot.

The day is won, and not only does the Doctor have a new body but a new assistant alongside Sarah Jane Smith - Harry.

(sorry for the delay in this review)

Doctor who’s arch nemesis has returned, the Master? No, the Dalaks, yes and no, DAVROS!

What joy to see the crippled hand moving towards a switch, slowly, what does it do, something dreadful, it must be something hideous. This time one of those switches has Stolen the Earth, and 26 other planets.

The Doctor and Donna Noble, are desperately trying to save the Earth - even going to the shadow proclamation for assistance, intergalactic police.

But they are not alone in their efforts, Torchwood with Captain Jack, Yanto and Gwen (please Dalaks do us all a favour here!) As well as UNIT headed by .

Martha Jones, also Sarah Jane Smith and Rose Tyler are trying to save the world. These companions and friends of the Doctor are coordinated by, the former Prime Minister.

They all coordinate every telephone in the world to call the Doctors mobile, through the power of the rift of Torchwood in Cardiff.

The Doctor is coming warns a twisted and damaged Dalak, who we later found out rescued Davros from the time war!

The Doctor follows a teleportation trail to an empty region of space and it is only the telephone signal that leads him to Earth.

He has a video conversation with Torchwood, Unit and Sarah Jane Smith… The signal breaks and a familiar voice comes over the screen… Davros ..the Doctor is speechless and shocked.

The Doctor speeds off to Earth whereby he lands and sees Rose, he runs to her and a Dalak attacks. He is hit and taken back to the Tardis… We see him start to regenerate …

Continues next week

This Doctor Who episode is centred around Donna, with the Doctor not having many lines. A complete contrast to the episode last week that was primarily the Doctor.

A question: What if you had turned right instead of left, what if you had missed that train, what if…

It is a theory that for every choice we make, we create a series of infinite possibilities, a series of infinite parallel dimensions.

So the big ‘what if’ is what if the Doctor died! What if he was unable to stop the Titanic from crashing into London? What if the Adepos where not stopped?

This is the brilliant thing about sci-fi, you don’t have to talk about it, it can happen. And happen with a giant beetle, in true classic Doctor Who style!

This all starts as we see Donna and the Doctor arrive as what appears to be a Chinese style market, obviously in the future, they both look to be having a great time. Donna is beckoned into a fortune tellers tent. The fortune teller asks her to tell her about her past so that she can see her future.

Donna explains how she met this man, and when she recalls she has a vivid flashback. The fortune teller makes her describe a point in time when she would not have gotten the job that led her to meeting the Doctor. As this happens a scurrying is heard and we see a large beetle like creature on Donna’s back!

The next thing is Donna sitting in her car, her mother saying to her to turn right to go and get a job at a shop and she wants to turn left to go to the job that eventually leads her to meet the Doctor. Instead of turning left she turns right.

She never meets the doctor, which means he dies as she does not pull him out of the building two Christmases ago before it is destroyed.

With no Doctor, all the events the Doctor has prevented happen. The Sontaran’s attack, the Titanic crashes into London and the adipose consume most of the United States.

Donna is left in this altered reality. Although there are two distinct bizarre things that keep on happening…

People keep on looking at her back, some people do, looking like there is something strange on it.

She keeps on seeing a blonde lady, who helps her and her family escape the tragedy of the Titanic crashing into London. The blonde lady is Rose Tyler, she is there to save The Doctor and every Universe in existence. Donna doesn’t believe her at first, but it is only when all of the stars start to extinguish does Donna go with Rose.

Donna is taken to a Unit base, where Rose is in control. The Tardis is there, looking like they are trying to reverse engineer the technology. Donna is shown the creature on her back. In true classic Doctor Who style it appears to be an oversized Beetle! It is explained that she needs to turn left not right on that fateful day, and she must travel back in time to do this, Rose tells her that she is going to die. Donna is determined that by going back she will prevent her death. She returns, she but she has landed half a mile away and has 10 minutes to get there. She is running, and realises that the only to make her past self turn left is to cause a traffic jam - she steps out and it hit by a van. As she drifts away, Rose comes up and tells her to tell The Doctor two words.

She regains control, she is in the fortune teller’s tent, and the creature has fallen from her back. The fortune teller is cowering.

Telling The Doctor about it later, he points out how strange it is how they bumped into each other again and also how she seems to be in several parallel realities recently..

Donna, then remembers more. She says there was a blonde girl, The Doctor says, what was her name, looking shocked! She never said, said Donna, but she did give me a message. ‘Bad wolf’..

The Doctor runs out of the tent, every sign post, says ‘bad wolf’, even above the Tardis! Donna asks what that is, The Doctor says; “The end of the universe!”

Next weeks – well it looks brilliant! As we have all of the (new) old assistants, Sarah Jane Smith and the Torchwood team including Captian Jack…. 

Midnight, the name of a distant world in a distant time. Where the light is deadly, it will vaporise you on contact and also not forgetting it there is no air outside either! Although this planet is made of precious gems, the majority of which are Diamonds, and a tourist company has built a tourist resort here.

This where Donna and the Doctor have gone, I assume as a well deserved pool holiday to recover from the Library.

At the start of the episode we see Donna sitting in a reclining chair at the beginning of the episode drinking a rather exotic looking drink next to a pool.

The Doctor, being an explorer of time and space just can’t sit there. He has to get out and absorb every moment. He is taking a transport to see a gemstone waterfall erupt all manner of delights. But, of course nothing goes according to planned.

The transport has an eclectic range of people, a family consisting of wife who not only wears the trousers but the overalls as well. A father forever struggling against the alpha (male) female to prove himself. A teenage son who has been forced to come along undoubtedly with the mandate that ‘you might just learn something’. In addition to them, there is a retired professor who has been on that very same trip for 14 times and believes he is the most impressive person in the world. His companion is a student/intern who admires him but has her confidence stiffened by his complete and utter disrespect for her intelligence. We have the hostess who is keen to please and create calm for her charges. Then we have, Sky Silvestry, who immediately feels like she should not be there or at least her intentions are not exactly in-line with anyone else. She reveals to The Doctor that she is recovering from a nasty break up and is trying to recover.

The scene is set and the transport, which has the appearance of a first class transcontinental cabin, sets off. The route has been planned by a computer and is guides by a pilot and co-pilot.

The journey is normal, long and uneventful until the event happens. The transport stops! For no reason. All the systems are ok.

With the help of psychic paper The Doctor is able to gain access to the cock pit, and they have a glimpse outside. An amazing crystal landscape lays before them. The co-pilot spots something moving, only he sees it and it is dismissed by everyone else.

Later, there is a banging from the outside. It is impossible, states the Professor, nothing can live there. Then a smash and the cockpit is ripped off, the pilot and crew are gone.

All is quiet. In the corner is Sky Silvestry huddled in a ball. She is quiet. Everyone asks her if she is ok. She starts repeating everything they say with pure accuracy. Panic grips the cabin, arguments are echoed by Sky Silvestry voice. The Doctor surmises that a being is trying to take control of them by stealing their voice and eventually it will be you who is repeating.

Then it is only The Doctors voice that is repeated, the sinister presence has detected The Doctors knowledge and power and has started a full assault.

The rest of the passengers turn on The Doctor and they are determined to throw him out into the deadly environment that even a Timelord cannot regenerate from.

The Doctors voice, stolen and controlled by the possessed Sky Silvestry, is recognised by the humble hostess who drags the distracted Sky Silvestry to an airlock and scarifies herself to save the passengers. The Doctor is released as the sinister presence is ejected.

Upon his return to the resort he is reunited with Donna to a hug and words of comfort.

For those of you not aware, when you have a Doctor Who that is scary, it is the result of the (as Russell T Davies) Says, genius of Steven Moffat. Like ‘Blink’ the story line about statues that moved when you did not look at them, the silence in the library is an episode full of suspense. Taking an everyday primordial fear and turning it into something that is a real threat. Russell T Davies explains his plan for the episode; it is to have a classic Zombie walk and a space suit full of these intelligent microscopic Parana’s moving towards the Doctor with its deadly shadow extending in several directions. He also says the show will be a success if just one child in the school playgrounds of the UK is mimicking the spaceman zombie.

‘Stay out of the shadows’ is what The Doctor warns us to do. So in the making of this episode shadows where used to create fear. Because how can you stop a shadow (the Vashta Nerada, as The Doctor later explains), the only thing to do is Run!

The location for all this fear is based upon a brilliant idea, you take somewhere that should be full of people, say a Library that is so big is requires an entire Planet and empty it! Oh, and the only information is from these creepy nods that have people’s faces that speak to you - real faces! And at the end of the actual episode (Spoiler) Donna is a nod, and we see the production technique to achieve this.

The locations used seemed destined for this episode, a reception that is the size of a concert hall and a wonderful old circle library that was not being used. One technical complication was the library had no books so the BBC had to buy fake books and put them in place, taking several days!

We also see some rather nice behind the scenes elements of the production, the game of cards that David Tennant wins but Catherine Tate kindly points out he is still three behind her!

Also, the scene where the girl is talking to the doctor through the TV, showing David Tennant sitting in the place of the TV saying his lines in reply to her off camera is a nice touch.

This episode, like all of the confidential allows the viewer to see different angles and elements of this brilliant series!

image from BBC copyright 2008

The Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee, is trying to keep an eye on a group of scientists are dabbling in elements that always lead to some kind of disaster. Yes, they are trying to penetrate the Earth’s crust.

In a secluded location the Government is carrying out secretly drilling operations to tap an ancient power source know as ‘Stahlman’s Gas’. This has been around since the dawn of the universe. At the same time the Doctor is trying to ‘kick start’ his Tardis with the power from the onsite power station.

All is not well, a humble engineer gets exposed to a mysteries green liquid and is transformed into a feral primordial man, that is so hot that everything, bar his clothing seems to be burned.

During one of his experiments with the Tardis he is transport to a parallel earth that is ruled by a powerful dictatorship. In this we see a one eyed Brigadier who is anything but nice and Liz Shaw as authoritarian Section Leader Shaw.

This Earth is suffering the same problems as The Doctor’s Earth in our dimension but they are advanced.

The Doctor struggles to try to save the parallel Earth, but it is too late but not for our Earth.

The Doctor returns to his own dimension and uses the lessons he has learned to save the day.

This episode has the full array of the Jon Pertwee era, Liz Shaw as his assistant, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton and of course random shooting at creatures and The Doctor!

A brilliant story line that will make old and new fans smile!

Silence in the Library, another episode that is written by Steven Moffet, this means the best of the best! From the outset it feels like a great episode. Whether it is the set that actually looks like futuristic library would do or the plot twist of the little girl who is a security camera? Confused? you will be!

The library is empty and all Donna and The Doctor have to go on is a message warning them to count the shadows. But what is stranger than a deserted library plant, yes I said planet, than someone from the Doctor future appearing.. Yes, a women who is rather familiar to him is leading an expedition to the Library knows him, she knows all about him.

Donna, who has stated that she does not ‘fancy’ The Doctor appears to be upset, disturbed. Possibly even threatened as she is just getting to know The Doctor.

Oh, the villain of the piece is .. darkness. I am not going to say to much on this as it is brilliant. Although, this episode is the first of a two part story line which leaves The Doctor facing certain death - nothing unusual there then!

A brilliant episode!

What was billed as a comical episode proved to be a well thought out and crafted piece of work. I would say it was a homage to the memory and works of Agatha Christie. In fact it has made me want to watch that brilliant film, murder on the orient express.

But, back to the episode. Some points that should be highlighted, the giant was ok and I think essentially a British reference to an established fear and hatred of wasps in the UK. Would it have been the same if it had been a giant kitten?

The character’s where very strong and the dialogue was equally good. The tongue in cheek innuendo was amusing and I liked the line, ‘there are no children in this house and there are not likely to be any!’.

This is a welcome addition to the series, but a little obvious at times.

I give this 7 Tardis’s.