In anticipation of the Doctor
Who 50th anniversary special, which airs on November 23 (exactly
half a century to the day after the series debuted in 1963), I’ve re-watched
the entire run of the revived series, which began in 2005 under show runner
Russell T. Davies, and continues under Steven Moffat.
This concentrated viewing has only confirmed what I’ve felt
since the revival premiered, which is that it’s a textbook lesson in how to
resurrect an iconic brand for a new era. Brash, funny, stylish, and smart, shot
through with heart (and an occasional undercurrent of darkness), it’s a show
designed for people who grew up immersed in genre TV, movies, and comic books.
It plays with the conventions of science fiction ironically, but affectionately—in
the same way Joss Whedon played with the conventions of horror films in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
In seven seasons (and assorted specials), the majority of
episodes have worked—I’d even say worked beautifully. There have been a few
wince-worthy clunkers, of course; but viewers who hung on through those were
inevitably rewarded with something transcendently wonderful a few episodes
later.
Originally I wanted to make this a countdown of the 10 best
stories since the revival, but found myself not up to the task of whittling
down the list quite so far. So I cut to the bone, and what I had left was the most
stellar 16. And to pare it even that much, I had to focus solely on stand-alone
stories that don’t depend too heavily for their impact on other episodes, or on
season-long arcs. Which is why you won’t find otherwise excellent entries like
“Doomsday” or “Let’s Kill Hitler” here.
The list ranges over the entire seven seasons (and
specials), as well as over three separate Doctors and more than a dozen
companions and costars. What’s remarkable is that through all the personnel
changes, the Doctor himself—winsome, childlike, dashing, and occasionally
frightening—remains recognizably himself; and the ways in which he differs seem
largely driven by the people with whom he surrounds himself. Which is as it
should be. The greatest change from the old classic Doctor Who series (aside from the incalculable one of higher
budgets and the availability of CGI), is that the revived version often seems
less like a science-fiction adventure show than a family drama.
I like to count myself a member of the extended clan.
16. “Dalek” (Season
1, episode 6)
Early in the first season, we learn there’s been a war
between the Doctor’s race (the arrogant, aristocratic Time Lords) and their
ancient enemies, the murderous Daleks—a war of which the Doctor is the only
survivor. This suits us fine; as phenomenally popular as the Daleks were in the
1960s (and for a while they were arguably bigger than the Doctor himself), the
pepperpot-shaped psychopaths don’t translate well to the 21st
century. They’re clunky and obvious. Yet this episode works like wildfire: the
Doctor meets his analogue—a previously unsuspected sole-surviving Dalek—and
immediately goes into all-out-war mode. His companion—the incomparable Rose
Tyler—is astonished by the change in him, and the entire episode is very crafty
about the way it peels away our preconceptions to hint that there are more
similarities—more moral equivalency—between the Doctor and his longtime nemeses,
than we (or he) ever knew. When the Dalek goes on the rampage (in an
underground compound manned by only a handful of people), we get a far greater
sense of its lethal capacity than we ever did in stories featuring dozens or
hundreds of the things. In the end, the Dalek finds redemption; the Doctor does
not. And that might have served as the perfect epitaph for the iconic creatures.
Alas, the pressure to bring them back was too great to ignore; they returned
later that same season, and ever since they’ve been responsible for some of the
lousiest episodes in the new Who run.
But on its own merits, “Dalek” is just about perfect.
15. “A Christmas
Carol” (Christmas 2010 Special)
Christmas specials are a Doctor
Who tradition. In the Davies era, they were usually spectacular,
widescreen-wannabe epics about disasters that threatened to blow up the planet
(or at least London). In Moffat’s tenure, they’ve gone an entirely different
route: fanciful, lyrical, fairy-tale stuff, which ideally suits Moffat’s
Doctor, Matt Smith, who capers through them like a hyperkinetic elf. “A Christmas
Carol” is the best to date. In it, the Doctor’s honeymooning companions, Amy
and Rory, are trapped on a rapidly deteriorating spaceship, and the only man
who can save them is a an Ebenezer Scrooge type, Karzan Sardick (played by the legendary
actor Michael Gambon). But Sardick won’t lift a finger, and sneers at the idea
he’d even be asked. So the Doctor, taking inspiration from Dickens, decides to jump
into Sardick’s timeline, right back to his childhood, and rewrite the whole
narrative of his life to make him a man with a heart. What follows is an old
man literally watching his life change before his eyes (thanks to an old film
projector), with the Doctor bopping between planets and time periods in a
manner even the Who series was never
quite so audacious to attempt before. There’s also a girl, of course; and some
incredibly beautiful images, like flying fish (literally flying fish), and the whole thing is what you expect when people
use the word “magical,” except they’re usually just hyperbolizing. This time,
it’s the goods.
14. “Hide” (Season 7,
episode 9)
One of the things I love best about Who is its absolute bedrock foundation in science fiction. Since
the series was revived, it’s featured ghosts, witches, werewolves, and
vampires, but all are ultimately revealed to be extraterrestrial in origin; in Who, the supernatural quite simply n’existe pas. (This is, unfortunately,
one of the ways in which its spinoff series, Torchwood, let down the side.) “Hide” is my favorite entry in this
particular category. It begins as a standard haunted house outing, creepy and
portentous; but then—through a series of wonderfully unexpected twists
(including an impromptu sprint across the entire lifespan of planet Earth,
which triggers a mini-meltdown in the Doctor’s new companion, Clara, as well it
might)—it unexpectedly evolves into both a nail-biting science fiction caper
and a surprisingly sweet love story, with a kicker at the end that will have
you laughing in sheer delight. It’s also gorgeously shot and brilliantly
edited, and features wonderfully appealing performances by guest actors in
compelling supporting roles—another Who
staple.
13. “Father’s Day”
(Season 1, episode 8)
As I mentioned earlier, the major difference between the
revived Who and its classic
predecessor is that the new series is much more devoted to the idea of family.
In the original series, the Doctor’s companions would climb aboard the TARDIS
and leave their everyday lives behind without a backward glance. In the new run,
those everyday lives exert a powerful pull. The Doctor’s companions—Rose,
Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara—don’t leave anything behind; their relationships remain
vital…so much so that lovers, parents, even grandparents find themselves
joining the TARDIS crew. “Father’s Day” was the first episode of the new series
to make this difference incandescently clear. Rose convinces the Doctor to
bring her to the day on which she lost the father she never knew—he was killed
by a hit-and-run driver while she was still an infant—and despite his warnings
not to interfere with history as it unfolds before her, the inevitable happens.
The remainder of the episode—with the fallout of Rose’s rescue of her father
threatening to pull the space-time continuum apart—is memorable chiefly due to
its poignant portrayal of a family given a second chance, that’s really no
chance at all. “Father’s Day” has resonances in the show’s following season,
and even beyond; but on its own, it’s a beautiful little tale of folly and
sacrifice.
12. “The Time of the
Angels”/”Flesh and Stone” (Season 5, episodes 5-6)
It’s a shame the Who
producers feel compelled (who knows, maybe they are compelled) to keep trying to revitalize the series’ tired old
menaces, like the Daleks and the Cybermen, when they have such an amazing track
record at inventing wildly terrifying new ones, like the Silence, the Vashta
Nerada, and—best of all—the Weeping Angels, who make their second appearance in
this two-parter. The Doctor’s mysterious time-inverted love interest, River
Song, also makes her second appearance here, and the sparks—as well as the
questions—fly like grapeshot. The plot involves the crash of the starship
Byzantium, whose cargo contained one of the aforementioned Weeping Angels—a
race of statue-like creatures who only move when unobserved. The Doctor and his
companion Amy Pond join River and a group of commando clerics (yes, really) in
trying to capture the Angel before it threatens a human colony on the planet.
But the deeper they get into the crash site—which encompasses an unfortunately
not quite accurately named “Maze of the Dead”—they begin to realize they’re
outnumbered. And the assault isn’t just from without; it’s from within—as Amy
Pond falls victim to one of the most diabolically inventive, and scream-for-your-life
scary, possessions I’ve ever seen. This is a rollicking, surreal two-parter,
where the ground under your feet is never anywhere near as steady as you think
it is.
11. “Turn Left”
(Season 4, episode 11)
As noted above, I’ve tried to restrict this list to
stand-alone stories—i.e., those that aren’t hugely dependent for their effect
on other episodes’ developments. “Turn Left” is a bit of cheat in that respect,
as it rewinds the show’s continuity to reveal what would have happened had the
Doctor’s season 4 companion, Donna Noble, never met him. The result is an
increasingly dystopian narrative that finds Donna spiraling into ever greater
distress—and the world along with her. Most of the events portrayed are from
previous episodes, but with different (i.e. disastrous) endings—and if you’ve
seen those episodes, “Turn Left” will have much more resonance. But it’s also
possible to appreciate solely from Donna’s point of view, as she strives to
understand the terrible things going on around her, and why a mysterious
stranger (the returning Rose Tyler) keeps telling her she’s the most important
person in the world. What Rose of course knows—and what we come to
appreciate—is that the role of the Doctor’s sidekick is much more than someone
for him to spout expository dialogue to. “Turn Left” is ostensibly about Donna,
but in fact it’s a tribute to the essential part played by every one of the
Doctor’s companions. Though the Doctor himself scarcely appears, this a great
episode, ambitious and agonizing, and featuring a searing performance by
Catherine Tate as Donna.
10. “The Impossible
Planet”/”The Satan Pit” (Season 2, episodes 6-7)
A standard Who
plot is to place the Doctor among a small group of colleagues in a small, claustrophobic
environment—a spaceship, a submarine, an isolated factory, etc.—and then pull
it all down around their ears. In this story, the Doctor and Rose stumble onto
a planet that is—impossibly (hence the title)—orbiting a black hole. A “gravity
tunnel” holds it in place, and allows for transport to and from a small base on
the planet surface; and since such a tunnel requires an unimaginable source of
energy, the base’s crew is drilling to find out what it is. The Doctor barely
has time to tell them how really
lousy an idea that is, before the gravity tunnel collapses, the crew’s servant
staff (an unsettling race called the Ood) go nuts and rebel, and what’s
revealed at the center of the planet is not just something evil…it may be the original evil. The pace is steady and
unrelenting, the shocks and plot twists come at you like hand grenades, and the
supporting staff drop like flies, Ten
Little Indians style. This two-parter is just harrowing, hair-raising fun,
culminating in a spectacular confrontation between the Doctor and the big bad
(and I do mean big). The visuals are
bold, the writing’s snappy and taut, and the interactions between the players
run an emotional gamut. A classic, on every count.
9. “The Doctor’s
Wife” (Season 6, episode 4)
Doctor Who
occasionally takes advantage of luxury casting, recruiting from the ranks of
acting royalty such talents as Michael Gambon, or Derek Jacobi, or Diana Rigg.
This episode is, I believe, the first time they’ve brought in a superstar writer. And Neil Gaiman doesn’t
disappoint; in fact, he makes it seem like Doctor
Who has just been waiting for him to arrive. In fact, his sensibility is
very close to the show’s; both depend for their vitality (and their charm) on
cobbling together bits and pieces of many other narrative genres, from
Victorian gaslight thrillers to dystopian science fiction—and “The Doctor’s
Wife” has all that, and more. The plot involves a malevolent being who feasts
on TARDIS energy, and who has drawn the Doctor, Amy and Rory to his
junkyard-like asteroid the way you or I might order a pizza delivery. But in
the process of deconstructing the TARDIS, its essence—its persona, in fact—is
transferred to a living woman, Idris; and thus we’re granted the very great
pleasure of watching the Doctor flirt with the love of his life, for the first
time, in flesh and blood. Idris’s dialogue is a zany delight (she tells the
Doctor, for instance, that the TARDIS likes to be called “Sexy”), and the
chemistry between Matt Smith and guest-star Suranne Jones lifts your hat right off
your head (if you wear a hat). Gaiman anchors all this with some decidedly
unsettling scenes of Amy and Rory in the depths of the lobotomized TARDIS, that
reveals the other, darker side of that iconic machine. A real winner of an
episode, and justifiably a fan favorite.
8. “Midnight” (Season
4, episode 10)
You couldn’t find an episode more different from our
previous entry than this one; which serves to illustrate the series’
wonderfully vast canvas. Doctor Who easily
accommodates Neil Gaiman’s rollicking, fanciful Steampunk tomfoolery, but it
can also deliver an episode like this: static, unnerving, and taut as a violin
string. The Doctor is one of eight passengers on a tourist tram crossing a
highly radioactive planet, when something—we’re never quite sure what—attacks.
What follows is a brilliant distillation of how happy, harmonious human
societies can rapidly degenerate into irrationality, fear, and finally violence.
It’s possibly the most frightening episode the series has ever delivered, yet there
are no giant monsters, no special effects of any kind; there’s not even a
change of scene—it all plays out in the cramped cabin of the tram. All the
strangeness and horror is completely, masterfully conveyed by the writing and
acting alone. By the time the credits roll, you’ve had a genuine catharsis. I’d
rank this one higher on the list if I didn’t ultimately feel that Who, at its best, is a hopeful show—a joyful
one. This episode is bleak and dark and devastating. And absolutely
unforgettable.
7. “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” (Season 1, episodes 9-10)
Doctor Who two-parters are a tricky enterprise; they have to have
enough ideas to carry the added story time, without becoming too confusing or
convoluted. This one slam-dunks it, providing a story about a bizarre plague
infecting besieged citizens during the London Blitz, and a seemingly
unconnected scam being run by a ridiculously charismatic 51st
century con man (Captain Jack Harkness, one of the most beloved characters in
the Who canon—and one of the few to
be awarded his own spinoff). The aura of menace and mystery is wonderfully
sustained; there are some wonderfully unsettling images (chiefly a spectral boy
in a gas mask continually muttering “Are you my mummy?”) and some terrific set
pieces (including Rose Tyler, in a Union Jack t-shirt, hanging by a rope from a
dirigible in the midst of the Blitz). The plotting and pacing are bang-on as
the Doctor and Rose—first separately, then teamed with Captain Jack in a series
of scenes that sparkle with collective chemistry—begin to tie it all together;
and the wonderfully inventive finale offers the best kind of tension and
release. There’s not a false or feeble moment in it, and it leaves you feeling
pretty much euphoric.
6. “The Girl Who Waited” (Season 6, episode 10)
Steven Moffat’s genius idea for
the show’s sixth season was to give the Doctor—for the first time in the show’s
five decades—married companions. At the end of Season 5, Amy Pond wed her
long-suffering (and by that time, “long-suffering” meant actual millennia)
fiancé Rory Williams, and the two showed up for Season 6 nuptialed,
honeymooned, and ready to rock ‘n’ roll. Nothing Moffat ever threw at them,
however (and he threw a lot), comes
anywhere near “The Girl Who Waited.” It’s basically a chamber piece, featuring
the three principals and no other characters. Well…that’s not entirely true.
Because you have two Amys. Two radically different
Amys. It all comes about when the Doctor takes the couple to what he thinks is
a holiday planet, but which has, since his last visit, become a plague planet.
They land in a “kindness center” operating on two separate time-streams—one
accelerated, so that the family of the afflicted can watch their doomed loved
ones live out their lives through a portal. Amy ends up in the accelerated
timeline, and by the time the Doctor and Rory reach her, 36 years have passed,
and she is pissssssed. She’s also
completely badass, having had to survive on her own in a kind of garden
paradise where robots are out to kill her. Older Amy is played—as is younger
Amy—by Karen Gillan, who completely throws down as an embittered woman suddenly
confronted with the much younger husband she lost, and by the “raggedy Doctor” of
her childhood, whom she now hates. And then…she’s confronted by her younger
self as well, as the Doctor, through some Doctor whammy, brings the timelines
together. But only one Amy can survive the episode, and as good as Killan is,
Arthur Darvill as Rory gets in some heart-rending scenes, as a decent man torn
between two women—both of them his wife. If you had to pick one episode that
shows what the new series can do that the old never could, then paradoxically
this one—which in every other respect is as linear and low-budget as the old Who—might be it.
5. “The Waters of Mars” (Autumn 2009 Special)
Throughout the revived Who, much is made of the idea that,
while the future can in many cases be changed, there are certain “fixed points”
in time that cannot, absolutely cannot
be altered, not for anything or anybody, anywhere, ever. The fall of Pompeii
(which the Doctor witnesses in Season 4) is one such “fixed point,” and he goes
to great length to explain to his traumatized companion, Donna, that this is
why he can’t—doesn’t dare—save the
city. Well, “The Waters of Mars”—which comes very late in Russell T. Davies
(and David Tennant’s) run—shows us what happens when the Doctor decides that
goddammit, he’s a Time Lord, and he’ll alter a fixed point in time if he bloody
well feels like it. But before we get to that turning point, we have a superior
example of the Doctor-in-a-confined-space-with-doomed-colleagues scenario that
the series loves so much. This time the first human colony on Mars in 2059,
headed by Captain Adelaide Brooke (played by Lindsay Duncan—more acting
royalty). Everyone in the colony is famous to history, and the Doctor is over
the moon at getting to meet them…but then finds himselef having to turn and
walk away from them just as they face their deaths at the hands of their own
team members, possessed by an intelligent water virus (and man, the special
effects involved here will give you some hellacious nightmares). The fall of
the Mars colony is a fixed point in time…there’s nothing he can do about it.
Until, in a burst of compassion—or hubris—or both—he does. The result?...One of
the darkest, most disturbing Who
episodes ever…pitiless, powerful and utterly indelible.
4. “Silence In the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” (Season 4, episodes
8-9)
At first, this seems like it
might be a routine Who outing. The
Doctor and Donna Noble arrive at a planet-sized library called—The Library.
(Because, what else?) But instead of teeming with 51st century
library-card holders, the entire world is empty. Then a team of archaeologists
arrive, and we can pretty well guess what happens next: the menace that wiped
the Library clean of life will start picking off the archaeologists, while the
Doctor scrambles for a solution that will save everyone. And that’s exactly
what does happen. But as it unfolds, the narrative slowly becomes much, much more, due to
several unexpectedly amazing elements. The first is the menace itself, the
Vashta Nerada, one of the most chilling alien races the series has ever dished
up (the fact that they’re both carnivorous and take the form of shadows, gives
you an idea). The second is that the events unfolding in the library seem to be
visible on television by a little girl in an apparently 21st century
living room. The third is that one of the archaeologists—one Professor River
Song—is a highly charismatic woman who appears to know the Doctor very
well…intimately, even…though he himself has no recollection of ever having met
her. And from there the story continues to spiral off into increasingly wild
new directions—including a parallel reality side-trip for Donna that’s both jaggedly
surreal and genuinely heartbreaking—eventually rushing to a series of climaxes
that run the gamut from the tragic to the exhilarating. Not just outstanding Who, this is outstanding TV, period.
3. “The Girl In the
Fireplace” (Season 2, episode 4)
Another standard Who
story device is to pair up the Doctor with a personage from history; in the
revived series alone, he’s met Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, William
Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Richard Nixon, and Vincent van Gogh. But this
episode, in which the Doctor encounters Madame de Pompadour (a.k.a. Reinette), is
outstanding in any number of ways. It begins in the far future, in deep space,
on an empty ship that contains a series of temporal doorways into specific
moments in Reinette’s life. Before the Doctor can figure out what the hell
that’s about, he finds himself rescuing her from clockwork creatures in period
dress (wonderfully creepy) who seem to be after her head. But despite the dazzling
ingenuity of this narrative scaffolding, the real heart of the episode is the
simmering romance between the Doctor and Reinette—a remarkable woman who seems
fully capable of meeting him on his own level. Even so, the entire thing might
well sink without the casting of Sophie Myles as Reinette; hers is one of the truly
great guest performances in Who
history. Her brilliant, beautiful, ultimately tragic Madame de Pompadour
lingers in your mind, long after the episode is over.
2. “Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood” (Season 3, episodes 8-9)
A common plot device for fantastic or heroic characters, is
to place them in a story where they’re suddenly ordinary, mundane men or women
in our everyday world, and their more outsize, colorful personae are said to be
no more than delusions they can’t shake. That’s where we find the Doctor in
“Human Nature”: he’s John Smith, a teacher at an English public school in
1913—an endearingly gangly, socially awkward sort who just has the daftest dreams about traveling the universe
in a small blue box. But thanks to his companion, Martha—who shares the
scenario with him, but remains aware of its artificiality—we know that this is
actually the Doctor’s attempt to hide himself from the Family of Blood, a clan
of alien predators who, right off the bat, unnerve us a little, because—hello,
they can scare the Doctor? And when
they appear, taking human form, they’re just as disquieting as they’ve been
billed—especially Jeremy Baines as Harry Lloyd, whose cocked head and twisted
smile are way more terrifying than a full-on Dalek invasion. Martha’s
unenviable task is to awaken the Doctor’s memories in time to get him to evade
capture by the Family…but John Smith has unfortunately gone and done the one
thing the Doctor never anticipated: he’s fallen in love. The object of his
affections, the school nurse (unforgettably played by Joan Redfern), becomes,
more than any other character in Who
history, the tragic representative of the innocent lives that are devastated by
contact with the Doctor. Yet, as good as Redfern is (and she’s tremendous), the
episode belongs to David Tennant, whose John Smith could melt the polar icecaps
with his grief at having to stop being who he is, and become
something—someone—he doesn’t even understand. Then there’s the epilogue, in
which Davies takes the metaphor of World War I (with the schoolboys’ battling
the Family) and makes it concrete (with those same boys, one year on, in the
trenches), and you’re basically being ravished by the most beautifully
rendered, most ambitious, and most affecting episode of Who ever.
1. “Blink” (Season 3,
Episode 10)
The irony of “Blink” being the best-to-date episode of new Who (and it’s not just me who ranks it so
high; do some Googling and you’ll find it topping nearly everyone’s list) is
that the Doctor’s barely in it. Its central character is a young photographer,
Sally Sparrow, who finds herself drawn into the chronal upheavals caused by a
race of extraterrestrial predators known as the Weeping Angels—fearsome
creatures who are immobile statues…until
you shut your eyes. They don’t kill you, it turns out; they hurl you back through
time, and feed off the energy of the timeline you’ve now abandoned. Only the
Doctor can stop them…and the means by which Sally eventually encounters him is both
over-the-top ingenious and laugh-out-loud thrilling. In the meantime, there’s
so much to feast on—so much to prompt reflection about what it means to be
alive, and how much when we are makes
us who we are—that “Blink” can stand proudly
outside the Doctor Who canon. It’s a
perfect example of short-form filmmaking; it takes you on a journey, and
delivers you on the other side fundamentally changed in small but important ways.
It’s got heart, and laughs, and wonderment, and some serious, jump-out-of-your-seat
frights. If Doctor Who ever manages
to top this, I’d be surprised. But you never know…we might get that lucky.
