Episode 003: The Unquiet Dead

This is a cool episode. It's the episode that locked me into Doctor Who in the first place. It does a great job of combining creepy sci-fi with history and drama, and there's a bit of actual science in there too. Part of what I love about this show is that it actually makes sense a lot of the time. I saw a commentary thing tonight that explained this perfectly. They were talking about how everything that happens, things you blame on tricks of the light or something like that, are actually the work of aliens.

"The stiffs are getting lively again!"

It has a nice dose of humor in it, too. Little hints and tricks to things like that TARDIS. Little bits of sci-fi thrown in, but not at you so that it overshadows all else.

But, right, the plot of the episode. All in all, it's a simple idea. It's Cardiff, there's a rift in time and space...which basically means that funky things happen there. Aliens and objects fall through, messages, , images, and just... stuff. These evil aliens are taking over human corpses, living off all the gases decomposing bodies create, and they want to take over the world. And there's a bit of Charles Dickens in there. And some Christmas. Rose dresses up all fancy, since it's 1860. It's her first trip to the past, and after the shock of the last episode, what with the Earth exploding and all, this is a nice, light, and balanced episode.
                        

"Ready for this? Here we go. History."

I also feel like this is Rose's first proper trip as an excepted companion. She and the Doctor both know that she's here to stay, and they're ready to experience whatever 1860 has in store for them, and by Jove, they're going to enjoy it no matter what.

And it's always nice to see Billie Piper all dressed up and whatnot.


Anyway, a few moments into their adventure, the Doctor grabs a newspaper and, oops, he's got it wrong. They were shooting for 1860 Naples, but they're actually in 1869 Cardiff. But, well, that's the TARDIS for you.

The Doctor and Rose get all wrapped up in everything happening, as they do, and they manage to communicate with the aliens and they beg for help. Charles Dickens is just kind of chilling out at this point. Mostly just an old, cynical and lonely old man out of ideas to write about and unbelieving of the wonders that keep playing out in front of him.

And then there's the maid, Gwyneth, who keeps displaying some more than slight psychic abilities. She freaks Rose out a bit. But it's handy when they contact these aliens.

This is a really lovely scene here, in my opinion. A lot happens. You have Dickens still denying the possibility of such things as ghosts and the supernatural, you have the Doctor just asking him to be a part of it, Sneed in nearly silent awe, and Gwyneth making the link and being possessed by the Gelth. They explain themselves, they beg for pity. And they ask to come to the Earth to make use of the dead, soulless bodies after the time war destroyed their own physical forms and devastated their homeland.

"Pity us. Pity the Gelth!"

Rose protests, but she can't say why. The Doctor shuts her down, telling her that being polite means nothing because it could save the lives of the Gelth. She protests more for a bit, and she may never agree totally, but I think it's when she learns about abandoning her own mindset. The Doctor tells her to get used to different moralities or go home, and I think it hits her hard, even if it isn't focused on too much. It's her first taste of an alien concept on her own planet. The suggestion of changes that would be felt 200 years later in her time. Changes that would affect the whole progress of the human race.

And that little mention of the Time War. That says a lot. The Doctor shifts- you can see his guilt. Rose and him share a brief moment, but it is only a beat, and I think that's important. And I like that it's just a mention.

And... Charles... he's finally a believer.

 So they go along with the Gelth's request. They establish the bridge and, well, a "few" Gelth turned into a "few billion" Gelth. 

Doctor: I trusted you! I pitied you!!
Gelth: We don't want your pity! We want this world and all it's flesh.
Doctor: Not while I'm alive.
Gelth: ...Then live no more.

 They start possessing people, Charles runs off because it's just too much for him to take, Rose and the Doctor lock themselves in a little cell...thing. All seems lost.


Except there's clever Charles. Opening the gas, drawing the Gelth out of the bodies before Gwyneth, already dead and just hanging on, sets them all aflame. And Rose just doesn't understand. She wanted to save Gwyneth so much.

"She saved the world. A servant girl. And no one will ever know."

That is a huge theme in this show that is just absolutely beautiful. Wonderful. Perfect. The Doctor, this great and powerful, clever alien who knows so much more than we can imagine... and a little person, a "nobody", if you will, saves the world. I love that.


Charles Dickens is a new man, too. A new motive for life. And when he asks if his books last. And the Doctor tells him "Forever". So cute.


Very classic episode, in my opinion.

Episode 002 : The End of the World

So, it's been...a while. Originally my goal was to finish writing posts about the first four seasons before the fifth season started, but obviously I've utterly failed at that. I blame no one but myself and my lazy nature. Sorry to any who care.

This really was an interesting episode, though. It's full of wit and drama and all that fun stuff...as well as more mystery. Let's take a look, shall we?

"She's my 'plus 1'."

Wow. If that's not a pretty picture, then I don't know what is. But what is this picture, exactly? Well, it's the year 5.5 /apple/26 of course! Five billion years into the future. The day the SUN EXPANDS. Basically, Rose and the Doctor are crashing a party on the famous satellite 5 (gotta love that slightly psychic paper). It's a party where the best of the best and the richest of the rich come to watch this ancient planet roast. Now I'm not sure about you, but if I were searching for a companion, I probably wouldn't use the death of her world as a persuasion tool, but somehow it works for the Doctor and Rose.

"You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible: that maybe you survive."

Now when I say the "best of the best", I don't mean humans. In fact, Rose is the only human there... Unless you count Cassandra, of course, but who would count her?

Honestly, though, she is the most entertaining part of this episode. It's always fun to see how history changes in time, and Cassandra's facts, wherever she learned them, are a bit skewed. For example, as a gift she presents the "last remaining ostrich egg"... It's normal looking enough, but I wouldn't want to be around when it hatched. According to her, it had a wingspan of fifty feet and breathed fire out of its nose. Her second gift is an iPod...except it's actually a jukebox. I'm not complaining, though, because, like the iPod, it also holds music from "humanities greatest composers"...aka Soft Cell. Although it is nice to think that of everything we've done as a species, and out of everything we'll ever do, all that will be remembered of this world are fire-breathing birds and 80's music. Honestly, I would be okay with that.



Cassandra doesn't stop there, though. It's a bit subtle, but you may have noticed that she doesn't exactly look human. Sure, she has the fleshy skin-color and a brain (even if it is in a jar), but where is the flesh? This is the product of yet another act of brilliance on the part of the writer(s). Cassandra is the result of a thousand (or, rather, two-thousand) years of a ridiculously extreme desire to be thin. The first thing she says when she enters the room is a reference to the difference made in her figure from having her chin removed. Is this a statement about society or just British humor? Probably British humor.

...

Then again, when does this show not have to do with some sort of evil human quality?

After all, it turns out that Cassandra is more than just a flab of skin. She's an evil, greedy, murderous flab of skin. That's right, she's the villain in this plot. Her plan is to kill everyone on the satellite to make money. This, naturally, is proof that she is, in fact, human.

Not to worry, though, because there are living, humanoid "trees" around to help the Doctor save the world. Or...at least the aliens on board. The Earth still gets roasted.

That's all I have for this episode, though.

Stay moisturized!

Episode 001: Rose

There you have it. The little blue police box. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. TARDIS, for all us fun folk. The first episode of the first season since, well... a while. The episode opens with a little fast-forward of a typical day in the life of Rose.

Wake up at 7:30 in the morning, go to work, have lunch with the boyfriend, Mickey, and get attacked by a bunch of living plastic window dummies. Wait- That part wasn't supposed to be under the "typical" category.

When I first watched this episode, I thought it was the weirdest thing ever. It took until the appearance of the Doctor to convince me that the episode was even worth finishing.

To me, the Doctor was just the most amazing character ever. He obviously knew exactly what was going on the second he came onto the screen, which was a relief for both Rose and whoever happened to be watching (if they were confused as I was). Suddenly, we understood what was happening...sort of. At the very least, it wasn't as creepy as we thought, because hey, killer manikins can't be so bad if there's this smiling "northern" man treating them like the final boss of a videogame he all but programmed. He knew what was happening, how it was happening, and how it would end. The only thing left he had to do was compile the code. First, though, he had to rescue the princess.

"...I'm gonna go upstairs and blow it up. And I might well die in the process. But don't worry about me, no. You go home, go on! Go and have your lovely beans on toast! And don't tell anyone about this 'cos if you do, you'll get them killed. "

He slams the door shut...and then opens it again.

"I'm The Doctor, by the way. What's your name?"

"Rose."

"Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!"

And the epicness doesn't end there. There's a clearly animated explosion to follow, just as promised. Lucky for Rose, she manages to get across the street just in time. Dazed, and still clutching the arm of a dummy that tried to kill her, she runs home.

Sadly, I couldn't get a decent screen capture of the Doctor peering into Rose's house through the catflap the day after they met. I compensated with the picture that goes nicely with one of my favorite quotes from the episode. While Rose is bantering on, rightfully of course, about going to the police and whatnot, the Doctor takes the chance to wander the apartment. He shuffles some cards (badly), reads a book by fanning though it, looks in the mirror to check out the damage of his latest regeneration, and reads through a magazine. Mind you, all this only takes a few seconds. It's clear, though, that the Doctor is completely nonchalant. In fact, he doesn't seem to care in the least about what Rose is saying. He's more interested in the relationship featured in the magazine.

"Well that won't last. He's gay and she's an alien."

Hey. Sounds interesting to me. It might take more than couple's counseling to work that one out.

Now here's what I think is the best part of this episode. Rose is still stalking when the Doctor hears this noise from behind the couch. When he looks behind it, the arm of that dummy attacks him. He's being strangled by a manikin's arm while Rose is making coffee. She walks right by him. She doesn't notice it until the hand latches onto her face instead. NomNomNom.

The Doctor saves her, of course, and then proceeds to leave. Turns out that the hand was just what he was looking for.

Rose follows the Doctor out of the building and all the way to the TARDIS. In that time, he explains about the living plastic, which leads to another one of my favorite parts of the episode, though this is on another spectrum. (And I'm going to leach this directly from wikiquotes.)

Rose: Who are you?
The Doctor: [turns around] Do you know like I was sayin' about the Earth revolving? [walks toward Rose] It's like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you that the Earth's turnin' and you just can't quite believe it cause everythin' looks like it's standin' still. [looks at Rose] I can feel it. [takes Rose's hand] The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinnin' at 1,000 miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtlin' 'round the Sun at 67,000 miles an hour and I can feel it. We're fallin' through space, you and me, clingin to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go... [let's go of Rose's hand] ...That's who I am.

That's the sort of thing that keeps people watching. It's the mysterious and obvious dramatic around the Doctor. It's like Edward Cullen from Twilight, minus the ~*perfectness*~...and the sparkles. Seriously, if the series were more popular here in America, he would have some serious fans. Not that he doesn't have them already.

But moving on.

The Doctor leaves, Rose goes home to research him on the internet, Mickey gets eaten by a garbage can... typical Doctor Who stuff.

So, eventually, the Doctor saves Rose from a rampaging, plastic Mickey copy and they end up in the center of London. They have a little spat about what is and isn't important (the Doctor tends to forget about Mickey, and that bothers Rose...y'know, since she just watched a plastic version of his head melt). The Doctor, being the wonderful manly man that he is, crosses his arms and pouts like a toddler until Rose can't hold back her curiosity anymore and changes the subject back to the plastic.
It's actually pretty remarkable. Think about it. This girl just went from an ordinary life to...exploding jobs, strange men that pulls limbs and heads off of killer manikins, loses her boyfriend to living plastic, and is transported across the city in a little blue box that's bigger on the inside. And what does she do? She asks about the plastic. She's even sane enough to make a crack about other plastic things coming to life besides the shop dummies. Namely, the breast implants. I can't speak for anyone else, but I think I would be busy crying in some corner by then, not thinking about... uh, that, as scary as it is.

So, after some...discussion, the Doctor and Rose find the evil alien's transmitter:

The Doctor: How can you hide something that big in a city this small?
Rose: Hold on... hide what?
The Doctor: The transmitter. The Consciousness is controlling every single piece of plastic so it needs a transmitter to boost the signal.
Rose: What's it look like?
The Doctor: Like a transmitter. Round and massive, slap bang in the middle of London. A huge circular metal structure-like a dish-like a wheel. Close to where we're standing. Must be completely invisible.
Can you find it?

It's never too heavy for too long in this show~!

It doesn't take long to switch back to epicness, though. Basically, Mickey is alive, the Consiousness is killed (though it was a last resort) with anti-plastic, and Rose saves the day! Good thing all those window shop dummies didn't have enough time to cause too much damage. Can't say the same thing for poor Mickey's mental stability, though...


All in all, the world is saved. The doctor gets ready to leave, but...he doesn't want to go alone. He invites Rose to travel with him, but she declines. That is, until the Doctor mentions that the TARDIS not only goes from place to place, anywhere in the universe, but travels through time as well. Now that, she decides, is too much to pass up. With excitement practically radiating off her, she runs into the TARDIS to join the Doctor in his travels.

...

Annnd, that's it. In a nutshell. Kind of. A bit picture heavy? Yeah, I guess, but I really do love taking screencaps. Didn't really say anything revolutionary, but y'know what? My inner fangirl is content. And when she is content, I am content.

I'll try to make the post for episode 2 more exciting. We wouldn't want to disappoint Cassandra, now would we?


To days to come,
~Melissa