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caz963Things like this tend to happen when I'm at home ill, because I get more time to think than normal. So I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I'm on the mend and will be returning to work shortly!
I read a blog post the other day (sorry, but I can’t remember where it was), the subject of which was Ten things we love about Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who.
And it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to do something similar for ages. Though he left Doctor Who more than a year ago, there’s no denying that RTD left his mark on British telly in more ways than one – although DW is, of course, the best known and biggest dent!
But there are a couple of non-DW things I wanted to mention because they made a real impression on me, so they're in here as well.
I struggled with putting these in order – and decided in the end that it’s impossible. So without further ado – and in no particular order –
Ten Things For Which I Will Always be Grateful to Russell T Davies.
1. Starting out with the bleedin’ obvious. He was the one who brought back Doctor Who to our Saturday night tellyboxes. He might not have got it right all the time, but without him, we wouldn’t have the show we have now. On his watch, the 'little show that could' became a veritable juggernaut, regenerated into the BBC’s flagship programme, won numerous awards along the way, and turned into a nice little earner for Auntie - and he left it in (as he says) rude health, at the height of popularity for his successor.
He also turned the Doctor from 'just' an intergalactic wanderer, sometime cosmic hobo and meddler, member of an ancient and grave race into the sole survivor of a terrible war in which he’d had to commit a truly abominable act – that of wiping out his own species in order to save the universe.
And that was a game-changer in terms of the characterization of the Doctor in that it gave more potential for the exploration of what made him tick, this nine-hundred-and-something-year-old alien who had such dark deeds in his past. (And I mean all of his past, not just the Time War, because viewers who were familiar with 'old' Who could fill in the gaps with their knowledge of the Master or Genesis of the Daleks or whatever else stretching back over the years if they wanted to - and new viewers had the explanation of a single, cataclysmic event.)
RTD also brought in what Phil Collinson once referred to as a more 'soap-y' element, in that for the first time, we got a bit of backstory about the Doctor’s companions and their families. I’m not a fan of soaps at all, but I do like character-driven drama, and this is what Rusty was brilliant at providing. He's also very good at drawing those characters – whether principal or minor – with very broad strokes in some cases, but this is what drama is today. It’s expected to be pacy and fast moving (for the most part) and if you’ve only got forty-five minutes in which to tell a story, then you have to use shorthands and other devices with which the audience is familiar in order to do that. RTD recognised that, and fortunately, it’s one of his strengths as a writer. Sure, he sometimes wrote plot-holes you could drive an oil tanker through, but he made me care about every character he wrote (even if it was in a negative way!).
I reckon he’s been responsible for more tears on my part than every single Lassie film ever made! And that’s saying something…
2. David Tennant and the Tenth Doctor.
Um. Yeah. Dunno what I can say about Ten or DT that I haven’t already said. At the beginning, Ten seemed completely different to his predecessor. Handsome and cheeky, he charmed us all with his smile and his wit… but it quickly became apparent that all was not as it seemed and that if anything, he was more damaged and dangerous that Nine had ever been. Underneath that gregariousness was a massive guilt complex, an arrogance that had the potential to do huge damage unless curtailed (and which proved to be his undoing) and the ability to be a complete arsehole at times. But to balance all that, Ten had a huge capacity for love, compassion and empathy. In WoM he did the wrong thing for the right – and very human – reasons. In FoB, he exacted a horrible, but very human-like revenge. Ten felt things strongly and he showed that, and for me, that’s what sets him apart from all the others.
And here I am going on about Ten when I should be going on about DT – but it’s pretty much impossible to talk about one without the other, isn’t it? Ten wouldn’t have been who he was without David Tennant, the fanboy who achieved his dream to play his childhood hero. I’ve often wondered – and I know there’s speculation in fandom – if he was actually RTD’s first choice to play the Doctor in the revamped show, but that he wasn’t a big enough name yet for them to take a chance on. I don’t know, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter. Rusty knew he had an actor on board who could do practically anything, and the two of them seemed to fit temperamentally in many ways; both passionate about their work and the show, both able to wring every last drop of emotion from the viewers.
Bastards. But I love 'em for it.
3. Catherine Tate and Donna Noble
I hate what happened to Donna – I can’t watch or think about the end of JE without crying, but I’m so grateful to Rusty for creating her in the first place. I have no idea whose idea it was to cast her – but if it wasn’t his idea, he'd have had to sign off on it so I’ll be forever grateful to him for that, at least. Donna was the companion Ten needed above all others. She was the one who made him better, as he made her better. Theirs was far more like a relationship of equals than any of the Doctor/Companion relationships because she didn’t let him get away with anything. She wasn’t in love with him or awed by him (well, not to his face!) so she could see him clearly for what he was – and yet she loved him anyway.
Catherine Tate was fabulous in the role. Every time I watch TRB, I marvel at how she and DT click so perfectly. The scene on the rooftop was the first one they filmed together (for TRB) – having had no rehearsal or even time together at read-throughs because she was so busy. But you’d never know from what you see on the screen becuase they're so comfortable together. And she just got better and better. I said in my Partners in Crime rewatch post that when it was announced that Donna was returning to be a full-time companion, the British press got the knives out. There were ridiculous and nasty comments about her age, and her acting ability – so RTD says he was mindful of the fact that he had to make sure that she had good material and storylines so as not to give the naysayers any rope to hang her with. Not only did he do her proud, but she absolutely nailed it. I can watch her in DW and then in her comedy sketches and not (or very rarely) do I ever find myself thinking “oh, she said that like Donna” or “Donna said that like Lauren” (I will admit to seeing a “Nan” moment in UatW, though!). She definitely brought a lot to the show, not least of which was giving David someone as talented and skilled as he is to play off.
4. Christopher Eccleston and the Ninth Doctor
I know I don’t talk about Nine very much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate him. He’s not my Doctor, and I wish we'd had a bit more time with him. He was dark and angry – an anti-hero in a way; a survivor – battle-scarred and bitter and brittle, but still retaining that enthusiasm for the human race that his predecessors had exhibited.
I remember being surprised and thrilled when I heard that Christopher Eccleston had taken on the role because I really admire him as an actor. He brought gravitas and dignity to the part, and regardless of the rumours which abound about his unhappiness with the working conditions etc. he did a wonderful job and is a huge part of the reason that the show made such an impression on its return. Eccleston is a highly respected actor with a large body of excellent film and TV work behind him, and I think that made people sit up and take notice. It probably brought some people in who were curious to see what this serious, heavyweight actor had signed up for. And hopefully, some of them stuck around for a bit.
5. Rose, Martha, Jackie, Mickey, Wilf, Jack (and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all!)
RTD clearly saw the Doctor's companion(s) as the way into DW for the new audience and he wrote and developed them accordingly. I really admire the way he’s able to tell the viewers something about each character so quickly, so that we feel we know them well within a few minutes of our meeting them. Being cynical about it, one could say that that’s very superficial, but given the time constraints and the fact that these days telly is expected to be fast-moving and pacy, superficial or not, it’s a bloody useful skill to have! Within the first few minutes of meeting Rose, Martha and Donna, we know something about them. To an extent, that relies on using very broad brush-strokes and even some stereo-typing – Rose, the girl in a dead-end job who lives on a council estate and who hasn’t achieved her potential; Martha, the go-getter with the dysfunctional family all of whom regard her as the 'fixer'; Donna, the woman who feels she's a disappointment feels like a failure – at relationships, at jobs, and who sees marriage as a way of escape from it … And then there’s Jackie – Rose’s stroppy Mum who hid a heart of gold under that brash exterior! And who turned into so much more. And Mickey, who started out as the dead-beat boyfriend and who decided to change his life by freeing Paris from the back of a van. Wilf, the old man who dreamt of the stars and probably the only relative who encouraged the companion in her desire to be with the Doctor… Jack, rogue Time Agent and intergalactic con-man who is prepared to sacrifice himself to help the Doctor… it’s a long list, and even the one-off characters that Rusty created have lives of their own and act consistently with what we're told and can infer about them. And that - for me - is key.
6. The return of Sarah-Jane Smith
I will love Rusty forever for School Reunion. There are bits of it that annoy the hell out of me (even though they make sense in terms of characterization) but he brought back Sarah-Jane-bloody-Smith! Rusty’s the same age as I am (well, 5 months older) and so he must’ve watched her in action at the same time I did. She was MY companion when I was a kid, and maybe she was his, too. But whatever the reason, I’m grateful to him for bringing her back – and for bringing her back in such a key role. I know that there are some who don’t like the way it was implied that she’d been in love with the Doctor and waiting for him all that time – but I’m not one of them. I always thought there was a frisson between Sarah-Jane and Three, especially, so it made perfect sense to me that she might have been carrying a torch for the Doctor. After all – we’re all in love with him on some level, aren’t we?
And after that, RTD went on to create The Sarah-Jane Adventures, the spin off for kids, but which is, I’m sure watched by many DW fans like me who are fans of hers. It’s unique among TV shows in having as its central character, a woman in her sixties who is allowed to be kick-arse and to look attractive. The fact that Lis Sladen must have an ageing portrait in her attic doesn’t hurt either...
7. Murray Gold
I’ve said before that I generally find that music for TV lacks the depth more usually found in film scores – but Doctor Who (more specifically, Series 3 onwards) has proved to be a notable exception. I’d seen Murray Gold’s name around in the credits of TV shows over the years; I think that Vanity Fair was the first time I remember thinking “oh, I must watch out for him” and then of course, he teamed up with RTD on Casanova. But his work on DW has been amazing, and I hope he’s incredibly proud of it - he should be. I wrote a post about my favourite DW music as part of my 30 Days of DW meme a couple of months or so and have to say that the DW soundtracks are now part of my regular listening patterns. I’m a bit of a film music geek anyway, but this is the first time I’ve found the music from a TV show has engaged me in this way. I’m glad he’s stayed with the show despite RTD’s departure – but surely, it won’t be long before he’s snapped up by Hollywood.
8. Midnight & The Waters of Mars
Two of my favourite nu-Who episodes. Okay. So WoM was co-written, but the original idea was Rusty’s and he'll have had more input overall than Phil Ford, simply because of his position as head writer and EP.
Midnight is, IMO, one of the scariest episodes of nu-Who ever – and while RTD presents rather a depressing side of human nature, he does it brilliantly. Other than the Doctor (and a brief glimpse of Donna), all the other characters are one-offs, and yet they’re very well drawn. I love stories where we don’t get to see ‘the monster’, (should that be ‘creature’?) because what we can come up with on our own is often far scarier than something we see – and in any case, it was pretty incidental to the story in some ways. It’s the catalyst, to be sure, but the real meat of the episode comes in watching the way these supposedly civilized people are reduced to little more than pack animals, blindly following the strongest voice (no pun intended) in the face of something they don’t understand and which scares the life out of them. David Tennant is simply magnificent as events spiral out of the Doctor’s control and his usual weapons – his confidence in his superior intellect and his voice - are used against him. I never get tired of watching it. Incidentally, I’m also fascinated by the work of the sound team on it - the DWC for this episode is one that's really worth watching as it goes into detail about their work behind the scenes.
And in WoM, we meet Adelaide Brooke, who would have made a fabulous companion in the mould of Donna – someone who wouldn’t put up with any crap and who would have stopped the Doctor when he needed it… and in fact, did. As a Donna fan, I loved the way she was ‘present’, from the minute we were told this was a fixed point and then the reference back to Pompeii brought home even more forcefully how rudderless the Doctor is without her.
That, right there is what it looks like when your heart(s) is (are) breaking.
The Doctor descends into madness and I find it both terrfying and heartbreaking. I don‘t think I cried the first time I saw the episode, but I do when I rewatch it, because I know where it’s going. (I mean, I knew where it was going the first time around, but now I know how we get there it’s different!)
I know half the credit for those moments belongs to David, but Rusty put Ten there; he brought him to this and whether he’d planned it all along or not, it makes perfect sense. Ten had a tendency towards hubris from day one, and even though here, it’s driven by his huge capacity for love and compassion – it’s completely in character for it to have been the cause of his demise. While committing such a human act – that of defying the odds to save lives – Ten was at his most alien, unknowable and terrifying.
Casting water as 'the baddie' was inspired.
And the Ice Warriors got a name check!
9. Cybermen and Daleks
I’ve said before that I’m a sucker for the return of the old enemies, and these are two of my most fondly remembered. I can’t say that I remember watching them from behind the sofa though :) I see a lot of moaning around the fandom about the overuse of the Daleks in particular, but I’m always delighted to see them. They’re iconic anyway, but I love re-vamped version from S1-4. They retained the look of the older versions but somehow they look more menacing – like heavily armoured tanks and made of METAL, goddammit, not brightly coloured plastic with a big arsed spoiler on the back! (I loathe the S5 redesign – I preferred the WWII Ironsides.)
The S5 crew haven’t (yet) ruined the look of the Cybermen – and I hope they decide to leave them alone. They’re another triumph of design and have come a long way since they started out as blokes in neoprene with silver foil masks on their heads!
I thought that Rusty and crew did a pretty good job on balancing out the use of old and new baddies. I know things were pretty touch and go as to whether they’d be able to secure the rights to use the Daleks – but thank goodness they did. Doctor Who without Daleks would be like bacon without eggs, or rhubarb without custard!
Rhubarb. Not fish.
And finally, a couple of non-DW related things – although I suppose it could be argued that the first thing IS DW related for obvious reasons.
10. Casanova and Bob & Rose
Casanova was my real introduction to the wonder that is David Tennant. I'd seen him in a couple of other things, but this was when I really sat up at took notice. Seriously, I was in love from the speech in the gondola – with Casanova because he was just so damn cheeky and cute with it, and with the writing, because it was very quickly evident that this was going to be fun and irreverent and wasn’t going to take itself too seriously. Again, what drew me in was the character Rusty had written. I’ve read a bit about the real Casanova, not a huge amount, but enough to know that what RTD came up with wasn’t a completely accurate portrait (for one thing, the real Giacomo was 5’9” , not especially handsome and swarthy, not 6’1”, gorgeous, pale and freckly!) - but there's got to be a bit of dramatic license somewhere, right? It was a wonderfully stylised production; great locations, costumes - it looked terrific - and it was funny and sexy and poignant and heart-rending (those last scenes as the dying Casanova waits for his long-lost (and long-dead) love to come to him - *sniff*) - and at its centre was a wonderfully flawed character, a romantic at heart - not the serial seducer of legend, but a man who genuinely liked women and who won people over with his intellect, his wit and his charm.
And who looked very fetching in tight black breeches and long boots! /shallow
Bob & Rose
I remember this being on and I think I watched the first episode when it was first broadcast, but for some reason I can't now remember, I didn’t see the rest. I watched it all the way through for the first time a couple of years back and again more recently and I just love it. This is getting to sound repetitive, but it’s funny and sad and poignant, wonderfully written, characterized and acted. If you've seen it - you'll know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't - why not?! It's an unusual love story (to say the least!) and the characters will pull you right in.
So there ya go. There's other things I could have included; I haven't mentioned CoE or QaF for example, or other DW episodes ... that's not because I didn't like them, rather because this is already bloody long as it is, and because the things I've mentioned are the things that are the least likely to change over time, if that makes sense. Anyway - feel free to disagree with me or tell me your own favourites... how could you possibly have left out X !! is fine, too, as long as we can play nice :-) You wouldn't want to upset me on my sick-bed, now, would you?
I read a blog post the other day (sorry, but I can’t remember where it was), the subject of which was Ten things we love about Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who.
And it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to do something similar for ages. Though he left Doctor Who more than a year ago, there’s no denying that RTD left his mark on British telly in more ways than one – although DW is, of course, the best known and biggest dent!
But there are a couple of non-DW things I wanted to mention because they made a real impression on me, so they're in here as well.
I struggled with putting these in order – and decided in the end that it’s impossible. So without further ado – and in no particular order –
Ten Things For Which I Will Always be Grateful to Russell T Davies.
1. Starting out with the bleedin’ obvious. He was the one who brought back Doctor Who to our Saturday night tellyboxes. He might not have got it right all the time, but without him, we wouldn’t have the show we have now. On his watch, the 'little show that could' became a veritable juggernaut, regenerated into the BBC’s flagship programme, won numerous awards along the way, and turned into a nice little earner for Auntie - and he left it in (as he says) rude health, at the height of popularity for his successor.
He also turned the Doctor from 'just' an intergalactic wanderer, sometime cosmic hobo and meddler, member of an ancient and grave race into the sole survivor of a terrible war in which he’d had to commit a truly abominable act – that of wiping out his own species in order to save the universe.
And that was a game-changer in terms of the characterization of the Doctor in that it gave more potential for the exploration of what made him tick, this nine-hundred-and-something-year-old alien who had such dark deeds in his past. (And I mean all of his past, not just the Time War, because viewers who were familiar with 'old' Who could fill in the gaps with their knowledge of the Master or Genesis of the Daleks or whatever else stretching back over the years if they wanted to - and new viewers had the explanation of a single, cataclysmic event.)
RTD also brought in what Phil Collinson once referred to as a more 'soap-y' element, in that for the first time, we got a bit of backstory about the Doctor’s companions and their families. I’m not a fan of soaps at all, but I do like character-driven drama, and this is what Rusty was brilliant at providing. He's also very good at drawing those characters – whether principal or minor – with very broad strokes in some cases, but this is what drama is today. It’s expected to be pacy and fast moving (for the most part) and if you’ve only got forty-five minutes in which to tell a story, then you have to use shorthands and other devices with which the audience is familiar in order to do that. RTD recognised that, and fortunately, it’s one of his strengths as a writer. Sure, he sometimes wrote plot-holes you could drive an oil tanker through, but he made me care about every character he wrote (even if it was in a negative way!).
I reckon he’s been responsible for more tears on my part than every single Lassie film ever made! And that’s saying something…
2. David Tennant and the Tenth Doctor.
Um. Yeah. Dunno what I can say about Ten or DT that I haven’t already said. At the beginning, Ten seemed completely different to his predecessor. Handsome and cheeky, he charmed us all with his smile and his wit… but it quickly became apparent that all was not as it seemed and that if anything, he was more damaged and dangerous that Nine had ever been. Underneath that gregariousness was a massive guilt complex, an arrogance that had the potential to do huge damage unless curtailed (and which proved to be his undoing) and the ability to be a complete arsehole at times. But to balance all that, Ten had a huge capacity for love, compassion and empathy. In WoM he did the wrong thing for the right – and very human – reasons. In FoB, he exacted a horrible, but very human-like revenge. Ten felt things strongly and he showed that, and for me, that’s what sets him apart from all the others.
And here I am going on about Ten when I should be going on about DT – but it’s pretty much impossible to talk about one without the other, isn’t it? Ten wouldn’t have been who he was without David Tennant, the fanboy who achieved his dream to play his childhood hero. I’ve often wondered – and I know there’s speculation in fandom – if he was actually RTD’s first choice to play the Doctor in the revamped show, but that he wasn’t a big enough name yet for them to take a chance on. I don’t know, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter. Rusty knew he had an actor on board who could do practically anything, and the two of them seemed to fit temperamentally in many ways; both passionate about their work and the show, both able to wring every last drop of emotion from the viewers.
Bastards. But I love 'em for it.
3. Catherine Tate and Donna Noble
I hate what happened to Donna – I can’t watch or think about the end of JE without crying, but I’m so grateful to Rusty for creating her in the first place. I have no idea whose idea it was to cast her – but if it wasn’t his idea, he'd have had to sign off on it so I’ll be forever grateful to him for that, at least. Donna was the companion Ten needed above all others. She was the one who made him better, as he made her better. Theirs was far more like a relationship of equals than any of the Doctor/Companion relationships because she didn’t let him get away with anything. She wasn’t in love with him or awed by him (well, not to his face!) so she could see him clearly for what he was – and yet she loved him anyway.
Catherine Tate was fabulous in the role. Every time I watch TRB, I marvel at how she and DT click so perfectly. The scene on the rooftop was the first one they filmed together (for TRB) – having had no rehearsal or even time together at read-throughs because she was so busy. But you’d never know from what you see on the screen becuase they're so comfortable together. And she just got better and better. I said in my Partners in Crime rewatch post that when it was announced that Donna was returning to be a full-time companion, the British press got the knives out. There were ridiculous and nasty comments about her age, and her acting ability – so RTD says he was mindful of the fact that he had to make sure that she had good material and storylines so as not to give the naysayers any rope to hang her with. Not only did he do her proud, but she absolutely nailed it. I can watch her in DW and then in her comedy sketches and not (or very rarely) do I ever find myself thinking “oh, she said that like Donna” or “Donna said that like Lauren” (I will admit to seeing a “Nan” moment in UatW, though!). She definitely brought a lot to the show, not least of which was giving David someone as talented and skilled as he is to play off.
4. Christopher Eccleston and the Ninth Doctor
I know I don’t talk about Nine very much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate him. He’s not my Doctor, and I wish we'd had a bit more time with him. He was dark and angry – an anti-hero in a way; a survivor – battle-scarred and bitter and brittle, but still retaining that enthusiasm for the human race that his predecessors had exhibited.
I remember being surprised and thrilled when I heard that Christopher Eccleston had taken on the role because I really admire him as an actor. He brought gravitas and dignity to the part, and regardless of the rumours which abound about his unhappiness with the working conditions etc. he did a wonderful job and is a huge part of the reason that the show made such an impression on its return. Eccleston is a highly respected actor with a large body of excellent film and TV work behind him, and I think that made people sit up and take notice. It probably brought some people in who were curious to see what this serious, heavyweight actor had signed up for. And hopefully, some of them stuck around for a bit.
5. Rose, Martha, Jackie, Mickey, Wilf, Jack (and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all!)
RTD clearly saw the Doctor's companion(s) as the way into DW for the new audience and he wrote and developed them accordingly. I really admire the way he’s able to tell the viewers something about each character so quickly, so that we feel we know them well within a few minutes of our meeting them. Being cynical about it, one could say that that’s very superficial, but given the time constraints and the fact that these days telly is expected to be fast-moving and pacy, superficial or not, it’s a bloody useful skill to have! Within the first few minutes of meeting Rose, Martha and Donna, we know something about them. To an extent, that relies on using very broad brush-strokes and even some stereo-typing – Rose, the girl in a dead-end job who lives on a council estate and who hasn’t achieved her potential; Martha, the go-getter with the dysfunctional family all of whom regard her as the 'fixer'; Donna, the woman who feels she's a disappointment feels like a failure – at relationships, at jobs, and who sees marriage as a way of escape from it … And then there’s Jackie – Rose’s stroppy Mum who hid a heart of gold under that brash exterior! And who turned into so much more. And Mickey, who started out as the dead-beat boyfriend and who decided to change his life by freeing Paris from the back of a van. Wilf, the old man who dreamt of the stars and probably the only relative who encouraged the companion in her desire to be with the Doctor… Jack, rogue Time Agent and intergalactic con-man who is prepared to sacrifice himself to help the Doctor… it’s a long list, and even the one-off characters that Rusty created have lives of their own and act consistently with what we're told and can infer about them. And that - for me - is key.
6. The return of Sarah-Jane Smith
I will love Rusty forever for School Reunion. There are bits of it that annoy the hell out of me (even though they make sense in terms of characterization) but he brought back Sarah-Jane-bloody-Smith! Rusty’s the same age as I am (well, 5 months older) and so he must’ve watched her in action at the same time I did. She was MY companion when I was a kid, and maybe she was his, too. But whatever the reason, I’m grateful to him for bringing her back – and for bringing her back in such a key role. I know that there are some who don’t like the way it was implied that she’d been in love with the Doctor and waiting for him all that time – but I’m not one of them. I always thought there was a frisson between Sarah-Jane and Three, especially, so it made perfect sense to me that she might have been carrying a torch for the Doctor. After all – we’re all in love with him on some level, aren’t we?
And after that, RTD went on to create The Sarah-Jane Adventures, the spin off for kids, but which is, I’m sure watched by many DW fans like me who are fans of hers. It’s unique among TV shows in having as its central character, a woman in her sixties who is allowed to be kick-arse and to look attractive. The fact that Lis Sladen must have an ageing portrait in her attic doesn’t hurt either...
7. Murray Gold
I’ve said before that I generally find that music for TV lacks the depth more usually found in film scores – but Doctor Who (more specifically, Series 3 onwards) has proved to be a notable exception. I’d seen Murray Gold’s name around in the credits of TV shows over the years; I think that Vanity Fair was the first time I remember thinking “oh, I must watch out for him” and then of course, he teamed up with RTD on Casanova. But his work on DW has been amazing, and I hope he’s incredibly proud of it - he should be. I wrote a post about my favourite DW music as part of my 30 Days of DW meme a couple of months or so and have to say that the DW soundtracks are now part of my regular listening patterns. I’m a bit of a film music geek anyway, but this is the first time I’ve found the music from a TV show has engaged me in this way. I’m glad he’s stayed with the show despite RTD’s departure – but surely, it won’t be long before he’s snapped up by Hollywood.
8. Midnight & The Waters of Mars
Two of my favourite nu-Who episodes. Okay. So WoM was co-written, but the original idea was Rusty’s and he'll have had more input overall than Phil Ford, simply because of his position as head writer and EP.
Midnight is, IMO, one of the scariest episodes of nu-Who ever – and while RTD presents rather a depressing side of human nature, he does it brilliantly. Other than the Doctor (and a brief glimpse of Donna), all the other characters are one-offs, and yet they’re very well drawn. I love stories where we don’t get to see ‘the monster’, (should that be ‘creature’?) because what we can come up with on our own is often far scarier than something we see – and in any case, it was pretty incidental to the story in some ways. It’s the catalyst, to be sure, but the real meat of the episode comes in watching the way these supposedly civilized people are reduced to little more than pack animals, blindly following the strongest voice (no pun intended) in the face of something they don’t understand and which scares the life out of them. David Tennant is simply magnificent as events spiral out of the Doctor’s control and his usual weapons – his confidence in his superior intellect and his voice - are used against him. I never get tired of watching it. Incidentally, I’m also fascinated by the work of the sound team on it - the DWC for this episode is one that's really worth watching as it goes into detail about their work behind the scenes.
And in WoM, we meet Adelaide Brooke, who would have made a fabulous companion in the mould of Donna – someone who wouldn’t put up with any crap and who would have stopped the Doctor when he needed it… and in fact, did. As a Donna fan, I loved the way she was ‘present’, from the minute we were told this was a fixed point and then the reference back to Pompeii brought home even more forcefully how rudderless the Doctor is without her.
That, right there is what it looks like when your heart(s) is (are) breaking.
The Doctor descends into madness and I find it both terrfying and heartbreaking. I don‘t think I cried the first time I saw the episode, but I do when I rewatch it, because I know where it’s going. (I mean, I knew where it was going the first time around, but now I know how we get there it’s different!)
I know half the credit for those moments belongs to David, but Rusty put Ten there; he brought him to this and whether he’d planned it all along or not, it makes perfect sense. Ten had a tendency towards hubris from day one, and even though here, it’s driven by his huge capacity for love and compassion – it’s completely in character for it to have been the cause of his demise. While committing such a human act – that of defying the odds to save lives – Ten was at his most alien, unknowable and terrifying.
Casting water as 'the baddie' was inspired.
And the Ice Warriors got a name check!
9. Cybermen and Daleks
I’ve said before that I’m a sucker for the return of the old enemies, and these are two of my most fondly remembered. I can’t say that I remember watching them from behind the sofa though :) I see a lot of moaning around the fandom about the overuse of the Daleks in particular, but I’m always delighted to see them. They’re iconic anyway, but I love re-vamped version from S1-4. They retained the look of the older versions but somehow they look more menacing – like heavily armoured tanks and made of METAL, goddammit, not brightly coloured plastic with a big arsed spoiler on the back! (I loathe the S5 redesign – I preferred the WWII Ironsides.)
The S5 crew haven’t (yet) ruined the look of the Cybermen – and I hope they decide to leave them alone. They’re another triumph of design and have come a long way since they started out as blokes in neoprene with silver foil masks on their heads!
I thought that Rusty and crew did a pretty good job on balancing out the use of old and new baddies. I know things were pretty touch and go as to whether they’d be able to secure the rights to use the Daleks – but thank goodness they did. Doctor Who without Daleks would be like bacon without eggs, or rhubarb without custard!
Rhubarb. Not fish.
And finally, a couple of non-DW related things – although I suppose it could be argued that the first thing IS DW related for obvious reasons.
10. Casanova and Bob & Rose
Casanova was my real introduction to the wonder that is David Tennant. I'd seen him in a couple of other things, but this was when I really sat up at took notice. Seriously, I was in love from the speech in the gondola – with Casanova because he was just so damn cheeky and cute with it, and with the writing, because it was very quickly evident that this was going to be fun and irreverent and wasn’t going to take itself too seriously. Again, what drew me in was the character Rusty had written. I’ve read a bit about the real Casanova, not a huge amount, but enough to know that what RTD came up with wasn’t a completely accurate portrait (for one thing, the real Giacomo was 5’9” , not especially handsome and swarthy, not 6’1”, gorgeous, pale and freckly!) - but there's got to be a bit of dramatic license somewhere, right? It was a wonderfully stylised production; great locations, costumes - it looked terrific - and it was funny and sexy and poignant and heart-rending (those last scenes as the dying Casanova waits for his long-lost (and long-dead) love to come to him - *sniff*) - and at its centre was a wonderfully flawed character, a romantic at heart - not the serial seducer of legend, but a man who genuinely liked women and who won people over with his intellect, his wit and his charm.
And who looked very fetching in tight black breeches and long boots! /shallow
Bob & Rose
I remember this being on and I think I watched the first episode when it was first broadcast, but for some reason I can't now remember, I didn’t see the rest. I watched it all the way through for the first time a couple of years back and again more recently and I just love it. This is getting to sound repetitive, but it’s funny and sad and poignant, wonderfully written, characterized and acted. If you've seen it - you'll know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't - why not?! It's an unusual love story (to say the least!) and the characters will pull you right in.
So there ya go. There's other things I could have included; I haven't mentioned CoE or QaF for example, or other DW episodes ... that's not because I didn't like them, rather because this is already bloody long as it is, and because the things I've mentioned are the things that are the least likely to change over time, if that makes sense. Anyway - feel free to disagree with me or tell me your own favourites... how could you possibly have left out X !! is fine, too, as long as we can play nice :-) You wouldn't want to upset me on my sick-bed, now, would you?
