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My usual random remarks, seperated into bullets to pretend they are not.
- The whole eternal traffic jam stuff... It's not a particularly profound concept. It doesn't make sense on any level (if I had "self-replicating fuel" like the characters claimed, I'd have found some better use for it!). But aside from the silly setting of the episode, the actual story and dialogue is pretty good.
- We have some big giant crabs (Macra) that are apparently a old time Second Doctor monster. They get very little explanation, although it's interesting to note that they are said be a very old species, but the episode itself is placed in the year 5 billion, so they're possibly just contemporary to our Earth
- The really interesting bits of this show are of course happening to the Doctor and Martha. First, Martha is in real personal danger for the first time, and realises she has basically left home with a complete stranger, and her family doesn't even know where she is! I'm sensing a Martha-family episode in the very near future.
- Second.. we get more Doctor developments. The Face of Boe dies in the year 5 billion 53, and speaks his final prophetic words to the Doctor (the Traveller in the prophecy): "You are NOT alone". But the Face also points out their special relationship as being the only ones of their kinds left, so it's a bit ambiguous. The Doctor outwardly dismisses the claim of there being another Time Lord.
- OVerall, some strong moments for the Doctor. We end the episode with the Doctor remeniscing about Gallifrey. His original plan of starting all over with Martha, and not telling her too much, basically falls apart now. He's slowly getting emotionally attached to his Companion again. Now that we're talking Companions, we did get a small mention of Rose again, when Martha realises he's taking her to the same planets as Rose.
- The preview of next week's episode has (present day?) Manhattan being invaded by .. pigs. And Daleks are involved! Those pigs may be the same 'artificial aliens' as the pig created by the Slitheen way back in the first season, though.
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I liked it too, despite the unbelieveable setup - it's the most human story we've had in a while, and that's saying a lot given how good the stories are on average. RTD has a habit of coming up with wild situations but not giving them enough of a sci-fi think-through. I'm willing to be he just thought "wow, people hate traffic jams - let's make a story where EVERYONE'S stuck in one!" and ran with it.
-Nice touch with the Doctor casually removing the arrow shot into the door by QE1's goons and tossing it inside! Stuff left outside of the TARDIS has been transported along before, like the Doctor's scarf, and arguably a few coats of paint over the years.
-Martha finally has some character time to stop and think about what she's doing, travelling with some guy with a spaceship without thinking about it. Unlike Rose, she hasn't yet felt really homesick - in the second episode at least Rose got a cellphone upgrade so she can at least talk with her mum. I really like the moment when Martha grabbed a seat and refused to move until the Doctor came clean with her.
-And like I said - you don't know what you had until it's gone. For the first time, we see in detail just how much the Doctor misses Gallifrey. Even when he was on the run from his people, he must have been secure in the knowledge that his home was at least still around. Now that it's gone - and he hasn't told anyone that he was basically responsible for its destruction - he probably misses it more than anything. Losing Rose a few months ago didn't help any.
-Best CGI in the series yet, despite the obvious repetition of the car, Macra and background building models. It's not like the Star Wars guys didn't do the same thing with Coruscant, which is eight years ago now. Also, it's an equivalent conservation of budget since the biggest part of this show happens in a ten-foot set piece, redressed endlessly.
-The kittens were cuuuuuuuute! And confusing. Would they not be a half cat, half human sort of thing? And just how humanoid ARE these anthropomorphic cats? What's sex and childbirth like? Do I *really* have to bring up a cat's barbed penis?
-Hey, it's Brannigan from New New York! Kiff, fetch me my Boxers of Reasonable Animation Nostalgia!
The Macra were from a 1967 story, where the were almost as big and using some form of telepathy to fool a bunch of space colonists that they were in a blissful society when in fact they were working themselves to death to feed the crabs. They didn't go into it, but this more primitive version of the Macra may still be using this ability to keep the motorway in blissful ignorance while providing them with the gas they need as well as the occasional snack.
-That big switch the Doctor uses to climactically open the sunroof is almost certainly the same prop he and Rose used to operate the big void vacuum.
-The message "You Are Not Alone" has been known since last year, when the Face of Boe was origainlly supposed to tell the Doctor. RTD moved it to this episode, but the effect is still the same.
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According to Dr.Who: Confidential, one of them said "Mama!", but for all the effort they went to to get it to look like that, I don't think anybody noticed.
I was wondering through this episode why nobody actually had New Yorker accents, but then the preview came up for the next episode.. be careful what you wish for indeed.
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No one had American or New York accents last time either - but then again, New New York also had a Duke. But then AGAIN, the holographic happy person in the cars had a dodgy American accent, so...
As for the kittens, I totally missed the "Mama!" (or as it sounded, "Ma! Ma!") the first time around. Tough to miss once it was pointed out, though.
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I heard the Ma! Ma! Straight away. I too don't want to know about how they reproduce - but it's quite funny.
Yeah - about the Face of Boe's final words... I'm SURE I've been spoiled about this before - and it would have been here... how did people find out?? I hate when I find out 'big' things - did it lessen the impact - is there anyone here who didn't know what he was going to say?
Poor g-err face!
Branningan... which character was he from Father Ted - he WAS from Father Ted wasn't he? Is he the dopey one who went on to have a crappy comedy where he's a secret superhero?
As for the concept - I'm glad it didn't just turn out to be your run-of-the-mill "in danger/get out of danger" episodes... there was something bigger at stake.
As someone said to me - is the TARDIS broken?? It seems to only go to Earth, New Earth and space-stations.
The city effects - were they a RE-USE of Couruscant or just a homage? OR was it a play on what Martha wanted to see - a planet with buildings and spires etc.
I like how they reference the older Doctor Who stories... they HAVE to with so MUCH behind it.
Did the original run do a lot of in-referencing (apart from the "big episodes" of Daleks, Cybermen and the Master
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The original series rarely did any self-referencing until the 80s, where a fair chunk of stories had SOMETHING to do with previous adventures. Some blame this as part of the show's downfall, as audiences believed they needed to know who the Sea Devils were to understand the story, etc.
New New York was NOT Coruscant, but how much variation can you get in a giant futuristic city filled with skyscrapers? May as well be Atlantis, Romulus, Voyager's "Workforce" city, etc.
The TARDIS is pretty good at getting around - the head writer however is fairly adamant at keeping as many stories as Earth-centric as possible, supposedly to keep things relateable to the audience. This is similarly why we've yet to have a companion who isn't from modern-day London. RTD seems to also have a thing against rock quarries (which were ubiquitous as alien planets in the original show), and CG environments haven't been widely used yet.
As to the Face of Boe's message... In the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, RTD wrote a synopsis of the time war but not how it ended. I'll dig it up again:
The Doctor Who Annual 2006, published by Panini in August 2005, contains an article entitled Meet the Doctor by Russell T. Davies, which provides some additional background information on the Time War as seen in the television series, also mentioning in passing events depicted in the novels, audios and comic strips. Although the canonicity of such material is debatable, the fact that Davies is the chief writer and executive producer of the television series may add some weight to the information given. Whether or not any of the material will be used as part of the television series is also unclear.
The article describes the Time Lord policy of non-intervention, but states that on a "higher level", they protected the time vortex and kept the peace. It further claims that two previous "Time Wars" had been fought: the first a skirmish between the Halldons (a race mentioned in the Terry Nation story We are the Daleks from the Radio Times 10th Anniversary Special, 1973) and the Eternals (Enlightenment). The second was the brutal slaughter of the Omnicraven Uprising, with the Time Lords intervening on both occasions to settle matters.
The conflict between the Daleks and the Time Lords is described as "the Great (and final) Time War". Initial clashes included the Dalek attempt to infiltrate the High Council of the Time Lords with duplicates (Resurrection of the Daleks, 1984), and the open declaration of hostilities by one of the Dalek Puppet Emperors; although the Daleks claimed that these were merely in retaliation for the Time Lords' sending of the Doctor back in time to change Dalek history in Genesis of the Daleks.
The article says that historical records are uncertain, but mentions two specific events in the lead-up to the war. The first was an attempted Dalek-Time Lord peace treaty initiated by President Romana under the Act of Master Restitution (a possible reference to the otherwise unexplained trial of the Master on Skaro at the beginning of the Doctor Who television movie, 1996). The second was the Etra Prime Incident (The Apocalypse Element), which some say "began the escalation of events." Weapons used by the Time Lords included Bowships, Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms (the last from Davies' 1996 New Adventures novel Damaged Goods) while the Daleks wielded "the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth" (from the comic strip story Black Legacy by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, in Doctor Who Weekly #35-#38) and launched a massive fleet into the vortex.
The timelines of lesser races and planets shifted without the inhabitants of the worlds affected being aware of the changes in history, as they were a part of them (presumably including humans). "Higher Species" who were able to notice the changes included the Forest of Cheem, who were distraught at the bloodshed; the Nestene Consciousness, which lost all its planets and further mutated; the Greater Animus, which died; and the Eternals, who apparently fled this reality in despair, never to be seen again. The war lasted for years, and exactly how it ended was also not precisely known.
The article ends with a description of a monument to the Time War on a distant planet, upon which, under an image of a lone survivor walking away, the message "You are not alone" has been scratched, perhaps indicating that the Doctor was not the sole survivor of the conflict.
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Interesting! The Forest and the Consciousness - weren't they both mentioned/seen when the Doctor and Rose go ahead to the end of the Earth?
I'm SURE, though someone posted here a whole bit on the Face of Boe including what he will say the next time he meets the doctor.
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posted
The Doctor fought the Nestene Consciousness and its plastic army in "Rose". The Forest of Cheem was seen in "The End of the World", and Jabe did recognize the Doctor as a survivor of the Time War.
And yes, last year someone let slip that the Face of Boe's message will be four words long, and as such the fandom quickly concluded that it would be "You Are Not alone" based on the Annual article.
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