Doctor Who: Wibbly Wobbly I hate this make it stop

Welcome back to the Wayback Machine, folks. Come on in and settle down, because today I need to tell you about a difficult time in my life: being a fan of Doctor Who in the 2000’s.

Where were you when Doctor Who came back to television? I know where I was – somewhere else. Although I was aware of this incoming potentially interesting show, I nonetheless managed to space and miss the first episode. The first episode of Doctor Who that I ever watched was the second episode, The End of the World, which you knew was set in the future because Britney Spears was considered to be classic Earth literature and the main adversary (spoilers for something that aired 12 years ago) was a piece of sentient skin. And you know what, I’m pretty sure that at the time I enjoyed that. It very quickly became apparent that this was a show that was unabashedly, unreservedly goofy, running on a level of camp that was about as far from hard science fiction as it’s possible to get – which is, it turns out, the sort of area where a significant two-part episode in your first season is about farting aliens taking over the world, by which I of course mean London, and by which I of course mean dodgy CGI and Cardiff interiors standing in for London.

And you know what, at the time, that was okay. We didn’t know any better! I know there’s a fanboy forum explosion’s worth of debate as to whether Doctor Who’s original showrunner, Russell T. Davies, ran a better show than his successor Stephen Moffat, but in my eyes there’s a definite upswing of quality right from the very first season through to the current one, one that exists independent of concerns like who’s actually in charge. the Doctor Who of 2005 had no idea what it was doing; it’s been fairly well documented by Davies himself that the production crew of that first season were making it up as they went along, with no idea if their revival of a show that had been cancelled in the 1980’s would prove in anyway tenable. The Doctor Who of 2010, by contrast, was a show that had found its feet and was confident enough in its science fiction credentials to start really digging into the conventions of its genre. The Doctor Who of 2015 was a worldwide hit, and the juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down. But there’s a problem with this seemingly consistent curve of improvement, and it is thus; the further away we get from those early seasons, the worse they become. Here’s where I have to admit to a slight bit of misdirection, because the great dilemma at the heart of this post isn’t about being a fan of Doctor Who in the 2000’s. No, it’s about being a fan of 2000’s era Doctor Who…. in 2017.

WIBBLY WOBBLY TIMEY WIMEY

The reason this is all up in my head right now is because me and my partner have been rewatching these early seasons after I got her hooked on the current season by means of cunningly watching it while she was around. Unfortunately I had to accompany her on her delve back into history with cautionary messages about how it wasn’t gonna be that good, a warning that the show was remarkably quick to prove apt. Yet, despite that, we came out of the first season with a generally favourable impression. There are, I think, a few reasons for this: first, there’s Christopher Eccleston, who is a master of making shitty material somehow seem not so shitty. Secondly, given that this entire season was constructed knowing that it was the only one in which he would be playing the Doctor, his incarnation of the character has perhaps the most clearly drawn arc of all those who have come before or since: from suffering survivor and damnable destroyer of friend and foe alike through to believing in himself and being worthy of his own title again, justly rewarded with a heroic death. Third, we only watched the second half of the season because my partner remembered watching the rest previously, so perhaps we hadn’t had enough time to get sick of the show or Rose.

Because rest assured, we are sick of Rose now.  My partner in particular had some particularly choice and generally unprintable thoughts when I asked her for her opinion as I was writing this. We’ve always been of the opinion that the new Doctor’s main companion is a bit hateable, mostly in terms of how she treats poor innocent left-behind sort-of ex-boyfriend Mickey (although Mickey certainly doesn’t help himself in that regard). But it was okay, in the first season. It’s not until the second season that the show really develops a Rose problem. The character demonstrates a staggering amount of self-obsession, or perhaps obsession with the Doctor and the relationship they share, which moves much closer to an outright romantic liaison now that she’s paired up with David Tennant’s fresh-faced, open and more approachable incarnation of the character. I by no means intend to disparage Tennant’s work in the role: I know for a fact that in seasons to come he does some really outstanding stuff with the material he’s given, and my general opinion on his tenure is that he’s a solid Doctor, but in this season, well… Watching it now, I do not like the Doctor.

You knew this was coming.

That’s a bit of a problem. I wish I could say it was intentional on the show’s behalf, and indeed, in odd, fleeting moments during this season, there does seem to be a nugget of a coherent theme about how the Doctor and Rose bring out the worst in each other. But it never seems to snap into focus, and instead I find myself watching two arrogant time-travellers get lost in their own hubris as the lives of the innocent people they meet are torn apart in the background. This is most apparent in the second episode, Tooth and Claw, where the Doctor and Rose are dancing around squeeing about encountering a werewolf literally seconds after a supporting character sacrifices himself so that they can escape from said werewolf. The fact that Queen Victoria, who is a supporting character in this episode because shut up, takes quite appropriate umbrage with this and ends up founding the organisation whose actions will eventually tear the Doctor and Rose apart, is a nice touch, and perhaps the most overt indication that there was a deliberate arc in play here. But in the stretch between these events, we have eleven episodes of the Doctor and Rose being awful, and never getting called out on it. Of particular note are the times when the Doctor goes full god-complex, declaring himself the highest available authority in a stunning display of arrogance that 16 year old me thought incredible cool but which 28 year old me thinks makes him kind of a dick. The season actually leads with this, having him declare himself such in the very first episode when he thinks something has happened to Rose, and that has the unfortunate effect of colouring all the following times when he leans on his genius. He is the Doctor that Rose made him, and unfortunately, that doesn’t make him a very nice guy.

It’s worth pointing out at this point that I love Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, who is often very much not a nice guy. I don’t have a problem with the Doctor being a dick, as long as the show is willing to call him out on it, and that era of the show is: indeed, one of the hallmarks of Stephen Moffat’s time in charge of Doctor Who is his interest in deconstructing the Doctor. Is he a positive or negative force in the universe? Moffat’s seasons 6 and 8 were basically all about that, and for their flaws, they were at least interesting. Season 2, by contrast, has no such focus. The one episode that does seem like it might be interested in exploring this, Love and Monsters, is so weighed down by how it’s universally terrible in every single way that an episode of a television show could ever possibly be that it never has a chance of even coming into the vicinity of sticking the landing, and so opts for a blowjob joke instead. This leaves us with is a long, long stretch of two people being generally terrible, and that is hard to swallow (phrasing). It’s quite telling that the standout episodes of this season, The Girl in the Fireplace and the The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit two-parter, feature the Doctor and Rose separated from each other for significant stretches. That said, I am quite looking forward to the concluding Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, but at this point I’m not sure if it’s out of a genuine hope that my memory of them being pretty good episodes is accurate, or if I’m just looking forward to the schadenfreude of the Doctor and Rose getting what they deserve.

Until this happens, of course.

I wish I could say that I’m hopeful for things to get better, once Rose is gone. In a way, I am, because I know that they do, but in a way, I also know that the next companion is going to spend her entire season living in Rose’s shadow. I also know that the next season is going to end with Last of the Time Lords.

Even 16 year old me had trouble swallowing that one. What will 28 year old me think?

This is proving to be an infinitely useful video.