Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

A nostalgic trip to the past to ensure Who’s future

I stopped watching Doctor Who religiously sometime towards the middle of Jodie Whittaker’s time in the TARDIS.  It wasn’t Jodie’s performance or the fact that the Doctor was a woman that lessened the appeal, but rather the storytelling.

Chris Chibnall had never really been high on my list of favourite Who writers, even though he’d done a decent enough job in the outings in the Matt Smith era. At the time of his appointment to Who showrunner, he was being lauded for his work on Broadchurch and Who did need a refresh.  Capaldi’s era had meandered into a weird place after Clara’s exit and it felt right to do a change.  I could probably write a whole treatise on what went wrong during the Chibnall seasons, but suffice to say, I did not enjoy them and felt Whittaker, a brilliant actress, was wholly unserved by the story choices, scripts and the build of the characters around her.

So, the news at the end of Jodie’s time as the Doctor that David Tennant was back as the Doctor, Catherine Tate was back as Donna, and Russell T Davies was back as showrunner all seemed like Who going back to basics and what worked.  But just how good were the three episodes which effectively constituted a 60^th anniversary trilogy?

The Star Beast

Let me just start by addressing the woke outrage nonsense about the discussion of pronouns and Donna’s daughter, Rose – seriously?  The Doctor has been talking about pronouns since the Seventies and if you expected a show run by Davies to be anything but LGBTQ+ positive, more fool you.  This is the showrunner who gave us Captain Jack Harkness.

Personally, I was rather more focused on the pitch-perfect casting of Miriam Margolyes as a cute and cuddly yet evil alien despot.  There was a part of me which grieved that she couldn’t have embodied the role in person rather than as the CGI/puppet we got on screen but she was utterly fabulous voicing the Meep.

Unfortunately the Meep did get a little lost in the whole Doctor-Donna resolution and the saving of Donna Noble’s mind thanks to her sharing the overload of power and knowledge by having a baby.  Was it all a little contrived in order to save Donna?  Well, yes, but that is OK.  Saving Donna was always going to feel contrived.  I’d rather save her, and have her and the Doctor reunited even for a short run of adventures together, than not.

The real success of this first story was just that: Doctor and Donna reunited and back together again.

It felt like no time had passed at all and that was wonderful.

It was a warm dip into the nostalgia of what made the Doctor-Donna era so successful – a companion who is very much a true companion and best friend to the Doctor in the way the companions in Chibnall’s TARDIS never did quite realise fully.

The Wild Blue Yonder

The nostalgia continued with the second episode and the brief return of Bernard Cribben’s Wilfred Mott; a last appearance for the actor and a touching and poignant reunion given his subsequent passing.

The episode itself was a tour de force of acting by Tate and Tennant who played themselves as the entities they discover at the end of the Universe with great verve.  There was a real sense of horror in the story and in the evil duplicates.  This was Who creating monsters which make children watching the show hide behind the sofa (I’ve been there back in the Seventies, hiding behind an orange-patterned monstrosity of a couch from the Daleks and hoping K9 saved the day).

More importantly though, the story gave us these wonderful character moments revealing the Doctor’s angst and sense of struggle with the events that took place in his previous incarnation – something the stories and writing never quite managed under Chibnall.

It doesn’t magically fix the mess that Chibnall created re-imagining the Doctor’s backstory and canon, but it does deal with the consequences of the Doctor realising that all is not as he has believed, and understanding how he feels about scale of the devastation caused because of actions taken against him – and we needed that as an audience.

The Giggle

The finale of the three stories brings together the threads of the first two – the Doctor’s struggle to bear up under the weight of his many lives and losses, the nostalgia of Doctor and Donna having an adventure together, the continuing horror elements (creepy dolls are suitably creepy), and finally, the regeneration into the next incarnation of the Doctor.

Not sure we really needed to see Bonnie Langford’s Mel – but it was the actual 60^th anniversary and an old companion along for the ride as well as UNIT and Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Lethbridge-Stewart did add to the sense of occasion.

Neil Patrick Harris makes for a wonderful Toymaker.  He clearly had a lot of fun with the role and his presence matches Tennant’s.  They feel like equals, like this is a threat that the Doctor respects as an actual threat.  Tennant goes out as the Doctor on a real high with his defeat of him.

The gem of this episode though was the introduction of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor.  Sure, the moment of bi-generation is a little weird, but I accept the hand-waving of ‘we just did something and it’s a myth’ because there is just enough nonsense with the Toymaker’s abilities to make the whole thing believable within universe. 

Gatwa is charming as the Doctor; he brings a sense of joy and marvelling at the wonders of the Universe to the character which hasn’t been seen since Matt Smith.  He’s young, beautiful and shines with an inner light and wisdom. 

I loved, loved the moment where he hugs the Fourteenth Doctor and tells him he’s got him.  The Doctor needed that hug and reassurance.  It felt like the Doctor was hugging the audience, reassuring us that he had us.  Something that continued through with the second TARDIS creation and finally Gatwa’s exit into exploring space and time, leaving his past self to get therapy and simply live happily ever after with Donna and family.

In conclusion

For me, the trip to the past has done its job.  We’ve set Who back on its feet with the comfort of a familiar face and now we’re ready for the next adventure.  It ended on a real high and I am looking forward to the Christmas episode and more of Gatwa’s charming take on the Doctor.