Army of Ghosts / Doomsday

Army of Ghosts and Doomsday are essentially three different stories spliced together.  The first, Army of Ghosts, is a well-structured yarn of escalating suspense and intriguing mysteries.  It's not just the ghosts themselves, although that's certainly a fascinating idea, but also a sphere that, according to all technical instruments, doesn't actually exist.

Finally, we learn what became of the Torchwood institute Queen Victoria created in response to the Doctor and Rose being smug jerks amongst death and tragedy.  These scenes are carried by the brilliant character of Yvonne Hartman, head of Torchwood; she hits that perfect sweet spot of complex, intriguing, and larger-than-life, thanks to both multi-layered writing by Davies and a charismatic, impassioned, cheeky, and often very funny performance by Tracy-Ann Oberman.  She's the rarest of Doctor Who villains: a human antagonist worthy of the Doctor.

Also, the Doctor passing off Jackie as Rose is a wonderful spark of whimsy.

Then, inevitably, the Cybermen show up, increasing the steadily-built intensity.  Now the situation is really grim: not only is Torchwood helping a mysterious entity punch holes in the continuum between Universes, but the Cybermen are coming through and invading earth (again).

And this is where opinions usually split on Army of Ghosts and Doomsday.  While a lot of people are perfectly happy with what follows, what happens next essentially negates everything so carefully built about the Cyber-invasion and Torchwood-evilishness.

Because all of a sudden, the Daleks show up and hijack the story.  The semi-evil Cybermen and Torchwood are reduced to distant silver and copper to the Daleks' shimmering gold.  For some, this is a disappointment.

Those "some" are wrong.  It may be opinion, it may be how they honestly feel, but they're wrong.  The Daleks showing up and upstaging the main plot only increases the fun of the story.  After all, for all its flashes of darkness, Doomsday is fundamentally a fun romp, full of humor and action.  Just because it's dramatic doesn't mean it can't be fun.

The Daleks face off with the Cybermen, which results first in a series of insults, for which Davies deserves tremendous credit -- the insults are not just hilarious, but perfectly toned for both races.

DALEK:  This is not war - this is pest control!
CYBERMAN: We have five million Cybermen.  How many are you?
DALEK: Four.
CYBERMAN: You would defeat the Cybermen with four Daleks?
DALEK: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek!  You are superior in only one respect.
CYBERMAN: What is that?

DALEK: You are better at dying!

And then the shooting starts and it plays out exactly as it should: the Daleks, despite being insanely outnumbered, mop the surface of the Earth with the Cybermen's faces.  The tone of the Dalek/Cybermen fight isn't one of horror or suspense: it's pure pop spectacle and breezy fun.

As this goes on, though, yet another thread slowly intrudes: Davies' conclusion to the various threads of the last two seasons.  As time goes on, it becomes clear that even the Daleks' superiority to every other villain ever invented by humans, or even the stunning sequences of millions of Daleks invading London, aren't the true centerpiece of Doomsday.  It's the emotional journey - for many, the last - of a gallery of wonderful characters.

Yvonne is taken by the Cybermen and gets a fantastic final scene as she's brought away to be cyberized.  Even brought to a fate she fully understands and fears, and even as she faces the consequences of her own actions, she's dignified and defiant.  Her cyberizing scene is genuinely moving.  And then, later, she gets an even better scene as a Cyber.  A great villain meets not one but two brilliant ends.

Pete, the alternate universe version of Rose's father, returns for a last hurrah.  I had very mixed feelings about his return in Rise of the Cybermen, but they ultimately went in an interesting direction with him, so his return is welcome.  Shaun Dingwall is as perfect as ever, and Pete's character arc is ultimately satisfying.  Camille Coduri also makes her final regular appearance as Jackie, and Davies gives her some of the funniest material she has had.  The scene where Pete and Jackie meet is just wonderful, equally hilarious and moving.

Mickey returns, but transformed by his time in Pete's World into Awesome Action Hero Mickey, and it's terrific.  It's really remarkable how far he's come - he was basically a failure of a character in Rose, but was carefully developed over time, becoming more and more likable, before being thrust into heroism in the early second season.  Here, when he shows up and starts going Bruce Willis all over the place, it somehow feels natural, as those it's actually the ideal ending to his character.  And really, it is; it's just totally unexpected, and a delight to watch.  Noel Clarke has been good as Mickey with a great variety of material, but he's just a blast to watch here.

Much more importantly, however, it's Rose's last (regular) appearance, and she's given a tremendous send-off.  Piper has all the appeal and humor she's always shown, she also shows a remarkable presence.  Doomsday opens with her stealing the Daleks' spotlight by facing them down with the sort of fearless power ordinarily only the Doctor shows.  Of course, Rose can't quite keep it up - she's not the Doctor, after all -- but it's a terrific character moment that, further, feels absolutely natural.  The Rose of End of the World could never have stood up like this, but the Rose of Doomsday has grown so believably that it isn't just cool; it's the culmination of the Doctor's influence on her.  She started as a normal, average person; now, she's become a mythical heroine, and deserved it.  Davies and the other writers may have occasionally stumbled with her in parts of the second season, but on the whole, her arc has been brilliant.

At the climax of the story, she saves the world, probably the entire universe with a genuinely selfless, sacrificial act.  As she falls into the Void, she is saved by the other universe's version of her long-dead Father, and rescued to safety in the other universe.  There, she can live her life with everything she ever wanted - her father alive, her parents together and in love, Mickey - except the one thing she wanted most.

Her Doctor is gone from her forever.

Davies can't help but give her a final farewell, but he takes tremendous care in the writing; it's melodramatic, but still underplayed just enough.  Tennant and Piper play their final scene perfectly.  But it's Murray Gold's music, particularly the entirely unexpected "Doomsday", that raises it to such a high level.  It's a devastating and extraordinary ending.

It's a complex, beautiful closing for a very strong companion.

But, really, Doomsday isn't even about saying goodbye to Rose.  It's about the Doctor - about the close to this part of his journey, and his moving on to a new one.

He's faced the Daleks just a season before.  Then, however, he was a different man.  Then, even having recovered much of his mojo thanks to Rose, he's still a traumatized war veteran, always on the edge of fury and destruction.  He faced them grimly and half-crazed.  But now, in Doomsday, he's not the Ninth Doctor, born of the tragedy of war and genocide, but the Tenth, who came from the Doctor's sacrifice of his own life to keep Rose from being utterly destroyed by the Time Vortex.  From the very first, he was cheerful and goofy.  Villainies could draw out his darkest side, yes, but it hasn't been constantly lingering under the surface, ready to explode.  This is the Doctor who, for the first time in more than a lifetime, is truly happy.

And so, when he faces his greatest adversaries, while he certainly respects their abilities, he's much more ready to fight them.  None of the full-on horror and desperation the Ninth Doctor felt, or the near-crazed edge to his threats and mocking.  No, he has his swagger back, the swagger than first put such fear into his enemies when he was a young man in an old man's body, telling off the psychotic creatures who have utterly conquered the entire Earth.  He can beat these guys, and he knows it, and he gleefully makes sure they know it.

And he does - literally sending the Daleks to Hell.  But it comes at a staggering cost.  Rose is alive, but locked away from him forever.  Just as before, he's alone.

But there's something more.  There's a magnificent moment where Rose and the Doctor lean their faces against the corresponding walls of their own universes, imagining and even, in some way, feeling each other's presence.  Rose sheds tears, of course, but the Doctor has no tears.  Every depth of the tragedy is buried in his eyes.  The look of utter devastation in Tennant's eyes is stunning.  Every day of his millenial life is etched across his face.  It's a man defeated and alone, more alone than any can imagine.  Again.  More so than anything else in the scene, even Gold's fantastic music, it's Tennant's face that hits the hardest.

And yet, there's something else in that face.  There's strength, and calm, and resolution.  Even after sending all the Daleks to Hell, the Doctor has lost Rose, and in a way, this was the ultimate loss for him.  But he hasn't just survived.  He's still the Doctor.  And in his farewell to Rose on Bad Wolf Bay, he's sad, but also warm and funny.  Now, he has the strength to go on to other adventures and feel the joy and fun and wonder, as he did before the War.  Even his own personal Doomsday can't take that from him.  Not any more.

RATING:

* * * *






SIDENOTES

• Okay, so, is there a reason we got Fear Her, but didn't get this episode?  I know RTD has said that he's more interested in stories about humans that about aliens on planet Zog.  But if that's what planet Zog looks like, why would anyone want a story about boring old humans?
• Come to think of it, the only other purely human adversary worthy of the Doctor I can think of is Salamander from Enemy of the World.

• Graeme Harper's direction is truly brilliant.  Harper's directing is always great, but this is among his finest work for Who.  He can't have had more than a few million bucks, but makes a spectacular, action-packed epic that weaves adventure, action, and a wondrous sense of breezy fun with quiet drama and melodramatic tragedy.  It's a stunning achievement to make all those work so smoothly and so powerfully.  There's a reason he's considered the greatest director Who ever had.

Rise Of The Cybermen / The Age Of Steel

The Tenth Planet, we were introduced to a horrific mirror version of humanity, people who had replaced more and more of their bodies with spare parts until they were machines.  They were human but not human.  Their look and voice enhanced this terrifying vision.  They were also intelligent, logical machines who convinced some people to volunteer to become cyberized. 

They never appeared in Doctor Who again.  Later, there were creatures who called themselves the Cybermen and said they came from Mondas, but they weren't the Cybermen.  They were just evil robots.  Cool evil robots, threatening evil robots, fun evil robots, but evil robots.  Never again in the classic series were they the object of such psychological and physical horror as their forebears.

Which isn't to say I don't like the later Cybermen.  I enjoy every Cyber story to some extent except "Revenge", (yes, even Silver Nemesis, at least up to a point) and certainly get some whimsical joy out of them.  But after The Tenth Planet, I was always waiting for a story that really got what made them so original and eerie, and never really found it.

Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel aren't quite the episodes I was waiting for, but they're really, really close, and in a few moments, they do capture excactly what I always wanted out of them.  Oh, they still work on the more common level: they're incredibly dangerous, virtually unstoppable robots.  But in exploring an alternate version of their origin from another universe, it finds some of that inhuman humanity.  We watch humans being led away and forced to take the "upgrades."  We see the horrific saws and tools used to splice the metal into the humans.  There's one especially unnerving scene in the second episode where the Doctor opens up a Cyberman and finds shredded flesh inside.

Also, the tools they use to cut people up?  Excellent.

And the Doctor's actual defeat of the Cybermen powerfully digs to the heart of their mix of human and machine.  It's far and away the most satisfying defeat of the Cybers in the history of the show.

As for their redesign... well, they definitely look slick and big-budget.  Very shiny, very big, very threatening... but totally robotic.  There's no hint of humanity in the design, which sucks out a little bit of the meaning.  They're also really, really loud when they walk, which makes the various scenes when they walk up and surprise the heroes kinda hard to buy.  But on the whole, this is a superb outing for the Cybermen.

And the rest of the episode, you ask?  Well, the production team did one masterstroke: hiring Graeme Harper to direct.  Back in the old show, Harper directed The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks; the former is almost universally considered one of the finest stories ever produced in the show, and the latter is a masterpiece of atmosphere, intensity, and pacing, regardless of whatever flaws the script may possess.  Harper made two of the best-looking, most atmospheric, and most gripping stories in the old show, directing with the kind of energy far ahead of its time.

He's lost none of his touch.  Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel is a superbly made action yarn with overtones of horror, intense, thrilling, and compelling.

As for the story itself, just keep in mind that while not everything is great, it's all done really, really well.  We start Rise of the Cybermen with the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey accidentally traveling into an alternate universe because... I guess because RTD has this belief that every Doctor Who story has to be about planet Earth, and he's gotta bring back the Cybermen with a big introduction, leaving us with an alternate origin story.  Which is fine, except that this alternate universe isn't really all that interesting.  The one other time Doctor Who did the alternate universe thing, we got Inferno, which turned all the companionish characters into the villains (including the Brigadier with an eyepatch), and then went absolutely insane near the end because on an alternate earth, you can do anything you want.  Here, we get... um, blimps.  An alternate universe with blimps everywhere.  Otherwise, nothing too interesting.  The UK has a president instead of the prime minister.  That sort of thing.

Mickey splits from the other two and after meandering a bit, finds that he has a double on this world named Ricky (of course), who is a tough-guy revolutionary. 

Rose, meanwhile, decides she has to look up her father, which means that we get to go through the whole Rose's father thing again.  Eventually, in Age of Steel, it does play out in an unexpected way, but for most of Rise, it just feels like an inferior rehash of Father's Day.  Shaun Dingwall is terrific again, and we do get the great bit where the Doctor and Rose sneak into his place dressed as servants.  We see an alternate Jackie who is... well, she's got all the negative, obnoxious characteristics of regular Jackie, but without the redeeming qualities.

Other than that stuff, this is just earth.  Nothing too imaginative, nothing insanely intense like Inferno.  So, outside of the Cyber stuff itself, the first episode, which is mostly about exploring alternate earth, is really well-made filler.  In what I'm guessing is a nod to some of the old Cyber-stories, they don't actually show up in full until 45 minutes in, which does a good job of building their eventual appearance up but leaves us mostly just waiting for the story to get started. 

There are some really strong performances in there, though.  Villain John Lumic is mostly just ranty on paper, but Roger Lloyd Pack digs his teeth way, way into the scenery and plays him with relish.

His not-entirely-onboard lieutenant, Mr. Crane, is played by Colin Spaul with intelligence and charm, making him a highly enjoyable villainous sidekick. 

Best of all is Helen Griffin as Mrs. Moore, who plays the revolutionaries' hacker, and makes her incredibly human and likable with only a few minutes of screentime.  And also awesome.

Anyway, the first half isn't boring; it doesn't do much inherently interesting, but it's done so well by Harper and his cast that it gets the work done.  And the second half is very cool: dark, shadowy, action-packed fun.  I could probably nitpick all day with minor issues, but the second half really delivers the goods.  The Cybermen go around being threatening, the Doctor gets big speeches, stuff blows up, and so forth.  Even the uninspiring Pete & Jackie subplot from the first episode ultimately plays out in a series of unexpected and compelling ways.  The payoff for Mr. Crane is incredibly satisfying.  And the climax is terrific.

Which is to say, there's a lot wrong with Rise and Age.  But the things it gets right are so good that, personally, I don't care.  It's a fun ride thanks largely to excellent direction by the master of directing Doctor Who.  And it's one of the best Cybermen stories ever, maybe the best.

But somewhere out there, there's still that definitive Cyber-story, one that nails the creepy horror, the awesome action, and the crazed logic throughout, and delivers a truly classic episode.

Till then, though, this'll do.



RATING:

* * * ½


SIDENOTES:

• "DELETE!  DELETE!  DELETE!"  Seriously?  That's the Cyber-catchphrase?  Lame.
  
  
• So, since this is Mickey's last regular appearance, I guess now's as good a time as any to discuss him overall.  I have to say, it's rare to see a character turn around so much.  In Rose, he's incredibly annoying.  But the more he was developed, the more likable he became.  And to be honest, by the end of Age of Steel, I wished he would have stayed on.  With him around, it wouldn't matter that Rose never held the Doctor back when he needed it, because Mickey would have filled that spot very nicely.  The three of them as a team would have been great.  Anyway, bravo to Noel Clarke for making the most of his
  
  
• I have mixed feelings about the Doctor's solution to the cliffhanger.  On the one hand, it comes out of nowhere.  There's no reason a subtle line couldn't have been put in the first episode to seed his solution.  On the otherhand, HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME!
  

The Christmas Invasion

Post-regeneration stories are tricky.  They have to establish the new Doctor's personality and quirks while capturing everything that makes him The Doctor, deal believably with the companion's reaction, and tell a compelling story on its own, and then somehow balance all these elements so they're all satisfying.  Oh, and also, having every cell in your body renew itself and turn you into a different person causing a lot of stress and trauma, so there's that, too.  It's a lot like the pilot of a TV show: there's a lot to do and very little time to do it in.

The first two post-regenerations, in Power of the Daleks and Spearhead In Space, managed to pull the balance off very nicely, but the other classic stories tended to struggle.  Robot did a terrific job of establishing the new Doctor, but stuck him in a lousy story.  Castrovalva had a pretty good story, but dragged in the middle, and focused on the companions, leaving Five to really establish himself in Four to Doomsday. (which he did very nicely) Twin Dilemma certainly had a grabber with a crazy, homicidal Doctor and a companion trying desperately not to get killed by him, let alone everything else, but stuck them in one of the most boring plots in one of the shoddiest productions of the entire series.  Time and the Rani is so bad it kicks puppies and kills kittens.  And the TV movie spun its wheels for over a hour before the plot was actually able to get off the ground (and not terribly coherently at that).

So the fact that The Christmas Invasion pretty much gets everything right isn't just cool; it's pretty unlikely, and all the more satisfying for it.

It opens with a terrific scene of the TARDIS materializing on Christmas Eve just outside Jackie's apartment... way up in the air, after which it bounces and crashes to a halt on the street.  Then Ten pops out for about two minutes of hilarious dialogue before going totally unconscious.  Rose then has to somehow explain that this skinny blond dude actually is the Doctor, in a new body.

The plot then gets started, and it's a pretty good First Contact story -- our first contact with aliens being a group that has the ability to control blood, and threatens to kill every human on earth with Type A blood.  It's not the most original tale in the world, but it's a solid story, nicely paced and well played.

But while that's going on, just to keep the energy up, there's the scene with the "Pilot Fish", which is one of the highlights of the entire story.  Less than ten minutes in, Mickey and Rose are attacked by an unseen group of assassins in Santa costumes with creepy Santa masks on.  And then, when they do reach the apartment to make sure the still-unconscious Doctor is safe, they're attacked by the Christmas Tree.  It's a thrilling scene that doesn't really have much to do with the plot, but it's exactly the scene a Doctor Who Christmas Special really needs.

And then the Doctor jumps up and saves the day, and again, Tennant only has a couple of minutes to be Doctorly, but he makes the most of every second.

Still, one of the best things about this episode is how good it is when Tennant isn't onscreen.  The characterizations of all the politicians and UNIT and scientists are great, but the best is Harriet Jones, returning from Aliens of London/World War III, now Prime Minister.  She still has that wonderful habit of introducing herself and her title to everyone, and them responding "Yes, I know who you are."  She's grown into her role as PM with genuine presence, dignity, and decisiveness, but still pours coffee for others without thinking a thing of it.  Davies and Penelope Wilton give her quite a lot of depth, and she's a joy to watch throughout.

Billie Piper is great as Rose as usual, and her chemistry with Tennant is evident right from the beginning.  She gets a particularly great piece to herself, though, when she tries to bluff and bluster enough to get the aliens to fly away, and succeeds only in making them laugh. (which, I might add, is great alien laughter: creepy and inhuman, but clearly laughter.  Bravo to the sound effects crew.)

Mickey's character arc is turning out nicely by this point.  In Rose, he was cowardly and frightened.  Here, he's still understandably scared of things, but bravely stands up to an assault from a killer Christmas tree and refuses to turn tail and cower when he's onboard the alien craft.  His scenes with Rose are very effective, as she continues to mistreat him (although not as badly as before) and he responds classily but with a proper undercurrent of jealousy.

And then Tennant comes in full force for the last twenty minutes, and he's absolutely sensational.  Not surprisingly, he's side-splittingly funny, and charming and appropriately smug at times.  But there's a moment late in the story, after the swordfight, when he turns on a dime to a darker, colder intensity than Eccleston ever hit before returning to his joyous normal self.  It's a gripping moment that shows how fully he nails the Doctor right from the beginning.

Then, having defeated the invaders, Davies includes a genuinely shocking coda that makes an otherwise fun romp suddenly turn very, very dark like it's the early 70s again.  Harriet Jones' decision is overzealous and painful, but the Doctor's response is itself a pretty intense overreaction, and as usual, he doesn't stop to think of what the consequences will be before running off into the universe again.  It's a great ending, complex and thoughtful.

The Christmas Invasion doesn't quite hit the heights of Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, but it's very worthy of its immediate predecessor in the series and a pitch-perfect first episode for Tennant, who was born to play this role.

RATING:

* * * ½


SIDENOTES

• I love every line Tennant says in this story, but far and away my favorite is the way he says "A great, big, threatening button."
  
  
• The Doctor's method of getting Jones removed from office is inspired.
  
  
• For all the things the episode gets right, it somehow messes up the climactic swordfight.  The dialogue is great, but the choreography of the fight feels clumsy and off.  Mostly, they're trying to fight with broadswords in ways that broadswords are not meant to be used.  Broadswords are all about power and force, and hopefully disarming your opponant.  The original Star Wars films look like broadsword fights; Highlander mostly looks convincing.  But if you are going to try to make it fast and full of finesse, watch the fights in First Knight: they're fast and smooth while still remembering that broadswords are freakin' heavy and difficult to use.  Here, it looks like the actors are having to pour their whole beings into just managing to hit their marks.
  
  

 

• Hooray!  We get to see another room in the TARDIS!  And it looks predictably great.

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways

[2005, Season 27/Series 1, Episodes 12 & 13]

Russell T. Davies' writing for Doctor Who is highly inconsistent.  When he does small-scale character drama, he does it beautifully.  When he really swings for the fences with wild abandon, he very often pulls it off, and even when he doesn't quite hit, the sheer ambitious audacity is dazzling.  Stuff in between, like plot and resolutions, on the other hand, are uneven at best.

But in Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways, he gets everything right.  The character stuff is superb; the big, sweeping ideas are stunning; the plot is involving and surprising; and the resolution brings everything together brilliantly.  The story begins small and strage, but builds carefully and gradually to a work of tremendou emotion.  The double-act finale of his first season rises among the finest Doctor Who stories, and is a great piece of science fiction and fantasy.

The opening is really bizarre as the Doctor wakes up in some sort of futuristic version of Big Brother.  Apparently he was transmatted there right out of the TARDIS.  This is strangely involving enough, but it's mostly gripping because of Eccleston's reaction -- his face is the perfect expression of "... the hell?"

Not that Rose's is far behind as she finds herself stuck on a version of The Weakest Link run by the Anne-Droid. 

Jack's reaction to inexplicably waking up in some sort of fashion show, on the other hand, is hilarious.

"Ladies, your viewing figures just went up."

This is a tricky idea, setting modern-day Reality Shows in the year 200,100, but for some reason, I'm oddly forgiving of this.  Partly because the explanation sort of makes sense, which I'll get to later.  But more than that, it's really, really well done.  The Doctor's situation works best: he's totally sarcastic about it, barely noticing everyone's horror at his laid-back reaction.  But then, somebody is voted off, goes outside... and is disentigrated.

He immediately gets dead serious.  One of the "roommates", Lynda (with a y), is intrigued by him, and he takes her with him once he escapes.  Lynda is incredibly likable; totally sweet, full of starry-eyed wonder and joy, and when it eventually comes down to it, nervous but brave.  Bravo to both Davies and to Jo Joyner.

The Weakest Link scenes take a lot of intensity from the dark lighting of the actual show.  This is a superbly lit and shot story all around, but this segment is one of the best.  Rose laughs at the weirdness of materializing in the middle of a futuristic version of an old show, but is silenced when the Anne-Droid suddenly turns out to be almost as evil as the real Anne Robinson when she shoots a disentigration beam out of her mouth, atomizing the Weakest Link.

Man, that show would be so much cooler if the Robinson really had a disentagration gun in her mouth.  She wouldn't even have to use it often -- just once or twice a season, to keep everyone on edge.

Jack's story is more of a humorous side story, but it is pretty funny.

When they do get out, the plot starts twisting.  This is actually only 100 years after the episode The Long Game, and it smacks the Doctor hard when he realizes that this happened largely because he simply abandoned Station 5 once he took out the Jagrafess, not stopping for a moment to consider rebuilding.  That's how he's been from the beginning, and it's always compelling to see those rare moments when it comes back to haunt him.

"I created this world."

But what comes back much stronger in these two episodes is the positive influence he's had on people.  RTD has created a great theme through this series, manifested beautifully here: even when the Doctor doesn't do things himself, he influences others to be heroes.  Yes, there were many stories this season where he didn't solve the problem, but his example inspired others -- Rose, Jabe, Gweneth, and as we see in Parting, even Mickey and Jackie all become heroes because of him.  It may have been a weakness in those episodes, but Davies turns that into the great strength of these episodes.  It turns out that this Doctor is every bit the manipulator he's always been, but in an entirely different way: he's helped others reach their potential.

Davies gives us four other particularly memorable supporting characters.  The first is Roderick, played by Paterson Joseph, one of Rose's Weakest Link contestants.  He's a smug, self-centered character, but his motives are understandable (if not admirable), and he shows hints of sympathy and humanity; he just has himself as the highest priority.  Joseph does a great job of making him unsympathetic but human.

Next is the Controller, who looks and feels like she came out of Star Trek: TNG.  Not that it's a bad thing in the slightest; she's written, designed, and acted exceedingly well, overcoming the lack of originality.  Martha Cope's voice is wonderfully eerie, saying untold fathoms of the sadness of her isolated life.

The other two are the Programmers played by Jo Stone-Fewings and Nisha Nayar, two minor characters given more than enough personality for us to care about their plight.  The actors deserve a lot of credit for how much they bring, but so does Davies for giving them good material in their limited time.

And it's here that anyone who hasn't seen the episodes should leave, now, and watch them.  The rest of this spoils a series of terrific plot twists, and you should go no further.  In other words --

SPOILERS

You have been warned.

The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda break into the Weakest Link room and rush towards Rose.  Rose runs toward them, yelling to watch out for the Anne-Droid and --

Ooh.  Did not see that one coming.

It's a stunning, beautifully done sequence.  Lynda's presence helps us fall for it -- Rose appears to have a replacement, so for a moment, you actually believe she might be gone.  By the time her true fate is revealed, the episode has already transformed from gripping weirdness to an emotional knockout, and her survival only raises the stakes.

It turns out that it's not a disentegrator, but a transmat.  Which transports the victims directly onto a Dalek ship, where they are mutated into Daleks.  So it turns out the Anne-Droid is equally as evil as the real Robinson.

And things suddenly get very, very real.

The Daleks are at their absolute best here.  They are terrifying.  Seeing not just a few, but literally thousands is a dazzling sight.  And everything keeps building and getting worse.  They move through Jack's makeshift defenses with even more ease than he anticipated.

Worse, they travel down to the bottom of the station, far out of their way, and massacre all the civilians down there just because.

And then they kill sweet Lynda with a y.

You bastards!  She was cute!

It just gets worse and worse.  The defendors fight bravely and sacrifice their lives with true heroism, but they accomplish little more than slowing them down briefly; only a single Dalek is even injured for all their efforts.

These scenes are directed by Joe Ahearne spectacularly and totally cinematically.  It really feels like watching a big movie, not a TV show.  But it's a big movie full of risks, thematic depth, and superb characterizations.

Eccleston's Doctor is amazing here.  His vow to save Rose at the end of Bad Wolf is inspiring; his dialogue with the Dalek Emperor riveting.  But above all, it's the moment when he tricks Rose into being sent home, safe, away from certain death, that finally makes him truly the Doctor.  His torment and loneliness have permeated every episode.  But by being around Rose, he's regained his ability to live, and what he believes to be his last act of compassion is saving her life.

After all this intensely powerful action and drama, it's truly astounding that the climax is not only satisfying, but really is stunning.  First, the Doctor has a second chance to do what he did at the end of his last life and the beginning of this one: destroy the Daleks completely, but in doing so, destroy another species.  The Dalek Emperor asks him what he is -- "Killer or coward?"  The Doctor stands with his weapon, but looks up to the Emperor and says, "Coward.  Every day."  The Emperor orders his minions to execute him, and he responds, "Maybe it's time."

And then Rose comes back, having absorbed the heart of the TARDIS to save her Doctor.  It's a Deus ex Machina, very literally, and it works magnificently because it builds out of not just an episode, but an entire season's worth of plot and character setup.  The dialogue and imagery are truly beautiful, the ideas mind-boggling.  The power of this sequence is almost unmatched in Who.

And then, finally, there's the regeneration.  It's one of the best.  The dialogue is perfect, the acting outstanding.  For the first time, the Ninth Doctor looks happy and joyous without irony or sadness behind it.  He is happy to have died saving Rose -- nothing could have made him happier.

And then he turns into David Tennant, and everything becomes a whole different kind of awesome...

The acting is phenomenal all around.  Eccleston and Piper are wonderful throughout; Barrowman is as charismatic as ever, but seeing Jack trying to face his mortality with the same casual charm as he faces everything else is touching.

And Davies, somehow, miraculously, achieves every wild ambition he aims for, and ends up with a masterpiece.  It's as good as it gets.

RATING:

* * * *




SIDENOTES

• Okay, it's not totally perfect.  "I think you need a Doctor."  Really?  Really?  That would be embarassing in a Pip & Jane Baker script.
• I love that after planting all those hints about "Bad Wolf" throughout the series, and then having that awesome scene in Boom Town where the Doctor actually talks about it and then dismisses it, Davies actually calls the 12th episode "Bad Wolf"... and still doesn't explain it.  When he does finally explain it halfway through "Parting of the Ways", the build-up has been phenomenal, and thankfully, he pays it off.
• Okay, so do 21st century reality shows in the 2001st century even begin to make sense?  The answer is simply "Daleks."  The Daleks aren't known for plans that make sense; their ideas are absolutely insane... and yet, somehow, they're intelligent enough to actually pull them off, barring only the Doctor's interferrence.  All of which is to say, enslaving the human race in crazed versions of their own past makes perfect sense coming from characters whose ideas make no sense.  I'll complain about the distant future looking like today from now until eternity, but this one time, I couldn't care less.  This is too awesome to worry about such a little detail.
• Murray Gold's score is magnificent.  For all the episodes or scenes he's done too much or unecessarily or whatever, he's got at least as many of these.  This is awesome music, always used perfectly.