Doctor Who blogging: The Long Game/Father's Day

Whoa. Has a show ever fetishized handholding the way this new Who does? My god, Davies has a serious jones for the Doctor, I think. And who doesn't?

And all the hugging...

"I'll hug anyone," the Doctor says in "The Long Game"? Oh, yeah, baby. Bring. It. On.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Not at all. I'm getting as much vicarious excitement out of all the touchy-feely stuff as I'm sure Davies got in inventing it.

And a lot of that is coming from the fact that the relationship between the Doctor and Rose is way more psychologically sophisticated than anything the old show gave us between the Doctor and his companions. I think we always knew the Doctor picked up silly young Earth people to travel with because he was kinda lonely, but that was an aloneness he imposed on himself by choice, exiling himself from his homeworld and his people because he was a weirdo, never quite fit in. Now that he is actually alone in all the universe, the last Gallifreyan (if he is; how could Davies not bring back his archnemesis, the Time Lord called the Master?), there's a new urgency in him to find someone to cling to. Rose sees it: "I know how sad you are," she says in "Father's Day," and the Doctor himself, he keeps setting himself up for disappointment, expecting, perhaps, better things from Rose than she is really capable of offering, being a mere backwater human, after all. He's crushed to discover this: he swings from a smug announcement of "I only take the best; I've got Rose," when Adam begs to be allowed to continue traveling in the TARDIS at the end of "The Long Game" to a bitter "I did it again: I picked another stupid ape. I shoulda known" when Rose lets him down in "Father's Day." The Doctor never put himself through this kind of vacillating -- she's cool; no, she isn't -- before.

Yet the fact that everyone sees there's something very special between them means that there probably is. (Adam in "The Long Game": "It's gonna take a better man than me to get between you two." Rose in "Father's Day": "We're not a couple -- why does everyone think we're a couple?") Even if we never find out more about how they feel about each other, even if it never develops into a full-blown romantic relationship, the seesawing they've gone through -- even in only these two episodes -- is one of the most satisfyingly realistic depictions of a friendship that doesn't know if it wants to go anywhere else. I mean, look: we go from this kind of cozy, comfortable familiarity:

"That's her gone. Looks like it's just you and me." -- the Doctor

"Yeah." -- Rose

"Good." -- the Doctor

"Yep." -- Rose

to this kind of anger, the kind that comes from someone you love -- in whatever way -- making you crazy:

"My entire planet died. My whole family. Do you think it never occurred to me to go back and save them?" -- the Doctor

"For once you're not the most important man in my life?... You'll hang around outside the TARDIS waiting for me." -- Rose

Get a room, you guys!

Random thoughts on "The Long Game":

Very Firefly, the station with its bustling atmosphere and alien languages and futuristic burgers and stuff. Cool.

It's Shaun of the Dead!

• This was always the kind of stuff that the old Doctor Who was good at: social satire. The constant surveillance, the populace kept cowed and ignorant by the media that harps on diffuse threats of terrorism ("invent an enemy, change a vote") and trumpets celebrity nonsense ("and over on the Bad Wolf channel, the Face of Boe has just announced he's pregnant")... that's not the year 200,000, it's today. And it's just as creepy today with mere humans perpetrating it as when it's giant alien slugs from the future in charge. It's probably safe to assume that the Doctor's contempt for 210th-century apes -- "stupid little slaves believing every lie; they'll just drop right into the slaughterhouse if they think it's made of gold" -- would probably hold for us in the 21st century, too. Makes ya feel all proud of the species, eh?

• The Doctor swears? The Doctor swears. He never used to do that.

I kept expecting the little dog to erase Adam's voicemail from the future. But then that would have deprived the Doctor of the pleasure of doing so.

Best line in "The Long Game":

"Time travel's like visiting Paris: you can't just read the guidebook, you gotta throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double, and end up kissing complete strangers. Or is that just me?" -- the Doctor

Random thoughts of "Father's Day":

The Doctor used to say that he couldn't travel within his own timeline -- no going back and forth in his own life. But now here we have multiple versions of the Doctor and Rose in the same place and time. Maybe he could always have done this kind of thing from a technical perspective but was forbidden from doing so by the laws of the Time Lords? And now that they're gone, he's got a freer hand? Is everything that happens in this episode the result of the fact that the time police are out of business?

And that's how we end up with one of the ultimate fan-fiction stories: the going back and changing something in your own life, fixing some regret or righting some wrong. The Doctor says he's thought about going back to save Gallifrey -- can he do it? Why has he stopped himself? Is this fodder for a future story arc?

The switch from the satirical to the personal is extraordinary, and not at all jarring, as you might expect. It's the emotion that ties it all together, the affection and devotion between the Doctor and Rose, even if it's strained here, carrying over from the previous episode. I love how emotional this Doctor is, even when it's a bit mysterious:

Where does the Doctor's deep animosity for Jackie, Rose's mom, come from?

These time creatures are probably the creepiest Who monsters ever...

And this sight is pretty darn disturbing, too. Stuck in 1987? The horror, the horror...

Best line in "Father's Day":

"I've traveled to all sorts of places, done things you couldn't even imagine, but you two? Street corner, 2 in the morning, gettin' a taxi home. I've never had a life like that." -- the Doctor

(screencaps from Stakes & Stones Screencaps)

blogging Christopher Eccleston's 'Doctor Who':
• episodes 1 & 2: Rose/The End of the World
• episodes 3 & 4: The Unquiet Dead/Aliens of London
• episodes 5 & 6: World War Three/Dalek
• episodes 9 & 10: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances [coming soon]
• episodes 11, 12 & 13: Boom Town/Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways [coming soon]
• DVD extras: Doctor Who Confidential [coming soon]

(Technorati tags: Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston, Russell Davies, DVD)