Deadly Furniture

"Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways"

There's a moment when every Doctor steps into the role and makes the title his own. For Ten and Eleven it's pretty early on in their runs, but they have a beloved and experienced show behind them. Nine never really  had that. Everything was filmed before a single episode was shown to the British public. The writers were still trying to figure out what to keep from the classic series and what to throw away. Plus, the Doctor had been through some stuff lately and who really knew who he was anymore?

Elizabeth and I were talking about when Nine's moment was--the moment when Eccleston claimed the role for himself and decided--this is the man the Doctor is. Elizabeth thinks that it was that moment back in "The Doctor Dances" where Nine realizes that today, everyone will live. And it is a great moment, a fantastic moment. The joy on Eccelston's face captures joyous madness in a nutshell. But my moment, my moment when I finally understand Nine, is in "The Parting of the Ways."

The pesky Daleks have once again returned and Nine's journey has come full circle. He's once again in the midst of a war where two entire races are at stake. So naturally the Doctor goes to talk to the Daleks face to face (rescuing Rose along the way) and he realizes that they're all made out of humans--human biologically elements with all the soul removed. But the imperfection of humanity's taint has driven the Daleks insane. And then the Doctor says one of those great Doctor Who lines: " They hate your own existence, and that makes them more deadly than ever."

Sure, this could all be meant to be straightforward. But, if you turn it around and apply it to the Dalek the line takes on an entirely different meaning. The Doctor runs off with his companions and finds safety behind the door of the TARDIS, but then there's this fantastic moment when Eccleston leans his forhead against the door. And that's Nine's moment. That moment when we as an audience realize how much our Doctor hates himself.

But the second part of that sentence still has to play out. And the Doctor realizes that he's going to have to be the Oncoming Storm. So he sends Rose away the only way he knows how--by lying to her. And then he creates a weapon of mass destruction that will exterminate the Daleks but take most of humanity and the last of the Time Lords with them. And as he builds it, person after person dies for him. Jack, the bad guy, the time bandit, goes off to lead a small militia. But before he leaves, he tells the Doctor, "Wish I'd never met you Doctor. I was much better off as a coward."


And then Jack dies, because being a companion with the Doctor comes with a horrible price. And the Doctor has to set off the device. But he can't do it. He's no longer the Oncoming Storm. Traveling throughout time and space with a shop girl has healed him in some way, and he would rather die a man alone, then a monster with others.

But Rose saves him. Or rather the Bad Wolf saves him. After staring into the heart of the TARDIS, Rose comes back with all the power and foresight of the Time Vortex. Powerful enough to send words back throughout time and space as clues to lead her to this moment, Vortex Rose can deflect a Dalek's laser with the flick of a hand. She can destroy the Dalek God with words, and she can bring Jack back from the dead with a single thought. But the power of it is burning Rose up, and so the Doctor kisses her. And with that kiss, he dies for her.


A lot has been written about how Nine needed to regenerate to fully be healed from the Time Wars. And I mostly agree with that. But I also think that Nine and Rose could have continued to travel the galaxy together and been perfectly happy. Nine was never a complete lost cause. Besides, future episodes will prove that Ten and Eleven have just as many problems (if not more) than Nine ever did.

Instead, I choose to see Nine's regeneration as a final gift. He was born out of war and he died out of love. It's a poetic ending, the right ending. Or rather--beginning. Because the next step is Barcelona.


Next Up: "The Christmas Invasion," "New Earth," and "Tooth and Claw"

"Father's Day," "The Empty Child," 'The Doctor Dances" and "Boom Town"

I remember thinking fondly about "Father's Day." It was one of the few episodes that I watched my first run through of series one, and it has some of those classic deep moments that I love about Doctor Who. At one point, the Doctor swears he's going to leave his companion behind and maybe might have (no matter what he says at the end of the episode) if time hadn't robbed him of the TARDIS.  And there's this quick acknowledgement that this sort of thing wouldn't have happened if the Time Lords were still around. Not only would the Doctor probably not have dared crossing his own time line when other Time Lords were there to catch him, but his people would have cleaned up the paradox/time-wackiness.

And then there's the ending--where Rose finally has the courage to hold her father as he dies. She's faced Daleks, the End of the World, and a giant monster at  the top of a space station with little more than a couple of screams, but she can't say goodbye again.  It's a touching moment, a moment when we get to see how similar Rose is to her dead father, combined with just enough dark undertones to keep it from being sappy.

But "Father's Day" has a rigid take on time travel that the rest of the series soon starts to ignore. Sure, the whole problem is that Rose and the Doctor cross their own time line creating a sort of weak point in the fabric of time and space--but series five and Amy Pond anyone? Anyone?). "Father's Day" therefore doesn't seem to fit in the cannon of the show anymore, but exists in some sort of no-man's land for things with other Doctor Who plots and elements that sorta work but don't really if you think about it too hard.

But maybe I was just in a rush to get through the episode because I knew the next one had THIS guy....


Man. Captain Jack is awesome. From the beginning, it's obvious that this man is a lot of what the Doctor is not. He uses technology to simplify matters, he flirts with most anything that walks, he's selfish, he's uses time travel as a means for his own gain, he carries a gun, he's out for himself and no one else. It's obvious that in the absence of Time Lords some other type of organization would have to take it's place, and the introduction of Time Agents is one that, at this early stage, still had a whole lot of potential. (The fact that for the most part the organization soon enters the no-man's land with "Father's Day" is pretty disappointing). But hanging out with the Doctor changes a man. Earlier in the episode, Jack would have come up with a way to cover his tracks and make a hasty retreat when faced with a giant bomb. But by the end of the episode, the conman is willing to die for others because he knows that's what the Doctor would do. And so the man abandons his profession and decides to travel with a man from some North somewhere and a girl.

The introduction of Captain Jack also allows for the Doctor to run across another time traveler. Nine's greatest comedic moment is when he switches out the Captain's blaster for a banana. Of course there's a back and forth masculine "Rose is mine!" thing going on. The Doctor noticeably doesn't let Jack cut in at the end (a rare selfish move for him).  But although Rose is of course tempted, there's a difference between a former Time Agent and a Time Lord--especially this Time Lord. By the end of the first episode, Rose has already switched her loyalties back to the Doctor (although they had really never strayed) and Jack soon realizes that it will always be the Doctor and Rose.

But Steven Moffat's first two-parter of new Who isn't all about the Captain. It's also about an Empty Child whose just looking for his mother. What the Moffat does best and what he'll do over and over and over again is to take things that we all know and love, like little five-year old boys, and make them ridiculously scary. With the Empty Child, he takes everything about being human out of this small boy and the result is terrifying.


This is also one of those rare episodes where everybody lives. For a show that's still (at rare times) called a family/children's show, Doctor Who stacks up a lot of bodies. But at the end of this episode, the universe gives the Doctor a gift. Everybody lives. And he's so excited, that he dances.

But my favorite episode of the series so far (because if I remember correctly there's a pretty terrific episode just around the corner) has to be "Boom Town" which is surprising because a) not a lot actually happens in the episode and b) it features the Slitheen.  Not surprisingly, however, I love this episode for it's character moments. First, Mickey finally comes back into the picture and dumps Rose. I'm not in the camp of people that think that, if the Doctor hadn't taken her hand in the shop and told her to run, Mickey and Rose would have lived happily ever after. Rose obviously was eventually going to go off and do something drastic with her life, leaving Mickey behind. But his last scene is still a great moment for Mickey--a moment where he finally leaves her guessing where he is instead of the reverse.

There's also the continued adventures of Captain Jack in the TARDIS. I like to imagine that the trio has been off having wild adventures between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boom Town." The three of them are so in sync, so connected in their shared love of time, space, and adventures that Mickey immediately notices that he doesn't belong. Also there's the continued evolution of Jack's relationship with the Doctor--he's not the superior mind with the most experience anymore.


But the real character moments are with the Doctor. He very quickly and easily captures his opponent and is all set to bring her back to her home planet to face justice, but he's then forced with the label of being her executioner. And suddenly he's called a murderer again. And even as Nine nears his end and his final redemption, he still isn't comfortable with the truth of that statement. He's killed two entire races, obliterated them in fact, and in many ways that makes him far worse from the creature that is sitting across the table from him.

The danger of the Doctor and the damage he does isn't easily resolved--even after he regenerates a couple of times. He's the most powerful creature left in the universe and that power is scary. As Margaret the Slitheen acknowledges, she has no where to run when the Doctor is looking.

Next Up: "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways." But first, a bonus picture of Captain Jack.

Note: This begins a "Watch A Doctor Who Episode A Day (ish)" series. Over the course of some weeks/months/years I've decided to watch an episode of the cult favorite a day (ish). For my few friends that I haven't convinced to love and adore this series about a mad man in a box (you know who you are) these posts will appear to be nothing but a fan girl thinking too much about her favorite television series (ish). But for you, the Converted, I hope that you'll have fun watching some episodes with me/hearing me rant about a time traveler and his faithful, TARDIS companion.

"Rose," "The End of the World," and "The Unquiet Dead"

I've always liked the idea of the Ninth Doctor more than I've liked the actual result. To be fair to the poor incarnation, I watched him after I'd watched most of David Tennant's run and Ten is a hard act to follow. But the actual premise of the Doctor's return to the small screen is pretty brilliant. Instead of just picking up where the now-cannon (ish) movie left off, with Time Lords a plenty and a content (ish) Doctor, the show begins after a war. While the Brits have let their national hero (ish) go off their screens, he's been through hell and back and he's far from the tea-sipping, book-reading Eighth Doctor that he was.

It's a pretty great idea. And I can just image the executives of BBC Wales realizing how brilliant it was when Russell T. Davies pitched it to them. And it's obvious in these first three episodes that the Doctor is a changed man. In "Rose," he picks up his first full-time companion in years and,with little more than a few warnings and some mysterious looks, whisks her away to the end of the world. The war is over and his world and people are gone, but the Doctor's anger, grief, and thirst for vengeance lead him right to the end of another world.

The man doesn't think. Rose takes the end of Earth rather badly (as I believe we all would) and if you think about it, world's end is a pretty horrible first date.  Martha gets to visit Shakespeare and Rose gets to see the remnants of everything she's ever known and believed burn up into nothing. The Doctor has taken her from home into destruction because endings are all the poor guy knows anymore. And when the man finally finds someone new to blame, he lashes out and kills Cassandra. When Rose asks him to stop, this last of his kind replies: "Everything has its time and everything dies."

Why these first three episodes don't always work is the fault of its ties to Classic Who. I haven't watched nearly enough of Doctors 1-7 to speak with any authority on the matter, however many of these old Who episodes can be categorized into "alien" and "historicals"--the Doctor either encounters some new race (Daleks, for example) or he goes back in time (cavemen for the win!). In "The End Of The World," the new series falls back on the alien story line and in "The Unquiet Dead" it falls back on the historical.


Which is fine. The Dickens story is fine. But it's not great and, at points, it's even boring (Sidenote: It also will now and forever be compared to "Vincent and the Doctor" and "The Unquiet Dead" doesn't come out on top in that battle.) It's brilliant when it focuses on our New Doctor--who refuses to listen to Rose's warnings and then ponders on the fact that he, the last of his kind, the explorer of the universe, is going to die in a basement. But for the most part the episode wants to focus on the walking zombies, the blue spirit smoke, and hey! That's DICKENS! And this just isn't very interesting. The threat of the zombies never feels quiet real. They're few in number, they're befuddled by 19th century doors, and all it takes is turning out the lights and turning up the gas for them to be thwarted.

But what's obvious is that at this early stage the show didn't quiet know what to do with itself. It had made this bold move and changed the Doctor Who universe forever, but it couldn't abandon it's classic roots. At times the Doctor has to act like fan-favorite Four and be goofy and strange and crazy, but Four never lived in a universe without Time Lords. The show wants to please its old fans with historicals, but it realizes that to gain new and young fans the show has to tell the tale twisted and can't become a history lesson (which Classic Who was partially created to be). This leaves poor Nine in a strange place--caught in the rift between two different shows that share the share universe and two different generations of viewers that don't often agree with each other.

Next Up: "Aliens of London," "World War Three," and "Dalek." Or probably mostly "Dalek" because I really don't like the Slitheen.

It’s a Disney cliché: The villain, finally defeated by the virtuous hero, falls to his or her death from a conveniently placed cliff/waterfall/castle buttress and disappears into the mists before we see the body hit the ground. It’s a convenient, goreless way to dispose of a character who has served their narrative purpose and now needs to meet justice. Parents are squeamish about exposing their kids to violence, and it’s understandable. That’s why I was a little shocked when I started watching Clone Wars—a Cartoon Network show set in the Star Wars universe between Episodes Two and Three. When characters die on this show, they don’t fall blissfully out of sight—they get stabbed through the freaking chest with a lightsaber!

Because of my recent short-lived interest in Parenthood and because I just watched the complete series Sports Night, I have a strange affection for Peter Krause. It’s not a strong affection, but it was enough for me to watch Dirty Sexy Money.

And you know what, it wasn’t bad. In fact, I sorta liked it. Far from what the promotional material, title, and basic marketing scheme (MORE LIONS! MAKE THE POSTER LOOK LIKE WE’RE STILL IN THE NINTIES! THEY’RE RICH!) would make the average viewer believe, the first season of the show shows some acting chops and some actual story telling. In fact, I liked the first season so much that I actually stuck around for the second season. Which was a mistake. But I’ll come back to that later.

The “money” part of the title centers on the Tripp family. A wealthy dynasty worth billions, they’re everything that one would expect. Their family’s personal problems/frequent lawsuits/and general tight spot getter-outer, Dutch George, mysterious dies in a plane crash at the beginning of the series, forcing Dutch’s son Nick (Krause) to take over. Nick, of course, has spent all his adult life running away from the Tripps, but no one says no to Donald Sutherland. Besides, Nick may have just learned that his father’s death wasn’t an accident.

When the show wanted to (or perhaps when it stopped trying) it could actual create something very watchable. There’s an amazing scene between Krause and Sutherland when Donald learns that his wife has been having a forty year affair that is understated, silent, and right. Then there’s the character of Brian Tripp (Glenn Fitzgerald) who learns how to be a father to one of the most adorable little boys in the world. Those were the good moments that shown in season one. But then season two happened and the main plot took over.

And see, the problem is that the main plot never really works. Perhaps the show, canceled after its second season, never had enough time to make it work. Or maybe Blair Underwood, brought in to be a villain, wasn’t interesting enough (“Look. We’ll cast Blair Underwood. People like him, right? And….we’ll do something with his character. We’ll figure that out later.) And then there was the sense that, constantly nervous about cancellation, the show runners were frequently trying to switch things up to entice viewers to stay. Therefore, they sped up the end of Nick’s marriage so that he can start one with one of the Tripps; Donald Sutherland’s character stops demanding acting and instead wastes away ill-used; characters do complete one-eighties so that they become likable; (Look. We’ll cast Lucy Liu. People like her, right? And….etc…”). This all culminates in the second season episode called “The Facts” where the show runners just stop even trying and offer strange, off-putting mini-stories that don’t fit into the show’s overall cannon. Near the end there, I couldn’t help imagining frantic writers throwing out crazy ideas in the hopes that stranger stories would make everything better. But they didn’t stop being frantic long enough to realize that none of these ideas were any good.

Which is a shame. Because for that first season, Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause actually had something going there. It wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t really even about money. But it was pretty good. And then people panicked, and a show that had potential just became another cancelled show.

I’m not one of those people that like straight-out comedy very much. I’m not saying that they don’t have their time and place in my television viewing line-up, but pure comedy shows with no deep, sad undercurrent or broken people quickly become boring for me. I think it’s why I’m having trouble with 30 Rock lately. The show is purely about the one-liners and laughs. The main roles are more caricatures than reality. They can’t be deeply sad or flawed because, let’s all face it, they aren't real people.

The other day, as Elizabeth and I watched the 1985 classic Witness, I couldn’t help but hear my father’s voice over entire scenes of Harrison Ford’s thriller: “Look what she does here---she fills his glass first,” “She how the Amish almost seem to rise-up out of the land,” “Now this is foreshadowing” and, of course, “Be careful out among the English.” I remember the nights when my dad would watch it for some reason or another and would let us all watch the barn raising scene, a scene that I believe I have watched more than any other in cinematic history. By the time I got around to watching the movie in its entirety, I already knew the entire basic plot because my father loved to tell it so much.

In the end, perhaps most of the movies and books we read and loved as children quickly become a part of our nostalgia, a part of our lives that we never want to have tarnished or forgotten. We love them because of who we were or where we were at the time and therefore protect them as a piece of our history. Take, for example, the BBC version of C.S Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Looking back at them now, they suck. A lot. The acting is atrocious, the adaptation too literal, and Aslan is some strange puppet/electronic thing that can barely open its mouth.But as a child, I couldn’t help but love those movies to death. Each Friday, my siblings and I would walk to Calvin College’s audio and electronic or something department and my dad would check us out a new one. I swear we just rotated them out for each other. (To be fair, however, we all knew from the very beginning that the Lucy actress was horrific. We still say “A badger, I’d love to see a badger!“ whenever anything Narnia-related comes up in conversation.) Even after all these years, when we saw Walden Media’s superior The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, we all hoped to hear BBC’s old Narnia theme somewhere in the soundtrack.Take for example, Zoobilee Zoo. Besides having perhaps the most fantastic opening sequence of anything that has ever come before or since, it’s basically about a bunch of grown-ups dressed up as animals doing stuff. The plots are somewhat of a distant memory, but that song tune is forever ingrained in my head (my older siblings could probably sing it to you, word for word, right now). The same can be said for The Polka Dot Door, Inspector Gadget, or Sharon Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show (famous for the song “Shinnamarink.” And yes, I can so do all the hand motions). Do these shows now look outdated if not somewhat disturbing? Maybe, but for me they still bring up memories of sitting around in Grammy’s house as she cooked something in the kitchen down the hall. Pretty soon, she’d call us to breakfast and we’d all run back and sneak around to our spots at the table and laugh and talk and laugh some more. In the end, these nostalgic parts of our past connect us to moments of time that are gone and people that we love who we’ve lost.

You’ve been there. You’re at a party, someone says something outrageous, and before you can clamp the imaginary hand over your mouth, you say, “Inconceivable!” Before you know it, you’ve started off a chain of Princess Bride quoting and nostalgia. After about three hours of this, you being to sympathize with Oppenheimer and think--“What have I done?” The truth of the matter is that mass media has forever tainted words and phrases, forcing your mind to make the connection almost against your will. This is our ever growing list of words we can’t say.

“Run” Glee may have little to no artistic value, but damn can it churn out a catchy cover. In the episode “Bad Reputation,” several of the characters try act differently than they usually do (you know, in their previous, totally consistent characterizations). For some reason, this involves singing a terrible, terrible hit from 1975--“Run, Joey, Run.” But now in the Schmitfer house, every time someone says “run,” this song must immediately be sung. Mulder’s getting backed into a dark alley by Krycek? “Run, Mulder, run!” Low on Hit Points in a video game? “Run, Shepard, run!” Accidentally turn on an episode of Glee? “Run, everyone, run!”

“Eagle” This one can be really annoying--especially because it’s one of those references that a lot of people may not know. Zach Braff’s “Eeeeeagle” can ruin a movie (like the new Channing Tatum movie that we weren’t planning to see but we could never actually see because every time they said “Eagle!” we would laugh), a scientific discussion about our national bird, or a car trip when one happens to see a bird out of the window that could possibly look a little bit like an eagle. We have yet to go the distance and actually do the Turk and JD routine, but it’s probably one of the greatest running gags on Scrubs.

“Maybe” As indecisive people, we say “maybe” a lot. And every time, this excellent Flight of the Conchords song must be sung.

“We’ll do that!”  from one of the greatest Star Trek films ever made, Galaxy Quest. This narrowly beats out, “Miners, not minors!”--what can we say, it’s a quotable film. But for sheer frequency, “We’ll do that!” wins. We say it any time we make a plan…or decide what to have for dinner.

“Delete” “Exterminate” “Assimilate” Damn Daleks, Cybermen, and Borg. If you guys ever got together, you could rule the world. And our vocabulary.

“3PO?!? Where could he be?!?!?!?” Ah, the dulcet whine of Luck Skywalker. This phrase has only increased in usage after Elizabeth named her Droid Incredible “C-3P0.” Whenever he gets lost, out pops an inevitable Mark Hamill impression. (BTW, yes, we name our inanimate objects. Deal with it.)

“Would You Kindly” Just the mention of this phrase gives us the shivers. We wouldn’t dare spoil this for anyone who hasn’t played the game, but Bioshock will forever ruin this phrase. And 50s music.

“…in the world.” Oh, Jeremy Clarkson. Need to comically overemphasize the greatness of something you love? Just tack on this phrase to your favorite superlative, and you’re good to go.

“Stop.  Pooping.” From Parks & Recreation’s “The Flu.” Now, whenever we look at Rob Lowe, that line is all that we can hear. This should make for interesting future West Wing viewing. “Mr. President: Stop. Pooping.”

“Blondie.” What’s wrong with a mildly amusing strip from the Sunday funnies, you ask? Oh, no, no, no. Every time we hear it, we think “Kiss me, James” from the Lost finale. It makes us cry. Every single time. Curse you Darlton.

“Doctor!” No, not a physician, THE Doctor. This moment in Doctor Who history lives in all fans heart as the time when John Barrowman could just not keep a straight face. The over-the-top ending to an otherwise pretty excellent season is more then a little groan-worthy, and tarnishes perhaps the best acting David Tennant does in the entire series five minutes later. The fact that Barrowman must have thought the same makes us smile every time the word comes up. BARROWMAN!!!

Bonus Word: Epidemic. ’Nuff said.