Doctor Who: 1x12 "Bad Wolf" & 1x13 "The Parting of Ways"

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DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE TWELVE: “BAD WOLF”

It all led up to this.

Doctor Who: 1x12: “Bad Wolf” Written by Russell T. Davies

The Summary:

The Doctor wakes up in a closet, not knowing how he got there, and a young woman named Lynda helps him by explaining that he’s been transmatted to a Big Brother house in the distant future (200,100 to be precise) in which house-mates who are voted out are disintegrated.  Rose is also transmatted into a game – The Weakest Link and Anne Robinson is now the Anne-Droid.  At first, she thinks it’s just a silly game until the Anne-Droid disintegrates the first contestant deemed The Weakest Link.  Jack, too, wakes up in a game show – this time a makeover type show, which he loves since he keeps getting to be naked on television.  The Doctor figures out that if he gets evicted from the Big Brother House, he will not be disintegrated because something or someone very powerful got through the TARDIS defenses to get him there; meanwhile, Rose is getting more and more terrified that she’ll be disintegrated next and Jack stops having fun when the androids doing him makeover decide he would look better without a head.  The Doctor escapes, bringing Lynda with him, and he realizes he’s on Satellite 5, where he, Rose, and Adam had been hundred years before.  Lynda explains that after the Doctor ditched clean-up duty, all the news shut down and caused total chaos until the game shows took the news’ place and everyone became complacent.  Kinda an awesome commentary on how television makes us complacent, but a bit unrealistic, since social media had to have grown exponentially in 198,000 years (of course, Facebook had just been developed at this point and Tweeting/Tumblring the Revolution was not yet a thing).  Oh yeah, and the whole thing is being run by… The Bad Wolf Corporation!  Dun dun daaaa!  Jack, with a couple guns, finds the Doctor and Lynda, and together they all go find Rose, who is about to be disintegrated.  They seem to arrive just in time, but as Rose and the Doctor are running to each other, Rose is disintegrated.  The Doctor gets a teensy bit upset, and the three go up to Level 500 to take over the Game Station.  There, thanks to well-timed solar flare interference, the Controller (a woman whose been hooked into the computer since she was 5 years old) explains that her masters are trying to destroy the human race and she called him there for help.  Her “masters” then disintegrate her.  And surprise!  It’s the Daleks!  And they’re not disintegrating people, they’re transmatting them to their ships to convert them into Daleks.  They open communications with the Doctor and reveal that they are holding Rose Tyler hostage so the Doctor will not intervene.  Instead, the Doctor tells Rose he’s coming to get her.

The Women:

Rose Tyler, Lynda Moss, Crosbie, Fitch, Colleen

The Conversations:

Five named women and no conversations?!

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

Oh, bother

The Tally:

Episode 1x12 Total: 0

Series 1 Total: 16.5

9^th Doctor Total: 16.5

Rose as Companion Total: 16.5

Russell T Davis Era Total: 16.5

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE THIRTEEN: “THE PARTING OF WAYS”

In which Rose becomes a goddess then has her power stripped away in a non-literal women-in-refrigerators way.

Doctor Who: 1x13: “The Parting of Ways” Written by Russell T. Davies

Due to how long this review is, I'm cutting it here.  No spoilers for anything beyond Series 1.

The Summary:

The Doctor has just finished explaining to the Daleks that he’s going to rescue Rose and stop their invasion.  He and Jack get onto the TARDIS, which the Controller had brought onboard, and take it to the Daleks’ main ship.  There, they find Rose, but also the Dalek Emperor, who survived the Time War, but apparently he went slightly insane in the process.  The human DNA used to create the new Daleks has tainted them and they now worship the Dalek Emperor as their god.  The Doctor, Rose, and Jack escape back to the Game Station, where they begin mounting a defense against the (now accelerated) Dalek invasion.  After giving both Rose and the Doctor goodbye kisses, Jack takes Lynda and the Game Station programmers down to the lower levels to organize the first wave of defense.  The Doctor and Rose stay on Level 500 in order to build a Delta Wave, which would wipe out the Dalek fleet.  The Doctor asks Rose to help him out by using the TARDIS to create it, but he sends her back to Earth to be with her mother and Mickey instead.  Mickey and Jackie try to explain to Rose that the Doctor did the right thing in saving her.  Rose disagrees and after realizing that Bad Wolf is a link between her and the Doctor that is meant to be a message that she can get back to him, tries to get the TARDIS to help her get back to the Doctor.  Mickey, realizing Rose has finally made her decision about who she wants to be with, helps her, by trying to pull open the TARDIS console so Rose can look into the Heart of the TARDIS.  Jackie tries to dissuade Rose, but ultimately helps Rose by getting a tow truck to tie up to the console.  Rose looks into the Heart of the TARDIS, the doors slam shut and the TARDIS dematerializes.  Meanwhile, on the Game Station, Jack had lied to everyone about their ability to defeat the Daleks and they were really just meant to keep the Daleks occupied long enough to give the Doctor time to create his Delta Wave.  Everyone dies (including Lynda and Jack).  The Daleks breech Level 500 and are about to exterminate the Doctor, when the TARDIS materializes and Rose, all glowy and Time-Lord-Goddess-like floats out of the TARDIS and kicks ass.  She creates the Bad Wolf meme by scattering it across the universe; she unmakes the Daleks, and she brings Jack back to life.  Because the Time Vortex running through her is what gives her this power, the Doctor fears it will burn out her brain.  In order to save her, he kisses her, thus depowering her/killing the Bad Wolf entity.  Rather than making any difference in Rose’s life (she can’t remember any of it), it changes the Doctor’s life by forcing him to regenerate.  Despite the problematic parts of the scene, it’s still incredibly emotional as we say goodbye to Nine and welcome Ten.

The Women:

Rose Tyler, Lynda Moss, Jackie Tyler

The Conversations:

Jackie and Rose:  Jackie tries to get Rose to stop trying to break into the Heart of the TARDIS, saying that Rose’s father, Pete, would say the same; and Rose claims that Pete would never ask her to stop.  Rose then reveals that she went back in time to meet Pete and sat with him while he died.  Jackie runs out.  The rating: 0

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

“The Doctor took me back in time, and I met Dad.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Remember when Dad died?  There was someone with him.  A girl.  A blonde girl.  She held his hand.  You saw her from a distance, Mum.  You saw her!  Think about it!  That was me!  You saw me!”

“Stop it!”

“That’s how good the Doctor is!”

- Rose and Jackie Tyler

I couldn't pick out a particular line in this exchange.  I love Jackie, as if that wasn’t clear, and I don’t think she gets enough credit.  I can’t imagine what was going through her mind.  One of the reasons I think Jackie was so reluctant to deal with the time-travel thing is that she couldn’t understand why, if there is time travel, her husband’s death couldn’t be reversed.  And here it is, proof that perhaps they tried.  And that rocks Jackie’s world and completely changes how she is with the Doctor and the TARDIS and Rose traveling with him for the rest of the show.

The Tally:

Episode 1x13 Total: 0

Series 1 Total: 16.5

9^th Doctor Total: 16.5

Rose as Companion Total: 16.5

Russell T Davis Era Total: 16.5

Before the next post on Sunday, I’ll have an analysis of this series’ ratings.

For Further Discussion: Mickey and the Nice Guy

First off, there is a hell of a lot of possible topics for this from these two episodes, including but not limited to invasion of privacy, the extremes of reality show culture, women in refrigerators, and the “Bury Your Gays” trope.  Some of these I plan on talking about for later episodes, and some may or may not have trilogies of books already written about them.

So, from what I’ve seen Mickey takes a lot of heat from fans, particularly in this season, but personally, I love him.  Although it was probably not intended, I consider Mickey an excellent subversion of the Nice Guy.

And if you’re one of those people who are like, “I don’t get it, why are nice guys bad?”  This is what we mean when we talk about Nice Guys (note the capitalization):

Nice Guys are those guys who constantly complain about how women only like jerks without realizing that they are the jerks.

Still like “erm…”?

Nice Guys are the guys that befriend a girl in order to get into her pants then get offended when she considers him a real friend.  Nice Guys are those guys who do things for their female friends and then call them bitches and cunts when said female friends don’t give them sex and/or a relationship in repayment.

The basic elements of the Nice Guy are, therefore, befriending a girl and perhaps giving her gifts or doing favors for her, attempting to be romantic with said girl, becoming irrationally angry when said girl rejects his romantic advances and goes for another guy.

So, let’s look at Mickey:

Befriends a Girl and Gives Her Gifts or Does Favors for Her:  Rose has pretty much known Mickey her whole life, since they lived on the same estate and Jackie is seen taking care of him in “Father’s Day.”  It’s safe to say they’re friends.  In the pilot, he takes the plastic arm to the dumpster and drives Rose to Clive’s house.  In “Boom Town,” he brings Rose her passport.  So, this one gets a check mark.  But wait, Mickey isn’t just Rose’s friend; he’s her boyfriend!  And she considers him to be so until at least “The Empty Child” when she tells Jack that she has a boyfriend.  He does those things for her when she asks him to because he’s actually being nice to the girl he’s dating (and in “Boom Town” still cares about).

Attempts to be Romantic with Said Girl:  This is most of their interactions, and in “Boom Town” he evens suggests they get a hotel room.  Check again.  But wait, they’re dating.  And in “Boom Town,” it’s Rose who initiates the romance by implying the passport was just an excuse to see him.

Get Irrationally Angry When Said Girl Rejects Him and Goes for Another Guy:  When Mickey isn’t trying to kiss Rose (or isn’t saving the world), he’s yelling(ish) at Rose or the Doctor for how she prefers the Doctor to him.  Check!  But wait, with only a bit of snark, Rose ran off on Mickey, her boyfriend, who then became a murder suspect because she disappeared for a year.  The next time we see him in “Aliens of London”/ “World War III” he’s less angry that she’s with another guy and more angry that she’s with a guy who ordered him to launch a missile at her.  And what cinches it – in “The Parting of Ways,” what does he do when Rose tells him there is absolutely nothing for her on Earth?  He does everything he possibly can to get her back to the Doctor.

And ok, this has mostly been a defense of Mickey’s character, but I like think of it as a guide for potential Nice Guys to what real nice guys are.  And they can’t tell me “yeah, but he still finished last.”  This is the man that Martha “Badass Motherfucker” Jones chose to marry, and that is far from last.