Doctor Who: 1x03 "The Unquiet Dead

Welcome to the third episode review for Fandom Approved, Bechdel Tested.  I’ll be starting with a rewatch of Doctor Who.  In each review, there will be spoilers for the episode reviewed and all previous (obviously); any spoilers for future episodes will be highlight-to-read or under a “Read More” bar.

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE THREE: “THE UNQUIET DEAD”

A fun little ghost story romp into the past with Charles Dickens.  Unfortunately the twist at the end is how idiotic everyone but Rose was.

Doctor Who: 1x03: “The Unquiet Dead” Written by Mark Gatiss

The Summary:

Meaning to land in 1860 in Naples, the Doctor takes Rose to Cardiff, 1869.  There, a funeral home director, Mr. Sneed, and his maid, Gwyneth, are dealing with the corpses rising, attacking people, and taking their bodies on joy rides.  Meanwhile, Charles Dickens is performing A Christmas Carol.  The latest zombie, Mrs. Peace, ends up in his audience, where the Doctor, Rose, Mr. Sneed, and Gwyneth all end up to fix whatever’s wrong.  When Rose confronts Gwyneth about stuffing an old woman into the hearse, Mr. Sneed kidnaps her.  The Doctor enlists Charles Dickens’s help in saving Rose.  When Rose wakes up, she is nearly killed by two zombies and narrowly escapes thanks to the Doctor.  While Charles Dickens complains the entire that what he’s seeing isn’t possible, the Doctor tries to figure out how to stop what’s happening.  After they figure out Gwyneth is psychic, he has her host a séance.  The zombies turn out to be created by an alien called the Gelth possessing them; the Gelth claim to be near extinction victims of the Time War and ask for the Doctor’s help in giving them dead bodies to possess permanently.  Despite the séance company including a genre savvy genius, the genre savvy genius, a man whose entire income is dependent on dead people staying dead, and a very religious woman who thought this was all unholy witchcraft until two seconds ago, and despite the first thing the Gelth have done once they get into a body is (attempting) to murder somebody, only Rose protests that this might not be a good plan.  The Doctor ignores Rose’s protests and has Gwyneth open the rift in time and space so that the Gelth could come through.  Surprisingly-not-surprisingly, the Gelth are actually not anywhere close to extinction and want to kill everyone in the world, starting with the Doctor and Rose, in order to take over.  Charles Dickens comes up with the idea to blow them all up at the last second and Gwyneth, who died a bit earlier, does it.  This episode is the second instance of the Bad Wolf meme and a more overt set-up for “Father’s Day.”

The Women:

Rose, Gwyneth           

The Conversations:

1. Rose and Gwyneth:  Rose confronts Gwyneth about stuffing Mrs Peace into the hearse.  Gwyneth tries to reassure Rose that everything’s fine before Mr. Sneed interrupts them to knock-out and kidnap Rose.  The conversation can barely be considered one, so the rating: 1

2. Rose and Gwyneth:  Rose and Gwyneth end up in the kitchen while the Doctor and Charles Dickens investigate the zombies.  While the essence of their conversation is comparing their lives and pushing forward the idea that Gwenyth is psychic as well as presenting the Bad Wolf meme again, the vehicles for their conversation are men – Mr. Sneed, the Doctor, Rose’s father, the butcher boy Gwyneth has a crush on.  The rating: 0.5

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

“You would say that, miss, because that’s very clear inside your head, that you think I’m stupid … It’s true though.  Things might be different where you’re from, but here and now I know my own mind, and the angels need me.” – Gwyneth (to Rose)

Feeling empowered for possibly the first time, Gwyneth delivers this awesome line to Rose who is doing the same thing she always hates when it’s done to her – talking about Gwyneth like she isn’t there and has no say.  I wish this had more of a pay-off because Rose is, of course and really rather obviously, right, and Gwyneth really does not understand at all.

The Tally:

Episode 1x03 Total: 1.5

Series 1 Total: 8

9^th Doctor Total: 8

Rose as Companion Total: 8

Russell T Davis Era Total: 8

For Further Discussion:  Facts vs. Faith

I’ve said before that I think Rose’s biggest strength is her ability to quickly analyze all the facts she’s given and come to a usually correct idea about what’s going on.  This is often brushed off as her having a “feeling” about something, an annoyingly sexist concept that men have ideas and women have feelings, and it’s definitely done so in this episode.  Rose takes all her givens about zombies and how to treat the dead and analyzes that along with the Gelth’s attempted murder of her and figures out that this is not a great plan.  Of course, the Doctor doesn’t listen.

But I think the real battle of wills in this episode is between Rose and Gwyneth.  Rose’s greatest weakness is self-righteousness, and her assuredly in her own cleverness has only grown since she’s begun traveling.  Gwyneth, on the other hand, is all compassion and selflessness and faith in the goodness of others.  And Gwyneth delivers a great blow at Rose’s self-righteousness that ultimately… doesn’t pay off at all.  The audience can’t even entertain the idea that Gwyneth could be right, the set-up for the Gelth being not just out for their own self-interest but full on evil was way too obvious.

What really bothers me about this isn’t that one character was wrong; it’s that they set up Gwyneth’s downfall as being symptomatic of a lack of education and belief in God.  It’s not just the “educated” who are right, and what could have been a wonderfully feminist discussion ends up being rather classist.

Doctor Who: 1x02 "The End of the World"

Welcome to the second episode review for Fandom Approved, Bechdel Tested.  I’ll be starting with a rewatch of Doctor Who.  In each review, there will be spoilers for the episode reviewed and all previous (obviously); any spoilers for future episodes will be highlight-to-read or under a “Read More” bar.

Please comment, share, and subscribe!

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE TWO: “THE END OF THE WORLD”

Ok.  I’ve gotta say that on my very first watch, I nearly stopped at only a few minutes into this episode.  And I’m so glad I didn’t.  I think the episode really hit its stride when Cassandra is introduced, and I think this episode introduced me to the morality play that is Doctor Who much more than the first episode, in which everyone’s self-righteous and yelling at each other, did.

Doctor Who: 1x02: “The End of the World” Written by Russell T Davis

The Summary:

Picking up where last episode left off – with Rose running onto the TARDIS to join the Doctor in seeing the universe, for those with a crap short term memory – the Doctor brings Rose to the future, around the year five billion, after doing a bit.  They do a lot of bits.  Anyway, the place the Doctor brings Rose to is Earth – or technically a space station/observation deck orbiting Earth while it burns/dies from the sun expanding.  Which is kind of a dick move.  Rose gets totally freaked out at aliens who have come to watch the death of her home planet for fun – or “art,” which is a really interesting subject I wish I had time to talk about (maybe in the comments) – and she especially freaks out over the “Last Human,” Lady Cassandra, who is merely a flap of skin with just lips and eyes and who can still talk despite the lack of vocal chords.  It’s quickly revealed, at least to the audience, that The Adherents of the Repeated Meme (why the hell isn’t that a thing on Tumblr?) is sabotaging the space station!  It actually turns out it was Cassandra – since a meme is just an idea – who is confident she will escape any prosecution by turning it into a civil rights circus in the courts.  Of course, a lady-tree named Jabe sacrifices herself so the Doctor could save everyone and then kill Cassandra, the second of which is probably more unusual than the first.  In the end, the Doctor explains what happened to Gallifrey, and they go for chips in contemporary London.  This episode marks the first appearance of the Face of Boe and of the Bad Wolf meme.

The Women:

Rose, Jackie, Lady Cassandra, Jabe, Raffalo

The Conversations:

1. Raffalo and Rose: After running away from the other aliens for being too alien, Rose chats with an alien plumber who is only allowed to speak when given permission.  Now that she’s not surrounded by the richest rich people in the universe who are watching the Earth burn for entertainment, Rose bonds somewhat with Raffalo.  But most of their conversation is Rose realizing that she just jumped into a blue box that’s bigger on the inside than the outside to fly through time and space with a man she knows nothing about, which is, you know, valid.  Unfortunately, I’m gonna have to give the rating: 0

2. Jackie and Rose on the phone: Despite being five billion years in the future, the Doctor fixes Rose’s phone so she can call home to her mother.  Jackie and Rose have a cute mother-daughter chat that reassures Rose (for a little while at least) that this time-travelling-and-meeting-aliens thing is really something she can handle.  The rating: 1

3. Cassandra and Rose: In a scene that solidified for me that Doctor Who is something I wanted to watch, Rose confronts Cassandra about what humanity really is.  The rating: 2

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

“'Cause you're not human. You've had it all nipped and tucked and flattened till there's nothing left. Anything human got chucked in the bin. You're just skin, Cassandra. Lipstick and skin.” – Rose Tyler (to Cassandra)

As I said previously, this episode really solidifies the morality play nature of Doctor Who (in New Who), and I think it’s at least partially this line that does it. Of course, it carries an unfortunate implication regarding the “natural” versus the “unnatural” woman. But I think the intended idea, and one that still gets across marvelously, is that humanity is change and progress and evolution and that trying to hold humanity back from that strips us of our humanity, in all senses of the word, and that trying to adhere to the “natural” state of humanity makes you “unnatural” – overall, an important message for a few social and political movements I could think of (remember that one of Cassandra’s main issues with other humans is their “breeding” practices).

The Tally:
Episode 1x02 Total: 3
Series 1 Total: 6.5
9th Doctor Total: 6.5
Rose as Companion Total: 6.5
Russell T Davis Era Total: 6.5

Doctor Who: 1x01 "Rose"

Welcome to the first episode review for Fandom Approved, Bechdel Tested.  I’ll be starting with a rewatch of Doctor Who.  In each review, there will be spoilers for the episode reviewed and all previous (obviously); any spoilers for future episodes will be highlight-to-read or under a “Read More” bar.

Please comment, share, and subscribe!

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE ONE: “ROSE”

I actually really like this episode.  I know a lot of people consider it sub-par as a Doctor Who episode and as a pilot, but I think without this episode I never would have gotten into the show because I didn’t know much about the show other than that it’s very, very British.  And I am not at all British.  And I need something to ground me, so having a character I can relate to as the POV character was rather reassuring. 

Doctor Who: 1x01: “Rose” Written by Russell T Davis

The Summary:

Rose is a super ordinary girl living a super ordinary life.  (And I don’t mean Hollywood I-have-a-job-people-would-kill-for-but-oh-my-god-I-hate-it-for-no-reason-cuz-that’s-what-ordinary-people-are-like-right? kind of ordinary.  Nor the-let’s-just-leave-her-as-a-blank-slate-for-the-audience-to-fill-in kind of ordinary.  She’s a nineteen year old girl who lives with her mother on an estate (public/subsidized housing for us USAmericans) and wakes up with bed head and goes to work a monotonous job and has a boyfriend who’s a mechanic and she has her own damn mind and way of observing and assessing the world.)  But then this ordinary girl’s life is turned upside down when the mannequins in her shop come alive and try to kill her!  She’s saved at the last second by a mysterious man who introduces her to the world as it is rather than as people think it is.  This wise man (who’s also a wise guy), The Doctor, reveals himself to be a gatekeeper to the universe’s mystery and wonder, but tells her to forget he exists.  This ordinary but clever and curious girl cannot be stopped and she investigates on her own, eventually regrouping with the Doctor (albeit slightly reluctantly since he just pulled off her boyfriend’s head without considering whether it would kill him… it makes sense in context).  Together, using Rose’s unique skills, they save the world.  So impressed by Rose’s quick thinking in a crisis, the Doctor offers her a chance to see all of time and space and become even more of a hero.  But wait… why does this sound so familiar?  Oh right.  Except – joy upon joy – they’ve allowed a woman to take the hero’s part!  Oh happy day!

The Women:

Rose, Jackie (remember that to count the character must be named and onscreen)

The Conversations:

1. Jackie and Rose with Debbie and Beth:  After the explosion at Henrik’s, Jackie talks with a couple friends on the phone ad interacts with Rose.  Their conversation is about Rose’s safety, the explosion and potential compensation.  They never mention a man, but as Debbie and Beth are not onscreen characters and Mickey is in the room, though not participating, the rating: 0.5

2. Jackie and Rose:  After Rose wakes up the next morning, Jackie reminds her that she no longer has a job, and the two discuss possible jobs.  Jackie harps on Rose more about getting compensation and Rose harps on Jackie about nailing the cat door down.  As much as the Doctor doesn’t want domestics on his TARDIS, I really love the domestic scenes between Rose and her mother.  The rating: 2

3. Jackie and Rose on the phone:  After the Doctor tells Rose the Nestene Consciousness is starting the invasion, Rose calls Jackie to warn her not to go into town.  Since they are on the phone, the rating: 1

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

“Got no a-levels.  No job.  No future.  But I’ll tell you what I have got, Jericho Street Junior School’s Under 7’s gymnastics team.  I got the bronze.” – Rose Tyler (to herself) 

Ok, so that’s stretching the “woman to woman” part a bit, but this is one of my absolute favorite quotes of the episode, and a defining moment for Rose’s character.

The Tally:

Episode 1x01 Total: 3.5

Series 1 Total: 3.5

9^th Doctor Total: 3.5

Rose as Companion Total: 3.5

Russell T Davis Era Total: 3.5

For Further Discussion: Rose’s Characterization and Motivations

Spoiler Warning: all of Series 1