Doctor Who Over Analysis: From 9 to 12 [Part 1]

Note: I will be going into detail about the entirety of the Doctor Who revival series that began in 2005. This particular piece will be discussing plot details from Season 1. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

In January of this year, I returned to another semester at college to find my roommate excitedly carrying several DVD box sets. Those box sets: seasons 1-5 of Doctor Who, that series that Tumblr will not shut up about. His mission: marathon the entire series with me. So over the course of 4 months, I have completely caught up on Doctor Who. Every season, every special, every doctor.

So you know what that means: it’s time to over analyze and discuss the quality of a show about a British man who travels through time and picks up random women… to travel with.

The Ninth Doctor - Season 1

For anyone wanting to get into the show, know that you should never skip any Doctor. In this case, that sentence means “I don’t care how much everyone likes David Tennant, you have to watch Eccleston first.” Yes, the show kind of falls flat on its face in the first season as neither the Doctor or his companion are all that great. Season one is not about The Doctor, however, at least not entirely, it’s more about building the world of Doctor Who for the new audience. Like a proper reboot, it assumes you haven’t seen the original, so basically everything is set to zero. Yes, Eccleston is technically the 9th Doctor, but to most he is the first. Any continuity from the previous series is used as necessary, ergo, the Daleks are still around and the Time War still happened, and that’s about it.

The longer the series goes on the more I appreciate the restraint the first season had. In terms of TV production it would have been so easy to make every episode about the Daleks and Davros or The Master, or anything from Old Who honestly, but instead it chooses to form its own identity while tossing in references to the original or borrowing from it sparingly. Where the season fails is in our main characters, and even then it’s more of a stubbed toe than a broken ankle (if that makes any sense). 

Eccleston as The Doctor is totally serviceable. He has no real discernible personality other than “man who occasionally does something kooky”, but in the later episodes he really earns his cold attitude. “Boom Town” specifically really gets to the core of Eccleston's Doctor: guilt. The short history of The Doctor is, the 9th doctor is the one who just got done genocide-ing the entirety of the time lord race, and is now just traveling around trying to deal with his guilt of doing so. “Boom Town” finds The Doctor faced with the decision to take an alien back to their home planet, but doing so will mean their execution at the hands of their own people. That's a pretty heavy choice to make for someone who just got done exterminating 2 (Gallifreyans and Daleks) races. Facing The Doctor with this choice also opens up the more interesting aspect of the show: The Doctor himself. Like Star Trek or any other sci-fi show, what keeps the audience invested often isn't the space age technology or monster design, but the characters in the world "Boom Town" is one such episode where the sci-fi hijinks takes a back seat, and asks "hey, isn't The Doctor basically being a horrible person who genocide-ed 2 whole races kind of morally reprehensible?" It's an aspect of The Doctor that comes up alot and it's what makes him interesting: no, The Doctor is not as perfect and wise and peaceful as Rose or any other of his companions had been led to believe, in fact he's just as human (ie, a believable character) as you or me.

Then there is Rose. Goddamnit I hate Rose. I know there’s a fanbase for her, but boy is she just plain annoying. I understand her purpose; she's a human who's thrust into a world of mystery and adventure as she tags along on The Doctor's adventures. She exists as the newbie character so she (and therefore the audience) can have exposition spouted to us. The problem with Rose is that she's just that and nothing more. All of The Doctor's companions have this problem were they all take a tremendous back seat to The Doctor's exploits and the only real interesting them about them is how their relationship with The Doctor works, and that's something that could use it's own article. Rose at her core is far too dumb and far to bland to be anything more than a footnote in The Doctor's world. She doesn't have some special purpose like Clara, no secret identity like Donna, and really isn't all that fun to be around compared to Amy & Rory or Martha Jones. That being said, the series at least makes an attempt to make her more interesting (or at least sympathetic) with "Father's Day". This episode finds Rose and The Doctor at the scene were Rose's father died several years ago due to a random car accident. Overcome with emotion, Rose then intervenes into her father's death, causing a paradox which causes time-monsters to appear out of nowhere and attempt to correct that mistake. OK that last part doesn't make much sense, but this episode does show that Rose does have some level of motivation as a character: family. Sure, she doomed the fabric of existence trying to save one person, but that one person was her father, and according to Rose and her mother, his death was so pointless and meaningless to the rest of the world and so painful and meaningful to them, that Rose thought that causing this paradox would someone right some tremendous wrong. That's some pretty heavy stuff, and I applaud Rose for being so caring, but that doesn't change the fact that any piece of sci-fi media can tell you that interfering with the past in such a significant way would be a really, really, REALLY stupid idea. Rose's time as companion certainly felt wasted by the end, but I would be lying if the efforts of Russel T. Davies and the rest of the writing crew didn't make her a somewhat tolerable character by her end.

As an introduction to the series, Season 1 is a solid starting point for Doctor Who. While later seasons definately improve upon the overall structure and pacing of the show, Season 1 certainly has more going on under the hood than anyone really expected. 

Continuing sometime in the near future, Part 2 of this little series will focus on David Tennant and seasons 2-4. See you next time.