|
BBC Father's Day |
|
| Story No. | 168 |  |
| Production Code | Series One Episode Eight | |
| Dates | May 14, 2005 |
|
With Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper,
Camille Coduri Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Joe Ahearne Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Mal Young. |
| Synopsis: Rose wants to visit 1987 - the day her father died. |
'Domestic' Done Right by Adrian Loder 25/5/05
Wow... Father's Day was incredible. I thought Dalek was good, but was not as impressed with it as much of the rest of fandom. Father's Day is, in my opinion, the Ninth Doctor's first classic story.
I shed tears during this one. I've largely been against the 'domestic' stuff, and this episode is full of it, but it works this time. The element of time paradoxes and time travel makes it otherworldly and unusual from the outset, allowing it to be more interesting and intriguing than workaday bickering would normally be. On top of that we have the Doctor, faced with no hope, no plan, bravely coming through to begin saving the day, full of compassion, trying to make things right without making Rose lose her father again, giving of himself in defence of humans even though they can be "stupid apes".
And mirroring this, we have Rose's father. He recognises that the Doctor tried to protect him, and Rose, and that his and Rose's mistakes have undone any hope for that and possibly ruined all the Doctor's plans. I really cried - it wasn't trite, or cliche, or overly done, or maudlin or anything - it was perfectly acted and scripted, and evoked genuine feeling.
And so many good moments - the Doctor playing with baby Rose and his total authoritarian attitude in dealing with Jackie and the rest being particularly noteworthy.
I think I like Rose now. Oh, I've not said as much that I disliked her before, but I was starting to. I guess part of me objected to a nineteen-year-old Londoner just hopping aboard the TARDIS and being so dominant from the outset. Now that the past two stories have highlighted the truth - "I know what I'm doing. You don't!" - Rose can now safely be a heroine in her own right without making the titular character of the series look ineffectual by comparison. This story also connects her more with the audience, I think, establishes her as, at heart, an ordinary person, which makes her more sympathetic, and also reestablishes the contrast with the Doctor that had been lacking. He is alien - not one of us - which makes him more interesting to watch, and to appreciate his ability to do things we can't, and Rose can now be what she ought to have been from the start - an intelligent, strong, smart person capable of dealing with strange and dangerous circumstances better than most but still just a human being. However, she does still wear entirely too much mascara. And, you know, Billie Piper really does have some honking big front teeth, doesn't she?
This episode was special, and was practically perfect. Repeated viewing will tell the full story but this goes down with The Caves of Androzani and Earthshock in the annals of Doctor Who's most tragically-inspired stories. I've enjoyed the new series, in general, up until now, but this is the great moment I'd been waiting for - that moment when the new series' remarkable feeling of continuity with the original, and the way it has sought to make new by evolving from the old rather than redoing or replacing it, has finally coalesced and come together, getting everything just right and formed a genuine classic. I always had that inner feeling watching these shows that yes, this isn't just a new show called Doctor Who, it really IS Doctor Who, but too many little quibbles and divergences, new things that seemed to fiddle with fundamental parts of Doctor Who got in the way, kept it from realizing its full potential.
With Father's Day, that potential is reached, that astonishing and rarely accomplished feat where something old and something new exist side-by-side, and in this it has become something more than the sum of mere continuity references or reimaginings of Doctor-companion relationships shoehorned together to try and preserve the past without being enslaved to it. This IS Doctor Who, the Doctor Who I have watched all these long years, but it wasn't on a video cassette or a DVD, an audio CD or set in type on the pages of a book. Sonic screwdrivers and Autons and Daleks aren't the truly innate, magical thing that makes Doctor Who what it is, though their presence has been appreciated. Father's Day got to the heart of the old and kept it there, alive, while swirling about it whole new attitudes and ideas. It is new, and it is old: it is both.
Bravo Russell Davies, Paul Cornell, Joe Ahearne, Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper and Shaun Dingwall. You've achieved your aim, and I thank you for it.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! by Joe Ford 27/5/05
The most touching, poignant and emotional episode of Doctor Who ever, screened with performances so on the nail it should shut up those naysayers who constantly criticise its acting. Unfortunately all the good work done by the director and the actors is undone by one of the most ridiculously stupid scripts ever written.
Stupid mistake number one: The Doctor takes Rose back to the point of her father's death. I can see now what the point of Adam was in the grand season one plan, he was there to show us how much the Doctor trusts and respects Rose in comparison so he can be totally let down this week when she makes some silly mistakes. Why on Earth doesn't he just say no to her request? Taking somebody back to their father's death and not expecting them to do something to stop it is like shoving a steak in front of a starving man (or a missing episode of Doctor Who in front of an anal fan)... something that is bound to give in to no matter how much you trust them not to. The Doctor makes a horrific mistake in flaunting his abilities to her here and the consequences are all his fault, not hers.
Stupid mistake number two: He takes her back to see her father again! What a bastard! Not content with risking one visit back he pops her back to a point when they are already there the first time they went back. Isn't this incredibly dangerous? And utterly irresponsible? When she ran out and rescued him I was laughing my head off, the Doctor's horrified reaction makes him look like such a prat. When he turned on her and blamed her for being a stupid ape I thought he was being hypocritical to the point of insanity, if anybody was being stupid in this episode it's him. Remember the BBC past Doctor adventure The Witch Hunters? That book had a similar plot where the time travellers re-visited a time they had just left because Susan wanted to change something and it was Susan who set the controls and took them back. The Doctor was wise enough and smart enough to realise that staying during the witch trials would be dangerous and Susan would not be able to resist changing things. And he has every right to be angry when she pre-programmes the controls and does attempt to change things. The book still deals with these gripping time travel ideas but doesn't spoil the Doctor's integrity. Father's Day is the work of a good writer so it baffles me that he could get the Doctor so totally wrong.
Stupid mistake number three: Don't touch that baby, Rose the Doctor tells her knowing full well it will cause a temporal paradox and give the Reapers extra strength so what does he do? Leaves her within arm's reach of the child throughout the rest of the episode. Why the hell didn't he get that kid as far away from her as possible? Get Rose into the belfry or shove her down in the vestry? Nope he leaves them nice and close and suddenly gasps with horror when somebody hands her the kid. What a dickhead. (Was this really Eccleston's favourite script?)
Inexplicable rubbish: The first phone call blaring through everybody's phones. What the hell was all that about? The glowing TARDIS key and it suddenly materialising in the church and the empty TARDIS. How on Earth do the Reapers have the ability to affect the TARDIS so? Where the hell did they come from anyway? For what purpose do they cauterise time? Why did the car kept re-appearing waiting to claim Rose's dad? How does his death in a different place rewind everything that has happened? How comes the Reapers are satisfied that no changes are made at the end when it is made blatantly clear by the two scenes with Jackie and child Rose that in the original timeline nobody was there for her dad when he died and because of their interference Rose was in fact there and holding his hand whilst he died? Why didn't the Reapers see that as an adjustment to the timeline and disinfect Rose from the scene? Did anybody think this script through at all?
Blatant plagiarising from the book series: Russell T Davies made a very eloquent speech in the last Doctor Who Magazine that the books have to follow the series' lead and that they just aren't quite as important as the series. Fair enough, but why then does this episode borrow wholesale ideas that have thrived in the series for the past four years? Gallifrey has been destroyed in a Great War, the Doctor the lone survivor. Dealt with in the books. Time travel mistakes made possible thanks to the Time Lords no longer existing. Dealt with in the books. Evil creatures appearing to police time travel in their absence, turning up and killing people horribly when diversions are made. It's Sabbath and the babewyns innit? This episode flaunts these ideas as though they are original and refreshing but I have been intimately associated with them in far superior works than this. Go and read Adventuress of Henrietta Street instead. I am such a huge fan of the books and to see them being treated so shabbily (their arc plot ignored in favour of an identical one for the TV series!) and yet being ripped off all the same is pretty annoying.
It is the character work where the story triumphs, namely Rose's relationship with her father and unexpected closeness of Rose and the Doctor during the second half. Going back in time to a period you have been told about but not experienced is always a terrible mistake, you are bound to find out something terrible you did not know about. Rose's realisation that her father was not the genius her mother made him out to be is inevitable but still extremely moving and then to discover even though he was a bit of a Del Boy, her father would still step in front of a car if it would make an important difference. Rose gets all the best scenes in Father's Day from her mumbling awkwardness with the Doctor after she has changed history, not wanting to face his wrath, to her hilarious reaction to her father's flirting and her moving reaction when she realises he will have to sacrifice himself anyway, despite her actions.
The Tyler family achieves a whole new layer of depth in this episode and as usual it is a joy to see Jackie back. She is as chavvy as ever, deeply humorous and dramatic in equal measures and with a tongue as sharp as ice. It was Jackie's vehement anger towards her husband that gave Rose her biggest culture shock and her sudden turnabout at the climax, crying and begging for her husband not to sacrifice himself that proved how much she loved him anyway. Camille Coduri is as marvellous as ever, looking stunning in her wedding attire and once again finding new layers for the increasingly complex Jackie Tyler.
Despite the horrible choices he is given, Eccleston gives a meaty performance that will go down as one of his best, a far cry from the dopey grins in earlier episodes. I know he wanted to show the world he could play a nice guy but the truth of the matter is Eccleston is better at playing nasties and when his Doctor is allowed to get angry and emotional he provides some sit up and pay attention fireworks that few of his predecessors could have managed. This is the episode that cements his relationship with Rose, having been to the brink of splitting up and still walking away hand in hand. When he admits that he wouldn't have left her and she says she knew that already you feel a genuine bond that cannot be broken, no matter how bad thin get. And the Doctor accusing her of having an agenda for travelling with him was pretty low but her quiet reaction to this proves it has been in the back of her mind for a while. Perhaps as far back as The Unquiet Dead. I take back what I said about Billie Piper in Dalek, I could not fault her performance in Father's Day and if she doesn't have you blubbing before the credits come up you have no soul.
The direction was absolutely smashing. Pretty much every episode has been extremely pretty on the eyes and so when this episode started with its incredibly drab looking location work (a horrid, grey windy day) it was already uncomfortable BEFORE time was messed up. The POV views of the Reapers attacking were stunning and proved once again that you only have to imply violence for it to be more effective than actually showing it. The music was a huge step up from last week, creepy and poignant in equal measures. And considering it was a slower, character based episode it was certainly not dull for a second, filmed by a director who knows how to inject drama and pathos into the programme.
I want to write this off as a spectacular triumph because of the sheer amount of talent that has gone into it. There are scenes in this episode that rank higher than anything else I have seen on television in ages. But the script is so irritatingly flawed I had a constant sense of anger surging through me throughout the episode.
Who would have thought there would ever be a time where the production and performances of Doctor Who would be its selling points and the script would be its biggest failure. My my, how things have changed.
A Review by Rob Matthews 31/5/05
My, my. After the end credits of Father's Day rolled, I was all ready to sit and bask in the warm glow of having seen another superb episode of one of Doctor Who's very best seasons (what season is this, by the way? 2:1 or something?). I casually wondered what particular nits fans would pick at this time round, but had no particular urge to put my own review-writing hat on. I just dashed off a quick mail to Joe Ford saying how much I'd enjoyed it, and indeed how much I was enoying the season in general.
Well, it turns out Joe didn't like it so much! And he got back to me about it quite quickly. Even sent me his own brand new review of the episode not long later. So, this is largely a response to that.
It's perhaps best to outline, just for clarity, how I view this particular season of the show, based on what we've seen so far:
Most obviously, this is a show that's as much about Rose as it is about the Doctor. Their relationship has been established almost from the word go as the central dynamic of the series. And I'd go so far as to say that while it's a shame Christopher Eccleston is leaving after just one season, it would likely have been catastrophic for the show if Billie Piper had been the one who elected not to stay on (oh, the twists and turns of fate - who'd have ever thought anyone would ever end up expresing such a sentiment?). The Doctor can change his appearance and still be the Doctor, but Rose can't be replaced so readily. Given that Rose's 'companion' role is a lot more fundamental to the show than the Doctor's assistants, even the good ones, have traditionally been, Piper's eventual departure - and there are rumours already, at the time of writing - will likely trigger New Who's first big test in terms of adaptability to change, kind of like the Hartnell-Troughton transition all over again. Who know, it may even turn out that this new TV incarnation of Who is as finite as the Doctor and Rose's relationship. All of which is my long-winded way of saying Rose matters.
Second point: Rose, um, matters. To the Doctor I mean. He's in love with her, I think. Not in an overt way (yet?), but, come on, this is the kind of subtext a senile budgerigar could pick up on without difficulty. And just like with the frock coat and the 'I say, old chap' idiom, the Doctor's apparent lack of such feelings in the past was something that for some reason always seemed to us an immutable part of the format - but was really just a vestigial remnant of an earlier period of the show, which once discarded was revealed by hindsight as being not that important after all.
Third point: Doctor who? I hadn't intended to start my argument with Joe quite so early in this review... but he makes the point that Paul Cornell's script 'gets the Doctor totally wrong'. I really don't believe this is a fair comment within the context of this series. I think when he says 'the Doctor' Joe's referring to the character who's been accumulated over forty years of stories from An Unearthly Child to The Gallifrey Chronicles - a character, in effect, who was extrapolated and consolidated from TV by books, and whose inconsistencies have been more or less ironed out. But there is, at this point, no reason for us to assume that the character onscreen is a direct continuation of the character us fans have been reading about. Russell T Davies is starting as much as is possible with a blank page - taking the idea of the time and space-travelling Doctor and going where he wants with it, the hell with the baggage. This is a show aiming for a whole new audience, not just us geeks who've been aboard the Who rattletrap all along, and - to paraphrase something Andrew Wixon said in talking about Spearhead from Space - any similiarity between this Doctor and the Doctor we fans know is purely coincidental. The Doctor said in Aliens of London that he'd changed a lot since the old days, and I don't think he was just talking physically. Fans are of course going to reconcile all this one day, when the TV series (if I might blaspheme for a moment) is over and the property's come back into out hands, but for the foreseeable future the gulf between the end of The Gallifrey Chonicles and the beginning of Rose can become as vast or as as small as Rusty decides, and the Doctor can be characterised however he wants.
Indeed, were it not for the odd token Cyber-head and mention of UNIT, there wouldn't be any reason to see this as a continuation of the old Who series, but rather as a reboot.
The Doctor's past, as remembered by us, is essentially irrelevant. The only past that matters to this version of the character is that war we keep hearing about, and we fans are as much in the dark on what happened to him there as every other viewer. His 'alienness', which they tried rather half-heartedly to reintroduce with Colin Baker, has been restored, and with it, his unpredictability. This Doctor is dangerous, the way Hartnell was in the beginning, and has in fact already done several things that Colin Baker would have been tarred and feathered for by fandom. So to say the character is being portrayed 'wrongly' suggests that we know who this Doctor is, what he thinks, or what he'll do next. But we don't know those things. The 'right' portrayal of the character is the one Rusty and pals come up with.
And on that basis, Joe's criticisms of the Doctor's stupidity just don't chime with me. EccleDoc doesn't properly understand humans, that was pretty solidly established in episode one. He thinks Rose is an exceptional human being and trusts her more than the other 'stupid apes', that was established in The Long Game. He's keen to hang on to Rose and is trying hard to impress her - 'I am so impressive' he boasts in The End of the World -, something he seems to feels he can only do by showing her all the things he can do for her that mere humans can't.
So (no spoilers here; this just covers the premise of the episode) when Rose asks the Doctor if they can go visit the day her dad died, he agrees, because it's something he can do for her that no-one else can. He says he's worried about how she'll react to it, but trusts her not to do anything silly. His trust is in fact misplaced, because he's overestimated the extent to which she understands the perils of time travel. I don't think of this as being down to idiocy on his part, it would be idiocy if Jon Pertwee or Peter Davison or Paul McGann did it because they're wholly different Doctors who have an undertanding of human emotions and it would be out of character for them; but EccleDoc is an alien who thinks human beings are stupid apes unless they prove otherwise, he's also from a race defined by their understanding of time, and because this knowledge is so innate to him, he can't properly judge the extent to which Rose has assimilated it, and thinks she has a fuller understanding than she actually does. He makes an error of judgement, but he makes it through blindness - a benign form of ignorance - and a wish to do something nice for Rose, so I don't find it at all obectionable. Frankly the thing that bugged Joe so much about this episode didn't occur to me at all as I watched it, and I still can't see it as any kind of problem now that he's raised the point and I've watched it again. I'll accept that the Doctor makes a far bigger mistake than poor Rose does, and that it seems a little unfair that she's the one who winds up apologising. But the thing is, these stories aren't wholly self-contained anymore, and I have a strong feeling the Doctor's superior behaviour is going to come back to haunt him later on (indeed, The Empty Child sees Rose being tempted by another, rather more smooth-talking time traveller).
Joe suggests that the Doctor should have simply said no to Rose's request - well, maybe so, but it would have made for a pretty short episode! But I think part of his reaction derives from being a fan, and being used to the Doctor banging on about the web of time and Blinovitch and all that. See, the original series started with the wonderful idea of being able to travel anywhere in time and space, the potential of it. Then the historical stories began and we learned that 'you cannot rewrite history, not one line', and later the Time Lords came along with all their rules about non-interference, and soon time-and-space travel in the show became more about what you can't do than what you can. Then with postmodernism came Faction Paradox, in part representing a rebellion against these rules and a challenge to them. There then followed the temporally messy post-Timelord universe of the EDAs.
But Rusty's Doctor Who is new, and its intended audience is people who've never even got as far as The Aztecs, never got as far as hearing you can't rewrite one line. The show is exploring the potential of time travel from scratch and has to learn all these lessons afresh. I think this is why, to some extent, already being fans is actually impeding our enjoyment of this new incarnation of Who - and why I never got quite so ecstatic about the prospect of this new series as some. Joe complains about the series, and this episode in particular, 'flaunting' certain ideas that we've already seen done in the books 'as if they were new and original' - the conceptual resemblance of those batty beasties to the babewyns, for example. I can certainly understand what he's getting upset about, because I got het up about this myself a while back, in a Cassandra-like fashion, guessing that the RTD series would build more on the legacy of the books and audios than that of the 'classic' series, but that that legacy would go completely uncredited in the mainstream media.
Thanks to getting a head start on my outrage, however, I'm more reconciled to it now - after all us fans, the ones who care about these things, know what's what; and frankly your average audience member wouldn't give a cack about the Babewyn similiarity or the xxxxxxxxxxx of xxxxxxxxx already having happened in the EDAs. Of course these ideas have been treated in more depth in the books; the books are for fans, who have a deeper interest in these things than your casual viewer. That's why a mere TV series, excellent as it is, couldn't replace the books for me at this point. But you can't really blame the series for 'flaunting ideas as if they were new and original' - the only alternative to that would be treating them as old and tired! Which, you know, they won't be to the normal people.
Like Robert Shearman's Dalek, of course, Father's Day really is one of those episodes that's going to be viewed in a very different way by fans than by everyone else. In the case of Dalek, it's because of the similiarities to the writer's own magnificent - and in my view superior - audio play Jubilee. In this case, it's because it marks the return of a writer who's contributed enormously to the Who mythos in its offscreen years, and who appeared to have somewhat shot his bolt creatively; from Timewyrm: Revelation to Scream of the Shalka is an, erm, odd trajectory (says Rob, who hasn't even read Scream of the Shalka). For me Father's Day was a mix of triumphant return and nostalgic wander down memory lane to the New Adventure years, the kind of Doctor Who story fans would have been enjoying a decade or more back. The imagery of the church and the gothic beasties seemed pretty Cornell-New Adventures-like too. But I was on the phone to my mam not long ago, and she referred to it, tellingly I reckon, as 'very different.' Which wasn't a euphemism, by the way; she did actually enjoy the episode!
I suggested in my review of Shadows of Avalon that Cornell's best Who work was behind him - interestingly, Paul himself now claims to dislike that book too, not that you can put a great deal of stock in what authors say about their own work -, but I think the Ninth Doctor and Rose have reignited something in him. Probably down to the fact that their respective characterisations seem tailor-made for his own particular writing style. I mentioned in my Unquiet Dead review how writers like Gatiss, Shearman and Cornell are coming in and doing slimmed down variations on their own 'greatest hits', stuff fandom has seen them do already, but whereas IMO Gatiss' approach felt a little shoehorned into Rusty's version of the series, Shearman and Cornell have proved much more in sync with the overall tone RTD has established. Shearman's wit meshes with Rusty's - the 'Democrat or Republican' exchange in Dalek, for example, could as easily have come from the pen of either scribe -, and Cornell's, um ... what's a good word for sentimentality that doesn't suggest it's cheap or trite? Well, whatever it is, Cornell's pervasive sense of individualistic humanism (hey, that'll do) knits perfectly with Russell's unspoken but rather wonderful credo that a nineteen year-old girl who works in Top Shop is exactly as important as the nine hundred year-old Last of the Time Lords:
'I've never lived a life like that.' Just brilliant.
And freeing Who up from its past restrictions - while at the same time building on what was done right in the novels - has really paid off. The show, the books and the audios have been so careful in the past to treat a time paradox as something that simply cannot ever be allowed to happen that it actually felt like a disturbing transgression when Rose was seemingly actually able to change the past and get away with it. Perhaps that's why I never got as bothered as Joey by the weirdness of the symptoms of time going funny; it just seemed to me like stepping through the looking glass, and that once temporal continuity was breached, any amount of weird things could start to happen; I accepted without any difficulty the idea that the first sign of the universe unravelling could be Mike Skinner turning up on the radio in 1987. Hey, I don't know how time or the universe works anyway; if the show tells me this is how the fabric of reality starts to tear, I'll buy it. The science fiction of Doctor Who is a good deal more often than not a bodged together background for a morality play anyway.
And this one's no different. It's about Rose and her dad, about redemption. And like with this movie I was watching recently - some big six-chapter mammoth space fantasy movie called Star something-or-other, also about redemption and a child saving a father - it left me fighting back the tears by the time the credits rolled. I couldn't get all that moved by a maudlin Dalek, frankly, but this was genuinely affecting drama.
Not that there aren't flaws - Rewatching it a few days after broadcast, I went out of the room to get some coffee or something, walked back in, and suddenly noticed all this plinky-plink music going on in the background. Which I thought was more than a little cliched. And there is indeed a rather hefty problem within the script, but I don't think it's the one Joe identifies; rather it's the issue of Rose's father's infidelity. Unless I missed something, it's fudged. We don't really know whether he did or he didn't. Which I find a bit of a cop-out - if you're going to redeem someone you have to make more clear just what it is they've done wrong. At least with Darth Vader you know where you stand!
So, it ain't perfect. Nevertheless, it's a nice distillation of what Cornell does so well, and one of my favourite episodes of the season so far.
Mr Nice Guy by Mike Morris
3/6/05
Oh, bloody Cornell.
Soppy-git-big-hippy-let’s-set-everything-in-a-bloody-church,
he’s back again. This time, Rose goes back in time to watch her dad
die, then saves him (shock horror there). Some big black bat things come,
though, because of the paradox. Now, how do you think this is all going to
end up?
Thing with Paul Cornell is... well, his books have a repeated
dedication to mum and dad for bread and butter and honey. One might view
his stories through this metaphor; the question of how good each book is
depends on how much bread and butter he’s included. This one just
isn’t going to work, on that basis - it’s obvious from the
start where this is going, and it’s interspersed with far too many
talky emotion scenes and not enough actual action.
So if the bread and butter is plot, then... Rose saves dad. Everyone
hides in church from angel things. And that’s pretty much it. The
rest is, well, honey. And that’s just not good enough, Paul. I see
what you’re up to, reaching shamelessly for my heartstrings, and
forget it. I’m not that easily fooled.
That might give the impression that I don’t like Paul Cornell,
and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s slightly
fashionable to write him off these days as a drippy, pretentious PC sod,
but that’s neither fair nor accurate. If anything, the slight
re-evaluation of his standing comes from the fact that Doctor Who
has moved on, insofar as it’s moved back. Cornell was a new and
important influence on Doctor Who fiction because he believed that
Doctor Who was important. Like, really important. He once said in
an interview that if you were to put Pertwee amid famine in Africa
you’ve got something grotesque, but if you put the NA Doctor in
there you’ve got the beginnings of something.
Thing is, this now seems equally as grotesque. The NA’s were
socially-driven much of the time, and taking into account serious
character development - not always well-achieved, in fact quite frequently
substandard, but they still tried, and they increased the storytelling
vocabulary to an enormous degree. Cornell was at the forefront of this.
What’s happened since is that the Justin Richards (one might say
'classic') view that it’s soapboxes not stories has won out, and
Doctor Who has returned to where it was, older and wiser for the
journey. This shouldn’t be allowed to detract from the fact that
Paul Cornell was a key navigator of the outward trip.
And his strengths are actually hugely apparent in Father’s
Day. Fair’s fair. Mainly, what I really like about Paul Cornell
is that he seems to genuinely like people. There are pretty much no
complete gits in any of his books, anywhere. Not ones that don’t see
the error of their ways. The Timewyrm is redeemed, Chad Boyle comes out
the other end, Rocastle defies the bad guys. In fact, the Doctor’s
little speech in this is a summary of Cornell’s view - “Who
said you’re not important?” It’s something I find
endlessly admirable. And while I’m generally not moved by this
stuff, Doctor Who does have this ability to sneak under my
don’t-manipulate-me radar - at its core it’s so damn wide-eyed
and innocent, and it’s about leaving yourself open to the wonders of
the universe and, therefore, about leaving yourself open, full stop. Maybe
that’s The Magic Of Doctor Who, or something.
In a way, that’s also what’s so bloody irritating, is this
notion that everyone’s-nice-really. It is, to steal a comment from
some other writer bloke, A Big Lie, and it does annoy me. To put it in
context, though - it annoys me in the abstract, when I’m not
actually reading one of his stories and I can stand from a distance and be
irritated at the falseness of the worlds he creates (and all this is just
my jaded opinion, obviously). When I’m reading the damn things he
wins me over, he makes me believe him, he gets me to be emotional right
when he wants me to be. Then after, I think to myself, “Dammit, I
can’t believe I fell for that...” – and this is
my bloody problem, I guess. But - Cornell talks about nights out in
a wonderfully seductive way, taxis at two in the morning and chips and
good clean fun. And yeah, that happens, but then there’s also the
nights out when you walk through the city centre
not-quite-as-drunk-as-everyone-else and there’s the sea of fighting,
puking, people semi-conscious on the street like human bloody waste;
there’s the nights when you get fall-down drunk and end up in a
strange bed, hating yourself and what you’ll do for your own animal
instincts.
Cornell’s worldview isn’t sugar-coated as such -
Rose’s dad isn’t the most wonderful man in the world, and the
eighties is not a Wedding Singer-type festival of kitsch and Flock of
Seagulls haircuts, it’s a bleak world of Socialist Worker
anti-Thatcher posters and acid faces. On the surface, this isn’t
saccharine; and yet on another level it is, because what would really be
dark and bleak would be if Rose’s dad turned out to be an absolute
wanker, if Jackie had moaned and moaned about what a dick he was and Rose
went back because she didn’t believe her, only to have him feel her
up. This is what I love and hate about Cornell’s work, this
steadfast belief that all people are decent and that even crap play-around
jack-the-lad dads can save the world. His work skates on a frighteningly
thin line between genuinely touching and sugary crap, and it can go either
way. To put it another way; the Richard Curtis Four Weddings worldview is
irretrievably crass and naff, because London is lit with beautiful
streetlights and every middle class person is jolly nice and jolly
English. Cornell isn’t as bad as all that; if Curtis is chocolate
box, Cornell is more of a Mars Bar. And while Curtis will only ever
produce sentimental rubbish, Cornell can produce work that actually does
jerk tears and deserves to. Father’s Day is in and around
this area.
But I see what you’re doing, Paul, and I see through it. So you
can piss off with this
wet-blanket-ooh-everyone’s-lovely-let’s-put-touching-scenes-in
pap.
Back to the bread and butter - the reason that Paul Cornell is far
ahead of others who try and piss in his pool (The
Algebra of Ice is a recent example) is that whatever the emotional
decision, whatever the nub of the matter, it is always the nub of the
plot. His big emotional decisions aren’t stuck on, they are at the
core of his stories. This ties in with a discussion that I had many moons
ago about the merits of Father Time and Human Nature; Father Time, to my
mind, doesn’t integrate its character examination into the plot
nearly as well as Human Nature does. And moreover, Father Time’s character study is fuzzy and unclear
- what’s it really about? - whereas Human
Nature does something that Cornell manages again and again - it boils
it all down to a single question, namely, can ordinary people become the
Doctor? In spite of all the other little PC touches, it’s
relentlessly clear what question we’re answering, we answer it
beautifully, and that is Human Nature’s genius.
And Love and War’s. And The
Shadows of Avalon’s. And...
Father’s Day does something similar, making itself overtly
about Rose’s reaction to her father and his early death, and making
her father’s death the very core of the story. This, folks, is what
character-driven means. In the world of Doctor Who it’s
unusual and quite possibly self-involved, because essentially we’re
concerning ourselves with planets. Cornell is a big fan of Buffy,
I’ve seen him write about how utterly brilliant it is that it can be
a metaphor for your boyfriend being a monster. But I find monsters ten
times as interesting as boyfriend trouble, thank you, and besides this
isn’t Buffy set in a bloody school - this is multi-planetary
drama, this is, and it has more important things to say (q.v. Aol/WW3, Dalek, The Long Game). Still, it’s just about okay,
because Cornell’s a smart cookie and he manages to make this single
concern be about the end of the world. And quite apart from inserting the
clever “Another stupid ape... it’s not about seeing the
universe, it’s about what the universe can do for you” scene,
it makes time travel dangerous. This is the first episode in the new
series about time travel, and rather than the usual
if-you-change-something-everything’s-different idea which we see
time after time, this is
if-you-change-something-black-dragon-things-will-come-and-kill-everyone-in-the-world.
Remember that, for many of Doctor Who’s viewers, this is new.
Remember that this is surprising. The mindless nature of these creatures
and the comparisons to bacteria are very, very smart, and the
Doctor’s entry into the TARDIS is a jaw-dropping moment. A friend of
mine was annoyed at some touches, such as the geographically shifting car
and the way everything gets fixed. Personally, I liked this, largely
because I could sense some sort of underlying logic (the car follows
Rose’s dad, flagging that it’s going nowhere) and suggests
that, once time gets distorted, shit flies everywhere in a way
that’s neither predictable nor safe. This is the bread and butter,
it’s well-baked and it’s good.
Problem being, as I said earlier, there isn’t anywhere near
enough of it. The story doesn’t get anywhere near enough mileage out
of its monsters, or out of the weird, off-kilter tone to the world (the
moment when The Streets come through on the radio is brilliant). There are
far too many deep heartfelt conversations between Rose and her dad, too
many hugs and tears, too much bloody honey, and it’s slow and
sticky. Oddly, it should be added, Joe Ahearne’s direction is
slightly lacking this time. The Night of the Living Dead type tension is
never really adequately put together, possibly because the cuts are too
staccato. Ahearne, like Euros Lyn, is an excellent director; it just seems
that he’s been given the wrong story. This should have been all
crossfades and panning shots; instead it’s locked off shot after
locked off shot, and fast cuts to emphasise action that isn’t there.
Not that the direction is bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just
that it fails to save the areas of the script that are lacking in action.
And there’s another reason why this just won’t work on me,
Paul. I’ve been given too much time to think about what’s
happening. I’m not scared enough.
The Guardian said of this story that 14-year old girls will be reaching
for the hankies - that 30 year old girls will be doing the same. Well,
maybe, girls are like that. Ultimately though, I can only say how a story
like this works on me. And it doesn’t; it’s too damn obvious.
I wouldn’t call it manipulative, because Paul Cornell seems to
genuinely believe in his story - his sincerity is one of his most winning
characteristics - it’s just plodding and obvious. The church-based
scenes remind me of the film Magnolia, a bunch of ‘big’ scenes
stuck together, which simply become tedious and self-indulgent. Whereas
someone like, say, Mike Leigh is less showy, he’ll write slightly
edgy yet invisible comedy scenes for the vast majority of his films, and
then in the last fifteen minutes he compresses all the emotion into a
thudding finale. His films are honed and sharp, not heavy and hefty.
Not that this is a bad story as such, just that I see through it. No
matter how good the Doctor’s self-sacrifice is, the way
there’s that sudden jolting who’s-going-to-save-you-this-time
moment when he’s gone. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s because
I’m (almost) late-twenties and too cynical to believe in this
fundamental-goodness-of-humanity schtick. Maybe it’s because too
many bad films and programmes have been trying this nonsense for years,
and even if this does it better than most I’m still wise to it.
Maybe it’s because I’ve reached the stage where
‘personal’ problems don’t interest me in themselves,
where I see them repeating themselves over and over again, maybe
it’s because I’ve realised that the real response is that
people just get the hell on with it and don’t bother with tears,
that people usually can’t find the right emotions, that the Jackies
of this world wouldn’t understand and would just be confused, that
all there bloody well is, often, is confusion and awkwardness and reaching
for the correct feelings to find they aren’t there. Maybe it’s
because I just don’t give a shit about this sort of inward-looking
self-involved stuff. Maybe that’s why it won’t work on me any
more.
I don’t want to lapse into the sort of “Oh bloody hell
Rose, get over it and stop blubbing and get on with it” rhetoric
that’s easy to reach for here, because I feel that’s a snide,
bullying response that’s easy to come up with when anyone behaves in
the unguarded, emotional way the people in Father’s Day
behave - even in fiction... imagine actually knowing these people
and reacting like that, no matter how drippy you think their behaviour
might be. This is sincere, the writing is sincere, and I don’t want
to sneer. I’ll forgive the fact that it’s slow, and I’ll
acknowledge that provided you’re sincere then making 14 year olds
reach for the hankies is an honourable aim. I’m just saying it
won’t ever work on me, no matter how good those final scenes are,
how shufflingly awkwardly Shaun Dingwall plays them, no matter how well
that “Jackie... look at her” works, no matter how convincingly
the back-biting between the two is stripped away and we see that
Rose’s na?e shout of “you love each other” was true all
along. No matter how touchingly right-because-it's-wrong “you would
have been” is, no matter how awesomely magnificent and brave that
simple “I’ve had all these extra hours” line is, or the
wonderful double meaning behind “thanks for saving me”. Yes,
fine, the ending is gorgeously restrained, it’s bittersweet and
mixes the sad and the happy, it allows Rose to rescue her Dad without
rescuing him, it even manages to quietly redeem the driver, it cuts the
music back, it ends a fraction earlier than you think with a very simple
statement, it’s simple and it’s easy and it’s
heartwrenchingly good. It’s... it’s...
Oh, dammit. Dammit.
Hankies. Hankies now!
Okay. It worked. Cornell, you’re a git, and you’ve done it
again.
Yes. He’s done it again.
"I only take the best. I've got Rose." by Steve
Cassidy
7/6/05
Aaahh... Doctor Who...
A phenomenon? A British institution? A quick twenty-five minute filler
between children's and adult evening viewing?
Whoever designed it or conceptualised hit upon something magical. It
had its own unique "identity" - not soap, not special effects-laden
action, not sexual, not hip, not "in-your-face". Just simple adventures in
time in space - stories of infinite variety, characterised by strong
plots, gentle British wit, and a spoonful of manageable morality once in a
while. It carved out its own niche that won a large audience. Viewers were
drawn to it - kids for the fantastic stories, mums to see what was keeping
the kids occupied and dads pretending they were watching it for their kids
but secretly reliving their own childhood.
It, of course, had to change. In fact it changed every couple of
seasons. When the earthbound UNIT invasion stories became stale the gothic
horror entries slowly slid in, when the fantastical farcial Williams ones
began to pall then the scientific Bidmead efforts were waiting around the
corner. Change is necessary, nay essential, for the series to continue.
But never before have we had what we have in Father's Day. Never
before has the series so obviously chased the ratings.
What do I mean? Well, the "soap" elements - the elements so obviously
designed to appeal to a specific demographic. The inclusion of Rose's
family and back history. There is no doubt that Father's Day has
been a massive success. Eight million viewers which for multi-channel 2005
is a miracle - but for me it has been my least favourite of the adventures
in the new series so far. Father's Day, although cleverly scripted
by Paul Cornell, with brilliant production design and direction, is an
exercise in audience manipulation with a time paradox story which doesn't
stand up to major scrutiny.
On a good note - I do like the Reapers.
I think they are a scary original monster put to good use and the CGI,
despite what others have said, is incredibly well done. They seem to fit
into a cloudy day in SE15 almost naturally and there is some wonderful
combined CGI/direction with their view of a childrens playground. The
premise of viral fantasy creatures let in by the breakdown of the laws of
time is a good one. But the explanation for the presence of the Reapers
begs the question of why the creatures haven't been seen pursuing the
Doctor before, given the number of cases in the series of a historical
person dying, or having their lives changed, due to the presence of
time-travellers of whatever species. Why didn't the Reapers come along and
cause havoc then when Scaroth's ship was destroyed?
The explanation given in the story is that the Time Lords used to
regulate this sort of thing, but, in their absence, nature is now taking
its course again. Where's the paradox in that case? No paradox is produced
if the Doctor simply turns up at some point in a planet's history, sees
something going on he doesn't like, changes it and clears off. The history
of the planet from that point on does change, but no paradox is created by
it changing. It just plays out differently from that point onwards than it
would have done if he hadn't turned up. A paradox is only created if
someone's only reason for travelling back in time is to change something
they know happened. I use the classic "go back and kill Hitler as a child"
example to illustrate the difference:
Was there anyone who didn't know, as soon as they saw the car
driving around, disappearing and reappearing, what would happen at the
end? Can anyone here answer the question of why the beasties wanted to
kill everyone rather than just the people directly involved in causing the
wound in time in the first place? Can anyone answer the question of why
the Doctor played no role in this episode whatsoever other than to play
Rose's time chaffeur, ferrying her around to see her dad die and then
pointlessly pointing the sonic screwdriver at wooden church doors? Can
anyone tell me what the point of the hot key regenerating the TARDIS crap
was all about? It added nothing at all...
OK, you might get the impression I didn't like Father's Day - an
allegation tantamount to treason in some fan quarters. Well, I did but I
don't like being manipulated and I like things to make sense. There is
stuff I like and top of the list of these has to be Shaun Dingwall as Pete
Tyler.
We seemed to have been blessed by the quality of the guest stars with
this series Simon Callow, Zoe Wanamaker, Penelope Wilton and Simon Pegg
but Shaun Dingwall's interpretation of the role is superb, helped by some
excellent characterisation from Paul Cornell. The late eighties are still
fresh in my mind and there were plenty of Peter Tylers hanging around SE
London to base this character on. When John Sullivan turned Del Boy into a
yuppy in classic "Only Fools and Horses" it wasn't a caricature of those
around him - it was the norm. Rose's father, Pete, is redeemed because of
his love for his daughter and, despite their difficulties, his wife; He is
a cliche (the deadbeat husband) but one which is served well by Mr
Dingwall.
Less is more with Jackie Tyler. I don't share fan enthusiasm for her
I'm afraid. I'm afraid she is a walking cliche only saved by Paul
Cornell's writing. Jackie's present-day spitefulness and selfish behaviour
thus appear to be affected by her feelings that she failed in her
marriage, and of being afraid to take charge but forced by circumstances
to do so. Pete's sudden death, also, does little to improve the situation.
This loss would no doubt, as such events do, inspire in her simultaneous
feelings of guilt at not having treated him better during his life, and
also resentment at him for having left her with all the responsibility of
raising their child on her own. Sometimes Camille Coduri rises to the
challenge of this writing - sometimes she doesn't.
But once again I have to commend the adventure due to Christopher
Eccleston in one of my favourite outings. The Doctor once again shows his
truly alien side here, in that it does not seem to occur to him that
someone going back in time to see their father's death wouldn't at least
consider the possibility of stopping it happening, and doesn't question
Rose's motives until the worst happens, whereupon he accuses her of having
planned it from the first. The Doctor trusts Rose. That's why he took her
back to 1987. His whole "stupid ape" speech was a reaction to that trust
being compromised. Effectively, he draws a parallel with Adam in the
previous story, The Long Game, in calling her a
"stupid ape" and taking back her TARDIS key, effectively threatening to
strand her in the 1980s for her misbehaviour (although he later says that
he would not really have followed through). Here he stands accused of
hypocrisy - Adam Mitchell was shot from the TARDIS at the earliest
opportunity after messing up, while Rose lets the Reapers in and of course
he forgives her. Let's put it down to those raging Time Lord hormones.
Father's Day got a brilliant reaction from public and fans alike
when it was broadcast. Anyone who didn't like it was accused of "hating
emotion" or "not being broadminded enough" when what they really wanted
was a story set in another world rather than Rose's family again. The
series was different, RTD cited Buffy as his template which mixed vampire
menace with high school, I hate to use the word, hi-jinks. The mix of the
grounded family drama and science fiction was what RTD was aiming at - and
he was aiming solely at the family demographic. Auntie Doreen could relate
to Jackie at the wedding much better then she could to the swampies or the
terilipetils. RTD realised that to keep the ratings up he had to compete
with Casaulty, and yes, dare I say it, Eastenders?
But to me Father's Day got the balance wrong. Rose was an introduction, a way for new fans to relate
to the series - to give background to the companion. With EOTW and Unquiet Dead, we
were Rose experiencing what she was experiencing. We return to SE London
in Aliens of London/WW3 and it was good to see
Rose's family. Their inclusion into an alien invasion plot was natural and
for two episodes they worked very well. But by episode seven we should be
up and running, we should be experiencing alien worlds and intergalactic
despots along with Rose and the Doctor. The introduction was over.
Father's Day would have been perfect for the second series when we
had forgotten Rose's family and were pleased to see them again.
It felt like the entire purpose of them was to make the viewer feel
what the production team wanted. It felt like the "why" was just a device,
rather than the point. And I don't like that sort of treatment. The effort
was going into the manipulative side, rather than the "giving a good
reason" side, so the shutters went up. I may like to be manipulated, but
I don't want to realise that this is happening, and if it is too obvious,
it doesn't work nearly so well. Father's Day was self-aware, so
much so that it actually fell into the age-old trap of not making any
sense. The concept was good (what happens to a time traveler emotionally
if you can visit your own past?) but it only seems to focus on the
emotion. You have to tie up loose ends for the viewer. The emotional
impact can be interesting, but you can't just leave the whole thing open
at the back. So many questions unanswered.
Father's Day has already, along with Dalek, been cited to be a fan favourite. But like that
other fan favourite, The Curse of Fenric, I really
can't see the attraction.
But who am I to criticise? The majority of episodes of this series have
been fantastic. The quality has been so good that if you don't like one -
there will be one you do like along in a minute.
A Review by Michael Hickerson
16/8/05
At some point in our lives, every one has written the basic time travel
story. I wrote my first one back in elementary school and it went
something like this: somehow time travel is invented and I use whatever
the device to journey back in time to visit my grandfather (or some such
relative). I see him on the street, see some kind of imminent danger and
shove him out of harm's way. Because of this, I create a set of
circumstances in which I no longer exist and start to fade out of
existence. I must then go back in time again and stop myself from doing
whatever it is I've done and putting the universe back on track.
With Father's Day, Paul Cornell takes this basic story and
applies it to the universe of Doctor Who.
We find out in the teaser that Rose's father was killed in a car wreck
and that Rose never knew him. Rose asks for a chance to visit him on his
last day, to ensure he doesn't die alone. The Doctor agrees, taking Rose
to the scene of the crime. Rose sees her dad run down by a car but is
powerless to move and go to him. She asks the Doctor to take her back one
more time so she can be ready and go to him in his final moments. Despite
knowing how dangerous this could be, the Doctor agrees. Rose and the
Doctor arrive again and see themselves watching the accident. At the last
second, Rose runs out, saves her father and unleashes a time paradox.
Before you know it, big ugly CGI Time Reaper monsters are descending upon
London and killing everyone in sight.
Why?
Turns out Rose's actions created a paradox - a wound in the space/time
continuum. The Reapers have come to sterilize the wound. But sterilizing
the wound means that all life on Earth will be destroyed.
Oops.
And somehow, the Doctor isn't quite sure how to stop them. Indeed, at
one point, he laments that all the Time Lords are gone since his people
could have stepped in and cleared all this time paradox up, quickly and
simply.
I'll give Cornell a lot of credit. He takes a simple germ of a "what
if" idea and expands on it. The story is more than just the standard "what
if I changed an event in the life of a family member via time travel". And
Cornell gets a lot of mileage out of the story in terms of the
characterization. Cornell's script is one of the more character-driven of
the new series. We have long segments that do little to advance the plot,
but instead give us a bit more insight into the characters.
It starts early with the Doctor accusing Rose of using him, of having
an ulterior motive for agreeing to join him on his travels. To hear the
Doctor reference his initial invitation and point out that Rose only
agreed to join him after he said the TARDIS could travel in time was a
nice touch. It also showed that the series is taking a long-term, arc
approach to the storytelling - one that is clearly influenced by such
shows as Babylon Five and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All I can say is - if
you're going to give us a good pay off, then I'm all for it. It also gives
me a lot of hope for the "bad wolf" thread that has been running through
most of this season.
The disagreement between the Doctor and Rose harkens back to the Doctor
and Ace's argument in Curse of Fenric in terms of
addressing things that need to be addressed in loud voices. Seeing this, I
can only think that the bond between the Doctor and Rose has now somehow
changed and I'm intrigued to see where they will take it from here.
It was interesting the gamut run by the Doctor here. From the initial
fury at Rose to his panic when the interior of the TARDIS is gone (never
really explained, though I wonder if it was some kind of defense mechanism
for a time ship in case history did get that off course so as to not make
it worse. Or to keep the offender in a time zone so when the Time Lords
did show up, they could punish said offender) to the scenes in the
church. Hearing the Doctor agree to save the married couple because they
were going to have adventures he never could was a nice moment for the
show. And Eccleston once again carries of a quiet moment with grace and
dignity.
Also, along the way, we get some nice backstory for Rose and her
family. We meet her father and see her interact with him. We also see a
bit more of what Jackie was like when Rose was younger. And while I
guessed that Rose's dad wouldn't quite be the saint Jackie said he was in
the flashbacks of the young Rose listening to Jackie talk about her
father, I honestly wished it had been a bit less clich?. Rose's dad is
running around on her mother, he's not got a steady job, etc. These are
all a bit too predictable for my liking. I'm not sure what I was looking
for here, but I wanted a nugget more than just the standard "bad
husband/father" clich?.
I will also say I saw the ending coming a mile away. Pretty much
from the first time we saw the Reapers, I figured out what Rose's dad had
to do to save the Earth. I did like the character arc that led to his
figuring out what he needed to do and why he had to do it. But again, it
was a bit too predictable in the overall arc of the story.
I also found the "Quantum Leap" moment of Rose meets a younger Mickey
to be a bit off as well.
Indeed, I will say that I felt that Father's Day was the
shortest on plot of all the episodes so far. Maybe part of that was that
last week's previews gave away what the Reapers looked like, thus
eliminating the suspense of much of the first 15 or so minutes of the
story as we see things from the POV of this week's monster.
From reading all that, you might think and out and out didn't like this
week's Who. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I will
give Father's Day credit - it was far more engaging that last
week's The Long Game. But that is kind of a
damning with faint praise really. There was a decent story here and some
good ideas, but I found myself drawing comparisons to the first season of
audio stories featuring Paul McGann. Those stories showed the effects of
time travel and the unraveling of the web of time a bit better than what
we got here. And the implications of that. Of course, that was a story
told over a series of six or so audio adventures and I will bet the vast
majority of casual fans tuning in had no awareness of it. But as the
complete fanboy that I am, I am aware of it and found it far better done
there.
And give Father's Day some credit - it had a lot of nice homages
to the history of Who from the POV shots by the monster to the
base-under-siege mentality of the Troughton years. It also had a
sprinkling of the new Who sensibility with the emphasis on
character development. But it lacked a good balance - at times the plot
ground to a halt for character stuff to happen. Also, while the show did
take a chance by killing off the Doctor mid-way through, we all knew he'd
not stay dead long. Or without the TARDIS. You can't have Doctor
Who without those.
So, all in all, I give Father's Day a lot of credit. It's
certainly not the disappointment that The Long
Game was but I'm not as over the moon for it as I was for Dalek. It was a decent enough story that asked some
interesting questions, but I'm not sure if it really answered all those
questions.
This Episode Makes No Sense by Paulo Felipe
29/8/05
Before discussing the episode we have to think about paradoxes. Each
Doctor had a different view about how much he would interfere with
timelines. But there were no real time paradoxes in DW (besides
when the Brigadier encountered himself), and it was one of the best point
in this show.
Paradox is based in the intention or non-intention.
Remembrance of the Daleks is the a good example,
he was surely following his agenda to destroy Skaro. He was there
intentionally. And there were no Repears attacking the Daleks in 1963.
Why? Because he is a Time Lord and he can do it whenever he wants! Another
example was Trial of Time Lord. The Doctor watched
the Matrix and knew that he would meet Mel. Knowing his future he would
change his actions when he meets the Vervoids or he would never select
Mel. Even worse, a future-from-his-timeline Mel was brought to the trial,
and he took her back before meeting her in the first place. Paradoxal
Yeah. No reapers.
Pro-Father's-Day guys can say: "The Time Lords would taken care
of the Repears (and paradoxes if they were alive)" as The Doctor said. So
the Reapers are a consequence of the absence of Time Lords. The Doctor
changed timelines all his life, and there were no timelord babysitting
him. So he could just let the Gas-People (Gelth) from Unquiet Dead invade Earth because it would affect the
timeline so badly that the reapers would act, because Rose would not be
born and she would not chose to go backwards (ha!). In the same episode
the Doctor said that the future could be rewritten in a slap of fingers.
Didn't he?
"Somehow Time Lords are protected from being affected by paradoxes"
Yes? Maybe! Example: Two Doctors: The Sixth Doctor
was seeking the Second Doctor. The Second had his DNA affected. If the
Second was dead or harmed the Sixth could not be there at the sime time.
More: Because the events were simultaneous, so the Sixth did not remember
where the Second was having dinner with the alien, even when it was a
memory from his own past. Know what I mean? Thousands of more important
events occurred that would lead to great impact in past companions' lives,
maybe avoiding their encounter with the Doctor, creating a major paradox.
Or very small one... Say it: Ace's Ghetto Blaster pieces (Remembrance) could be collected by some major company,
making the invention of the walkman happen before its correct time,
changing the fate of almost every modern human. Surely. But it did not
happen. In this case, saving Pete would lead to a chain of events that
time would correct itself, like always, maybe changing some of Rose's
remembrances, but everything would go OK, as always.
In the book Head Games, Bernice threw away a soda
can, that caused a biker to fall down, the biker's mum stayed all night
taking care of him, turning later the conception of her second child that
was supposed to be grandmother of a hero of space war, that never has
born. Every single interference is valid. No matter how small they are.
Now another point. A (normal) Doctor would never re-travel in time and
be at the same moment in the same self. It is so dangerous, he is at least
(or was) a responsible Time Lord. He knew that Rose could have done that
for the first time, the second visit is totally a absurd. And that was the
reason that he did not save Adric. And that is the reason that he did
never had a double situation before.
And that repeating car was real insanity!!! The car was not in the same
place it was before, so that car and driver has a doppelganger somewhere
else!!! Also Pete could have being hit by the car, but not mortally
injured. If the time was running countinuously, by the time Pete died in
front of the church the wedding would have been finished for hours. If it
was seriously written, the time should have bumped back moving them to the
first spot Pete was hit. I don't like reset situations but it would be
more plausible.
How was the car moving rightly on the street? If it was a glitch in
space-time why he was not (at least) invading the sidewalk or hitting
trees. This argument only can be fought if a highly intelligent being was
controlling time. Why? Look at that to see how pathetic it is (belive me I
checked). First scene: The car is turning left. In the front of the street
it was turning right. When it hit Pete it was going straight on the
street. "God" made a phantom car to let people have a second chance to
die.
Why the hell would everybody lose their memory from the Reapers'
attack? And how were the dead people returned??? How did the TARDIS park
itself near the church if it was not there before? A matter of good
directing would avoid all this discussion. A few less emotion scenes could
have been changed to a little more explanation. Could the Doctor draw a
explanation on the church board instead of playing the priest or insulting
Jackie? I think so.
The reapers could have appeared all the time, we just do not know about
them, our minds have been reset as well. It was just the first time it
happened and we watched it. Seems So Wrong!
Doctor Who is wonderful because is the only show with unlimited
possibilities within a number of rules, you can break all the rules
anytime, just have to explain it (sometimes with nonsense) but always
explaining.
What was the percentage of people that understood it perfectly as you
did? Few. How many non-fans were turned off because it was so emotional? A
lot! How many real fans got confused? More people than there should be.
Off course that is a good thing when a movie or a show gets you
thinking a lot on its issues for days. But Doctor Who is a
long-lasting series. When a new concept is not clearly explained and
sometimes creates thousands of questions of existing continuity, it annoys
more than enlightens our questioning minds.
So
Then when we accept that time bumped and the death of Pete (always)
occurred in the church (that is why the TARDIS was parked nearer), the
bloody Mickey site show photos of the reapers, shame on the production
team!
(Fan of DW just since Nov 2003, into episodes, videos and
audios. And until now, never angry about any of it.)
Paul Puts the Corn in Cornell! by Ron Mallett
3/9/05
Well it was tissue overdrive time last night as a new "Whoenders"
episode screened on Australian televisions. Father's Day saw Rose
ask the Doctor for the chance to travel back in time and watch her father
die horribly in a hit and run accident. Not only does the Doctor grant
this macabre wish but forgets to mention that if she interferes with the
past the whole world could end up getting sterilised by very contrived
looking creatures.
There were so many faults with this effort, I almost don't know where
to start! We find that while Rose's father is able to nut out a time
paradox by himself, her mother struggles to program the timer on a VCR.
Hands up who didn't realise about three minutes into the show that
Tyler was going to have to die in order to sort things out? Apparently
Rose's Mum has always looked fifty and Mickey is about five years older
than Rose (after all we couldn't have a couple that were the same age
could we... that would be weird). And while we're on the subject of
coupling: is it necessary to have a close up of the Doctor and Rose
holding hands every episode? They must have a camera unit just devoted to
hand shots! What are they inferring now? That the Doctor's genitals are
located in the palm of his hand? That might be where Mr. Davies' genitals
are at this moment situated but really...!
In fact there were an awful lot of faults with this story. It was
almost as if it had been written just so we could have a tear-jerker and
not with any sound concept in mind. Would the Doctor even put himself in a
position where such a thing could happen knowing that the Time Lords no
longer exist to help? Why would old objects be any different to the
Reapers than new ones? Why would the TARDIS just vanish? Who are these
Reapers any way and where do they come from? Would a person really want to
see their parent die painfully? Why not have chosen a date earlier when
they could have met up in a pub and had a quiet chat? Would people accept
that Tyler's death was a accident when this time he just seemed to run out
in front of a car. Wouldn't people think that he had committed suicide and
wouldn't that have changed history anyway for both his family and the
driver? I also felt a bit uncomfortable with the story being set in a
church and the Doctor spouting from the pulpit. I think that that might
have been a bit close to the line and may ruffle a few feathers on either
side of the fence.
Despite all this I get the feeling that there was a half-decent story
hidden somewhere - though it had been swamped by an ocean of
Davies-induced sentimental drivel. There was in fact a kind of atmosphere
associated with the New Adventures series of the nineties, where Cornell
and others we won't mention made their names writing very melodramatic
Who aimed at the teenage and mentally disabled audience market. It
wasn't Who either and neither was this. If only we could get those
Reapers to surgically remove Russell T. Davies from time and the new
series then might have a chance.
A Review by Finn Clark
3/5/06
For my money, Father's Day was the most important Doctor
Who story of 2005. There were other fine episodes, but this was
something we'd never seen in the classic series. It pushed the
boundaries. It's a televised Cornell NA. Delete any other Eccleston
episode and you'd merely lose a good story, but delete Father's Day
and you'd diminish Doctor Who as a whole.
I also think it's wonderful, but that's another matter. This story
made me cry at a man's death. It took Rose's childhood hero, gave him
feet of clay and then in the end let him be a hero after all. That's the
story's heart. For once the usual Who trappings (time travel,
monsters, jeopardy) really are trappings. When they originally
commissioned Paul Cornell for this slot, it wasn't going to have any SF
elements at all.
I've seen "it doesn't explain its rules of time travel" criticisms of
this story, but after some thought I've decided they're all bollocks.
The script tells us all we need to know. The Reapers are bacteria
sterilising a wound in time and nothing in this universe can hurt them.
Simple. The plot isn't structured like a conventional Doctor Who
story... you know from the beginning what must happen and so it's just a
question of awaiting the axe's fall. It's tragedy, not adventure. Thus
it doesn't matter that you know there's a reset switch coming. Pete Tyler
is what's important, not the Earth being devastated and everyone being
eaten.
However to get technical about it, I'd suggest that "time gets screwed"
is actually a better set of rules than a 2,000-word dissertation. Why
should the causality of multiple paradoxes be comprehensible? Try asking
a university lecturer about the maths of General Relativity some time.
Note that Cornell doesn't kill Pete Tyler with a pompous "we mustn't
change history", but instead crafts a double paradox with two Doctors and
two Roses at the accident site and some outright unhappenings. Even the
most SF-illiterate viewers would know that that's not good, all without a
word of technobabble dialogue. Our inner fanboys might have warmed to a
three-page analysis of the Laws of Time, but does anyone really think that
this would have made for a better Saturday evening BBC1 episode?
Sometimes it's almost Sapphire and Steel in the way that Time seems to
be deliberately chasing Pete Tyler (e.g. the teleporting car), but I don't
mind that. Drop a black hole on Earth and it'll look as if gravity is
chasing you too. Doctor Who has often portrayed time travel as
dangerous (Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Two Doctors) and with that Father's Day is
bang in line.
It's recognisably Cornell being Cornell, but that was the brief.
What's more, we hadn't actually seen this kind of old-school Cornell for
quite a few books now. Personally I thought Scream
of the Shalka was twaddle, so it's nice to see him bowing out on a
high note.
This script relies even more than usual on its actors and none of them
let falter. Shaun Dingwall completely nails Pete Tyler and the regulars
are faultless. Billie Piper in particular is given a lot of heavy
emotional lifting to do and succeeds with every moment of it. Rose never
gets to relax, instead staying as freaked throughout as she was in The End of the World. It's interesting to watch
Christopher Eccleston at the start, incidentally. He's dangerously blithe
and carefree in the pre-credits scene, his damaged Doctor clearly not
connecting with the emotions whirling inside Rose. He got angry with her
later, but he took her there in the first place.
I wouldn't want an entire series like this, but I love the fact that we
got one such episode. I'd deny that the story is slight or slapdash.
It's just not really about Reapers and time paradoxes. The story is all
about the emotional journeys of Pete and Rose Tyler, taking us in a
complete circle from the first line to the last. "Peter Alan Tyler, my
Dad. The most wonderful man in the world. Born 15th September 1954."
"Peter Alan Tyler, my Dad. The most wonderful man in the world. Died the
7th of November 1987."
They're almost the same, but by the end we've seen a world of
difference. Even on rewatching, Father's Day packs an emotional
punch. It's not just good. It's special.
A Review by Terrence Keenan
6/10/06
It's a very personal story. Rose wants to meet her father, Pete, who's
been a legend to her as he died when she was only a baby. And she happens
to hang out with a bloke with a time machine. The Doctor takes Rose to see
Pete & Jackie's wedding, and then Rose decides to be at her father's side
when he is killed so he won't die alone...
If you've absorbed any amount of fantasy storytelling in any of its
forms, then the wish/what-if story is nothing new. But, Doctor Who
has more or less stayed away from it, especially in the original TV
series. In fact, the TV series came up with one of my fave bits of
technobabble, The Blinovitch Limitation effect, just to keep out of messes
that Father's Day dives head first into. But, it's a new time, a
new production crew, and a whole new way to look at time in the
Whoniverse.
Rose rescues her dad, which causes all sorts of hell to break loose,
and forces tough decisions on someone given a chance at a life he didn't
know he was supposed to have. Along the way, the legend of Pete Tyler gets
dismantled, just to rebuild it by making the ultimate sacrifice.
If you were to ask fan who would you trust with such a scenario,
there'd only be one choice, Paul Cornell. Cornell made his name in the
book lines with tales that cover similar territories to Father's
Day. Cornell would be the only one to tread the fine line between
drama and total schmaltz.
Credit goes to Cornell for choosing the only option that the fans would
go for: Pete Tyler dies saving the world, allowing Rose to be with him
when he dies, and allowing her to know the man and what he was really
like, a good man, warts and all. The other option, Pete lives, would have
failed the laugh test of fans.
So, why did Father's Day piss me off? Do I really
think it's "The Doctor Who equivalent of Beaches"?
I gotta be honest; I don't like stories like Father's Day.
Stories like this feel rote and predictable to me, and not in a good way.
Which is why when the first reaper made its appearance, I started
screaming at the TV: Kill him, kill him now so we can end this and go
home! I saw where it was going and was impatient for it to end. So, all
those high character/emotional moments really got under my skin. Lots of
"fuck off"s muttered and yelled at the screen.
Subsequent viewings have let me focus on the smaller details. It's
Billie Piper's show, and she gives a stellar performance. Shaun Dingwall
is really good as Pete and deftly underplays all the big emotional
moments. The rest of the cast are up to the task as well, with special
mention to Christopher Eccelston allowing Piper to stand out. And all due
credit goes to Cornell for making this story work far better than it
should.
I still don't like it, although I do respect the effort. Again, it's
not my kind of story. My own version of this would have been a dark,
revenge story with Rose going back and hunting down the driver of the car
and killing him, but that's the kind of story I like, and can see
endlessly. But I will give credit and say that Father's Day might
be the strongest of the New Who stories I've seen so far.
A couple of postscripts:
When the first reviews and discussions came out about Father's
Day, many zealous fans claimed that anyone who didn't cry at the
ending wasn't a real Who Fan. To which I respond with a loud "Fuck
Off!!!" Everyone reacts differently to any kind of art they experience,
and to demand a specific reaction smacks of conformity and fascism, which
is precisely what Who is not. I know I'm a bit late on this point,
but I had to get it off me chest.
One of my comrades in my local Who group predicted my reaction
to this story quite well the first time well. He's a big fan of Cornell's
work and blamed the over-sentimentality of Father's Day on Russell
T. Davies. After watching the first season a couple of time, he might have
a point, but that's a discussion for another time.
The Doctor Gets Derivative by Nathaniel Wayne
10/4/08
I don't think that I will every fully understand the praise and
affection this episode receives from so many fans. It's by no means a
complete clunker but there are a myriad of problems with this episode and
honestly it's the only one I almost fell asleep during (not even The Long Game did that). There are some great
performances on display to be sure, but they can't save the lazy and
predictable writing that drags the entire episode down.
This is the only Doctor Who episode that I'm aware of (and I
grant that my knowledge of the Doctor is not encyclopedic) that deals with
the characters deliberately crossing into their own time lines. And
having now seen the result, this is one cliche I wish that the new series
had chosen to avoid. And it really truly is a cliche; every science
fiction show (and a ton of movies) that's ever had any time travel
involved has done this basic story (people go back and change something
and things go bad). Hell, even Red Dwarf has done it. And anybody who has
ever seen any of these other shows or movies knows immediately what will
have to happen at the end to fix everything. One of the things that I've
really appreciated about Doctor Who (both new and old) is that it
is rarely ever derivative. But this episode reeks of a total lack of
original ideas right from the conception.
Even the one superficially original idea, the Reaper creatures,
doesn't really hold up. They bear more than a passing resemblance (in
concept more than appearance) to the creatures from Stephen King's The
Langoliers, flying mouths that ate up the past. Their use doesn't even
make a great deal of sense. The concept that they take advantage of the
paradox and essentially "cauterize the wound" as the Doctor puts it is
fine. But if that's the idea shouldn't they just be focusing on Pete,
Rose and the Doctor? You know, the ones who don't belong there? Why are
they going after everything that moves? It's an idea that exists to
provide an assault feeling by holing everybody up in the church but that
makes it a near-decent plot device but a lousy bit of writing and a failed
leap of logic.
Now, that said, there are some redeeming features of this, just none
of them have to do with the plot. There are some really great emotions at
play here and some great performances to back them up. The almost vicious
disappointment that the Doctor feels toward Rose is well played by
Eccleston, who up to this point has basically given her nothing but praise
and affection. Rose is well played in her own disappointment and eventual
adoration of her father. But the real star of this is Shaun Dingwall as
Pete Tyler. One of the few redeeming features of this story from a
writing perspective is that, in his attempt to let Rose keep the father
she just saved, the Doctor tries everything else he can think of to fix
the problem. This leaves Pete on his own to realize for himself what has
to be done to fix everything and to decide on his own to do what is
needed. It's all very internal and played wonderfully. It makes his
character a very true hero, not simply that he was willing to sacrifice
but that he required no coaxing. At the realization that he could save his
family, he did what was needed without doubt or hesitation.
Sadly though, these bits of well-played melodrama (good melodrama but
still melodrama, let's be honest) only help to liven up an otherwise
preposterously predictable episode. It doesn't take much of a background
in sci-fi entertainment to figure immediately where this episode is going
and how it will end and it fails to shake things up in any serious way.
A Review by Brian May
16/8/12
After the disappointment of The Long Game, the
quality of Doctor Who's revival season bounces right back with
Father's Day. Joe Ahearne is once again in the director's chair;
his work on Dalek was exquisite, and he follows up
that effort here in similar style. The story commands a variety of moods:
suspense, pathos, tragedy and something approaching horror. Not horror in
the splatter sense; not even the psychological less-is-more brand.
Something more along the lines of David Lynch's creepy surrealism,
especially that played out in the most normal of environments
(picket-fence America in Blue Velvet; urban LA in Mulholland Drive). The
pan left across the Doctor and Rose that occurs twice, the second as
viewed by their future selves, is the key Lynch-inspired visual moment,
voyeuristically portending something awful on this mundane London street.
The weird phone messages, plus the constant appearance and disappearance
of the car add to the unease. And while you'd never throw this story in
with the likes of The Exorcist or The Omen, the images of the Reapers
flying behind the stained-glass windows of the church, especially their
silhouetted gargoyle faces, could surely be described as sacrilegious.
The feel of the story is helped no end by the fantastic music. Like
quite a few others, I've not been too enamoured of Murray Gold's
bombastic, chant-filled scores, but there's virtually none of that here.
It's actually reminiscent of Dudley Simpson at his best. The various
tricks applied, such as slowing the music down at appropriately moody
times, also contribute to the overall atmosphere. It's also appreciated
that, for dramatic character moments, it is best not to play anything at
all, which we thankfully get in the scenes between Rose and Pete in the
church.
One of the criticisms levelled at Doctor Who since its return is
the focus on relationships. The interpersonal wasn't a great priority in
the old days, but that's all changed now. Sometimes for the better,
sometimes not; fortunately this falls into the former category. It's not a
soppy, sorry account of unrequited love for the Doctor; this explores a
family relationship that never happened, but which Rose makes a grab to
change when she can. And it works! The difference between the dead man
remembered and how he's regarded whilst still alive de-romanticises the
whole scenario. Pete is just a get-rich-quick type who's unfaithful to his
wife; a brutal contrast to Jackie's description of him at the beginning
("the most wonderful man in the world"). Indeed, Pete is aware of his
failings and it's Rose's gushing fictions that drive home to him the final
truth. Shaun Dingwall's performance is excellent. He ensures the character
is the loser he really is, but still a man who deserves the sympathy that
befits anyone facing death. Billie Piper is also superb as Rose, grasping
her emotional conflicts far better than any soap opera type gush that
would ensue.
This focus on these two characters means the Doctor takes a relative
back seat to the action, but, however prominent or not his role,
Christopher Eccleston is still on fire. Once again he's alien and
detached, as seen in his anger at Rose. The "another stupid ape" line and
his insulting her in the church are extremely compelling moments. Looking
at such scenes in the light of his successors, I can't imagine David
Tennant's Doctor reacting like this at all (he'd never criticise a
companion lest he offend them, even if deserved!); Matt Smith I can,
albeit in a subtler way. But nevertheless Eccleston remains my favourite
of the new lot, thanks to moments like these. And also his gentle, genuine
apology to Rose after the second insult; it's the other side of his
personality coin and both sides are magnificent.
For a story made in 2004/5, the setting of 1987 makes it a period
piece. It's a year I remember well; indeed, the whole 1980s were formative
for me (unfortunately, some might say). It's an era that easily invites
mockery, but I think the production overdoes it: the brick mobile phone,
the perms and meringue frocks, the reference to Betamax tapes; heck, even
Rick Astley playing on the radio. (Unfortunate? Oh yes!) It's just a bit
too self-aware in drawing attention to the decade's embarrassments.
Another thing I'd have done differently is script related. The situation
Rose creates is spreading across the whole Earth, not seen but confirmed
by the Doctor when he states the planet is being "sterilised" by the
Reapers. I would have preferred this to have been on a smaller scale:
perhaps just the church, or at the very most the surrounding blocks. It
would have helped justify the final outcome, the resetting of events, a
little bit more. This is another of those elements that has ruined future
tales, providing the most convenient of copouts, insultingly nullifying
anything too big for the writer or producer to handle, such as enormous
body counts or the death of a companion. Given this is the first instance,
or perhaps because the reversal is a neat and obvious outcome given the
underlying story (but would have been much better on my preferred lesser
scale), the reset is fine here
When reviewing any story I try not to compare or contrast it with
future ones too much, but Father's Day is one of the exceptions to
this rule. It gets right everything the revived programme has since got
wrong. It's good to see Paul Cornell given a chance to write for TV
Doctor Who. His books for Virgin and BBC were a mixed lot; I loved
some of them, hated some, and others fell in-between. My two favourites
are Love and War and Human
Nature, both of which are based on relationships destined for tragedy.
It must be his forte! With everything else in its favour, this is
undoubtedly one of the superior stories of the new series. 8.5/10
The most wonderful man in the world by Evan Weston
23/6/13
Paul Cornell might as well own a remote control for my tearducts. I
mean, dear lord. Doctor Who has never been known as an emotional
heavyweight; sure, there are some scenes in the classics that can tear you
up (I'm thinking of the particularly touching regenerations of the Third
and Fourth Doctors off the top of my head), but there really isn't
anything like Father's Day. This is pure, emotional television, sad
and sweet but not manipulative or schmaltzy. I doubt it's the second-best
episode of New Who, but it's my second-favorite behind Dalek.
Before we talk about anything else here, we have to talk about Billie
Piper. Over the first seven episodes, Piper is a pretty strong actress who
develops Rose into a very likable character. She's helped by the fact that
Rose is usually the strongest-written character in any given episode, but
Piper more often than not sells the performance well. Here, she takes it
to a completely new level. Putting together three or four emotions into
one close-up repeatedly throughout the episode, Piper is an absolute gem
and could have earned a BAFTA nomination for this tour de force, had
Doctor Who possessed that type of clout back in 2005. She conveys
Rose's guilt, her sadness, her anger, her surprise and her love for her
father with effortless grace and is the best part of a phenomenal episode.
Not only is Piper's performance top-notch, but her character is given a
thorough workout, and it's the best character development the show has
done since its revival (and possibly before that). Rose wants to be with
her father Pete when he dies, but she can't help herself from saving him.
Her actions and the Doctor's reaction are perfectly written - when he
calls Rose a "stupid ape," you agree with him and sympathize with her at
the same time. As Rose progresses through the episode, she confronts the
knowledge that her father isn't the man her mother described him to be but
is great nonetheless - and summons the courage to let him go. It's a
beautifully written part, and Cornell's exceptional script deserves loads
of credit.
He's also written a great role for Shaun Dingwall, who is wonderful as
Pete Tyler. Dingwall gives Pete a sort of world-weary quirkiness that
makes the character simultaneously disappointing and endearing. Like
Piper, he can make Pete cycle through emotions all in one shot. Pete is
also given a great arc: he goes from deadbeat dad to hero quite naturally
and is shown to be a fairly smart man underneath his lazy exterior. The
Rose-Pete relationship is absolutely gorgeous, and, though I wish it had
been left as is, I'm not surprised Davies decided to bring it back for
Series 2.
Guess who's next? Christopher Eccleston takes a bit of a backseat in
this episode, and rightly so. The Rose-Pete saga needs ample space to
breath, and the Doctor allows it. However, there's still plenty for Chris
to do here. His reaction to the TARDIS being gone is priceless; that scene
is a truly great moment overall. He's compelling when he takes command in
the church against the Reapers, and his "death" is really unsettling. A
lower-key performance from Eccleston, to be sure, but he's in fine form as
always. The Doctor gets plenty more to do in Steven Moffat's two-parter
next week.
Other great things about Father's Day: The production design is
usually lacking in these earthbound episodes, but this one looks great. It
definitely captures the 1987 feel, with its drab British suburban
landscape, the hair, the cars, the Thatcher posters. The CGI Reapers
aren't totally convincing, but they are scary monsters nonetheless. They
are creepiest when seen as shadows banging up against the stained-glass
windows of the church. Murray Gold's score deserves plenty of praise; it's
his best work for the show to date, bringing to the episode a soft,
haunting undertone rather than a sweeping operatic feel.
Oddly, I don't have too much more to say about Father's Day,
even though it's unquestionably one of my most beloved episodes of
Doctor Who and among the most emotive 45 minutes of television I've
ever seen. I suppose it's because the story has such a small, personal
feel to it. Father's Day isn't about the ages-old conflict between
Time Lord and Dalek, it isn't about aliens taking over Downing Street, and
it certainly isn't about burping trash cans and bouncy techno music. It's
just a story about a girl and her father, put into a science-fiction
context. The beauty of this kind of story really can't be condensed into a
1,000-word review; I'd really have to break down and analyze every moment,
and that isn't nearly as entertaining or powerful as just watching the
episode. Father's Day isn't a great in the way that Dalek is; it's a great in its own incredibly special
way. Doctor Who never does emotion or character better than this.
Ever.
GRADE: A
Never Gonna Give You Up by Jason A. Miller
9/1/20
Father's Day does two things that, up through that point in time, May 2005, Doctor Who had never done before. First, it tugs massively on the heartstrings of the audience, by telling an intensely personal story about loss and grief. Second, it rickrolls the audience.
No, seriously. It rickrolls the audience.
After Rose Tyler violates the Laws of Time, by traveling back in time to November 1987 and saving her father from death by motor vehicle hit-and-run, she and her grateful now-living father drive in his car, and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" plays underneath them on the car radio.
That is what the kids call a rickroll, and you can get rickrolled anywhere from YouTube to Facebook to the official White House Twitter account (seriously -- in 2011 -- the pre-Trump White House, so it's OK to acknowledge that it happened).
The reason I'm spending all this time talking about Rick Astley, as opposed to the episode itself, is because it's easier on my emotions that way. This is an incredibly raw story, probing at the open wounds of its lead characters. Classic Series Doctor Who rarely did that. Here we learn that Rose's father was killed when Rose was just a baby. Rose insists on visiting the scene of his death -- twice -- and interferes the second time, preventing him from being killed.
But this doesn't work out for Rose. She soon learns that her father is a bit lecherous, and that her mother is an unbearable shrew who, when given a second shot at marriage, courtesy of her husband not dying on schedule, verbally berates him in public for several minutes at a time. The Doctor harshly repudiates Rose, demands the TARDIS key back and actually enters the TARDIS, seemingly intending to abandon her in the past. And he'd have left, too, except the TARDIS has vanished, leaving only its police-box exterior.
Then, the Reapers, frightening CGI vulture/pterodactyl hybrids with gaping, vicious mouths in their underbellies, descend from the sky, eat up an entire playground full of schoolchildren (except for one boy, who'll later be revealed to grow up to be a person of some interest to Rose and the Doctor) and then attack a church, where they eat the father of a groom and the priest. That's an awful lot of taboo deaths, fathers and little kids, and just in the first half of this story alone.
So, yeah. Easier to think about Rick Astley than about all the tragedy and horror on offer.
So the Doctor always visited places accidentally and solved its problems
letting changes go OK. What about here? He so did not! In the show we have
two set of consequences caused by messing with time:
Exploring more:
The rule-breaking of the paradox was plot enough. Since we have only 45
minutes per episode, Rose's emotions took much time. The Doctor trying to
rebuild the TARDIS took some time. And we had to discuss this for more
than one week to get the whole point.
"The past is another country. 1987 is just the Isle of Wight."
But, actually, if you think about it for a minute -- yes, Jason is asking you to think about rickrolling -- the use of the song actually makes sense. Rose wants to save her father's life, because she's never gonna give him up. And, in the end, Peter knowingly sacrifices himself in order to repair the timelines. Because he has to give her up.
-- the Doctor"My eyes. Jackie's attitude. You sound like her when you shout."
All this is from the pen of Paul Cornell, making his TV Who debut, after having already left his mark across a string of similarly raw, emotional, painful novels, mostly in the New Adventures book series. Cornell had hit the early NAs like a thermonuclear detonation, with his first two offerings, Timewyrm: Revelation and Love and War particularly pushing the boundaries of Who in print, and now here he is on TV doing the same thing. The book even borrows heavily from the iconogroaphy of Revelation, with the main characters seeking refuge in an Anglican church, that symbol of British independence and self-reliance, for most of the narrative.
-- Peter Tyler, figuring out who Rose really is
"Don't know what this is all about, and I know we're not important --"This is an interesting episode for Christopher Eccleston. As I write this, my mind has rearranged itself to accept Whittaker as the Doctor. In the middle of Whittaker's intense performance, at turns caringly maternal and acidically disdainful -- redolent so much of Frances McDormand's Oscar-winning turn as Detective Gunderson in the original Fargo movie -- it's weird going back to Eccleston's one orphan year as the Doctor. Eccleston played the Doctor as a scarred survivor with PTSD, masking his pain with smirks and sarcasm. The above exchange is an important part of the season-long journey of the Doctor remembering how to be a hero again. In this episode, when the Reapers finally penetrate the church, he makes the heroic decision to save everyone by sacrificing himself to the Reapers.
"Who said you're not important? I've traveled to all sorts of places, done things you couldn't even imagine, but. You two. Street corner, Two in the morning, getting a taxi home? I've never had a life like that. Yes. I'll try and save you."
-- A bride and the Doctor, trapped in the church
But, of course, that means that the Doctor isn't even in the final ten minutes of the episode. Peter Tyler is left to figure out, from all the clues left him by the Doctor, that he has to die in order to restore the timeline and undo all the subsequent deaths caused by the Reapers. It becomes Peter's episode, not the Doctor's, but the Doctor excelled as the agent of chaos who allowed Pete to become the star.
"I'm your dad. It's my job for it to be my fault.And that's a brave choice -- a choice that Doctor Who is still making today. Jodie Whittaker's Doctor let Prem do the same thing in the superlative Demons of the Punjab.
-- Pete Tyler
So Father's Day created a template for the new series, for highly personal stories involving the deepest pains of the main characters. It's incredibly personal and therefore painful to watch and not something you can sit through very often, as captivating as it is. That's why the episode needed to rickroll us, to give us something to keep us from bawling through the whole 42 minutes.
I gotta end this piece on a lighter note. So. Follow me now: I don't know how they get the baby who played Infant Rose to give such serious side-eye to everyone -- even the Doctor, when he coos at her to not grow up and cause the end of the world -- but you gotta figure that uncredited baby is now a 15-year-old actress, hopefully performing on some teenage coming-of-age dramedy and still shooting serious side-eye at would-be boyfriends and ineffectual parents.
Best acting job in the episode, and she doesn't even say a word.
Father's Death by Noe Geric 24/4/22
If there's an episode that couldn't have been made in the original series (I hate the word ''classic series''), it's this one. Most of it, if it isn't everything in it, is about the companions' family history. We never saw a whole character arc about someone's family before (you can count Ace if you want, but her mother only appears once as a baby). Here we finally learn why Peter Tyler isn't in the other episodes with his wife and daughter, and it's one of the most divisive episode I ever saw.
I really, really love it. There's some very good stuff: the TARDIS turning into a real police box; the Doctor really dies; Rose is less annoying than ever, even if she does make one of the worst mistakes ever. And Eccleston gets to leave his dark jacket for the first (and only) time! Wow! There's all the character development about Rose, about Peter and Jackie that will be used in the last episode of this series and into Series 2. There are also some great performances from Eccleston and Piper and even Peter Tyler. The enemy are rather creepy, even if they're just a little part of the plot, and they don't do much other than kill and create desperate situations. The idea of a base under siege in a church is well done, and it's technically an historical episode. And as the bonus point: we can hear that marvellous song that is: Never Gonna Give You Up!
Of course, it's too good to be true. The story is plagued by bad characterization and character decisions. The Doctor looks like the worst monster to bring Rose to her father's last moments! All the guests cast is blank. It's rather obvious who is supposed to be who at that wedding: the happy couple, the two hysterical friends of the bride, the worried father... Only Peter Tyler gets something different from the other guests. He's got a real history, we know what everyone thinks of him, his behaviors, his hopes for the future, his love, his passions... Everything a character needs. And you've also got this scene with young Mickey. Okay, it's funny, but these child actors really get on my nerves. I don't want to be a monster, but is it really hard to look convincing when you're running and have only one line of dialogue? The girl from The Rings of Akhaten did a better job, and she is the protagonist of the whole episode and even sings! I agree when people says that the shots from the Reapers' point of view are crap. You can barely see anything (no wonder they hit the church and even run into the TARDIS), and the people screaming around aren't more convincing.
Finally, there's Peter's death. I always wanted to cry in front of it, but I couldn't bring myself to. The episode really wants that, it shouts it at your face, and I just want to resist. It's too easy. Really. The piano, the Doctor dying, and Peter saying goodbye to Rose before dying... Well, at least the scene wasn't in slow motion. Cornell can be a fine writer. Even his ''worst'' novel No Future was decent. But Father's Day has these terrible mistakes in the writing that you can't miss. They're not even disguised, they're OBVIOUS!
As I said, this is one of my favorites. The whole stuff has an atmosphere I really love. Character development (at least for the regulars) and a small menace makes this an enjoyable story. I also agree with people saying this sort of soap-opera episode should've been avoided in Doctor Who, but for me it's good enough for a 9/10.
Some big faults doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable.