|
BBC Partners in Crime |
|
| Story No. | 203 | 
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| Production Code | Series Four Episode One | |
| Dates | Apr 5 2008 |
|
With David Tennant,
Catherine Tate
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by James Strong Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner. |
| Synopsis: Donna Noble is investigating the mysterious Adipose industries when she chances upon an old friend. |
A Change of Pace (for the Companion at Least) by Nathaniel Wayne 5/5/08
Wow, what a mixed bag this episode turned out to be. It revisits a lot of the themes that have run through the new series since Season One, yet at the same time highlights how the Doctor has changed over time and indicates how things will be different for this season. This episode has the always-thankless job of hooking up the Doctor with a new companion. These episodes have been handled well by the new series so far, but they're always tricky, usually having to do just as much about establishing the companion as giving us the wonderful antics of the Doctor.
Partners in Crime, however, manages to cut a break by bringing back Donna Noble from The Runaway Bride. So she doesn't need to be established from the ground up, just enough has to be given to let the audience know how she's been since last we saw her. However, nobody seemed to pass the memo onto Russel T. Davies that since we've seen her before he doesn't need to establish her as thoroughly as was done with Rose and Martha. So we're treated to repeated scenes and dialogue about her discontent with her dull life and the point is just hammered into the ground. Some scenes like the one she shares with her grandfather are quite delightful. Others, like the one in the kitchen with her mother, are almost interminable. Also, the scenes establishing Donna resurrect what is starting to become a bit of a tired theme in the new series, which is the impact the Doctor has on those he leaves behind. At first, this was an interesting angle because it was something that had never really been explored before. But now we've seen it done with both Rose's and Martha's families and really truly run into the ground with Love & Monsters. While I recognize it's important to establish why she wants to join the Doctor now when she turned down the opportunity before, it just feels like a retread in many ways.
Aside from the way in which she is sort of over-established in this episode, I'm very happy to see Catherine Tate return and be the Doctor's new companion. Having done variations on potential romance with two companions in a row now, it's nice to see the Doctor paired with somebody with whom there really seems to be no romantic angle to be played at all. And, in fact, the very idea is wonderfully and flatly dismissed towards the end of the episode. It's time for the Doctor to have a companion who is completely platonic, and I think there's a clear chance for a more antagonistic relationship as well, which could bring a new kind of energy to the show if it's done properly. It's also nice to have the change that's happened in the Doctor as seen through the eyes of Donna. She points out some minor adjustments to his character that I personally hadn't really noticed but now that they've been pointed out I'm rather pleased about.
Aside from the new companion, the plot is somewhat blah. The Adipose company has its new miracle diet pills out on the market in London and about to go nationwide, but, as we all immediately suspect, there's something unpleasant going on behind the scenes. The actual effects of the pills are actually quite inventive. It's such a shame that Davies had to ruin the potential surprise and shock by dropping a painfully obvious hint early in the episode (made all the worse by the line delivery from the otherwise solid Sarah Lancashire which just screams "this is a big hint!"). It was interesting to see a villain who could match the Doctor in terms of technology, though this idea was used in fairly obvious ways. Tennant has slipped back into the role of the Doctor without missing a beat and he maintains that wonderful almost manic energy that makes him so engaging and he also forges a very interesting connection with Catherine Tate that I'll be very interested in watching develop. And the scene when they first see each other after a half an episode of near misses is just delightful.
The effects are kind of bland. There's a very nice but unoriginally designed spaceship and the effects of the diet pills result in some of the least convincing special effects yet on the series, though I suppose they serve the purpose they're intended for.
While the episode in and of itself isn't stellar, it does set up the season well in terms of both the Doctor and the new companion. And then of course there's that one delightful moment towards the end (you'll know it when you see it) that is a very nice surprise and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I think that, after the previous season had gone fairly dark, overall this episode shows that this season may potentially lighten up slightly and be a return to the more fun aspects of the show that were so wonderfully prominent in the first season.
Skin Deep by Mike Morris
28/5/08
Oh good god. This is a bad joke, right? This has to be a really, really
unfunny joke.
A bit of context is required here. I've just seen Episode 6 of Series
4, which is so far shaping up to be the worst series since the show came
back. I've long been meaning to start reviewing the show story-by-story,
but a few things (like my complete inability to write a review of the
Series 3 finale that extended beyond "well I thought it was pretty good,
actually") kept getting in the way. One of those things with the constant
belief that Series 4 might be getting better, and then the repeated sense
of being kicked in the teeth. Right now, Doctor Who is bad. It's
very very bad. And Partners of Crime is, quite possibly, the worst
of the lot.
It's Russell T. Davies, and Russell T. Davies is a great writer.
Unfortunately, he's a great writer who appears to be corrupted by his own
success. Once upon a time, Doctor Who was lean and dynamic and
fresh. Now it's churning up... this.
The things wrong with Partners in Crime are numerous, even if
you don't count Catherine Tate. As it happens, though, I do count
Catherine Tate.
Here's the thing; the character of Donna actually works quite well
here. She's someone who turned down the chance to go with the Doctor and
has been haunted by it ever since, to the extent that she's looking into
any sort of weird activity with the hope of him turning up. Whereas the
Donna of The Runaway Bride was essentially
pretty useless, and annoying and shouty with it, this Donna's annoying and
capable. She blags her way into a press conference where That Woman Who'll
Always Be Raquel Off Corrie To Me is publicising a diet pill. What? Donna
missed the Cyberman invasion because she was hungover in Spain, but now
she's started investigating super-effective diet pills? My, the woman has
changed.
The Doctor's doing the same thing, but - here's the punchline, kids -
they never meet. Actually, this is quite well-choreographed, and up to a
point the whole thing's pretty engaging. You do, obviously, have to apply
a hefty discount given that Catherine Tate's starring in it, and the
woman's not an actress. But it's brash, confident (because Rusty doesn't
lack confidence), and well-choreographed. There's the core of a good idea
here, too; the diet pills are causing people's fat to gather itself into
an alien life-form and waddle off to god-knows where. Some real
body-horror to be had in that concept, the sort of grotesquery that
Doctor Who can do so well.
Until, that is, we see the first human-Adipose transformation. The
decision was made to trade this widely before the episode aired, and the
mistake's obvious. Firstly because it spoils the surprise, and secondly
because anyone who saw the Adipose would surely think twice about watching
the show at all. It's not that they look rubbish, it's that they seem to
be specifically designed to look rubbish. These are creatures made
entirely of fat, remember? The gooey, squidgy, nasty stuff that Channel 5
likes showing you on the 100 Greatest TV Operations? So why do they look
like shiny computer-generated beanbags? Why, and here's the pointed bit of
the question, why do they look like things that might be merchandised in a
few months?
The rest of the episode is garbage, of course. There's been some
almost-funny comments in the mainstream media about this satirising diet
pills and eating disorders, which makes you wonder whether everyone in
showbiz-world is suffering a mass hallucination. Not only does the
programme not say anything at all about the fetishisation of thinness, it
doesn't even hold up to its own internal logic. The story says that
Adipose industries has one million customers, and also that an Adipose is
created from each person each night. So where on earth are they all?
Exactly how many are required?
And yet, the obvious story flaw only becomes apparent about halfway
through; namely, that there's no real threat until the Doc and Donna
intervene. So people's excess weight is turning into little baby-alien
things. Erm, so what? It seems a rather symbiotic relationship as far as I
can tell, and I sure as hell wouldn't mind giving birth to an Adipose or
two if it enabled me to get around the 5-a-side pitch a bit quicker. Even
the Doctor notes that "it's not a bad system", and when he tries to take
the moral high ground he resorts to saying that doing this sort of thing
on a Level 5 planet is illegal. Er, what? I'm not sure which baffles me
more... the notion of some sort of intergalactic police force having a go
at people for trespassing (maybe; a sort of mixture of Judoon and those
blue-shirted wallies that were in The Twin Dilemma),
or the notion that this is a Doctor who'll quote rules and regulations
without questioning why they exist in the first place.
Or, just to put it in perspective; in Series 1, Christopher Eccleston
was quite happy to let nasty aliens wander around in human corpses, and
when Rose objected he told her to go and stuff it. Now, as if to emphasise
that this is no longer a programme that's interested in challenging our
preconceptions, David Tennant objects to the Adipose birth process for
exactly the same reason that Rose did to Eccleston's "recycling" project.
Namely, that it's all a bit *wuuuuuuuhhh*. If the Doc went back and
started working for the army he couldn't be more conservative.
And that, really, is the nub of the matter; there's a terrible,
grinding conservatism in Partners of Crime, that moves the story
beyond the realms of the dull and into the realms of the vaguely
offensive. Raquel OffCorrie's villainess isn't just based on that
Supernanny woman, and made up to look like her... she's actually called a
"Super Nanny", just in case those people who don't consume every piece of
detritus the mass media throws at them didn't get it (and fair's fair, I
didn't get it; but I preferred it that way). The only time that Donna gets
any sort of real material is when she talks about how rubbish Earth is,
and dismisses a trip to Egypt as "guidebooks and don't drink the water."
She might be the first companion not to be interested in the Doc's Rod of
Rassillon, but that doesn't disguise the fact that the only why she can
make her life seem worthwhile is finding the right man. Lindsay gleefully
tells Donna that she's dumping her boyfriend because "I can do better than
him now", the sort of vile trading-up mentality that at least merits some
sort of put-down. The whole thing feels horribly insular, as if the
programme itself has become convinced that it's better than real life.
"Who says you're not important?... I've never had a life like that."
Remember that, kids?
And yet, even that's not getting at what really bothered me about
Partners in Crime, although it was certainly what I found the most
distasteful. There's the strangest feeling here that we aren't watching a
Doctor Who story at all; it feels more like a pastiche, a Children
in Need special featuring those two famous people off the telly. This
spreads itself through to David Tennant's performance: he's really a
collection of mannerisms in this one, a return to his uneven performance
of the Series 2 that never feels like anything other than a man Acting,
and Acting hard. To be fair to Tennant, he's probably struggling to make
some of the duller scenes at least feel vaguely intriguing. The direction
has this problem, too; you can do all the camera tricks you want,
including that funny thing where the camera zooms in and zooms out at the
same time (oh, you know what I mean), but when your climax involves the
Doc fiddling about with some random machine in the basement and spouting
technobabble, it'll look like the desperation it so clearly is.
The thing that really sums up the problem with the story is the ongoing
thread with the journalist, who - oh my sides - keeps getting tied up in a
chair and having a gun pointed at her. The Doctor's not even vaguely
interested in looking after her, because we all know that the story's not
real and any threat is just for a bit of a laugh. The only word that comes
close to this attitude is "smug", although even that doesn't really
capture it. It suggests that this isn't really a story at all so much as a
place, a brief stop in the well-choreographed world of Showbizland. It's a
piece of media detritus, and it's so gleefully happy as part of that
detritus, so happy with its status as detritus, that it doesn't feel the
need to justify its own existence as anything but detritus.
I'm going to stop saying 'detritus' now.
(If Partners in Crime were genuinely funny, of course, this
might not matter so much. But watching Catherine Tate gurning through
glass isn't my idea of fun.)
On the plus side... Tate probably gives her best performance of the
season so far, although more because she's not given any testing material
than anything else. She scrapes 'mediocre' for most of the time... but
then you get to that godawful "You're not mating with me, sunshine" scene
and she reverts to playing Catherine Tate TM. I'll discuss Tate more fully
on some other occasion here, but suffice it to say that she's
poor-to-middling here; and it's about as well as she ever does.
(In fact, it's impossible to know why the Doctor shows more interest in
Donna than he does in the investigative journalist who's actually been
asking the right questions. Maybe he's decided that he doesn't want any
more brilliant companions - although, since in Smith and Jones he classified "the windows aren't
airtight" as brilliant, it does make you wonder how dense Donna must be.)
All in all, Partners in Crime ain't good. It's facile, smug,
facetious and - worst of all - dull. However, it didn't even annoy me,
really. Bad stories usually annoy me. But this - this gurning pastiche,
with famous people running around a parody of a Doctor Who story -
didn't really come close. Because, in truth, it's not really a story at
all.
A Big Step Back by Adrian Pocaro
8/7/08
As this is my first review, the reader must excuse my lack of
eloquence, if any. I'm an American who's been watching Who since
the Davison era (thanks PBS!), and through the Sci-Fi channel and BBC
America I can stay fairly current. I'm sure that I will go back and review
previous installments as I have just discovered this site, but let's start
with the series four opener. This was a complete and utter mess of a
story. After the growth that we saw in series three now we go back to
semi-juvenile humor and a bland, not-too-well-thought-out storyline. I'm
worried. But let's start with what I liked.
Catherine Tate is toned down considerably here, but there was very
little that she could do worse than Runaway
Bride. She is also looking much better and her backstory is believable
for once. After all, how do you live with refusing to join the Doctor when
the offer comes by? And THANK GOD we have a companion that doesn't want to
shag the Doctor. I never thought I would miss Peri's whiny ways but I
think that the tenth Doctor could use a break from this unrequited love
angle. "I just want a mate!" So do we, Doc. So do we. The bit where they
are talking to each other through the window is a charming bit, and I very
much liked the scene where the Doctor is in the TARDIS, talking to
himself, only to look up and realize that he is, in fact, alone. The look
on Tennant's face conveys the emptiness inside, and I for one multilayered
approach that he has taken of late.
But that's just about where the positives end. Sarah Lancashire is
utterly wasted as an actress. She delivers her lines seamlessly, nowhere
near over the top, and yet the premise behind her villain (and the whole
story, to be honest) is far below her. I wish that RTD had saved her to
portray a more, let's say, familiar, villainess. The "secret" of the pills
is absolutely ridiculous and something that I would expect to see in
Series One along with farting aliens and talking pieces of flesh suspended
in mid-air but then, that's Russell T. Davies for you isn't it? Don't get
me wrong, I'm am utterly thankful that he brought our beloved series back
and clearly he has the best of intentions at heart, but he needs to pull a
Gene Roddenberry maneuver and let other, more talented, writers articulate
his vision. Case in point, the dialogue is as campy as I've seen it and
not even the regulars can seem to muster any kind of tension in this
storyline. But, as I said, the storyline never really did that much for me
anyway.
Donna has some nice scenes with her grandfather who seems like a nice
enough guy that I wouldn't mind seeing again, unlike some of the other
domestics past. That goodbye scene though... arghh! Can we please start to
take this show seriously?
And then there's that scene. If you've seen it, you know what I mean.
And I for one, although I am in the minority about this, am not happy,
excited, or elated about it. In fact, I fear the future. Be honest with
yourselves. Do we really want to go back to THAT place? Seriously?
Series three was a big step forward. The Doctor stopped joking around
so much and started to show gravitas. The stories were, on average, an
improvement from the previous years. Now we start series four and I can't
help but feel that a regression has taken place. Laughs have always been
in Doctor Who, but never have they come so cheaply. A story that
moves so fast it's over before you care. (I'm a big fan of the two
parters, by the way. More time for exposition and development, like the 4
parters of old.) Not a strong start, but let's hope, for the series sake,
it's only a false start.
Inauspicious Beginnings by Greg Long
4/8/08
I had high hopes for series 4 of (new) Doctor Who. David
Tennant has proven that, given a decent script, he can be a joy to watch
as the Doctor, so the viewer can always hope that this time, they will see
something good. In Partners in Crime, it was not to be. Instead,
we get another Russell T Davies fiasco, a self-conscious self-parody
closer in spirit to 60's Batman than Doctor Who. In fact, the
episode is so like Batman that the villain leaves deliberate clues for the
hero to follow, taking an alias and using a motto that deliberately hint
at their dark intent.
Now, certainly, it isn't as if the classic series never stooped to that
kind of thing (Chameleon Tours in The Faceless Ones
springs to mind) but this sort of thing was clumsy in the children's
television of 1967 and it hasn't gotten any less so. Another "Batmanism"
is the inclusion, in Foster, of a smirking two-dimensional villain who
revels in their own evil. To be fair, this also happens in the classic
series, but it was a weakness at the time and at least they weren't
winking to us about it as if that somehow made it clever instead of lazy
characterization.
The irony is, when dealing with ordinary people in ordinary situations,
Davies characterization can be quite good, something he proves again in
this episode. But he only takes the ordinary seriously, not the
extraordinary; that which is different exists only to be laughed at. Hence
we get another "comedy" alien where we might have had something genuinely
frightening or even thought provoking. Hence we get suspension of
disbelief shattering moments like the Doctor and Donna constantly just
missing seeing each other, and even Foster performing a Wile E Coyote look
to camera before falling from a height. Any sense of reality flies right
out the window and all tension is lost because the program is constantly
yelling to us "I'm a television program!"
It goes without saying that the story is resolved by another dues ex
machina, with Donna pulling from her pocket the very thing that the Doctor
needs to save the day. Tennant does his best to sell all of this to us,
but it is all just too much. Similarly, Catherine Tate tries hard with
Donna, but the character, even if not as badly written as before, is still
a bumbling clown. All up, it is disposable junk, not worth watching
twice.
A brave move indeed by Nathan Mullins
8/12/08
There's absoloutly nothing to dislike here. So the creatures in this
episode (the Adipose) aren't the creepiest, vicous, meanies to come up
against the Doctor but so what? This episode is a true classic for many,
many reasons. For starters, the writers had to think up a way of getting
the two leads (the Doctor and Donna) to meet one another again since they
last met in The Runaway Bride, two
Christmases ago. I liked the fact that Donna had an investigation of her
own before the Doctor got involved. Matron Cofelia (Miss Foster) has
developed a pill that will justify the fat that simply walks away.
Adipose industries is the company she works for and it's not long before
the Doctor gets involved.
May I say that, since Doctor Who had seen series 3 end on such a
high note, it came back with a new setup that really worked. David
Tennant acts as though he hasn't stepped out of the role and he's been in
about three or four drams since it came back for a fourth series.
Catherine Tate proved to me that she was worth having back as the Doctor's
companion because it seems that since we last met her, she's done a lot of
growing up and had been telling herself that she made a mistake when she
refused to travel with him. But I must say that I was in shock when I saw
how prepared she was for the trip of a lifetime with him when I saw his
reaction to all the bags she pulled from out of her car. I mean, she must
have known he'd return.
The Adipose were something else. I mean, they're not all that bad.
When I first saw them in the Radio Times, I can't say I was impressed, but
they've grown on me and after I repeatedly watched them on BBC3 on a
Doctor Who repeat, I must say that the episode was a blast! Of
course, we were bound to meet Donna's family as we did Rose Tyler's and
Martha Jones', but theres nothing wrong there. I quite enjoy that part and
I love Bernard Cribbins as Donna's grandfather Wilf. Although I despise
her mother, but she wasn't terribly irritating like Jackie (thanking my
lucky stars.)
A positive start to season four and, to be honest, from what Voyage of the Damned screened at the end of the
episode, it looks like the rest of the season's going to be brilliant.
A Review by Finn Clark
22/9/09
It's a comedy. D'oh. If you cast the UK's number one female star,
known for her comedy sketch show, it shouldn't be surprising for them to
write her a comedy. That's what they did with the (brilliant) The Runaway Bride and that's what we get here
too. As a result we have both of Catherine Tate's first two stories both
being explicitly comedies, in each case to a degree we haven't seen since
the Hartnell era. Doctor Who has often been funny, but this is
actually "the comedy genre" rather than just "has laughs". That's how
they're structured.
Like that story, this one falls down a bit in the second half, but I
think this copes better by not trying to reach so far. It's not trying to
blow our Christmas-laden minds, but instead is doing something weirder.
This is a story in which people's excess body fat turns into cute little
aliens and walks away. We've seen criticism of New Who for being
too safe, for giving us formulaic Saturday evening family fare instead of
anything riskier, but I don't believe I've ever seen this before. Of
course it's crowd-pleasing and funny, but that's what you want from a
season opener. There's an evil corporation seeding the world with its
products of death, just waiting to press the big red button and kill us
all... with cutie-wutey snuggle bunnies. Miss Foster isn't a bad person,
really. She's just differently ethical. All she wants is to make babies,
which is something you don't often say about a character in Doctor
Who. Arguably it's the alien infiltration we thought we were getting
with Rose, except that it's practically a parody.
You could cut-and-paste Autons in place of the Adipose and you'd hardly
have to change a thing. You could even keep the, ahem, climactic alien
rampage across London, although you'd need to tell the extras to do a bit
more running and screaming.
Of course, the story ends with the Doctor just standing by and watching
as aliens fly down to make everything all right, but that's almost the
point. It's a NICE invasion. The thing's constructed like a shaggy dog
story. There certainly are New Who episodes in which the Doctor's
lack of plot involvement is regrettable, but this isn't one of them. The
real meat of the story involves the relationships of the Doctor and Donna.
A more serious niggle would be that the second half runaround is a bit of
a waste of time, but it's still featherlight and fun. It's just that it's
empty calories, that's all.
Going back to the beginning, I love the gag of the Doctor and Donna
coincidentally doing the same thing at stage after stage of their
investigation. It's even clever. Rusty's problem was always going to be
how to reintroduce Donna without being seen to do so. After all, we've
all seen The Runaway Bride. Then, on top of
that, there's Tate's performance. I hated her in the Christmas special,
but I loved her here. Apparently Russell T. Davies said in the Radio
Times that she'd been rounded out from "a shouting fishwife to someone
who's quite vulnerable and emotional". Sounds about right to me. I'm not
arguing. She's still got a bit of Peri in her, but in the sense that this
is what Peri should have been and wasn't. Look at how she reacts to
stepping inside the TARDIS, for instance. "I know all that, although
frankly you could turn the heating up." More than any other companion,
Donna brings the Doctor down to earth. That's the joke. She's always
100% grounded. This could have been annoying had Tate delivered a bad
performance, but instead it's great.
Similarly, this story shows The Idiot's Lantern
and Fear Her how you do domestic. "Ten past one
in the morning, the burglar alarm goes off." Doctor Who needs more
scenes of people worrying about their burglar alarms. However, the comedy
disappears and everything becomes gentle and lovely when it's time for
Tate and Bernard Cribbins. Awesome, both of them. It's interesting to
note that the following scene is of the Doctor talking to himself in the
TARDIS before realising that he's alone, but the important thing is that
no praise is too high for Cribbins.
If we're looking for nitpicks, then I'd like to know what happened to
conservation of mass when the lady got Adiposed. There was a lot of her
and not many waddling lumps afterwards. I also thought the Doctor was a
bit cavalier with the sonic pen. I can see that it was too useful for him
to be allowed to keep, but couldn't it have blown up when he put the two
sonic devices against each other? Incidentally, the bin he drops it into
isn't the one into which Donna drops her mother's car keys. One has a bag
and the other doesn't.
However, the important thing is that this is a story in which a
character delivers lines while hopping along tied to a chair. It's clear
what kind of spirit we're meant to be watching in. That's one of many
lovely moments, by the way, despite the fact that the actress messes up a
wonderful line. "I'm going to report you for madness." That should have
been funnier. Other moments I adore include the popping up heads, the
squish under the taxi and the Looney Tunes effect of turning off the
gravity beam. Obviously it's ridiculous, but it's easily handwaved.
Gravity doesn't glow. The light beam would presumably be a side effect or
a safety feature for ease of aim and manipulation. It's funny. That's
all you need, really. One subjectively wonderful line would be "it's a
beautifully fat country". The Japanese contingent says aye.
Oh, and I haven't even yet mentioned the lip-reading conversation.
Funniest live-action thing I've seen in years, although in anime I've seen
Kodocha. Laugh? I nearly died. Tennant's easier to lip-read than Tate,
by the way.
I'm going to single out a single moment. Note the playfulness of the
scene where Donna's sitting there while her nagging mother fades in and
out around her. They spent money on that special effect, you know. If
they'd cut that shot, we could have had an alien with six-inch fangs
instead. It's never the easy option to take that kind of step away from
realism, but I love the fact that they did so. That's confidence.
Russell T. Davies is completely out of control, in all the best ways.
Here we have a writer who knows how to play, which is a more important
skill than you'd think. Writing that's in no way playful is writing
that's half dead.
This story is deliberately lightweight, but that doesn't mean it's not
special. On the contrary, for my money it's worth a thousand stories like
Tooth and Claw. I appreciate the surprises. I
love the incidental music, which is bright and Partners in Crimey.
I admire the fact that they felt confident enough to go against the
expected season opener pattern of "bigger, Bigger, BIGGER!!!!" Last year
they had alien rhinos taking a London hospital to the moon. How do you
top that? Why, with monsters that make Alpha Centauri look like Aliens
vs. Predator. We have cute aliens! Doctor Who had never done cute
aliens before, if you don't count Beep the Meep.
A Review by Jamie Beckwith
5/4/10
Any misgivings I had about Catherine Tate evaporated as the episode
progressed. I'm not a fan of her sketch show but I do think she's good at
capturing characters (even if it's usually stupid or obnoxious
characters), so I didn't doubt her ability as an actress. Donna seemed so
annoying in The Runaway Bride but I rewatched
it again a few days ago and whilst I still don't rate it very much in
terms of the series overall, one can almost forgive Donna shrieking and
stomping about and throwing tantrums and slapping the Doctor. She had,
after all, to all intents and purposes, been kidnapped by an alien on her
wedding day.
On to Partners in Crime itself. It was a fairly solid season
opener and the fact that both the Doctor and Donna are known to the
audience allows for a bit of comedy in the beginning as their paths keep
crossing, missing each other by a few seconds each time.
The plot itself was silly but within the Doctor Who parameters
of "it makes sense" silly, and it was nice to have a bunch of aliens who
weren't bent on conquest or wanting to destroy the Earth for nefarious
means. As David Tennant points out in Confidential, if it weren't for the
extreme side effect of getting killed, humans and the Adipose could
probably get on quite well.
It was nice to see that Martha hadn't been forgotten and that the
Doctor had sobered up to the consequences of what he'd done to her. She's
still my favourite companion of the new series (Rose who?) so I'm looking
forward to her return later in the season. The Doctor inviting Donna
aboard was nicely inverted as a consequence of this and when they finally
set off I'd found that I was actually quite looking forward to Donna's
adventures with the Doctor.
Total Whogasm! I kinda regretted being home alone (My family had gone
to the theatre and though I was invited I had to reply "Do you not know
me?! I'm fully booked for the next 13 Saturdays!") because there was no
one to share the hand-punch-in-the-air moment of brilliance.
7/10 with a Whogasm bonus point for that bit at the end.
A Review by Harry O'Driscoll
3/2/11
This story is like some sort of joke! The whole thing is treated as a
comedy and cheapens Doctor Who to some sort of little kiddies show.
Any idea that this show could be real was totally dashed with the
stupid comedy premise here. The whole idea of the Doctor and Donna keep
missing each other really takes a stretch of the imagination, and things
aren't helped by Murray Gold's stupid musical score. The whole invasion of
Earth idea has been done to death in the new series. I know that
technically that there is no invasion here but it is getting a bit
unbelievable that every alien has their plan set on Earth; surely there
are other planets out there? Besides the whole point of Doctor Who
is to take us to faraway places in the Universe, not to have half the
series set in the modern day.
The monster in this story is possibly the cutest monster I have ever
seen, so how on earth does this episode scare people? Ms Foster is hardly
threatening, thinking that an icy demeanour and some heavies make her
belong in the Doctor Who monster hall of fame.
The worst thing of all is that the plan is not actually that evil, as
both the Adipose and the humans get what they want (they actually say as
much in Confidential!). The danger only happens due to the Doctor's
interfering; this could have worked to the story's advantage. However, a
nice point could have been made on how the Doctor's actions actually cost
lives, they could question whether the Doctor ever really saves anyone or
whether disaster just seems to follow him. This could have been a
recurring theme in season 30 but RTD wants to maintain this image that the
Doctor and the companion are always in the right.
Is there anything good to say on the story? Bernard Cribbins as ever
makes a great performance as the lovable Wilfred Mott and the Doctor and
Donna make a great duo, but that hardly enough to salvage this story.
You ain't mating with me, sunshine! by Evan Weston
6/11/15
Series 4 of Doctor Who is a strange beast. It's probably the
only run of the show so far that can't really be defended as good
television (unless you count the main arc of Series 6), which is both sad
and fascinating. This is due to a couple of key factors that begin to show
themselves in Partners in Crime: the casting of Catherine Tate and
the subsequent reliance on comedy, and the dumbing down of the scripts by
showrunner Russell T Davies and co., who were at this point helming one of
the BBC's most successful and beloved programs, one which many believed
would fail. This combination results in a series of stories that are just
too flimsy to analyze as serious drama, and a ham-handedness that hadn't
shown up before or sense.
Partners in Crime is a great, if perhaps too successful, example
of the typical Series 4 story. An evil alien nanny is duping the British
public into birthing her client's babies by marketing their eggs as diet
pills. Seriously? How did that make it out of Russell's head and into the
ears of another human being, much less into a produced episode of
Doctor Who? Oh, and I forgot to tell you, they come out as little
CGI balls of fat. Yup. The silliness is cranked up to 10 for what really
serves as a companion introduction episode, and it just feels wrong the
whole way through. I found myself rolling my eyes constantly, groaning
more than laughing at the ridiculous story concept, which the two leads
are forced to try and take seriously.
Catherine Tate, to be honest, does not do a particularly good job of
this. She's not quite as cringeworthy here as she will be in the next few
stories, but my goodness, what a failure by the casting department. That's
not to say that Tate isn't talented - she's very funny, and I enjoy a lot
of her work - but she and Doctor Who just don't mesh. I get the
want for a non-romantic companion and one that appeals to the average
person, but to celebrity-stuntcast that role and then make her a
blathering fool wasn't exactly the right idea. Donna kind-of worked in The Runaway Bride because her story made
narrative sense; here she's just a lovelorn spectator without the love
part, a shadow of a female character just waiting for her man to take her
to the stars. It's quite silly how her actions are explained by "I was
looking for you!" as if that was going to work, and Tate's mugging gets
annoying at points.
Her interplay with David Tennant is a high point, though, and the two
have undeniable chemistry. I do feel bad for Tennant both in Partners
in Crime and throughout Series 4, because he's forced to deliver all
of these godawful lines and be a silent comedian after the dramatic highs
of Series 3. However, he manages to make lines like "This is your one
chance, because if you don't call this off, then I'll have to stop you" at
least somewhat appealling, and I appreciate his full-on embrace of the new
tone. It's not a good change for the show, mind you, but he does with it
what he can. I also enjoy his interaction's with Tate's Donna: it's easy
to see why the Doctor would want to travel with her still, and the two of
them are quite funny as a pair. In fact, the whole thing is pretty
hilarious. Comedy is the obvious strength with this story, and it's hard
not to let out a big laugh when the Doctor and Donna are miming across the
villain's lair.
The issue with Partners in Crime, then, as I've alluded to
earlier, is that there's absolutely no dramatic depth to be found. The
villain's plan is silly and convoluted, death is treated as something to
be laughed at as long as people are exploding into adorable goo, and most
of the script is just a Stooges-style chase through Adipose Industries'
headquarters. The first ten minutes of the episode exist solely to provide
reams of useless exposition and to make sight gags of the Doctor and Donna
almost meeting. Oh, look, there they go again! The plot is so inane and
meaningless that it's extremely difficult to care about anything happening
on screen. Things make no sense: Why would the reporter be hiding in a
bathroom? Why would Cofelia think the Adipose would bring her back with
them when she failed, despite showing a large degree of intelligence
throughout the story? What the hell was Donna doing with fake
identification? You can turn the plot into a block of Swiss cheese if you
think about it for 30 seconds, and while that's been cropping up in
Davies' work for some time, it's especially bad here and throughout Series
4. Simply put, it's television for dumb people, and if Davies had that
much contempt for his audience, he should have left the show before this
series.
What works better are the smaller character moments, particularly with
Donna's grandfather. We met Wilfred Mott very briefly back in Voyage of the Damned, but he actually gets to
act a bit in Partners in Crime. Bernard Cribbins is utterly
charming, one of the best actors to ever appear on Who, and even in
brief glimpses we fall in love with his character. The hilltop
conversation between Wilf and Donna comes this close to convincing you of
her motives almost entirely on the strength of his acting. We also get
some sweet continuity moments between Donna and the Doctor, as he explains
Martha and his failure with her. She also asks about Rose, and guess who's
back... even for just a second, Billie Piper's defeated expression still
manages to light up the screen, and her return is extremely welcome. At
least, that's what I thought at the time; The Stolen
Earth/Journey's End hadn't yet defeated my faith in humanity. But more
on that later.
For now, Partners in Crime is the start of, in my opinion,
easily the worst era in new Doctor Who. The overt simplification of
the plot (likely for what Davies believed to be a mainstream, stupid
audience) and reliance on comedy to carry the drama almost completely
fails, saved somewhat by funny moments and character coherence. Sadly,
future Series 4 episodes don't even have that going for them.
GRADE: C