Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways (2005) Review

"The fuck do you mean, I left Doctor Who to not be typecast? Fake news!"

Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways perfectly ties up the themes and character arcs of Series 1, albeit with a touch of cheese.

WRITTEN BY

Russell T. Davies. He clearly put extra care into making sure his first season of Doctor Who had a good payoff.

PLOT

The TARDIS crew wake up to find themselves as players in bizarre future game shows held by the Daleks to keep humanity docile. With nobody else to defend the planet, the Doctor takes it upon himself to hold their invasion off with a doomsday weapon that would annihilate both races, but save the universe.

ANALYSIS

Bad Wolf has come under some criticism for its use of then-contemporary British game shows to represent the Daleks' hold over the planet. It didn't bother me much. Logically speaking, there is no given answer for it(though it is of course possible the Daleks themselves installed the games based on their limited knowledge of Earth), but the audience's familiarity(remember, this is before Doctor Who became a hit outside Britain) with shows like Big Brother and The Weakest Link helps to drive home the gruesomeness of what the Daleks are doing.

If the games were alien by themselves, then I don't think the surprise wouldn't land quite as harshly.  It also stylistically fits in with RTD's penchant for criticising contemporary culture by exaggerating its negative sides. So I understand and appreciate what he was trying to do here, but perhaps it would've been better suited for a different kind of episode(and one that wasn't set so far in the future).

The pulpy Dalek attack on Earth is by far the best and most fondly remembered aspect of the finale. The Daleks already have a strong fundament thanks to Rob Shearman's work on Dalek, and now the series gets the chance to show them off in all of their glory. I liked the strategy of Jack and the Doctor's defence, seeing how long the hapless humans manage to hold them off with flashes of ingenuity.

The sheer effort that RTD put into making sure the entire series *matters* can't be understated. And it's not just that the words "bad wolf" appeared in every episode, but all added some vital aspect of story or character development for later on. The first three episodes served to introduce the format, the Slitheen episodes set up the Heart of the TARDIS and did the most to develop the leads, Dalek and The Empty Child introduced the Daleks and Captain Jack respectively, The Long Game directly set up the events in this story and Father's Day emotionally reconnects Jackie and Rose and pushes them to work together to get the TARDIS to return to the Game Station. All of that pays off here and it's immensely satisfying, especially for a regeneration story.

My one criticism of the plot would be the clunky ending. I don't mind Rose becoming Bad Wolf and disintegrating the Daleks(like half of Doctor Who is deus ex machina if you really think about it), but the fact that she survives completely unharmed whilst the Doctor suffers gross cellular damage isn't really explained. It's not a huge problem, but it did kind of leave me scratching my head a bit.

CHARACTERS

Christopher Eccleston's final performance is also his peak. I absolutely love the Doctor's cold resolve in escaping from the games, particularly after the jaw-dropping moment where Rose is seemingly killed(a scene directed so well that it still gets me even though I'm perfectly aware it's just a fakeout). Forcing him to relive his choice to take down the Time Lords and the Daleks together is such a brilliant conceit for his regeneration story, and honestly, I'm far more impressed with how this scene was handled than the actual one in Day Of The Doctor.

I'm not sure how I feel about Rose in this one. The fact that she chastised Mickey and Jackie for keeping their heads low and not getting involved with the situation I liked, it's definitely showing how much braver and headstrong she's become. But the fact that she did it because there's supposedly nothing left for her on Earth(which is a flat-out lie) rather than simple moral imperative takes away from that scene considerably.
That, and her childish jealousy over Lynda's budding relationship with the Doctor hints towards the more possessive attitude she'll take in Series 2.

Speaking of Lynda, Jo Joyner is such a, well, joy in the part. It took her all of five minutes to become my favourite Ninth Doctor companion. And yeah, I count her because you know she'd have gone with him. She just seemed such a charming, innocent, excitable person and I would've loved to see more adventures with her.

Barrowman also fitted well into the story as a classic charismatic action hero, leading the defence whilst the Doctor does the nerdy work. Jack shows off his firm loyalty to the Doctor and Rose, and I really do find it to be a shame that he had to be booted off for Torchwood, as I think he would've been a nice buffer between the two in the next season as well.

I thought it was a really neat idea to use Rose's dad as the thing that gets Jackie sort of onboard with the time travelling concept and helps her rediscover Rose's humanity. In turn, this also shows us more of Jackie's vulnerability as opposed to overemphasising her loudness, which can get a bit grating. As for Noel Clarke's Mickey... let's just wait til next season. He does at the very least refuse to let Rose give up, showing some increasing backbone.

The romance between the programmers was kind of a token way to get us to care about them, but I think Jo Stone-Fewings and Nisha Nayar had just enough natural chemistry to make the workplace bond seem plausible and make us notice their inevitable fates as Dalek fodder.

NOTES

*Given the fatal design of the Big Brother house, why is Lynda initially excited about the Doctor being there? Keeping up appearances for the cameras?

*Powerful transmat beam or not, how did the Controller access a time-travelling TARDIS? Were they just hanging around that particular point in time? And how was she aware of their identities? Was there any info left from their visit to Satellite Five?

*Where'd they put poor Jack? On some porn channel?

*What exactly do the programmers think Rose "knows" when she first gets onboard?

*The reference to president Schwarzenegger was cute. Who knows, maybe a descendant...

*The fact that some teen declared himself incapable of playing right before Rose was about to was very convenient.

*Considering that Jack's show is supposed to be fashion-related, how exactly are legs stitched to one's chest fashionable?

*Why does Rodrick get credits for winning The Weakest Link whilst the Big Brother contestants merely get to live?

*How insanely confident is the Doctor to walk into that disintegration room believing he'll be spared without even knowing how exactly he ended up there and why?

*Aren't there other satellites around the planet that the Doctor could use as some form of defence(I would assume, given that at least in The Long Game-era, the Game Station was the fifth satellite)?

*I like how the Doctor defines himself as a passing traveller who's really just after a quiet life, much like Bilbo Baggins. I prefer that to the ADD monstrosity of nowadays.

*Despite Jack's fashion being "soooo 20th century", everybody else on the Game Station seem to be wearing remarkably 20th century clothes.

*Jack seems to be an underappreciated engineer(part of the Time Agent training?) as he manages to transform the defabricator into an effective blaster, with a specific lifesigns detector to boot(that can isolate both the Doctor and Rose).

*Why would a lack of news information cause the planet and economy to collapse, exactly? Were they cut off from the rest of the empire somehow?

*It also occurs to me that the Doctor and the Daleks' intervention in Earth history seems to be pretty massive in this instance. I wonder if the Doctor went back to check whether the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire turns back alright.

*The Doctor seems to exaggerate when he says Bad Wolf has manipulated his entire life, unless he refers to his life as that one specific incarnation. Or maybe he's remembering seeing the words in previous selves?

*For a brief moment, Lynda mentions just wanting to go home, which seems to be completely at odds with her character development throughout the rest of the two-parter(she even refuses the chance to do so not much later to stay with the Doctor).

*Why does the transmat cause such powerful memory lapses when we first see it used on the TARDIS crew, but every other time in the episode, the effect is mild? Is it something to do with the distance?

*The Doctor mentions the "ancient legends of the Dalek homeworld". Given the implausibility of Dalek legends, maybe he was referring to the Thals, who after all, would have cause to give the Doctor titles after his part in their history.

*"Soon as the TARDIS lands, I become a part of the events, stuck in the timeline." is a nice way of saying "it's not Moffat's era yet".

*Why would Jackie and Mickey just pretend everything was normal and ramble on about pizza instead of just straight-up comforting Rose over the loss of a friend?

*The fact that Rose runs off immediately after yelling about how she wants to make a stand instead of being like all those other people who run away is hilarious to me.

*What's the point of using the Anne Droid to transmat the Daleks away? It's not that much of a victory, but Jack's cheering like he just won the football match.

*Are people who work on the Satellite itself eligible for the games? If not, why would Davitch's only reason for working there be to be alongside a hot co-worker? I'd be like "shit, I work here because I wanna live!"

CONTINUITY ADVISOR

It's a series finale, so expect tons...

1) We get reintroduced to transmat technology, which is basically a Classic Who term for teleporting, introduced way back in 1968's The Seeds Of Death.

2) Jack claims he got his clothes from a shop in Cardiff, presumably during Boom Town.

3) The Doctor mentions how the TARDIS had been to Raxacoricofallapatorius after the events of Boom Town.

4) The Doctor jokingly tells Lynda that he "moisturises" to keep young(does she ever learn he was a time traveller?). This was done by Lady Cassandra in The End Of The World.

5) Rose recognises the Face of Boe as the oldest inhabitant of the Isop Galaxy(Jack found a comfy home galaxy?), having met him in The End Of The World.

6) The Doctor, Jack and Lynda are sentenced to the Lunar Penal Colony, which the Third Doctor was also sentenced to in Frontier In Space.

7) The TARDIS crew encounter the Emperor of the Daleks, last seen in The Evil Of The Daleks.

8) Rose mentions the TARDIS's ability to reverse course and return to a previous point, which refers to the fast return function established in The Edge Of Destruction.

9) In order to escape Earth, Rose opens up the Heart of the TARDIS and tells Mickey of her previous encounter with it in Boom Town.

10) Rose tells Jackie about how she met her dad in Father's Day.

11) Lynda mentions that Australasia has disappeared. That combined continent was introduced in The Enemy Of The World.

BEST QUOTE

"Coward. Any day."

CONCLUSION

Not a perfect story, but an excellent sendoff for the Ninth Doctor and one of the strongest Dalek entries in the TV series.