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5TH JULY 2008
(65-MINUTE EPISODE, PART 3 OF
3)
As I write this,
it’s being reported that Journey’s End was the most watched
prog-
ramme of the week on British television. More viewers than
EastEnders. More viewers than Coronation Street. More viewers
than the Wimbledon final. More viewers than chuffing Big Brother,
even. But even with the highest chart position in Doctor Who’s long
history and an audience appreciation figure that is practically off the
scale, something about this episode doesn’t sit well with me. It
has left me feeling utterly dejected; so much so that I’m writing this on
the Wednesday night following transmission rather than first thing on the
Sunday morning!
And why? I still
haven’t worked that one out. Russell T Davies’ sixty-five minute season
finale either has such profound dramatic impact that its ending is
literally too painful to bear or, just like last year, the story was so
damned big that it was nigh on impossible for even Davies to craft a
satisfying conclusion.
“Now then, where
were we?” the Doctor
says. At the nub
of the most almighty
Doctor Who
cliffhanger ever devised,
that’s where.
The explosive ending to
last week’s
Stolen Earth had even the
most hardened spoiler junkies questioning
what they knew. Predictably, a few rumours were
bandied about on t’internet – my favourite was the “Sylvester McCoy is returning!” one (well,
if he is going to show up on Doctor Who Confidential
wearing some bizarre corruption of his
original
costume…) – but somehow, someway, the production team managed to keep
their big secret under wraps.
Sadly though,
when you have so much media interest all centred around one cliffhanger,
it’s to be expected that its resolution is going to come as something of
letdown. The greater the suspense, the greater the hype… the bigger the
cop-out. And the “handy spare hand” is the biggest cop-out of
them all. But I can forgive that - hell, it’s part of the magic – but a
Doctor duplicate is harder to forgive, at least in the long term.
“Instantaneous biological metacrisis. I grew out of you.”
The idea of a
multi-Doctor story limited to just one incarnation is hardly something
new. The most prominent example that springs to mind is Lloyd Rose’s audio
play
Caerdroia, which featured three incarnations of Paul McGann’s Doctor. And Caerdroia was fun, just like the others were fun, and
just like Journey’s End is fun. David Tennant and Catherine Tate
have clearly relished the opportunity to play off each other in a new and
hilarious way; the Doctor imitating Donna’s voice was especially amusing –
“Part Time-Lord, part Human. Well isn’t that wizard” – although in
fairness Tennant had had plenty of practice after voicing Donna in the
recent Pest Control audio book.
My beef is with
the fact that, come the end of this story, there are still two
Doctors. Neither of them perishes (despite a blinding opportunity for the
ersatz Doctor to do so, when he comes belting out of the TARDIS in the
Dalek Crucible), and there is no re-amalgamation. Instead, we are in
essence left with two Doctors out there; same memories, same face, same
man. And personally I can’t stand the idea that the Doctor is divisible and/or
replicable.
“This is a fully-fledged Dalek Empire at the height of its power; experts
at fighting TARDISes.”
However, save
for this one - admittedly pretty fundamental –
grievance, I found the
first fifty minutes or so of Journey’s End
to be nothing
short of magnificent. Seeing a Dalek Empire at
its zenith is
something that we have never even come close to
seeing on
screen, but it was well worth waiting forty-five years
for. It may be a
cliché to say that you would struggle to find act-
ion as epic as
this in the cinema, but it’s true nonetheless - the
visuals of the
planetary alignment field and the TARDIS being
drawn into the
Dalek Crucible are simply spectacular. Once
again, the Mill
has to be applauded.
But, more
importantly, Davies’ imagination is more than equal
to the tremendous
resources that he has at his disposal. I love
the sequence showing
the Daleks occupying Germany, for
instance. Daleks speaking cod German is
one of those things
that, now that it’s been done, you can’t believe that
no-one had thought of doing it before
because it’s just so… apt. “Extermineren!”
Here’s to the death of allegory.
“Extermineren!”
I also enjoyed
seeing the Doctor’s recent companions all joining forces to combat the
Dalek menace. Fair dues, even at sixty-five minutes Journey’s
End is
obscenely overcrowded, but who can blame Davies for wanting to bring back
all those fantastic characters?
Martha Jones is served well; the
idea that she would be prepared to destroy the Earth with the
“Osterhagen” device to save the whole of creation is wonderfully played. I
particularly like how Davies leaves it unclear as to whether or not Martha
would have actually gone through with her “final option” or not. Freema
Agyeman is truly at the top of her game here.
Elisabeth
Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith is also treated to a strong outing. Sarah has a
deadly earnestness about her throughout that works really well and is paid
off marvellously in that spellbinding moment when Davros recognises her.
“Impossible. That face. After all these years. Oh this is meant to be!
The
circle of time is closing. You were there on Skaro at the beginning of my
creation.”
Only Captain
Jack and his Torchwood team seem subdued, relatively speaking. I
can’t quite put my finger on why, but for some reason Jack doesn’t seem
his usual bombastic self here (save for his episode-long spar with the
Dalek Supreme, that is) and worse still Gwen and Ianto are for all intents
and purposes out of the equation altogether, safe inside their time
bubble. All the same, I’m grateful that Davies managed to squeeze in a few
lines for them both, including a charming little veiled reference to Eve
Myles’ appearance in The Unquiet Dead.
Of all the
Doctor’s companions though, Mickey Smith
fares the
best. Noel Clarke’s character is at the heart
of the action
all the way through but, crucially, he really
makes himself
stand out – just look at the way in which
he takes control when everything is kicking off inside the
Crucible. I wanted him to kill Davros so much; can you imagine? After
surviving everything
the Thals and
then Daleks and then the Time Lords had to throw at him, to be finished
off
by ‘Mickey the
Idiot’… That would have been sublime.
“You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. I made the
Daleks, Doctor. You made this.”
For me though,
the heart of this episode is the extraordinary psychological battle
between the Doctor and Davros (“The Doctor’s soul will be revealed...”).
It’s so skilfully and powerfully written and performed that the whole
episode could just have been the Doctor and Davros sat in the dark and I’d
probably have been just as entertained. Journey’s End may not be
the first time that one of the Doctor’s adversaries has pointed out his
inherent flaws to him, but never has it been done as well as it is here.
When I reviewed
The Stolen Earth I hastily glossed over Julian Bleach’s performance
as Davros because I was still lamenting over Terry Molloy’s being passed
over. This week, on the other hand, I really do have to take my hat off to
the new feller. Bleach has captured the essence of the character so very
well – all that scrupulous genius and all that quiet reason combined with
deafening madness and a supreme sense of righteousness. The way he spits
out the word “butchered” when he is accusing the Doctor of war crimes
encapsulates where Davros is at in Journey’s End flawlessly.
“…every dimension. Every parallel. Every single corner of creation.
This
is my ultimate victory, Doctor. The destruction of reality itself!”
What’s more,
Bleach’s Davros is more physical than his predecessors. Whilst the
Davros of old could shoot lightning bolts from his hand, it was, at the end
of the day, a withered hand. Davros’ new prosthesis gives him a
whole new range of movement; whereas earlier actors could only use their
voices, Bleach can use his arm. He can point. He can rub his forehead.
And, thanks to the advances in make-up made since the 1980s, he can even
move his face. He can imbue fervent lines like “Never forget Doctor, you
did this. I name you, forever, YOU ARE THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS!” with a
material sense of menace.
And this time
Davros’ plan is so colossal and so ambitious that were he to succeed, it
would literally mean the end of everything. Not just the end of our own
universe, but the end of every other. Nothing in the whole of creation
save for an almighty Dalek Empire and the crippled Kaled scientist that
created it. That is bigger than any other baddie-master plan that I can
re-call; it even outdoes the Master destroying half the universe in
Logopolis. I couldn’t believe it when I read some reviews in the press
that criticised this story for trying to be too huge – of all the
things that Journey’s End can reasonably be criticised for, I
certainly don’t think that scale and ambition are amongst them. On the
contrary, they’re its greatest strengths.
And the script’s
ambition is paid off outstandingly with the sequence that shows the TARDIS
towing the Earth home. The CGI is stunning, and Murray Gold’s uplifting
score is exceptional. Better still, seeing the TARDIS being operated
correctly for the first time in forty-five years is worth this year’s
licence payer’s fee alone. A hexagonal console. Six pilots. Perfect sense.
But with reality
saved and Earth home in time for tea, the credits don’t roll. And this is where the episode takes a nosedive
for me. Fifteen
minutes of farewells felt disproportionate at the end of the mammoth
Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, and so having the same in a
sixty-five minute television programme was always going to be…
problematic. Remarkably, the vast majority of the goodbyes are dealt
with swiftly and sweetly – Sarah Jane doesn’t try to outdo the poignant
panache of School Reunion, she just runs off; and as for Jack,
Mickey, and Martha… well, let’s just say that it looks like Torchwood
has two ready-made replacem-ents for its two recently fallen heroes.
“Something has been drawing us together for such a long time… but heading
for what?”
Turning to
Donna, I think that her fate works brilliantly in the sense that it is
literally too painful for the viewer to bear. After all she’s been
through, and after how much she’s changed and grown, to see her reduced to
her old pre-Runaway Bride self is utterly, utterly heartbreaking.
“Even the
Supreme Dalek would not
dare to contradict the prophecies of
Dalek Caan”,
Davros said. I can only
assume that Caan was not including
this episode’s
writer in that statement.
Caan was unequivocal in saying that
“…his
children of time will gather and
one of them will die”. He didn’t say that
“…his children of time will gather one of them will
undergo a biological metacrisis and have to have her memory erased”. Semantics, I
know, but the point stands. Had Donna died, then I’d be feeling a lot more
buoyant about Journey’s End than I do right now. She deserved a
noble end. She deserved better. And maybe that’s the whole point; maybe
that’s why it’s the best ending ever written. Maybe that’s why it’s the
worst.
“We saved the universe but at a cost. And the cost is him…
That’s me when we first met, but you made me better. And now you can do
the same for him”.
My real grouse
though has to be concerning Rose’s spick and span ending. I
unreservedly hate it. Having her effectively married off to a being
that, depending on how you look at it, may or may not be the Doctor is
insufferable in so many different ways. It’s far too neat, far too clean,
and it leaves one Doctor in the manifold multiverse too many.
It also means
that the Doctor can go on with his lonesome life, righting wrongs and
fighting monsters, but deep down he will always know that the woman he
loves is shacked up with a human incarnation of himself, who can give her
all the things that he never could. Whilst there is still most definitely
a whiff of tragedy there, wasn’t Bad Wolf Bay the first time around that
much more affecting? The Doctor and Rose were torn apart despite being
desperate to stay together. But this time around, there is no getting away
from the fact that the Doctor walked away from her. No matter how gallant
his motives, the Doctor chose to leave Rose behind.
The way that the
Doctor vanished in Doomsday before he could say whatever Rose
thought that he was going to say to her was too perfect for words; that
should have been it. Now we are left with the certain knowledge of what
the Doctor could never say and what the Doctor could never be, and whilst
many with doubtless rejoice in that fact, I have to say that I much
preferred the matter left open to interpretation.
The only
positive that I could possibly take from how the foregoing played out is
that if, in twenty years time, they want to do a multi-Doctor story
without having to come up with an awkward explanation as to why David Tennant
looks older then hey presto: it’s the human Doctor, back from a parallel
universe!
“I’ll watch out for you sir. Every night when it gets dark and the stars
come out.
I’ll look up, on her behalf, I’ll look up at the sky and think
of you.”
Thankfully the
last few rueful moments of the season are saved by Bernard Cribbins’ and
David Tennant’s delightful performances. I think I’m going to miss old
Wilfred Mott as much as I will Donna.
On a final note,
I can’t express how glad I am that David Tennant will be staying on for at least
another episode or five. He is such a phenomenal talent. That dour look on his face
as he paces around the
TARDIS console, teasing us with the prospect of a cliffhanger that would
never come, sums up the closing moments of Journey’s End so
completely. And by the time the final credits had rolled, my bitter
expression was much the same.
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