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| "But it never rains in New New York!" "That's Southern California." |
...seriously, though. American Gothic? Just...why?
Oh, and before they're hopelessly torn apart, they attempt to call the police department of the city of New New York, to no avail. However, this is not actually a joke about the authorities being useless, as we'll soon see.
Meanwhile, the Doctor offers to stretch his definition of "a trip" to one to the future since the previous episode already had one in the past. Martha agrees, but asks to see his homeworld. The Doctor almost wistfully describes the beauty of Gallifrey. The mountains that go on forever, that burnt orange sky, and Martha is quite taken with it. The Doctor, however, claims he doesn't want to go home.
...I'm not crying. You are.
...
...shut up.
Jokes aside, David Tennant absolutely sells the Doctor's anguish and doing his best to keep it buried. The way he tells Martha that he doesn't want to go home, in particular, is absolutely heartbreaking. It's one of many moments of his as the Doctor where I'm literally dumbfounded that people say David Tennant isn't an astounding actor and a great Doctor. Although with Russell's writing, I can understand that second part...especially with some things we'll see coming up.
The TARDIS lands in New New York. The Doctor is quick to mention that he last visited New Earth with Rose, which irritates Martha a bit. I can understand why. Rather than the stately look at the over world of New New York that Rose got, the Doctor has landed them slap bang in the under city right next to the Motorway. Definitely the impression you want to cultivate on your companion's first trip! Gold star, Doctor! Only, y'know...the opposite of that.
Elsewhere, a familiar cat woman speaks to...the Face of Boe, who tells her to find him before it's too late.
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| "Describe what the Face of Boe looks like!" |
As Martha works off annoyance, she and the Doctor run into a bunch of salesmen selling patches that cause moods. A young woman comes up to buy "Forget", which gets the Doctor's attention. She wants to forget her mother and father's deaths on the Motorway. Everyone goes to the Motorway in the end, she says, before putting on the patch and...well, forgetting.
And then, suddenly, Martha gets kidnapped by Annie Sawyer! Yes, it's Lenora Crichlow of later Being Human fame, being much more solid than her character on that show. The Doctor protests, but is held back at gunpoint. Annie and her boyfriend take Martha away, putting her in their car in order to get to the fast lane - something that the couple in the cold open were in during their very fatal trip.
The Doctor returns to the Mood pushers, getting some information out of them to continue after Martha, and then tells them to get out before he closes them all down.
Martha wakes up and tries to use the couple's gun to force them to take her back...only to find out that it's a dummy. Annie, or rather Cheen, and her husband Milo tell Martha that they only kidnapped her to get into the Fast Lane and had no intentions of actually hurting her. While they are apologetic, they are desperate. Martha rightly calls them idiots, and is not remotely amused when they tell her their next stop is in six years.
The Doctor meanwhile, gets out onto the Motorway and finds a CGI shot of many many cars...and smog. Lucky for us, the Doctor is called into one of the vans by a cat person. Before the Doctor dies of asphyxiation and we get Matt Smith roughly three years early, the Doctor pops in. Thomas Branigan Kinkade is the cat man in question, and he and his wife Valerie and their kittens (actual kittens, which raises more questions than it answers), and the Doctor grills him for information about the current situation. They've been driving for twelve years and, in that time, they've traveled only five miles. This seems to be the order of the day on the Motorway.
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| Natural reaction to realizing you've just met David Tennant. |
Martha is offered some recycled food for a "haha! It's urine/poop!" joke (and yes, I just typed that. Someone please come to my home and shoot me - if you can get through the Quarantine). Milo and Cheen get clearance for the fast lane and head down.
The Doctor, meanwhile, tries and fails to get a hold of the police. With the help of Thomas' friend list, he calls a married couple who the Doctor asks for help in locating a car. Luckily, one of them is a car spotter and they are able to work out the car that Martha's in and where it's going.
In the car of totally not about to be screwed, Martha and company hear some noises from below. While Milo tries to insist it's the air vents, Cheen seems all too cheerful to tell Martha legends about the Motorway where people suddenly go missing...which only makes everyone uncomfortable.
...yay?
Martha also points out that it's probably not the air vents, given all the pollution, but Milo dismisses this because he's an idiot and Russell isn't ready for anyone to know the actual reason yet.
Back in the Kinkade car, the Doctor can't get them to agree with going to the fast lane - though their reasons are very understandable. The Doctor gets back online to the old couple, asking them if they've seen a police car. The end result, the Doctor gets to, is that there's no one out there. Just the drivers going on the Motorway forever and ever and ever in a big ol' circle.
We get a lovely bit of hymnal when Kinkade tells the Doctor that the people of the Motorway aren't really alone like he says, so long as they have each other. Kind of a weird place to put in a discussion of faith, but Russell's done weird things and will do even weirder things to come. The cast doing the singing is a pretty nice touch though, I'll admit. Even Martha is driven to tears.
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| And then there were crabs. |
The Doctor resolves to go it on his own, using his sonic to break open the bottom hatch on the van and (after giving his coat to Valerie to keep a hold of - name dropping Janis Joplin) hops down onto another one, entering it. Here follows a "comedic" series of entries and exits from various cars.
Back in the Car of Imminent Doom, the exits to Brooklyn are all closed and a radio message from another car warns them that they need to drive back up before their car is destroyed by...something. The other car gets totaled, much to their horror.
The Doctor pops into the van of a stately gentleman and, after learning that he's on the bottom-most layer before the fast lane, pops the bottom hatch open to look down.
Back up top, Novice Hame - the cat woman from earlier - gets into the Kinkade van, demanding to know where the Doctor is.
Below, the Doctor finds out the cause of the trouble on the fast lane - the Macra! This is actually a classic series alien that first showed up in the 1967 episode The Macra Terror...and then never again until this episode in 2007. Given that that story involved the Macra enslaving humanity to mine a gas they needed in order to survive, you might think that the Macra here are responsible for the Motorway or are in some way the villains of this episode.
To that I say: congratulations! You've officially put more thought into this than Russell T. Davies did, but more on that later. However, no, they are not the villain.
Martha, Cheen, and Milo are having a bad time avoiding the claws of doom. Martha hits on the idea to cutting the power to the van, which seems to stop the attack as the Macra can no longer track them. Unfortunately, that means they only have about eight minutes of air.
The Doctor handwaves the Macra being a completely different thing than they were in the 1960's. Novice Hame pops in and the Doctor hugs her before remembering that she was complicit in some really shady shit the last time he came to New Earth. Unfazed, Novice Hame teleports him away with her, promising that the situation is worse than he can imagine.
They emerge in the New New York Senate chamber to a horrifying scene of the skeletons of the senators. Exposition dump follows: 24 years ago, a new chemical mood called Bliss was released. A virus mutated it and killed everything on New Earth in seven minutes. Hame sealed the Motorways to save everyone. The Doctor questions how Hame survived, and the Face of Boe is revealed. Boe has been using his life force to keep the Motorway running so that the people trapped there can survive.
The Doctor expresses amazement that Hame and Boe stayed here for twenty-four years. When Hame tells the Doctor she had no choice, he tells her that she did and he commends her for making the choice to do the right thing in the circumstances.
Back in the Car of Imminent Doom, Martha has a bit of an mini-existential crisis about how she took up with a stranger who turned out to be a time traveling alien. In the end, however, she decides that she has faith in the Doctor.
Remember this. It's going to legitimately hurt later.
No, not this episode, but this Series.
Milo reactivates the engines and they make a break for it amid horrifying crab claw death.
The Doctor helps Hame rewire the system so that they can open up the Motorway. After a false start, and the Face of Boe giving the last of his life force to finish the job, the skies open and the Doctor gets on the comms with his smug little smile to tell everyone to drive up into the sunlight. Martha and company barely managing to escape, Martha's faith in the Doctor rewarded.
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| "I had the strangest dream. And you were in it. And you were in it. And you were in it." |
Back in the Senate chamber, Boe's tank cracks. When Martha finally arrives, she finds the Doctor at his side. Boe is finally dying and, as Hame says, is to speak his final secret. To a wanderer. To a man without a home. He tells the Doctor that he's the last of his kind, just as the Doctor is. Before he goes, he tells him...
"You. Are not. Alone."
...much to the Doctor's confusion, as you might guess given that it's cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and gives no context. But yes, the Face of Boe is gone and Hame weeps for him. Other than that, however, all's well that ends well.
The Doctor and Martha come back to find that the mood sellers have cleared out. Before they leave, however, Martha questions the Doctor about what Boe said about him being the last of his kind and not being alone. He tries to avoid it, but she's having none of it and resolves to sit in one spot until the Doctor finally talks.
The city sings its hymns and the Doctor finally relents. He's the last of his kind, his planet is gone - Gallifrey and the Time Lords are nothing but dust now. He lied to her because, for a moment, he could pretend it wasn't true. That his people were still alive under that burnt orange sky. He settles in with her in that back alley, telling her about the Time War (and about a race called the Daleks who they fought). He tells her of Gallifrey as the camera pans back and the hymns take over the audio...as the episode ends on a shot of New New York brought to life once again as the sun sets.
Gridlock is a pretty okay episode, with some exceptions. I suppose, upon reflection, that the discussion of faith given the circumstances - i.e., a bunch of people trapped on a journey that seemingly has no end - is well-placed. It doesn't really go anywhere beyond Martha's affirming her own faith in the Doctor, though. This episode mostly exists to get Martha up to speed on the Doctor as well as to push the arc of the Series, namely that the Doctor. Is. Not. Alone.
Also, Russell managing to subtly (for him, anyway) tie in the theme in Series 3 of Martha's faith in the Doctor, but more on that later.
The Macra are completely pointless in this episode. They don't have the same status as they did back in The Macra Terror and it's kind of a lazy explanation that they just "devolved" over the billions of years since then. It is technically true, sure, but we really don't ever see that with any other races in Doctor Who, in particular humans. They could have been cut out of the episode entirely and, besides Martha being in danger for the climax, there would be so little difference.
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| "For a moment, I could just imagine...there were no fangirls." |
If anything, given how Bliss wrecked the world and so on, one would almost think that the drug pushers would have been the villains of the piece in a very The Sunmakers or even a The Caves of Androzani kind of way. Maybe the Doctor uncovering the truth of things and then shutting them down or the denizens of the Motorway turning on them for their part in bringing about the collapse of their civilization.
So no, not a bad episode per se. Just a bunch of Russell's usual hallmarks (seriously what was with the American Gothic couple in the beginning?) and some nonsense that clearly wasn't thought out too well or could have been expanded on better. Not so for the episode that comes next week. It's a Dalek episode and a two-parter. Naturally, this means I should love it.
Oops.
Written by Helen Raynor, it is in my mind the first part of the second and third worst Dalek episodes that have been broadcast since the show came back to the air waves.
That isn't a dig at her, though. More at Russell, but we'll get into that next week.
Daleks in Manhattan. Be there!
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