I see things like this, and I wonder why I even bother, really. I didn't think that there were actually episodes of Doctor Who so bad that they'd cause you actual, real physical pain, but we're here now. This is real and it is happening. Father's Day.
Absolutely...freaking...astounding.
If Dalek is the best episode of the Christopher Eccleston series, then Father's Day is the absolute worst. I know that some people hate the first two-parter, Aliens of London and World War Three for a bunch of ridiculous crap with the Slitheen and the finale Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways for it's various problems that we'll be getting into when we get to those episodes. I even agree with quite a bit of it. But this...this is the absolute pits. The bottom of the bottom of the barrel.
And it's not even a Russell T. Davies episode. That's what absolutely kills me. It's Paul Cornell, who would go on to write the spectacular Human Nature and The Family of Blood in Series Three (admittedly based largely on his novel of the same name as the first of the two episodes) and had done several things in Doctor Who spin-off work - such as the creation of Bernice Summerfield and several spin-off novels and audio plays that I've mentioned in previous reviews.
It's just disheartening to see him turn out a clunker like this, and I really wonder how much it has to do with him and how much it has to do with Russell's interference.
With that settled, let's get this over with.
We begin with some narration over a photograph. Rose talks about her father, Peter Tyler. "The most wonderful man in the world" and we see a younger Rose being told stories about him by her mother, specifically about the day that he died. In the present, Rose petitions the Doctor to go and be there in her father's final moments - since her father died alone after a hit and run accident. The Doctor agrees with a pat "be careful what you wish for".
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| Look at this photograph, every time I do, it makes me laugh |
They arrive, Rose narrating what is happening as it's happening...and Rose unable to go to him in that moment after he gets hit. It's understandable, really. If I had witnessed one of my parents suffering a terrible accident like that - even if I had known about it beforehand, I'm not entirely sure that I would have coped any better than Rose did.
...but then she asks to try again, the Doctor's look and the ominous music telling us that this is a bad idea...as if trying to warn us of the terror that is yet come. This time, seeing the previous pair of themselves there (and the Doctor warning that it's bad for two sets of them to be in the same place), Rose watches her father leaving her car...and then jumps out into traffic and pulls him out of the way...well in sight of the previous Doctor and Rose, causing them to wink out of existence. The Doctor looks on in shock as Rose is absolutely exhilarated at saving her father.
So...time paradox.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 23
Peter is friendly as all get out and, as I mentioned last week, Shaun Dingwall gives a great performance and portrays him as a very, very likeable guy. He brings them around to his flat, and when he heads off, the Doctor and Rose have it out. The Doctor makes very reasonable remarks about how time has now been completely altered by her rescuing her father - bringing up that when his planet was destroyed and his people died, he didn't go back and save them.
...insert "if you saw Day of the Doctor, you're laughing" joke here.
But, regardless, he brings up a good point. Rose literally has no idea what she's done by saving Pete. Literally an infinity of potential futures have been opened up by him existing. As the Doctor puts it, an ordinary man is the most important thing in creation.
Instead, Rose takes this as the Doctor being jealous...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 24
...and then berates him, saying that she knows how said he is and that she's going to make him wait a long time out of sheer spite. She knows the Doctor's trauma, she's been told a couple of times now about how he's the last of the Time Lords. How he fought in the Time War and saw the end of his people and his planet. She's met a Dalek and knows the destructive power that one holds, much less can imagine what an entire race can do.
She is putting herself above him, and using that position to belittle his pain because she feels petty. As with Mickey before, this is something so grievously callous and tone-deaf that the counter must go up. Much, much higher. Just one hit isn't going to do it.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 72
Good. God.
Luckily for me, the Doctor takes her TARDIS key and heads off. Unfortunately, because we're not even to the halfway point of the episode, the Doctor's TARDIS has been thrown out of time and the plot kicks in.
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| That moment Eccleston realizes that, no, he did not read a good script. |
But yes, people are disappearing. A red lens filter consumes people and a young boy, later revealed to be Mickey, runs scared to the church. As does the Doctor...and we get the reveal of the "villain" of the story...since Rose is filling that position admirably.
The Reapers.
The never before mentioned and never mentioned again way that time corrects paradoxes. The Doctor gives some explanation about the Time Lords having been around to stop paradoxes like this beforehand, hence the lack of need for such things...but it doesn't really matter ultimately. Honestly, the fact that these things weren't showing up en masse during things like The Big Bang or The Wedding of River Song just makes me think that the Doctor's talking out of his ass on this one...not that such a thing is uncommon.
But everyone who isn't horrifically murdered by the Reapers gets into the church, which the Doctor says is old enough to keep the Reapers out at least for the time being. We get a truly glorious moment where the Doctor gets some retroactive revenge on Jackie being a complete ass to him. The groom at the wedding gives the Doctor the phone...and he reveals the speaker on the other end is Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
Why that call? I have no idea, and the episode doesn't feel like explaining either.
The Doctor exposits about the Reapers - time is damaged and they've come to sterilize the wound...by consuming everything inside. At this point, Rose actually has the nerve to ask if this is her fault. No, Rose...it was the other person causing a paradox that the Doctor earlier says would change the entire course of history. Also, if you're hoping I'll add another point to the Rose Tyler is Awful counter, don't worry...it's coming.
But yes, we see the streets of London are largely abandoned with ominous music playing overhead. The Doctor and Pete have a short scene where they see the phantom car, and Shaun Dingwall's performance here is great where we can see the wheels start to turn in his head. He heads back to Rose and they talk, him questioning her before he works out that she is indeed his daughter. It's a very sweet moment and the performances of both Shaun Dingwall and Billie Piper make it very sweet and touching...and such a moment deserves to be in much better episode than this one.
I will go ahead and say it, I don't hate Billie Piper. I think she's a fantastic actress and I love her to bits. When I'm attacking Rose, I am only attacking Rose. I think I've given enough reasons why I hate Rose and I will give plenty more as we go along through the end of Series 1 and into Series 2. And even when she returns in Series 4 (spoiler alert).
The Doctor has a moment with the bride and groom where he promises to try and save them, another bright Eccleston moment that - again - deserves to be in a much better episode.
There's a further scene where Rose and Pete talk. Jackie shows up to give her customary grief and shatter Rose's illusions.
Also, Mickey at one point runs in and hugs Rose. Rose later saying that Mickey must have imprinted her on him like a mother chicken, developing an attraction to her that she will later misuse, abuse, and exploit for her own selfish ends.
...the count is coming. Just wait.
The Doctor jokingly tells the baby Rose to not end the world...and the Doctor tells Rose not to touch her younger self, because the paradox is causes might allow the Reapers in. After the Doctor rightly tells her off...she lightly cries and he says that he's sorry.
Doc...you did not nearly bring about the end of all life on Earth. She did. Her. The worst part being, of course, that the Doctor says that he was not, in fact, going to leave her in 1987...which just shows that the parasitic mind-control that Rose infects others with has apparently begun to work on the Doctor.
But the Doctor has no plan and is worried. The only bits of the human race that are left are places like this...the paradox has apparently laid waste to the entire world. So, by doing this, Rose Tyler has basically caused an extinction level event in 1987. Therefore...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,204
And yes, the count is now that high. Don't expect it to get much lower.
Rose insists that she's sorry...which Series 2 proves to be a gigantic load of crap. Luckily, however, the plot kicks up again with the TARDIS key glowing and white-hot. With the key, the Doctor can summon the TARDIS back and fix everything...somehow.
As the Doctor begins to charge the key, Rose tries to give Pete the romanticized version of the events of her childhood as if he were alive...and Pete doesn't buy any of it. It seems that the mind-control hasn't completely taken over Pete, and good on him I say.
The TARDIS starts materializing and all seems hunky dory. Pete has worked out that he was supposed to die. Rose insists that this isn't his fault, but Pete goes for the good Dad route and insists that it's his job for her mistakes to be his fault...and as you can see by the jump in the Awful Count, I'm willing to give him a pass on this one and just let Rose bear the brunt of it because this is her mistake that she suffers no repercussions for.
Alas, Jackie intervenes and is horrified when Pete says that Rose is their daughter, him taking the baby version and putting her in grown up Rose's arms to show her the comparison. The Doctor protests half a second too late, and a Reaper gets in...which then eats the Doctor, because he is the oldest thing in the church.
We'll get back to this.
The Reaper also collides into the forming TARDIS, which causes both to disappear and leaves only the key behind...now cold.
So, Rose has broken time and gotten several people, including the Doctor, brutally killed. Now, given how Rose is such a wonderful and compassionate person, you would expect she would make the ultimate sacrifice to set things right. If Rose gets eaten by the Reapers, then the paradox should be resolved. If she gave herself over to the Reapers, then everything should be resolved and go back to normal. /Unfortunately, Pete continues his damn likeable streak of honor before reason and resolves to go out and get hit by the car.
Again, a wonderful scene between Billie Piper and Shaun Dingwall (and also Camille Coduri) that deserves to be in a much, much better episode.
Also, Rose insists that the entire thing isn't fair...and I wasn't going to...but I'm going to add another point for that.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,205
I mean, good god. I understand being upset, I really do. But you have seen firsthand evidence that this is not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination, Rose! Doing this one thing has broken time and gotten the entire human race 86'd. Even Pete realizes it. But no, Rose must selfishly insist that reality isn't being fair to her and whine. And whine and whine and whine and for some reason Russell T. Davies wants us to root for her and feel sad!
But Pete goes out and runs in front of the phantom car to get hit, which causes the Reapers to disappear. The Doctor returns and Rose goes to be with her father in his final moments. As the previously deceased come out of the church with the survivors, we smash cut to Jackie telling a young Rose a different version of the events of Pete's death - telling her about the strange woman who was with him in his final moments, holding his hand.
Oddly enough, this paradox doesn't summon the Reapers considering Rose changed something about her personal history even without this...but nevermind.
And, hand in hand with the Doctor, Rose returns to the TARDIS to have much, much better adventures than this one.
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| "Don't let your mother hook up with an alternative universe version of me!" |
Yeah, if my ranting hasn't made it clear, this episode sucks. While Rose Tyler had some rather annoying, vacuous moments before (one could even argue I was a little too harsh toward her in earlier episodes), this is where she stops being in any way redeemable or relatable for me. She shatters the whole of time around Earth, is unapologetic about it, manipulates the Doctor's trauma because she feels bad, but then gets away with everything because she's crying and she's "sorry".
She brought extinction to the human race, and she gets away with it because she's crying and she's sorry. Some would argue that the count should revert because everything got undone in the end. Well, you make your own review series and do your own count. That is staying. Why? Because this episode should have seen Rose kicked off the TARDIS. I wouldn't have that too firmly ingrained in my head, except we just had an episode where the Doctor kicked someone off - Adam - for stealing future knowledge and technology. Technology that he didn't get to even use apart from the door in his head that the Doctor, in blatant defiance of his own logic, left Adam with.
This is way worse!
Way. Flipping. Worse!
The Reapers make less sense the more you think about them. The Doctor claims they sterilize wounds in time by consuming everything inside said wound...but why don't they go after the source of the paradox they're summoned by? The Reapers should be trying to consume Rose and/or Pete, not everything in sight, since all that would do is create more paradoxes and hence summon more Reapers and it would basically be an endless loop...though I imagine they didn't have the budget for that much CGI back in 2005.
This to, also speaks to Rose's character on another level beyond the simple counter gag joke that I've been running (and will keep running) as we go on. Namely, as the Doctor brings up at one point, the question of whether or not this was her plan from the very beginning. Paul Cornell deliberately left it ambiguous as to whether or not she was, and actress Billie Piper has said that it wasn't Rose's intention from the beginning. Given how the episode plays out, I'm inclined to agree with Billie Piper's interpretation. It's fitting of her character at that point, after all. She's an incredibly flighty, self-centric teenager, essentially.
No, my problem isn't that Rose put literally all life on Earth in 1987 at the risk of extinction. My problem is that Rose put literally all life on Earth in 1987 at the risk of extinction, doesn't get punished for it in any way while also not trying to learn from the experience and better herself. She doesn't change, which is one of my fundamental problems with Rose as a character on the whole. Companions change, usually for the better, during their travels with the Doctor. They get a better perspective of life, the universe, and everything.
...when they don't die or get their memory erased, that is. It happens more than you think.
But Rose...doesn't. She's exactly the same callous, jealous arrogant human being she is in Rose that she will be in Journey's End, if not actually worse because she has the Doctor to fixate on. The fact that the Doctor doesn't immediately drop her back off at the Powell Estate in 2006 after this is all over is utterly and completely maddening.
I am happy to say that there is a much better version of this episode coming in a few series. It's called Turn Left and the character there actually has to do something besides cry and paying lip service to being sorry before things get fixed. And let me just go ahead and get this out of the way now, Donna Noble is an infinitude of times the person that Rose Tyler wishes she could be. But as for Father's Day...just avoid it. The little bits of good aren't worth the utter mountain of crap you have to work through, and the fact that Rose is still allowed on the TARDIS after this is offensively wrong even independent of what happened to Adam in The Long Game.
There is also a better pair of Paul Cornell episodes coming up - namely the aforementioned Human Nature and The Family of Blood, both of which are far, far better than this.
Next time, however, we get the first addition to Doctor Who canon by Lord Steven of Moffat, then-future showrunner. Is it good? Well, it's a two-parter and either part is significantly better than this.
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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