...one of those things is ridiculous even for this show. Can you tell which one?
It's 1953 and a shop owner by the name of Magpie is broke on dark and stormy night. Most distressed, he does not have it in him to shake the pillars of heaven, but doses off. Somewhere nearby, a family debates getting a television...the Grandmother having some insightful knowledge of what television does to your brain.
It's just a pity that she's a few decades early for reality television.
Back with Magpie, a streak of red lightning hits his shop. Rather than get a quickening, however, Magpie is lulled by the announcer lady on the TV...who proceeds to eat his face. As you do.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rose land in what they think is New York to see Elvis Presley at the Ed Sullivan show...and instead find themselves in London in 1953. The Doctor shouldn't fret too much, though. He'll be getting to New York...in an episode that is far, far worse than this one.
We return to the family from the cold open, with Grandma conspicuously missing and a new TV set in their living room. The Father praises the technological innovation. The mother and son are...worried...about something upstairs. A "her" without a face. The father, Eddie, does not take well to this talk.
The Doctor and Rose learn that the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is to take place tomorrow. Much to their surprise as well, every house on the street has been hooked up with a television courtesy of Magpie, who still has his face and has been making a mint. As the Doctor praises the 1950's...because post-World War II England...a woman screams for help as two men in black take someone covered in a blanket from her home. The boy from the family, Tommy, comes up and tells Rose and the Doctor of what's been happening - that people have been turning into monsters. Taking to the moped, the Doctor and Rose give chase...and lose their quarry due to the old Market Stall cover technique.
Oh, don't pretend you didn't see that coming.
The Doctor is confused, and Rose actually does something useful and suggests asking the neighborhood. Of course, it's 1953 and the Doctor just mentioned Winston Churchill...and is known to be a close friend of Winston Churchill, and could probably just call him up for some help and...okay, maybe I just want an excuse to jump ahead to Victory of the Daleks. Sue me, that episode is more fun. And doesn't have Rose in it.
The Doctor gets a stealth insult in on Rose before getting on with it. Also, because I'm being fair...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,226
...believe it or not, I only had half an aneurysm from deducting that point!
Magpie, meanwhile, brings a device to the mysterious Announcer Creature - a portable television. While Magpie has his face, apparently whatever she's doing is causing his mind to burn. She tells him that the time is ripe...and other foreshadow-y things like that.
Back at the set of The Honeymooners: UK, Tommy creeps upstairs as he hears the beating against the floor above. With a key, he goes to unlock the door, calling to his Grandmother. Eddie stops his son, denying him the chance to do so. In the living room, the three members of the family who are not shut ins due to a monstrous transformation talk...and Eddie is unsurprisingly a 1950's stereotypical asshole father. Big shocker there.
And no, it's not covering for nuances. He's just an asshole.
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| "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...to chew the scenery..." |
Speaking of assholes, the Doctor and Rose show up, seem rather insufferably smug, and the Doctor uses a combination of the psychic paper and good old fashion fast talking to bluff their way into the house. The Doctor calls Eddie out on the sexism when he tries to make his wife, Rita, put out the flags. However, while the Doctor has a valid point, Rose takes a moment to be pedantic about the proper name for a Union Flag.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,227
...oh, look at that. I recovered from my aneurysm.
The Doctor and Rose conver-terrogate Tommy and Rita, Eddie trying to keep them from spilling the beans about the Grandmother in the attic. He snaps into sanity again and tries to tell the Doctor off...which does not go well for him in the least, because the Doctor IS. NOT. LISTENING!!!!! Grandma beats on the ceiling again, and the family starts coming clean about something going on - people changing and the police somehow finding out, taking them in the day or night. Going upstairs, they go into the room...and find that Grandma is lacking a face in what is still a creepy CGI effect even today.
The cops bust in, and the Doctor gets decked while Grandma gets taken away. The Doctor gets to his moped to pursue, while Rose notices some mysterious red lightning eeking from the television. She investigates, finding it to be from Magpie Electrical. Eddie yells at her to leave, and Rose takes an opportunity to once more be an insufferable jackass about how a Union flag is hung before ducking out.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,228
And with that, I've recovered a few thousand brain cells!
The Doctor gets fooled by the Market Stall technique once again, though he's caught onto it by now and is smart enough to go poking around. Finding the Men in Black at a warehouse he pursues them and finds a pen full of faceless people in what is, again, a very creepy and good effect in a very creepy and tense scene as they all approach him, clenching their fists. It rather reminded me of the Autons the first time I watched it.
However, the Doctor is saved by a flood light...and the Men in Black, who take him into custody.
Rose, meanwhile, comes to Magpie's shop and begins to interrogate him. He keeps trying to insist that she leave. Points to him for that, since it shows he's not just a willing stooge in all this. Rose, however, is incredibly stubborn and falls into the companion trap of not going to find the Doctor. Because of that, Magpie locks Rose in and she meets the villain of the piece...
And given that she literally brought this on herself with ample warning...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,229
The announcer introduces herself as "The Wire" and eats Rose's face.
The Doctor, meanwhile, gets a shot at being a smarmy asshole to the British Police who are just doing their job. Detective Inspector Bishop in particular is most nettled. Super nettled, one might say. But the Doctor flips the script on him after appealing to the fact that he wants to investigate and so hilariously out of his depth.
As they begin to piece together things, the Men in Black bring Rose in so that the Doctor can have a great vengeance and furious anger moment when he sees her face missing. And this has nothing to do with anything, but if you watch on the DVD extras, you see the scene as it was shot before the faces were removed in post-production, with Billie Piper and David Tennant both trying not to laugh. I bring it up, mostly because it makes this scene kind of hilarious in an incredibly dark way, but also shows Tennant's ability as an actor. I just wonder how many takes it took for them to stop giggling.
Now, if I were going to have a "The Doctor is Awful" Count, it would get a hit here. The Doctor did not have remotely this amount of blind, inconsolable rage when common people were having their faces taken away. Even when he was literally surrounded by them only a scene earlier. But now that Rose has had her face taken, now he should have indignant fury.
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| MY WAIFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!1!!!!1111!!!!! |
Compare this to the Fourth Doctor episode The Pyramids of Mars, where the Fourth Doctor was not swayed by the deaths of some of the story's ancillary characters, but was more focused on the bigger threat and what it would do to the rest of the universe if it managed to succeed. To put it in Star Trek terms: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Fast forward to the Tenth Doctor, and the Doctor suddenly doesn't seem to give a toss about the needs of the many and is instead only angry when someone he cares about is put in the crossfire. Yes, the Doctor is supposed to care about his companions. This, however, is some ridiculously misplaced bullshit that is a product of Russell T. Davies being surrounded by people that either didn't have the heart to or would risk being fired to tell him that Rose Tyler is awful and not remotely worth this kind of reaction for. And that it makes the Doctor look like a sociopath.
The Idiot's Lantern was written by Mark Gatiss, and I can assume that this was not an injection by him - it was Russell's now well-known mucking about with scripts. If not, then the complaints would got to Gatiss. Either way, this does not make the Doctor look good and makes it look as though the 900+ year old nigh-immortal being is a deranged maniac who only cares about his blonde sidepiece.
Which is entirely unfair. He's only a 900+ year old nigh-immortal being that is also a deranged maniac.
The Doctor heads off with Bishop ready to group Ezekiel 25:17. Eddie gets creepy before the coronation party, where we get a few jokes about how clear the television picture is...because it's the 1950's. Tommy gets a bit of domestic abuse threatened and the Doctor turns up to enlist him. Eddie tries to snap him out of it, and Tommy works out that his father was the one calling the police on everyone in the street. He gets a nice little speech about how, if they live in a police state than the war that Eddie fought is worthless. Eddie admits to it all...and the family begins to crumble apart. Tommy heads off to help with the Doctor after encouragement from his mother, Eddie being abandoned by both his wife and his son.
With Tommy mentioning that the last thing his Grandmother did was watch television, the Doctor works it all out: it's the televisions. They head to Magpie's, where the Doctor finds the portable television and discovers the faces in the television screens - victims of the Wire. Rose and Tommy's Grandmother are within to get their own little sad moment, and Magpie arrives to be yelled at by the Doctor...who is then confronted by the Wire. She gives backstory - executed by her own people, but escaping in a data form - and her plan, to use the Coronation to feed on the energy of 20 million British people, which will give her a corporeal form.
It then proceeds to try to feed on the Doctor, Bishop, and Tommy. However, the Doctor manages to get her to withdraw with the sonic screwdriver. However, Magpie takes the opportunity while they're unconscious to get the portable television and, after the Wire leaps into it, heads off to put her plan into action. The Doctor awakens and gets Tommy up, having found Bishop to be down one face. The Doctor quotes Kylie Minogue, which creates a bit of an actor paradox in a few Series' time, more on that much later.
Working out where the Wire plans to leech the energy from, the Doctor goes back into Magpie's shop to go into magpie mode...heh. Magpie heads to the site while the Doctor and Tommy get a hodge-podge of equipment together. It's a race to the tower, Magpie getting there first and starting to climb as the Doctor impersonates the King of Belgium. He leaves Tommy to flip the switch at the appropriate time as the Coronation winds up and the future Queen Elizabeth is getting into position. The Doctor heads up for the final showdown. Magpie plugs the Wire in. The Wire gives him peace...by killing him!
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| "Time to pull an Edison on this one..." |
However, unfortunately for the Wire, the Doctor manages to survive by a combination of rubber soles and the Wire having wasted energy killing Magpie. While there is a last minute error, Tommy manages to get the final part in place and the day is saved! The Wire being trapped on a Betamax tape. Back with the Men in Black, the people in the pen have their faces again and the day is saved! Queen Elizabeth II is crowned and all is well. Tommy runs into his Grandma again and brings her home, and the Doctor runs into Rose again because the Wire could not do the right thing and put her permanently out of my misery.
...still a better hit record than the Daleks managed, though.
Rita tells Eddie to hit the bricks, and the Doctor and Rose attend the neighborhood party and the Doctor gives Tommy his scooter...telling him he should keep it under wraps for a few years. They witness Eddie leave, and Tommy gets a talking to by Rose about how he's still his Dad even if he's a an abusive asshole, so he should go after him. I'd think she's making a parallel to her own father with her "Of course, he's your Dad" comment when Tommy calls Eddie an idiot...but Pete was never an abusive asshole, mostly just a bumbler with hintings of a rather promiscuous natur-okay, fine...maybe there's a bit of a point there.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,228
...oh, there go those brain cells!
Tommy takes her advice and goes after his father, and the Doctor and Rose toast another episode in the can.
The Idiot's Lantern is a fairly good episode. It's only real problem, as I've mentioned, is the Doctor only getting fully invested and properly worried about the situation once Rose gets taken by the monster. And yes, I'm sure that someone will point out that the Doctor does a similar thing in A Good Man Goes to War. The only difference is that it's not for an incredibly crappy, forced romance...and for as many issues as that episode has, it's much better written than almost all of the Russell T. Davies era bar two episodes...that we won't be getting to for a few Series.
Being that I'm neither someone who lived in the 1950's nor a British person, the setting looks pretty good to me for a period piece based on what I've seen of the era from video and pictures, so kudos there. Gatiss has a few moments in the script that make me chuckle, such as the Doctor impersonating the King of Belgium and then a policeman fearing for his safety as he heads up to the radio tower to confront the Wire.
The Wire her/itself fits in well with the Russell T. Davies era in that it's an insanely powerful entity that is never fully explained exactly what it is. I would love to see perhaps a prequel to this story or something else that would involve members of its race and maybe we could learn about it more. Something to help develop the lore of the show a bit. That's just wishful thinking on my part, though it's a problem I also have with Gatiss' next to last script all the way in Series 9...but that's a looooooong ways away.
But for The Idiot's Lantern itself, it's your classic psuedo-historical that the show is very fond of doing. Nothing too crazy...for Doctor Who anyway.
Next week, we jump into another two-parter. The Doctor and Rose end up on an asteroid in orbit around a black hole, there's some writing that the TARDIS can't translate, and a villain from the Classic Show returns in all but name...for reasons that don't exactly pan out.
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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