Doctor Who - The Next Doctor…or not?

Posted by ScuzzBuster

December 26, 2008

Christmas Day in the UK for the past few years has brought not only a joyous holiday celebration but joyous holiday television ratings in the form of geekish delight of the Doctor Who Christmas Special. As an in-joke, last year’s special had London evacuated on the holiday due to the mass panic of paranoia of further Christmas catastrophe. This year, the Doctor has decided to give the present day London a break and push the fright-fest back around 160 years to 1851. No break for London though as it gets some even more fierce destruction unleashed on the 19th century’s unwashed masses.

Producer Russell T. Davies teases the fan base, now well aware of the impending departure of David Tennant, by titling this episode The Next Doctor with familiar British actor David Morrissey portraying what appears to be a future incarnation of the our lead character. In this case, the Doctor is more convinced than the fans watching that he’s in the presence of his future self as the truth of the situation begins to unravel around the specifics of this twisted plot.

In this case, we have the return of the Cybermen, again the “alternate” universe version introduced back in series 2. But as has been a recurring trend in many of the new series episodes in the 45 minute format (or in this case a bit longer), the villains and the plot seem to take a back seat to the character development and interaction throughout the program until the climax. In this case, the pay off is over-the-top bordering on silly, but in a fun way, with the Cybermen, now lead by an overzealous local woman’s quest for power unleash a Godzilla-esque level of destruction on London that I’m pretty sure I don’t remember reading about in history books recounting British historical events in the mid-19th century.

I won’t unleash any further spoilers, especially since the show hasn’t aired outside the UK yet, but I would say that this is a cut above last year’s Christmas Special Voyage of the Damned, but ultimately still a rather light romp that is driven and carried by the outstanding performances of David Tennant as the Doctor and David Morrissey as the “other” Doctor. Will we be seeing him again in the role? I’m sufficient to leave fans guessing, but Morrissey is a rather charming and overly dramatic incarnation of our favorite Time Lord.

The noteworthy piece of fanwank that Davies throws out this time is another nail in the coffin that the 1996 US Fox Network’s Television Movie is absolutely part of the show’s official canon. There is still that segment of fandom that refuses to acknowledge this as part of the show’s history, but now we actually have footage from the telefilm itself in fleeting “flashback” form to further piss of those in-denial fans. For the rest of desperate fandom, we also get brief footage and glimpses of all the actors to play the role since 1963. Another nice nod.

I’m pretty much over the new Cybermen now. Also, they didn’t have a whole heckuva lot to do in this episode, so I’m hoping that this is the last time we’ll see them for a while. Considering we’re now several months away from our next fix of Doctor Who as we creep toward the inevitable death of David Tennant’s popular incarnation of the Doctor it’s certainly tasty to watch and enjoy this years Christmas episode. It’s an above average romp for the show. At some point after 45 years you have to start asking yourself when the evil super villains are just going to make a bee-line for the hero and kill him dead rather than playing around and letting him live just long enough to foil their plans.

bookmark Technorati Del.icio.us StumbleUpon Digg Facebook Mixx Reddit