Doctor Who Series 1 (Christopher Eccleston)

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Although the 21st century Doctor Who revival started in 2005, we didn’t watch the first series until 2011. Since then we have gradually acquired DVDs of the various seasons and ‘specials’. We finally caught up with ourselves in June this year, when we saw the 60th anniversary specials that followed the 13th series, ‘Flux’. At that stage, there were no more DVDs to be bought. 

So we decided that we would re-watch from the beginning, starting in the middle of August when we were both back in Cyprus after travelling. It’s going to be a lengthy process, watching Doctor Who one evening per week, so we agreed that sometimes we would watch two episodes in an evening. 

Disc One

The first episode of Season One, just called ‘Rose’, is, I thought, very well done. We first meet a young woman (Billie Piper) who works in a big department store. At the end of the day, she has to take something down to the basement… and very peculiar things start happening with the display mannequins. Then her hand is grabbed by a strange man, who rushes her away and saves her. Christopher Eccleston tells her he is ‘The Doctor’, and leaves her to go home. 

But he hasn’t stopped the danger. Rose’s boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clark) is somehow assimilated and cloned, and once again the Doctor comes to the rescue - although Rose has to rescue him, too. Little bits of information about the Doctor are cleverly introduced for the benefit of anyone who was not familiar with the series before. It’s a dramatic episode, with a bit of humour here and there to lighten the mood.

The second episode, ‘The End of the World’ sees the Doctor taking Rose several billion years into the future, to the moment half an hour before the Earth is due to be destroyed. They arrive on a spaceship with many different representatives of a variety of alien races, including the last ‘human’, Lady Cassandra. She has had so many surgeries to preserve her essence that she looks nothing like a human. Inevitably there are more dangers, and sabotage, and more information about the Doctor is revealed, including the fact that his own planet (Gallifrey) no longer exists.

In the third episode, the Doctor takes Rose to the 19th century where they discover an alien force trying to take over the bodies of people who had recently died. I found it  a bit disturbing at first, but the episode is lightened by their meeting with Charles Dickens. He is played to perfection by Simon Callow, who apparently loves Dickens, and has acted his character many times. The ‘extras’ on the first DVD mention that the Doctor has not previously been shown with historical figures, although in the previous incarnations he sometimes mentioned having met them. Historical figures play a significant role in many of the later ‘new’ seasons: I had not realised that the 20th century episodes did not include these. 

Disc Two

The second DVD in our box set has three episodes. It’s a good thing we allowed the time to watch two of them, as the first two are a dual-part episode. ‘Aliens of London’ begins with Rose discovering that she’s been away for longer than expected. Then a spaceship crash-lands in the Thames, after destroying the clock face of Big Ben. This is the episode where the ‘Slitheen’ are introduced. I found them quite scary when we first saw them, thirteen years ago. This time they looked rather dated, and much less intimidating. 

There’s some humour in the episode as well as tension, and it ends on such a cliffhanger that I would have wanted to see the sequel at once, even if it had been late. That episode, ‘World War Three’, resolves the issue, as we expected. It also includes some good scenes with Rose’s mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) and also her boyfriend Mickey. Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton) is introduced, as a backbencher with political ambitions. We thought she was excellent, providing some of the light relief as well as aiding in the eventual solution. 

I was not looking forward to Episode Six (third on the second DVD), simply entitled ‘Dalek’. Of all the Doctor Who enemies, the daleks are the ones who terrify me the most. But it was a very good episode. The Doctor and Rose land in a kind of museum of aliens, and discover the final dalek in existance. It is being tested and tortured to try to make it speak, but only in the presence of the Doctor does it find its voice. By the end, I almost (though not quite) found myself feeling sorry for this dalek… 

Disc Three

The third DVD begins with episode Seven, ‘The Long Game’, which features a satellite populated with humans many thousands of years in the future. They are apparently all happy, and are broadcasting news around the universe. I had vaguely remembered some of what transpired; it’s perhaps a warning not to accept the status quo, and to be suspicious of ‘promotion’ which nobody is allowed to speak about.

‘Father’s Day’ is the next episode, one I thought particularly engaging. Rose asks to go back in time to the day her father died. She’s warned about the dangers of time travel to one’s own past, and that it might be traumatic for her. But the Doctor doesn’t take into account Rose’s emotional reaction to seeing her father hit by a car. And then it becomes rather disturbing, with results quite at odds with the principles established in the very different ‘Quantum Leap’ series. But I very much liked the background into Rose’s life, and the scenes involving her mother Jackie.

It’s a good thing we had plenty of time the following week when we watched ‘The Empty Child’, another episode that’s full of human interest. The Doctor and Rose arrive in London during the Blitz, to find odd things happening after a strange object landed near a hospital. Jack Harkness, another time traveller from the distant future, is introduced in this episode. I recalled him appearing every so often throughout the series, with a mixed kind of relationship with the Doctor and his companions. John Barrowman is excellent as a charming rogue who rather bewitches Rose, and makes the Doctor oddly jealous.

That episode ended on such a cliffhanger that we immediately watched its sequel,’The Doctor Dances’. Again there’s a lot of human interaction and some insights into the London Blitz. For instance, we see a young girl, stealing from wealthy houses during air raids in order to feed hungry boys. And the conclusion of this double episode was, we both thought, very well done and entirely satisfactory. 

Disc Four

The fourth DVD in our box set contains the last three episodes of Series One. The first, ‘Boom Town’ takes place in Cardiff. The Doctor, Rose and Jack think they’re just relaxing for a few hours while the Tardis recharges. But it’s quite a stressful episode, featuring an alien whom the Doctor thought had been fully destroyed. There are some interesting exchanges and it’s impossible to know who can be trusted. There’s also some emotional turmoil as Rose catches up with her former boyfriend Mickey.

Then there’s another two-parter to end the series: ‘Bad Wolf’ and ‘The Parting of the Ways. The Doctor, Jack and Rose are back on the satellite of episode Seven, a hundred years later. This time it’s broadcasting game shows, many of them spoofs on real television game shows. But there’s a drastic end for anyone eliminated from the competitions. It’s quite a complex storyline involving some unexpected terrible enemies and the potential destruction of the human race.

The climax of ‘The Parting of the Ways’ is a bit ‘deus ex machina’ but well done nonetheless, after some humorous attempts on Rose’s part (helped by Mickey) to open up the tardis. What happens is far from amusing, and I’m not sure I entirely understood the significance. But in the end, as we knew would happen, The Doctor is unable to continue as he is, and regenerates into a very young-looking David Tennant. 

There are a couple of interesting ‘extras’ on this last DVD of the set. One of them looks at the incredible detail put into the creation of the sets (in particular the tardis) and some of the aliens. I’m astounded that anyone would spend so much time and effort on things that were only needed for one episode, but the people involved loved what they were doing. The second extra is by John Barrowman, talking about Jack - I found that rather more interesting, but then what matters for me is the human interest part of the show. 

Three things struck me overall, watching these episodes again, thirteen years after we first saw them. One is that the pace is rather slower than it was in the later series. I liked the slower pace very much, as it makes the stories so much easier for me to follow. 

The second thing I noticed is that the Tardis looks oddly old-fashioned! It reminded me somewhat of the 1960s Tardis, which, perhaps, was deliberate. By the thirteenth series, it had been modernised and transformed many times.

The third is that, although I thought Christopher Eccleston did a good job as the ninth Doctor, he seemed quite hard in the earlier episodes. He did soften in the later ones, and I thought he was an excellent choice to introduce Doctor Who to a 21st century audience. 

Rose, we thought, was a very good companion. We weren’t too sure the first time around, as she looks a bit too like some of the rather fluffy companions of the past. But she has lots of determination and ideas, and The Doctor is evidently very taken with her. We’re glad to recall that she remains as companion to the Tenth Doctor in Series Two, which we hope to start watching next week. 

I would recommend this series very highly to anyone who likes this kind of TV show. 

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