![]() When the episode reaches its inevitable sad conclusion, the Tenth Doctor is shattered, Tennant conveying a quiet heartbreak that solidifies his Doctor as the ideal romantic hero to follow on many more time-travel adventures. It's hard for any 45-minute love story to be convincing, but Tennant and guest star Sophia Myles manage to make you believe that theirs is a love for the ages. "The Girl in the Fireplace" is a perfect time travel tragedy, a self-contained story that is a stellar showcase for Tennant's particular charms and talents. ![]() Through the mysterious portals, the Doctor runs into Reinette at various points in her life, the two falling in love even as Reinette is hunted by terrifying clockwork monsters. But she's not all that when the Doctor meets her: she's simply a scared little girl named Reinette who spots him through her fireplace. The Steven Moffat-penned season 2 episode follows the Tenth Doctor, Rose, and Mickey (Noel Clarke) as they land on an abandoned spaceship full of portals to 18th century France - specifically, portals into the life of Madame de Pompadour, the chief mistress of the king and an influential patron of the arts. On top of giving the season a much-needed jolt, "Dalek" is kind of the turning point for the season that heralds the darker "Doctor Who" of the revival. And it also clues us in on the Doctor's fresh trauma surrounding his new backstory of the Time War that killed his people. For maybe the only time in the show's history, "Dalek" treats a Dalek as a complex villain and as more than just a killing machine and thinly veiled Nazi metaphor. "Dalek" is a slow-burn toward a twist that we know is coming (it's in the title, duh) but that payoff works thanks to Eccleston's explosive performance. Captured by the bunker's billionaire owner, the Doctor and Rose must find out the source of that distress signal and the bunker's secret, and most dangerous, part of its collection. ![]() The episode opens on the Doctor and Rose chasing a distress signal to a massive underground bunker in Utah filled with alien artifacts. But "Dalek" achieves the near-impossible: it makes the Daleks seem genuinely terrifying. A remnant of the show's low-budget early years, the Dalek looks like a giant metal can with a plunger stuck onto it that feasibly could be defeated by stairs - and yet it captured the imaginations of thousands of children. Written by Robert Shearman, "Dalek" is the sixth episode of season 1 and has the formidable task of introducing to a new generation the Doctor's greatest enemy and the show's most ridiculous-looking monster: the Daleks. But it doesn't try to hide what kind of show the new "Doctor Who" will be, which I like to categorize as "camp and crying." And let's face it: walking mannequins are a little silly for sci-fi fans used to more serious foes. It ricochets so quickly between campy, serious, and soapy tones that you get whiplash, and it seems to be torn between paying homage to the classic show while establishing Eccleston's Doctor as a damaged action hero. Granted, "Rose" is not a perfect episode. But "Rose" reimagines the Doctor as a sort of cynical Superman. It's a radical introduction for the Doctor, who in the final days of the Classic era was more known for his tawdry quirks than having a personality. But one battle with reanimated mannequins and an exploded department store later, she's on her way to travel through all of time and space with Christopher Eccleston's brusque Doctor, who, in a bold twist for the new revival, is the last surviving member of his species, the Time Lords. Davies-penned episode introduces us to the Doctor through the eyes of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), a 19-year-old London shopgirl bored with her mundane life. ![]()
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