Crikey! Russell T sure knows how to have a good time. Seriously good episode from a fanboy point of view. Can you really fault it? The Doctor, Sarah Jane, Torchwood… even Harriet Jones makes a heroic return as the core of the resistance, the head of the Doctor’s Army.
The episode made sly references to the past and Bernard Cribbins did make a connection – as they make reference to moving planets and the Doctor comments that someone has tried to move the Earth before. In Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD, the Daleks attempt to move the Earth by dropping a bomb into the planet’s core – and The Doctor, his granddaughter, his niece, and a policeman, Tom Campbell (Cribbins), do everything in their power to ultimately defeat the maniac pepperpots.
I knew that Dave Ross was returning long before the start of the series, though I had hoped for one or two other surprises (like a return visit from a previous Doctor). The make-up was absolutely fabulous – incredibly realistic and deliciously creepy. The whole business that he chose to recreate the Dalek from his own body, making them of pure (if mutated) Kaled stock, fits into the whole Nazi slant and eugenics. The Cult of Skaro showed the same self-sacrifice for the survival of the Dalek race, cannibalizing their own armour – and Dave takes it a step further.
So, regenerating, huh? What is that all about? Given the general consensus that David had agreed to do the Christmas Special and the extended one-off episodes next year, what the heck is going to happen there?
Funny that 18 months ago to the day, The Sun reported that David would be leaving the show and started guessing who might replace him…
While I won’t yet write-up my overall view of ‘Turn Left’ (because I still have a lot of catching up to do), I enjoyed the nod at continuity when the Doctor referred to the beetle as one of the Trickster’s lot. The Trickster was the excellent villain from the ‘Sarah Jane Adventures’ episode ‘Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?’ – and given the return of the Sonic Lipstick wielding journalist in the next two episodes, this made for a great touch.
In respect of the next two episodes, I can only imagine a hoard of fans will probably be truly spent for the Summer – exhausted with the exertion of almost two hours of copious fan-w**king. The Doctor, Donna, Martha, Rose, Captain Jack, Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper, Sarah Jane, Luke, the Daleks and Dave… it beggars belief. On top of that, I could have sworn one of the Daleks in the trailer (the red one) looked like the style faced by the alternate first Doctor in the cinematic movies in which Bernard Cribbins played a part… another superlative fan pleaser if it’s true.
‘Sleeper‘ felt like preparation – and while an effective enough story itself, failed to bring the viewer to a comfortable conclusion. Beth provided a well-handled focus for the story, a confused woman torn between reality and a secret hidden from everyone, including herself. Beth wanted to be ordinary, but circumstance had pushed extraordinary upon her; whereas, the ordinary members of Torchwood embrace the extraordinary role they play, without necessarily understanding it completely. You might draw parallels between Captain Jack and the alien invaders, as both enforce strict and unsympathetic controls on the information they pass to those who serve them. Sleepers and Torchwood members alike only know what they need to know to serve their current function and nothing more.
While I thought Beth handled her character well, I found less positive thoughts surfacing about the sleeper who survived to the end. I blame the director rather than the actor, but the murder of the council member added unnecessary violence and splashes of gore with an almost comical portrayal of the alien. The distant, disinterested gaze didn’t work at all – less of the psychopath, more of the mildly aggrieved accountant. Why the story required the same guy to break his partners neck also begged an answer – as that kind of violence got cut from the Doctor Who: TV Movie and the story didn’t suffer for it at all. Has pointless and poorly directed violence started to replace the childish bouts of sex and swearing from Season One?
Highlight of the evening – a witty Ianto Jones who seemed to have an amusing quip for every occasion. Yes, it might have seemed uncharacteristic of the often morose Ianto of Season One… Yes, it looked like Ianto just got dumped with all the throwaway humourous dialog for the episode… but, it worked for me.
Overall, the episode almost worked and I trust it will lead to something more – but, how about getting on to some fuller and rounder storytelling and characterisation for Episode Three, huh?
So, Cyberwoman – an hour of spot the gaff/contradiction? While I can appreciate you can love someone an awful lot, how could Ianto turn from dutiful assistant into weeping wreck willing to kill everyone for his cybernetically altered girlfriend?
Mind, Ianto’s girlfriend went through a complete sea change of personality – from the desperate woman at the beginning to murderous cyber-beast 10 minutes in. How so? Perhaps if the story had shown some visible evidence of the encrouching cyber-conversion, nanite like modification to cells or bloodstream. I’m thinking of the Borg conversions from Star Trek, where you can see physical manifestations of conversion through – or on – the skin of the individual. Here – you could see nothing more than a violent swing from one personality to another, without must explanation as to the why of it.
While the principle of the episode worked – the team against the monster in the locked confines of the Torchwood base – so much didn’t and couldn’t. The storytelling of the episode lay riddled with holes – rather like the cyberwoman 10 minutes from the end. How did Jack, who doesn’t sleep and pretty much lives in the Torchwood base, not know about the thing hidden in the basement? How come, after they shut down the power, Jack could make the cyber-conversion table swing down to release Gwen? Exactly how could Ianto’s terribly damaged cyber-girlfriend complete a brain transplant in a matter of minutes, alone and with a single cyber-conversion table? How – given in the first episode Ianto had to activate the secret door for Gwen to take the pizzas into Torchwood – did the secret door open all by itself when the pizza girl arrived near the end of the episode? Why – once she’d transferred her brain to a human body – did Ianto’s girlfriend continue to speak with a cyber-voice, given she had been quite capable to speaking normally in her cyber-body at the start of the episode? Surely the cyber-voice originated from cyber-modifications to the throat of her old body, which should not have effected the pizza girl’s voice!
And fan-geek continuity gaff! How come the alien technology Toshiko used in Episode One to scan a book by attaching it to the cover suddenly become an alien lockpicking device in Episode Four – capable of defeating any lock in 45 seconds or less? A spot of multi-functionality – or just a spot of laziness in finding another shiny piece of LED-flickering metal to use instead…
Torchwood continues to let itself down with stories that lack attention to detail and characters that lack depth. I’m not convinced the show can survive – an in the US it would probably have been cancelled already. Something like Firefly – which managed only a handful of episodes – showed so much more promise, so much more love and attention to characterisation. Russell T and his team need to do so much better to have any hope of seeing the show through to a second season…
