I was born in the year 1990, which meant that I grew up during the years that Doctor Who was off the airwaves. During the sixteen years that the show was essentially 'dead', numerous fans-turned-writers tried in vein to revive it. This was often attempted through the use of Doctor Who novels and radio-plays. Here, a variety of writers tried with great effort to come up with a modernized style and format which could help to bring the show to a new generation of viewers. Despite such noble efforts, not one person could come up with a formula that everyone could agree on, and the show remained in book and radio format; unable to make its way back into the mainstream public consciousness.
The closest that it came to making its way back onto the small screen was in the mid-1990s. Universal Studios and BBC Films formed a co-production. They decided to try and create a backdoor pilot for the program, so in the summer of 1996, Doctor Who: The Movie was born.
Unfortunately, the film was a complete and utter clanger and received criticism on a universal level. The entire production turned out to be a mess, and the version which made it on to screen was riddled with flaws and soul-destroying dissapointment.
As a result, producers concluded that this dog had quite clearly had its day and the planned series was axed indefinitely.
But in 2003, something wonderful happened for Doctor Who fans.
At this point, the BBC had become concerned with the ever growing success from competing commercial competitors from both terrestrial and digital broadcasters. They decided that the past decade had experienced a rapid decline in the quantity and quality of in-house produced BBC dramas.
To try and return to their so called golden years, the BBC decided to hire a team of critically acclaimed producers and writers to help spark some life back into their productions. Amongst the list of individuals was the highly popular Russel T Davies.
Davies was praised by many during this point for his work on such sublime shows as Queer as Folk (Channel 4, 1999), Bob & Rose (ITV, 2001) and The Second Coming (ITV, 2003). For these projects alone, the BBC just had to have him.
Davies made it quite clear that they could only have him on board if the BBC promised to let him help bring back Doctor Who. Despite it being labelled as a dead show, the BBC took a gamble and by early 2004, production for a revamped (and direction continuation of) Doctor Who kicked into gear.
When the pilot episode for this new era of Doctor Who aired on the 26th April 2005, the program was more or less alien to me. I mean ok, I saw the 90s movie when I was a very young kid, and my grandparents had bought me an episode of the classic series on VHS for my 8th birthday. But I wasn't all that interested, as Doctor Who didn't really mean anything more to me other than "that zany old show which had a telephone box and those shouty, Nazi-like pepper pot creatures in it".
I had zero interest in the 2005 series upon its release, and really had no intention of watching it. But my dad told me to give it a go (which is funny, as he has next to no interest in the show these days). I finally came to the conclusion that I might as well check it out, even if it was just to see what the media's hullabaloo surrounding the whole program was all about.
When I first saw the pilot (titled Rose), I wasn't all to sure of what to make of it. Throughout the entire 45 minutes, my opinion kept switching from "oh wow, now that's quite impressive" to "what the heck is this suppose to be?"
The first episode is a real roller coaster of a pilot. So to explain what made me go "wow" and what made me go "huh?", it is probably best for me to start from the beginning.
It started off to a fine start. The opening titles were a stylishly colorful race through what I would later learn was the time vortex (a time corridor through time and space). A CGI version of the iconic Tardis hurtles through the vortex, followed by the names of the cast - Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston - bursting onto our screen in a brassy bold font. An epic, modernized version of the highly recognizable theme accompanies this grand spectacle. It was contemporary, exciting and was trying to ambitiously exhibit to its viewers what sort of a show it was aiming to be.
I was considerably impressed. At the time, I was not a viewer of mainstream British drama; so such a visually audacious introduction to a television program took me pleasantly by surprise.
Immediately following this sequence, planet earth fades on screen. The camera hurtles toward it, down toward Europe, toward Great Britain, toward London, and finally into a young woman's bedroom. An alarm clock buzzes into life, awakening the room's owner; 19-year-old Rose Tyler (Billie Piper).
This scene is followed by a montage of Rose's day-to-day life. This is a montage which hurtles at a racy pace; telling the story of her world as hastily as possible. She lives with her mother, she has a boyfriend - named Mickey Smith - and she works in a clothes store. The point of Rose's life is blatantly transparent; she lives an incredibly normal life. This normality is flipped on its head during the next scene, however.
Rose heads down to the basement of the store she works in, where she is to deliver an envelope to the company electrician - Wilson Instead, she is greeted by a group of shop manikins which have mysteriously sprang to life. As the living plastic homes in on Rose, a man in a leather jacket and a massive grin grabs her hand, telling her to "run!".
And from here, the plot takes off like a rocket into orbit; giving the viewer hardly a moment to breathe during the remaining 40 minutes of the episode. During this time, shop dummies invade the city of London, Rose's boyfriend is cloned by a wheelie bin (I'll explain in a minute to those who haven't seen it) and the Doctor invites Rose to join him on his adventures through time and space.
So as I mentioned earlier, this episode had a collection of "wow" moments and "huh?" moments which both impressed and baffled me.
So lets begin with the wow's first.
One of those would be the introduction of Christopher Eccleston as the 9th incarnation of the Doctor. Aesthetically, Eccleston was not how I had envisioned the character of the Doctor. I had the image of Tom Baker burnt into my mind; so when Eccleston appears with his leather jacket and his short hair and his massive smirk, I was slightly taken aback.
But then he spoke and instantly I knew they had found the right man for the job. His persona was eccentric, his mannerisms were enigmatically alien and his dialogue was delivered like lightening from a storm.
Eccleston was not only a grossly entertaining Doctor, but he was also a man filled to the brim with mystery. This became clear to me after he delivered this sizzling piece of dialogue:
Do you know like we were saying? About the Earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you that the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. {he grabs Rose's hand} The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. And the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world and if we let go... {he drops her hand}. That's who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.
The delivery of this line was truly perfect. It was so extraterrestrial, so melancholic, yet also so full of human emotion. It was a gorgeous piece of dialogue, amplified in its beauty by a fine bit of acting.
What i also loved about this episode was its pacing. Many of the old fans were rather miffed about the episode's speed (mainly because they ere use to the classic era's format, which frequently laid its episodes out in a more serialized format. Each episode was 25 minutes in length and were spread out over a number of between four to twelve episodes). yet despite the disappointment of some old school whovians, I thought the 45 minute blockbuster format worked a charm (there were one or two issues I had with it, however, which I shall elaborate further on in a moment).
What the pacing managed to achieve was it threw the audience into a very unusual and out-of-this-world story, managing to immerse themselves into this world before they had time to bail from the story. From the moment that the Autons (aka living shop window dummies) appear on our screens, the plot refused to stop for a moment's breath. It grabbed the viewer (and Rose for that matter, who is a character designed for the audience to identity with) and pulled them right through to the other end of the story.
As a result of this hasty pace, Russel T Davies was able to give the audience a taste of what Doctor Who was in just under 45 minutes. Because this episode contains absolutely everything which makes Doctor Who was it is. There was the Tardis, the companion, the other-worldly premise and an alien invasion.
It was also bloody entertaining.
As for the "huh?" moments, well there were a couple.
First things first, let us get the whole 'Mickey-cloned-by-a-dustbin' out the way shall we?
So for those who haven't seen the 2005 pilot, Rose's boyfriend - Mickey Smith - is swallowed by a dustbin, which extracts information from his biology and builds a plastic doppelganger of him in order to trick Rose into trapping the Doctor.
When I first saw this scene, I hated it. I thought it was awfully childish (even for a show essentially designed for kids) and I wasn't quite sure if I could really invest my emotions in a show were dustbin monsters could eat people make make plastic copies of them. It just felt like it was one step too far; even for a show of this nature.
Plus the plastic Mickey was far too unconvincing. It was clearly made of plastic, it constantly stuttered and it spent the entire duration of its on-screen time smiling in the most bizarre manner imaginable. This would have been fine, if only Rose picked up on it. However she hasn't the foggiest. She does not pick up on the fact that her boyfriend is now made of plastic until the Doctor gallops on screen and fires a cork into its head. Rose is suppose to be an intelligent character, however it can be a little difficult to believe this when she cannot spot this incredibly obvious situation; regardless of how implausible such a scenario may be.
When I watched this episode a few years on, my hatred toward this scene had subsided somewhat. By this point, I had been exposed to a lot more of the show and its history and was fully aware that barmy moments like this are prevalent throughout its entire existence.
Nevertheless, I still cannot help thinking that the plastic Mickey sequence was a little too much madness for this opening episode.
My second "huh?" moment in this episode may seem a tad contradictory at first, but please hear me out. I say this because it has to do with the episode's actual plot. Something which I have so far praised.
So I said earlier that the plot's speed and electric execution were engrossing and entertaining. I stick to my word on this, however, at the same time, I also felt that it tried to do a tad too much. It wanted to establish as much as it possibly could before it potentially lost any of its viewers. It felt almost like a teacher, frantically trying to wheel out all sorts of interesting facts about a specific subject before the students began to pull out their mobiles phones. Davies wanted to reveal to a new generation what Doctor Who was and he wanted to do it as quickly as was humanly possible.
But he was 100% right for doing this. Remember, the show had been dead for over fifteen years. It was cancelled and there was the general opinion amongst most that this was a show which had long out welcomed its stay.
So not only was Davies trying to introduce Doctor Who to an entire new generation, he was also attempting to prove to all the skeptics that it could work and that it could be sparked back into existence in just a single episode.
The main reason why I found this fast introduction a little too much in some ways, was simply because it made the show feel a little insecure about itself. It was a brave execution no doubt, but still felt a little nervous despite the audacity it was displaying. Its approach to try and justify itself so rapidly made me suspicious and cynical. Why was something which was this entertaining trying to prove itself in such a hurried manner? I wondered if maybe it wasn't as good as it initially seemed, that maybe the speed was hiding a grand vista of plot holes and flaws that existed within the concept.
So apart from the wobbly-yet-bold execution and that bizarre Mickey doppelganger scene, the 2005 Doctor Who pilot was off to an energetically promising start.
I was not totally won over by the pilot, but the energetic story, marvelous acting from Eccleston & Piper and exceptional production values had intrigued me. It made me want to tune in the following week; which I guess is the over all aim of any pilot episode.
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