Doctor Who New Series 1.12 – 'Bad Wolf'

Plot – It's the year 200,100. The Doctor, Rose and Jack awaken to find themselves trapped inside a series of deadly games which have been inspired by early 21^st century television shows. Something sinister is working behind the back drop of humanity, which all falls back upon one word; Bad Wolf.

Finally, we're here. After eleven 45 minute mini-movies and the reinvention of a British cultural icon, the final story in this new series airs its penultimate episode. Regardless of 2005 Doctor Who being the return of a show which lay within the shadows of mainstream culture for over a decade, the first series still managed to rack up a considerably large fan base during its run. A fan base who would, by their very nature, follow the show religiously and read into the text with fastidious eyes. Furthermore, the series was going out in an era where DVD box sets were all the rage. Russell T Davies even mentions in the introduction leaflet to the series one box set, that if the show failed to make a come back, then at least he would have the DVD to keep him company.

The obvious predictability of a fan base with attention to detail, topped with a DVD box set which would warrant repeat viewings of all the episodes, Davies and co decided to install an overrunning story arc into the first series. This was done with two words; Bad Wolf.

From my understanding, this was initially an experiment during the early planning stages. Davies would sneakily plonk the word into numerous episodes and see whether any of the production team noticed these cheeky little Easter eggs knocking about the place. Whatever the original reason, it was eventually decided that these two arbitrary words would take on a larger meaning within the overall narrative of the series. Naturally, viewers caught on to the words, and as soon as episode twelve's title was revealed to be 'Bad Wolf', well the fan boards starting filling up to the eyeballs with theories.

The words laced throughout the series built up an aroma of curiosity around this episode. Seeing as it was named after the biggest Easter egg which this series had to offer, people were expecting to get 45 minutes of answers and revelations which would shed a heck of a lot of light on its enigmatic presence.

Which is what makes the opening moments so interesting in my opinion. The series starts by giving us a recap of one of the most forgettable episodes of the series; The Long Game. Seeing as the story for this episode was quite weak, such a recap doesn't take long at all, and after a couple of 'previously' shots, even a Doctor Who virgin would have pretty much gotten the gist of that story.

The flashback to The Long Game already serves to throw the audience off guard; particularly dedicated fans to the series. Yes, ok, so the phrase Bad Wolf did pop up during this episode, but what in the name of Frank Sinatra has this got to do with the overall meaning of the arc? Was there something huge that everyone missed in that episode? What is the significance of that particular story? How's it going to tie in with the final Christopher Eccleston story? These were the sorts of questions which such an opening forced the viewer to muse over. It was unexpected, which made it a rather brilliant move.

Because that's when Doctor Who is always at its best: when it throws you off guard, showing you something which you don't expect. That's one of the many reasons as to why the show has always been such a staggering success. When it first begun, the concept of an elderly gentleman who traveled through time and space threw its audience off their balance. They didn't expect it. It was strange and alien and stuck within their minds. If we go in to Doctor Who and expect something, only to then discover that what we expected was right all along, then the show isn't doing its job properly. When we convince ourselves that an episode is going to go down one route, only to find that stumbling down a different one entirely, well that is when things get bloody well exciting.

And then the show goes and does it all over again; spiraling us down yet another rabbit hole of uncertainty. This is done when the 'previously' sequence cuts to a '100 years later' caption, followed by the Doctor waking up inside a version of the Big Brother house.

Initially, the use of Big Brother comes across as highly irregular, as well as slightly ridiculous. At times, it can be troublesome to pin point what exactly Doctor Who is. And to be fair, there's probably no such  thing as a stone cold definition to this show. It's a billion and one different things which has been forever changing and  reshaping itself for 50 years now. A parody of contemporary mainstream television, however, is about as far from an overall definition to Doctor Who as one could possibly get. 

As you allow for the weirdness in this choice of direction to take its course, however, it begins to reveal something rather interesting about the episode in question. The decision to throw Big Brother into the story succeeds in carrying out yet another characteristic which Doctor Who has always been rather brilliant at executing: the ability to mesh highly dissimilar ideas together.

In the past, the hybridization of elements has often been carried by colliding multiple genres into one another. During the Philip Hinchcliffe era of the series, this was done by blending multiple film plots into the narrative of Doctor Who. Here, however, the series has taken a string of icon mainstream programs – including itself – and slammed them into one another; creating an peculiar and arguably unique idea out of the resulting debris.

The strangeness and newness of the episode is pushed even further into the foreground, as the story decides to milk this program hybridizing by also throwing a futuristic version of The Weakest Link and What Not to Wear into the mix.

The What Not to Wear scenes are a bit pointless in all honesty. As was the case during the previous episode, Captain Jack Harkness is still pretty much left with little to do in this here. The back story to his character, which was flagged up briefly during the Steven Moffat two-parter is by now completely forgotten; whilst the enigmatic con-man persona is nothing more than a vague memory. The charm and charisma is still very much there, yet that's about all there is to him. Jack has gone from the mysterious secondary companion to the flirtatious-yet-empty TARDIS stowaway in less than two episodes.

Essentially, the What Not to Wear sequences - in which Jack tries on some different outfits, gets stripped down to his bare flesh, is threatened by an android who wants to chainsaw his face off and conceals a weapon in a rather revealing area – is pretty much written into this episode to provide as a space for Jack's character to play in whilst the Doctor and Rose get on with the larger story at hand. The Doctor's entrapment in the Big Brother house results in him pushing to find out what the heck's going on. Rose's failure to win the Weakest link results in the Doctor discovering the ultimate question behind the games. Jack's scenes, on the other hand, only serve to provide him with a weapon which doesn't get a chance to be fired until the following episode.

In regards to The Weakest Link, however. Davis uses the rules of this program's structure in order to create an intriguing new obstacle for Rose to overcome. Here, she's thrust into a deadly re-imagining of the show where she must win the game in order to survive. This is a rather fun and interesting idea. Instead of giving Rose a standard bog eyed monster to leg it from, she's instead imprisoned inside a culturally recognized show from her own timeline.

Not only is the collision of Doctor Who and The Weakest Link so marvelously bizarre, but the character of Rose is completely aware of the insanity contained within this idea. Soon after she realizes that she's trapped inside a futuristic version of the Anne Robinson television series (with an actual robot Anne Robinson), she begins to play along; playfully attempting to answer questions revolving around events which occurred long after her own time line and joyously shouting the answers to questions which loosely relate to adventures which she's previously had with the Doctor (there's also the first mention of the word Torchwood during these scenes; which will become Series 2's equivalent to the Bad Wolf phrase).

Rose's willingness to play along with the game reminds me of a theory which the eight Doctor's companion - Sam - comes up with during the Lawrence Miles Novel; Alien Bodies. Sam believes that travelling with the Doctor is a bit like trying to continue functioning whilst paralytic drunk. Suddenly the way the world works different to how it did prior to intoxication. In order to carry on functioning, you have to learn to adapt to the new rules and obstacles that this strange new reality provides you with. The willingness to co-operate with the mad world of extreme intoxication is much like travelling with the Doctor. Suddenly, the rules you understood yesterday no longer apply, so the only way to deal with the sheer oddness of his life is to just go along with the madness and make up a new set of laws to abide by.

This is essentially what Rose is doing here. By now she's been apart of the narrative of Doctor Who for long enough to recognize that when fresh and spontaneous events spring out from nowhere, she has no other choice but to just go along with the whole thing.

Naturally, when Rose discovers that her life will be terminated if she loses, the tone switches instantaneously. By this point, she's aware of the danger which her present situation presents. This isn't just another bonkers moment, but a monster waiting to incinerate her from existence if she's unable to apply herself to the game at hand.

And inevitably, she loses. Much like in World War Three, Davies teases the audience with the possibility of killing off one of the main characters. Only this time, he actually provides us with the on screen death of that said character.

Once again, as was the case in World War Three, logic makes us aware that Rose isn't going to die. It is pretty much clear by this point that the death of Rose Tyler is not the direction in which this show is headed in. The audience knows this by now. They've figured out the rules of this particular thirteen-episode run. Yes, the rules could change later on down the line, but as it currently stands, the companion isn't going to bite the dust. But with all the program collisions which have been taking place during this episode, the show's in a state of strangeness and uncertainty. The introduction of Big Brother and The Weakest Link have revealed just how easy it is for this show's narrative to unravel itself. It can reinvent itself and steal from different shows at will. Nothing stays the same and the rules have no fixed limits. Plus, they did kind of show Rose's disintegration on-screen, which further suggests the fragility to a companion's mortality.

What further enhances the idea of the present companion dying is the fact that the Doctor spends a large portion of this episode running around with a woman who possesses a number of tropes which qualifies her for the role of a potential future companion. Lynda Moss is young, reasonably bright and keen to spend time with the Doctor. Not only does she tick a number of the boxes for companion status, but the Doctor also fancies the idea of having her on board the TARDIS too.

Naturally, the setting up of Lynda as a future companion is just one big fat lie. Not only is she callously murdered in the following episode, but there's also a nugget of information – buried under the surface of Davies' script – which foreshadows her inevitable failure to become a future companion. “You're too nice” declares the Doctor, “From what I've seen of your world, do you think anyone's going to vote for nice?”

Of course, the Doctor is referring to the rules of Big Brother here. The general public don't vote for 'nice' people to win such shows. Yet despite this being a rule of reality Television, remember that Doctor Who is currently in a position where the reality television format has been blended into its own narrative. The rules of Big Brother's format could quite easily apply in this reality for a temporary period; lingering ever so slightly into the following episode in time for Lynda's departure.

So yes, Lynda dies and Rose is fine. Rose was not killed when she was zapped by the Anne Droid, but was  teleported over to a Dalek fleet which has been hiding on the fringes of Earth's solar system for a considerable amount of time.

That's right, it turns out the Daleks are behind the whole thing. There's certainly some comparison here to the John Pertwee story The Frontiers in Space. For those who may not know, The Frontiers in Space was a third Doctor story in which the Master was allegedly hypnotizing two advanced civilizations (the Humans and the Draconians) into waging a war with one another. The major twist of this story occurs when it transpires that the Daleks were indeed the real menaces behind such a manipulative scheme.

Such a plot twist could have worked pretty well here. The idea that a mysterious force is making the human race participate in brutal reenactments of 21st century game shows, only to have that force turn out to be a Dalek fleet is an idea which could have played out in two distinct ways. It could have been a surprising plot twist for viewers who were unfamiliar with the initial Pertwee story, whilst simultaneously being a pleasant hat tipping (or rip off) for old school fans.

It could have worked like this, except they decided to go and spoil the plot twist during the very end of the previous episode. The 'next time' trailer - which played before the end credits of Boom Town - revealed the Daleks in its final shot; pretty much giving away the game before Bad Wolf even had a chance to air.

Which really is a pain in the neck, because this episode goes out of its way, at times, to gradually build up the climactic plot twist. It hints casually that the Daleks may be involved (one example being a camera reflection loosely resembling the outline of a Dalek shell) as well as throwing in all kinds of red herrings along the way.

Yet the whole build up was ruined a week earlier by that stupid next time trailer. This is not the first time that the next time trailer has diminished the impact of a future episode. Aliens of London also had the same problem. After that episode's cliffhanger placed the audience in a state of concern for the well being of the show's characters, the next time trailer scuttled along and pretty much assured us all that the Doctor and co were going to be just fine and dandy in the following story.

The only time they managed to get the next time trailer right during this series was at the end of The Empty Child, where they chose to wait until the end credits had finished playing before showing the following episode's clip.

But to be fair, this isn't actually a fault of the text in and of itself. The episode holds out well on its own. I like Bad Wolf, I really do. The problem here is the fault of external texts spoiling the core text. Both the next time trailer and Davies' decision to whore out the Daleks as a way of promoting the series final were the reason behind this blunder. If you came to the episode without being a witness to these two facts, however, then I'm sure the twist would have worked rather nicely for you.

Regardless of my overall satisfaction with this episode, however, there's still one element of disappointment to the whole experience. I'm specifically making reference to the promise of the Bad Wolf story arc. Because there really are no answers in this episode. Ok, so I'm unnecessarily throwing my toys out of the pram here - as they do indeed answer this question in the following episode - yet there's still an issue with the fact that they chose to name the episode after this arc without bothering to actually address it properly.

The words Bad Wolf pop up once in this episode, the Doctor gets a bit suspicious about it's persistence, only to then brush it off his shoulder and getting on with the main story behind this episode. The fact that they named the entire episode Bad Wolf, only to go and mention it so briefly, is a bit of a pain in the backside. It almost feels cheeky; as if they just named it Bad Wolf as a shameless ploy to get bums in their seats.

Or maybe I'm just nitpicking. Who cares. The episode was good. Furthermore, the next time trailer at the back end of this one is so thrilling it pretty much makes up for last time's blunder. 

Philip Sandifer

When it came to sitting down and watching the classic era of Doctor Who, I experienced great difficulty in doing so. There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, there was the fact that a majority of the stories were hugely dated. I don't mean this in the sense that I thought the special effects looked a bit pants. All special effects date with time and I had long grown accustomed to visuals which didn't match today's state-of-the-art standards. No, what I mean by this is the overall narratives and story execution felt considerably different to what I had become use to. The stories of the classic era were a lot slower in their pace than the post-2005 revival and often spanned between 4-7 episodes to play out (during the first six seasons of the show, some stories streched even further than this number). No matter how hard I tried, my attention span just wasn't fit enough to keep up with such narrative lengths.

The second problem I suffered when trying to catch up with the prior four decades of the show which I had learned to love was just how staggeringly different the whole experience was. In 2005, Doctor Who wasn't yet the confident extravaganza that it would soon become, but it certainly felt as though it knew what it was doing. By the time David Tennant came along, it was so sure of itself that I found it difficult to find another program which was this confident and in control of its own destiny. When you look back on the episodes which aired in 1963, the show is nothing like the brash spectacle that it would one day become.  It was almost impossible to look at the TARDIS control room and honestly believe that the frail elderly gentlemen at the console was the same leather jacketed alien who ran off in time and space with that young blond girl who once had a hit single called "Honey to the B". Then when the Daleks popped up, were we really suppose to believe that the bullet melting beast in Van Statton's basement was really a member of those wobbly pepper pots who couldn't even move from their own base in the original Terry Nation story? None of it made any sense to my none-cultured mind.

I made eight attempts at watching classic Doctor Who before giving up. It just didn't stimulate my mind in the way that the new series was able to. I never became excited or engaged in what was going on in any of it. But then Philip Sandifer fell into my life, and suddenly, I started to get it.

So, for those who don't know, Philip Sandifer is an writer who graduated with a PHD in English. Like many in today's economic climate, Sandifer struggled to find work with his admirable qualifications. He now makes a living by producing a series of Essays on his blog; originally titled TARDIS Eruditorum (his blog also contains a series of essays titled The Last War in Albion which is an intriguing and exceptionally detailed exploration of the British Comic Industry; focusing particularly on the "magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison").

TARDIS Eruditorum is a continuing critical history of Doctor Who from the 1963 series, all the way up to present day (though it will be ending with Matt Smith's departure on the 25th December 2013). Not only does Sandifer explore the historical and cultural phenomenon of every Doctor Who story in their own self contained essays, but he also focuses on a colossal number of the spin off novels, television series and audio plays which have been released alongside and in between the mother show.

TARDIS Eruditorum furthermore makes heavy reference to the practice of psychochronography; the study of physical spaces and their impact on personal, social and cultural spaces. The concept of psychochronography is based - if my understanding is correct - on the idea that individuals and societies possess an internal landscape which is known as ideaspace. This ideaspace is built up, both personally and communally, based on the memories of fictional narratives which we've consumed over the years. With the assistance of psychochronography, we can meander through this internal ideaspace, exploring the memories of both our personal lives and those which have occurred publicly within the time periods in which they were released in.

I've talked about the idea of memories and film/television experiences intertwining and impacting the memories of one another on this blog before (though I've yet to comment on how they've impacted the larger aspects of the public sphere) and I'm almost certain that all these ideas have stemmed from Sandifer's writings. Which is one of the reasons why I felt the need to write up a brief post on him here. Because I have noticed that an awful lot of the ideas which crop up in the content that I've produced thus far have indirectly been shaped by Mr Sandifer's own work.


But the fact that I've accidentally pinched a few concepts from Sandifer' blog is not the only reason why I have written about him. I'm also writing this as I am keen to inform others who may not yet have come across this person's work. Because it is the very reason why I managed to finally get into the classic era of Doctor Who; a fact that I am hugely grateful for.

As mentioned, I had experienced many failed attempts to finally jump on board and appreciate what the 1963-1989 series was doing, and it was thanks to TARDIS Eruditorum that I was finally able to overcome this hurdle. The subjects and ideas which Sandifer raises in each essay assists in opening up a doorway in my mind which allows me to see and understand the classic era in a way which I would never have been able to do with my own thought process. Like all great studies of film and television, he is able to make you see content in new and exciting ways. His writings up on the new series also helps me to view the show that I learned to love in a unique and fresh way; warranting each and every episode a further viewing.

I'm still learning about the classic and wilderness era of Doctor Who. The size and complexity of the series is so vast in scale that I doubt I'm even half way toward knowing all that I will be content in knowing with regard to this show. Much like the hugely ambitious About Time series by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood, this blog is one of the most stimulating and entertaining ways of brushing up on the history of this series.

When I finally start putting more effort into my film/television blog, I am planning on focusing more on detailed episode-by-episode explorations of different television series which I have learned to love over my lifetime. I will start up by attempting discuss all the episodes of the post-2005 series and then hope to move on to look at the series from 1963, right on through into the wilderness years. If I do stick to my promise, then I will have TARDIS Eruditorum to thank for all of this (though I do plan on trying to come up with new ideas; as opposed to just shamelessly ripping off what another blogger has already had to say on the show).

TARDIS Eruditorum is a riveting read which I cannot give enough praise toward. Furthermore, if you like the blog, then I highly recommend popping over to Amazon to purchase the TARDIS Euriditorum ebooks. Hopefully you'll find them as beautiful as I did.