Doctor Who New Series 1.13 – 'The Parting of the Ways'

Plot - In a bid to rescue Rose, the Doctor sends her back to her own timeline; choosing to deal with the invading Dalek fleet by sacrificing both his and the Earth's existence. Any remaining hope now rests behind the meaning of the 'Bad Wolf' enigma.

For the preceding twelve episodes, Russell T Davies and the rest of his production chums have set out to create something which can work in more than one way. First off, the 2005 revival of Doctor Who acts as a thirteen part pilot; testing whether the show is able to hold ground among 21^st century culture. Second of all, it acts as a taster series; giving its audience an idea of what Doctor Who could be like if only it was accepted within contemporary society.

Therefore, the show has been given a distinct shape to its overall structure. Even though the creative force behind this era of the show had no intention of wrapping things up after parting of the ways; there’s almost a feeling that the show could have quite easily called it a day here and everything would have still all worked as a thirteen part mini-series. Yes, we end the episode with David Tennant grinning like a mad puppy as he talks about Barcelona, but this still where the plug could have still been pulled if all went south.

How the show achieves this shape is by building up the scale and force of the series as it marches forth. When the series begun with Rose, it was a speedy romp which showed an average London girl falling out her world and into the madness of the Doctor’s reality.

As the episodes continued to air, Rose slowly fell further and further away from the rules of the reality which she initially spent 19-years living in. By episode five, she had returned to her world; only to discover that the Doctor’s realm of aliens and monsters had taken over what she thought she knew. No longer could she go back to her normal day to day life. Aliens had taken control of downing street, spaceships crashed into Big Ben and shop window dummies could bring cities to a standstill.

By episode six, Rose was a fulltime companion. She had official become a part of the Doctor’s universe; granting her the invitation to meet yet another icon from this strange and vast universe. After her encounter with the Dalek, Rose was accustomed to the rules and functions of Doctor Who. So much so, in fact ,that she even started to attempt to break such rules; resulting in her faux pas in Father’s Day.

Yet now, after the gradual build up from soap opera reality to the world of the science fiction, the series goes all out for its final episode. The series has gradually been building up to what it is meant to be for some time now. After twelve long weeks of genre clashing, rule bending and world falling; viewers suddenly find themselves watching what can be described as the 21st century's most Doctor Who episode to date. There’s no more genre clashing here; it’s the Daleks invading Doctor Who.

One of the most interesting aspects to this episode, is its tendency to show things which everyone had thought they’d seen the Daleks do, but had in actual fact hadn't. Take the Dalek inside the TARDIS for example. Never before had the show depicted an onscreen Dalek inside the console room. Furthermore, the series had never once managed to show an entire fleet of Dalek ships on the scale which this episode manages to achieve. Such a fact is more likely down to the fact that the previous show never had the liberty to throw CGI at the screen whenever it needed some visual assistance, but nonetheless, here is the program doing something which we were convinced we’d seen the show do on screen, but had actually only been a witness to in our own minds.

A potential answer to this might be down to Russell T Davies’ love of comic books. One thing which is clear about the Davies era of the show is it’s obsessive attitude toward the visual tone of each series. Every episode looks like its own mini-movie; possessing their own visual styles and cinematic qualities. Davies even use to hold tone meetings for each episode; where he’d bring all the separate departments together and push them into working toward meeting a set goal with each of the episodes which were set to be filmed.

Davies’ adoration of comic books, topped with his fondness to keep one eye on the visual qualities whilst writing his scripts, could very well explain why this episode possessed the aesthetic qualities which it has. The episode looks similar to one of the classic Doctor Who and the Dalek comics; in which huge armies of Dalek fleets were splashed across the various pages. Such comics also made heavy use of the Dalek emperor; who makes an onscreen return here for the first time in four decades.

And the episode does look like these comics. It’s audaciously colourful (well...bronze), atmospheric, drools over the emperor Dalek at every opportunity and embraces its liberty to finally put as many Daleks as it likes on our screens. The Doctor Who comics (and novels for that matter) were once the only way in which anyone could depict vast swarms of Daleks on screen. With the 21^st century’s uprising of computer aided technology, however, this is a liberation which the mother series can now also embrace.

Much as is the case with the current Moffat era (which we’ll get on to in due course) the Davies period of the show possesses a number of tropes which pop up throughout the duration of his time as head writer. Series one played out these tropes in a much more watered down manner than the following three series ended up doing, yet nonetheless, they are still very much in play here.

Firstly, there’s the idea of the Doctor being responsible for his own destruction. In this situation, the Doctor will be responsible for a history-altering event which will create a vacuum within the timelines. Sooner or later, some evil enemy will fill up that vacuum and inevitably be responsible for that said Doctor's regeneration. Tennent’s Doctor ends up sowing the seeds of his own regeneration in the very next episode, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The Ninth Doctor is also responsible for creating a vacuum which will lead to his regeneration; creating this said vacuum all the way back in The Long Game. As I mentioned back when talking about that episode, the Doctor’s actions during that story resulted in the news networks of planet earth completely shutting down. Due to the malnourishment of information, mankind stopped overnight. This gave the Daleks a chance to step in and build up their army by luring in and converting a planet of information starved and helpless humans.

The Doctor was the catalyst which helped to spark the events of this story into existence; therefore being responsible for the series of events which lead up the Bad Wolf resolution, therefore inadvertently forcing him to regenerate into his tenth body.

The second trope which pops its head above the water during The Parting of the Ways is the idea that the Doctor needs a companion in order to stabilise the narrative of the show. Without such a character to stand by his side, the Doctor will either make huge errors or slowly loose grip of his morals.

Early on in the episode, the Doctor chooses to send Rose back to her own timeline; saving her from the monstrosities of the Dalek invasion of 200,100. As Rose tries to deal with the situation of accepting her permanent return to present day Britain, the narrative occasionally jumps back to the heart of the narrative which takes place on Satellite five. Without Rose, it’s apparent that the plans and actions of the Doctor are falling to pieces. People are mercilessly gunned down, Lynda is murdered, Jack falls victim to a Dalek ray gun and the Doctor decides to drop all of his morals and fry the entire earth population in order to bring down the Dalek fleet.

From the collapse of events, one thing is clear; the Doctor needs someone by his side. Without the likes of Rose Tyler; the Doctor is unable to be the hero figure that he's so commonly associated with. He becomes a victim of the surrounding story. People die, moral becomes lost within the chaos, and ultimately, the Doctor loses.

And lose he bloody well does. All becomes lost. Jack and Lynda are dead, the Doctor’s defenders have all been gunned down in cold blood, the Doctor is willing to fry the minds of billions of helpless humans to stop the Daleks surrounding him. And he gives up. He sticks his hands in the air and admits that he can’t do it. The Daleks have won. The Doctor can’t save the day this time.

Meanwhile, back in 2006, the narrative is making a third trope apparent. Not only is the Doctor useless without his companion, but his companion is unable to revert back to her previous life. Rose has spent nearly thirteen episodes now, spiralling down a rabbit hole of madness. She’s learned methods in order to cope with the chaos of the Doctor’s universe. She’s fallen out of time for twelve months, broken the [forever changing] rules of the narrative and learned to participate in obstacles which no man or women could ever dream of facing. She’s no longer a member of the soap-opera genre; she’s a Doctor Who character in many ways.

This is how the episode works. Everything is in a state of unbalance. The ex-soap opera character is lost in a world of normality, whilst the day-saving hero is unable to function without someone to prod him in the right direction. Separated across time, the story of Doctor Who caves in on itself.

But before the episode sees itself out, all is restored in the narrative. In fact, things are restored in quite a literal sense, because Rose not only manages to return to the future, but she also looks into the time vortex; essentially becoming a temporary demi-god who can disintegrate Daleks, resurrect Jack, willingly spread the words Bad Wolf through time and space (well that’s that mystery solved then) and put everything back to [almost] the way it all was.

This is an issue which will only get worse as each series finally comes to pass during the Davies era. Because you see, the thing is, Davies has some staggeringly strong points, but at the same time he has his weaknesses (but then who doesn’t?).

Firstly, Davies is one of the most television-savvy producers in the UK. Not only does he know the workings of many television shows which have been released during the past 20 years, but he’s also a master at efficiently bringing together different departments in order to execute the shows he works for. This is why Davies was able to act as the headwriter/executive producer of Doctor Who, micromanage a full series of Torchwood and commission and entire series of The Sarah Jane Adventures all at pretty much the same time; whilst current head writer Steven Moffat struggles to get more than eight episodes of Doctor Who on our goggle-boxes each year.

Secondly, Davies is incredible when it comes to characters. He’s able to take ordinary people and make them extraordinary. This is a technique which shines in Doctor Who; as Davies takes convention soap-opera characters and builds them up into science fiction heroes. It works, it’s wonderful and it adds an element to Doctor Who which the classic series seemed to lack considerably.

Davies creates characters who are so wonderful to watch that it helps to make the show engaging and emotionally stimulating. You genuinely care about the outcome of these people. If a character is in mortal danger, then it can at times be genuinely terrifying to experience.

His weakness, on the other hand, is his tendency to try and go as epic as possible with his stories (particularly series finals), only to go ahead and write himself into a corner. Like many of his later series finals, The Parting of the Ways builds and builds and builds until a point where the viewer simply doesn't know how on earth the Doctor is going to get out of the situation he’s trapped within.

The crux of the issue here is, that Davies doesn't seem to know either. Which is why he often ends up going for the dreaded reset button; having Rose sweep in and save the day with her newly obtained magical TARDIS powers.

Except it does sort of work here. Ok, it’s still a slight cop out when it comes to saving the Doctor from certain death, but it does still result in the Doctor's death. As he willingly absorbs the time vortex from Rose's mind; he is forced to save his existence via regeneration. The only problems which can stem from such a moment however, is if the rules for that set piece magically spring out of thin air . Usually, if you want an important plot point to come along and change the direction of the story, it is usually effective to feed it into the narrative prior to that particular significant moment.

This is why the whole super-Rose things sort of works here. Because it turns out that she’s the Bad Wolf. The phrase has been scattered through time in order to lead her back there. It’s a nice little paradox arc in which Rose shapes her own destiny with two words. Ok, so it’s not great, and it does flag up another problem about Davies, in which his story arcs are just random phrases uttered once every few episodes (he might as well have used the words ‘Fried Chicken’ and the arc would have still worked in more or less the same way. Only less enigmatic).

But the rules regarding the idea that the time vortex will burn Rose's brain if he doesn't take the bullet for her - so to speak - just feels a little out of the blue. We did indeed see the heart of the TARDIS during Boom Town – when Margaret Slitheen stared into it and requested that she be given a second chance at life – yet the fact that it turned up at the ass end of episode eleven gives off the skeptical impression that it was retrofitted in for the sake of the final minutes of episode thirteen.

The whole ‘looking into the heart of the TARDIS’ scene feels quite lazy. It’s there to help Davies wrap up all the conclusions which he needs to arrive at before the credits begin to role. He needs to explain the Bad Wolf; check. He needs to kill off all the Daleks; check. He needs to bring captain Jack back so that he can star in his own little spin off; check. He needs to force Christopher Eccleston to regenerate into David Tennent; check.

Yet like I say, this type of ending does sort of work here. But there’s a reason behind this. Firstly, at this stage of the story, it seriously doesn't matter about the mechanics of how this part of the episode plays out. Seriously, unless you’re dissecting The Parting of the Ways for academic purposes, or because you’re an overly enthusiastic fan, this part of the story is all about the emotion. Viewers don’t give a shit about the reset button. They know that they’re moments away from saying good by to Doctor no. nine and hello to no. ten. This is a huge moment in which a new generation are going to see how the series executes one of the show’s most iconic and important transitions. The Doctor is going to regenerate and that’s all the audience really cares about at this stage.

Which is just what happens. After a heartfelt farewell from the ninth Doctor, a beam of light blasts from his limbs and head; revealing a completely new man in his place. After thirteen episodes; the story of the ninth Doctor is over and ten is about to begin his [considerably longer] on screen journey.

Series one turned out to be nothing short of a cultural success. When the show begun back in March 2005, no one knew whether this revitalisation would really take off. This was simply a test to see whether or not this show could still work. It died in 1989 and managed to keep itself on life support with a series of novels, audio plays and a poorly thought out TV movie. The idea of it becoming a part of the mainstream conscious once again was difficult for some to comprehend.

Such nerves held by the creative team goes a long way in explaining the overall tone of this series. It’s clearly a well-designed and expensive show. The visuals were top notch for their time, the cast were carefully chosen and the quality of each story was impressively executed. Just by looking at an episode, one was able to see that this was a well-crafted piece of work, in which great levels of love and effort were put into the making of it. Yet it still felt a little insecure about itself.

The show did weird and peculiar things, but it still stepped lightly as it did. Furthermore, the choice of Eccleston assisted in providing the show with at least some level of gravitas. Eccleston was a well respected actor who’d starred in a number of Hollywood roles. When things go too weird, the knowledge that Eccleston was the figure at the centre of that weirdness grounded these situations considerably.

Likewise, the show did not feel comfortable in referencing the old series in any way shape or form. To avoid any confusion, Davies and co decided it best to continue the story of the Doctor by not looking back. It was officially announced as a direct continuation of the classic series; but never once did they feel it necessary to explicitly reference the stories or characters of previous eras.

In conclusion, Doctor Who in 2005 was big, bold yet still somewhat shy. It was a bit like one of the world's most beautiful drag queens on her first night out in public. The show didn't know what it could get away with just yet. Nor did it feel content enough to start looking back on its own mythology. It had two purposes to its existence. It wanted to show the world what Doctor Who could be like in the 21^st century and it aspired to get wanting it again.

Of course we all now know that the show succeeded in doing this on a phenomenal level. The program is now the center of British culture and has even managed to land on American soil. The show is colossal and it’s very much aware of its own success. As the years go on, Doctor Who will grow to become staggeringly more confident in what it can do; it will happily throw all kinds of references to its own history; and it will celebrate its own tendency to be weird and different from anything else that exists in popular culture.

From series two onward, Doctor Who will become a colourful and confident crown jewel for the BBC. Yet here, we have something slightly different. The potential is all there, the show just needs a bit more time before it can audaciously come forth and execute such audacity.

Overall, series one is bloody charming in its ambitions. It’s a brave run of episodes; desperate to be loved by the people whom its made for. The fact that it was loved makes this series all the more delightful to look back upon.