Revisiting Doctor Who - Series 1, Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways

Revisiting Doctor Who - Series 1, Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways

Ooh, the recap takes all of the pre-credits sequence! I don't know why that's exciting. Anyway...

Cue title sequence...

On board the Dalek ship, the Daleks tell Rose that she will predict his actions, but she refuses, say she doesn't know, and she wouldn't tell them anyway. They fire missiles at the TARDIS, which is heading for the ship, but they are ineffective, as the TARDIS materialises on board, surrounding Rose and a Dalek. Jack blows the hell out of the enemy, as Rose and The Doctor hug, and then Jack demands one, because of course he does. Briefly back on the TARDIS ship, we hear a deeper Dalek voice...And then we learn a little more about the Time War, as The Doctor explains how the Time Lords were destroyed as they took the Daleks with them, but now it's obviously been all for nothing. Still, he puts on his best 'no point dwelling on it' Northern expression, and heads out to meet them. The Daleks immediately shoot him, but the TARDIS forcefield extends to cover him. The Doctor then boasts about his awesome nickname amongst Dalek legends, 'The Oncoming Storm', betting them that they're going to feel a bit of fear. Just then, the deep Dalek voice makes itself known - it's the Emperor of the Daleks. His ship survived, falling through time and crippled but alive. They waited in the dark space, rebuilding, quietly infiltrating the systems of Earth, harvesting the waste of humanity - all the criminals and other layabouts that came to the Daleks were harvested, one cell in a billion worthy of being used to repopulate the Dalek race. Don't call them half-human though Rose, it's blasphemy apparently. This is a new concept to Daleks though - the Emperor has proclaimed himself the Dalek god, and the rest of them have been driven insane by the waiting in the darkness, hating themselves for being half human, and more dangerous than ever. The Doctor decides it's time to leave, and leads Rose and Jack back to into the TARDIS.

They head back to Satellite 5, realising that Earth is defenceless against a Dalek invasion. The fleet begins to move, the Emperor telling his troops to reign fire upon the Earth, to turn it into his temple and their paradise. The Doctor proclaims that he can create a huge Delta Wave, which will fry all the Dalek brains, but he needs to speed up the process a bit, as it should take three days, and they only have a few minutes. As the fleet approaches, Jack tells how the forcefield will stop them firing outside the station, but they can still invade it personally. They move to secure the room, as the Dalek's plan will be to head up to there to stop The Doctor. Jack tells them both goodbye, as he knows he isn't going to make it, but that they're both worth fighting for - he also gives them both a goodbye kiss, because it's Jack. Rose asks The Doctor if Jack will be alright, but The Doctor can't answer.

A few floors down, Jack demands volunteers from the station's inhabitants. Roderick, the winner of The Weakest Link from the last episode, tells the crowd that the Daleks aren't real, but Jack tells them to consider that when they can hear everyone above them dying, and then heads into the lift with some brave volunteers. 

Back in the main room, Rose questions whether The Doctor can just go back in time a week to warn the station what's about to happen, but he tells her that he'd just become part of the events then. He gives her another option, leaving and letting history take it's course, but he knows that it never even occurred to her, because she's too good. Which is why we love her. The Doctor loves her all the more as she's given him the idea to use the TARDIS to cross his own timeline, which will generate enough power to charge the Delta Wave in time. He leads her into the TARDIS, telling her that he's programming it, and to hold on, but when he leaves to do something technical, it turns out he was sending her home out of danger. He looks mournfully at the disappearing blue box, as Rose sees an emergency protocol hologram appear, telling her it is only activated if he's id danger of death with no chance of escape. Well, that'd bum me out a bit too. The TARDIS is taking her home, and will not be able to return to him as he can't let the technology fall into Dalek hands. She is to leave it somewhere to become part of the scenary, and have a fantastic life, and dear God I'm starting to well up already. When the ship lands, Rose runs outside to find herself back home, Mickey running towards her. In tears, she falls into his arms.

On Satellite 5, Jack calls Rose to get her to read him some codes, but The Doctor informs him that he sent her away. Just as Jack questions whether the Delta Wave will be ready, the Emperor appears on screen, telling Jack that The Doctor has been hiding the truth - there is no way of refining the wave in time, meaning it will kill everyone on the station, not just the Daleks. Actually, not just the station, the Earth as well. The Emperor says that if he is the Creator of Worlds, then what is The Doctor? Hint: he's calling him Shiva, the Destroyer of Worlds. The Doctor argues that there are colonies of humans, but we know really that he's wiping out a huge portion of the human race to kill the Daleks, like he did with the Time Lords. Jack's fine with it though, if it means stopping the enemy. When The Doctor questions the Emperor on why Bad Wolf has followed them however, he denies all knowledge, which causes some very dramatic music to play.

Back in London, Mickey and Jackie talk about pizza, as Rose laments being 200,000 years away and unable to do anything. She flees the cafe they are in, unable to stand around doing nothing. Mickey tries to tell Rose to get on with her life, but she notices 'Bad Wolf' written on the ground and walls nearby, and starts to think it could be a message telling her how to return to the future, rather than a warning. In the console room, Rose tells Mickey they need to open the console so that she can look into the heart of the TARDIS and use it's telepathic nature to travel back to The Doctor. She hurts Mickey though by telling him that there's nothing left for her in London. Still, he goes and fetches his car, attaches a chain to it with the other end attached to the console, and tries to pull it out whilst driving off. It's not powerful enough though. They could use something with a bigger engine...and so Jackie comes to the rescue - when Rose tells her all about visiting her father in the past, and how she was the girl who held his hand as he died, despite initially fleeing, she realises how The Doctor has helped her daughter, and brings her a massive pick up lorry. They try again using the extra power of the lorry, and then YES! The console pops open, and Rose stares into the heart of the TARDIS, as the doors close, and the ship de-materialises...

Meanwhile, as all this is going on aboard the station (I've very handily separated the two events out in this review, as we switch back and forth every 30 seconds), Jack prepares everyone for the invasion, as the Daleks flood out of their ships. He tells everyone to follow his commands, and wishes them luck. The Daleks easily override and turn off the various defences that have been put in place, and then people start dying, their bullets useless against the Dalek shields. Anne Droid has a few successes, blasting three Daleks to Jack's joy, but then she gets shot so that's all over. The Daleks then head to the lower levels of the station to kill everything there, something that The Doctor and Jack didn't think they would bother with. Lynda then reports to The Doctor that the Daleks are bombing Earth, as we see images of all the continents distorting into new shapes. Jack and his volunteers open fire as the Daleks approach the area outside the main room of the station where The Doctor is preparing the Delta Wave, but they quickly start to fall. Lynda is killed too, and Jack has to flee down a corridor. He tells The Doctor that he has about 20 seconds, using up all his ammunition, and then getting killed - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! BARROWMANNNNNNNNNNNNNN! 

The Doctor finishes the Delta Wave, just as the Daleks come into the room. He tells them that they will all die if he activates the wave, but the Emperor tells him that he wants to see The Doctor become just like him - 'Hail The Doctor, the Great Exterminator!'. He asks is The Doctor a coward or a killer, and The Doctor has to relent and admit he is a coward. The human race will be harvested because of his weakness, and he will be exterminated, but just before it can happen, the TARDIS materialises. Rose appears in a the doorway, a gold glow around her. She tells him, in a very ethereal way, that she looked into the heart of the Tardis, but The Doctor tells her that is the Time Vortex itself, and no-one is supposed to see it. The Daleks called her 'the abomination', and try to exterminate her, but she just catches the death ray. She declares that she is the Bad Wolf, and that she creates herself, scattering the words through time and space, leaving herself a message to lead her here. The Doctor pleads with her to give up the power now, but she won't as she needs to protect him from the false god. She can see every atom of the Daleks existence, and she scatters them, turning all the Daleks into dust. She declares that 'the Time War ends', with the destruction of the Dalek fleet and all it's members. The Doctor pleads again for her to let go, but she asks how can she, when she can bring life, and swiftly brings Jack back to life (Oh, thank you Rose! Thank you!). The Doctor tells her it's wrong to control life and death, but she won't give it up, telling him that it hurts, and that she can see everything that is and was and ever could be. He tells her that she needs a doctor, and he kisses her, absorbing the Time Vortex - I don't think this counts as the kiss she's been craving, but still, it must be close. She collapses in his arms, safe, and then he expels the Time Vortex back to the TARDIS. 

Jack staggers to his feet, bloody confused about how he's alive, and all the dust on the floor. He hears the TARDIS, but is too late to get there before it leaves. On board, Rose awakes, asking what happened. The Doctor tells her that he sang a song and it made the Daleks go away. He's glowing a bit though, which can't be good. He tells her that he was going to take her to so many places, such as the planet Barcelona. She asks why can't they still go, and he tells her that she will, just not with him. He suddenly bursts with a glow of energy, and tells her that all the cells in his body are dying because he absorbed the Time Vortex, which no-one is supposed to do. She asks if there's anything he can do, and he tells her yes, but he'll have to change (in case you hadn't guessed, he's going to regenerate). He tells her one last time that she was fantastic, and then in one last slightly big-headed way that only The Doctor can do (well, alright - The Master is pretty good at being big-headed too in Series 3), he tells her that he was too. And then bright orange energy shoots out of him, as he regenerates into David Tennant. Who has new teeth, which are weird. 

And so ends Series 1. I'm going to do a more detailed blog post looking back at it shortly, as well as a post solely about Christopher Eccleston's performance, but for now let's just wrap up with this episode. It's a cracking end to the series, full of excitement and capping off the previous cliffhanger very well indeed. There's a genuine sense that anyone can die, especially when Jack is killed, and there's only a few criticisms that you could level at the ending, namely that it's a bit Deus Ex Machina, i.e. 'let's just make Rose invincible'. To be honest, this doesn't really bother me at all, as it's still a legitimate ending, but I can see how it's a bit of an easy way of getting rid of the Daleks which should otherwise be impossible at this point. It's much better than the telepathic field of Series 3, or the cancelled regeneration of Series 4 though.

Eccleston's performance gets more and more frantic as The Doctor tries to get his plan together to wipe out the Daleks once and for all, and it's a perfect showcase for how he can be just as much of a manic ball of energy as Tennant and Smith at times. It's so pleasing too that he gets such a brilliant last line:

'Rose, before I go I just want to tell you that you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? So was I!'

He really has been fantastic all series long, growing in strength and moving away from the slightly angrier Doctor of the first few episodes, although knowing what we do about the Time War and the sacrifice that he had to make, all that anger was fairly understandable.

There's also a great comparison between the sacrifice that The Doctor made when he sacrificed all the Time Lords to stop the Daleks in the Time War, when he puts a plan into motion which will effectively do the same to humanity. It's not a subtle parallel at all, but it's an important one for the character, and shows just how badly the Time War affected him. True, most of humanity would have been wiped out in the Dalek attack on Earth, judging by the way the shape of the continents was changed, so it's not as if he'd be murdering the same numbers as before then anyway, but it's obvious that he can't bring himself to kill that many innocent people again, even for the greater good.

Billie Piper's performance is fantastic too, especially when she laments being unable to help The Doctor after being sent home to safety. As Rose becomes more hysterical, we feel her pain at being helpless, and Piper continues to show why Stephen Moffat said that it was her show for the first two years. I think he's right in many ways, probably because, unlike Eccleston, fshe wasn't an established actress at this point, so it's even more impressive how well she plays and develops the character. She's the beating heart of the show at this point, and our gateway into The Doctor's world, and we feel her pain when it seems like there's nothing she can do to save him.

I'm glad they had more of Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri as Mickey and Jackie before the end of the series. They've made such a strong supporting cast, albeit only used for half a season or so. The look on Mickey's face as Rose tells him there is nothing left for her in London sums up perfectly how he's been treated throughout the series, and the fact that he still agrees to help her despite her obliviousness to how much she hurts him shows how truly loyal he is. If only she'd realise it...

Special mention to the visual effects too - it's rare that we really praise the visual effects in Doctor Who, as the BBC really doesn't give it much of a budget for this, and it's impressive that they manage to do a decent to good job each week on a regular basis, but the site of all those Daleks flying through space on their way to invading Satellite 5 truly is a fantastic sight. I also love the colour change when someone gets shot by a Dalek death ray. Wonderful stuff, very evil looking.

The music has also been exceptional throughout the series, as it will continue to be up until the present day with Series 7. Murray Gold sure knows how to write a powerful piece of music, the 'Bad Wolf' theme being the standout for me this series. It will be surpassed by the 'Doomsday' theme in Series 2, and again by 'Martha's Theme/The Doctor Forever' in Series 3, but it's one of the best pieces of incidental music on British television. The 'Dalek Theme' is also exceptional.

Bad Wolf Sightings
We learn that Rose IS the Bad Wolf after staring into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbing the Time Vortex, and scattered the words throughout time as clues to how she could help The Doctor.

Where It Fits Into The Series As A Whole
Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor regenerates into David Tennant's Tenth.

The occasional Bad Wolf sighting will still occur over the next few series.

The Daleks are supposedly wiped out again, bringing the Time War to an end.

Captain Jack is revived, and is now immortal - at least, every time he is killed he will come back to life shortly afterwards.

Overall
A great way to end the first series of the modern Doctor Who. An episode full of excitement and danger, even if the solution to the Dalek problem is a little too easy. Christopher Eccleston bowed out on a brilliant note.

9/10