Doctor Who this week: Father's Day
May. 15th, 2005 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksThe reason why I didn't really talk about The Long Game last week was that there wasn't really much to say. Apparently it was a script that Davies submitted to the BBC in the 80s but was rejected, and it was very old school Who - so much so that it was rather blah and showed the same plotting limitations that Davies has shown in other episodes this season. Simon Pegg was marvellous, though, and I was constantly being distracted, (un)fortunately, by Anna Maxwell-Martin's cleavage.
But about this week's...
Father's Day
Most people may know of Paul Cornell from stuff he's done for shows like Casualty or Holby City. For me, Cornell was the name on one of the first Doctor Who novels I ever picked up. In the first set of wilderness years between 1989 and 1996, Virgin Publishing started their line of original Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures in 1991. The first NA that made me sit up and take notice, however, was one called Love and War, and that was by Cornell. An incredible story that no summary I make will do justice, it was everything that I thought a Seventh Doctor story should be. Dark, manipulative, high stakes and yet with very strong, emotional consequences. While the dark, manipulative Doctor was not in evidence here, since we have the Ninth Doctor, the emotional stakes were high.
Father's Day is shamelessly manipulative. Well, it really has to be as the plot is really quite thin and quite basic. Rose goes back in time and she changes history by saving her father from dying in a car accident. And everything goes to hell. The A Sound of Thunder scenario isn't new to science fiction by any means, but for a time travel series, Doctor Who has shied away quite a bit from introducing paradoxes. The only serials that deal with it to any serious degree - and even then it's pretty much skimmed over, are Day of the Daleks and arguably Pyramids of Mars and Mawdryn Undead. That's three stories out of 26 seasons' worth. The rest of the time, history is pretty much immutable.
Here, all the rules go out the window. The continuity fanatics will have their usual apoplectic fits as they try to make this fit in with what we know of Blinovitch Limitation Effects and the other conceits that Doctor Who has gathered to itself over the years to deal with paradoxes, and to be honest, after a point I don't quite care. A lot of it can be handwaved away, and it really depends on whether you actually like the story enough to prefer it over the continuity knots it creates. It is a story that really had to be done though, to get the point home to new viewers who are obviously going to be asking themselves, "Well why can't they have a re-do?" and thinking that no one's ever asked the obvious before.
But back to being shamelessly manipulative. The emotional content here is really high, with tearful embraces, intimate cheek touching (no, the face kind of cheek) and lots of "Daddy" terms being used. It's a hard-hearted soul indeed who won't even get a lump in their throat about what Rose is going through or understand exactly why Rose had to try, although she didn't figure on the consequences being so dire. And Pete Tyler's sacrifice in the end is almost as touching. Cornell's story touches on fathers and daughters (and sons), the moving finger moving on and being unable to rewrite it, the way we mythologise our parents... especially if they're absent. In the end, Pete's decision is summed up by what he tells Rose: "I'm your Dad - it's my job for it to be my fault," because that's what parents do. Seeing Rose grown up is what awakens Pete to the responsibility of being a parent, the awareness of the responsibility parents take in raising their children and how their actions reflect on each other. And so he does the right thing.
This is not your classic Who. The programme never dealt with themes this heady or emotional, or layered. The word is that Cornell was asked by Davies to do an NA-style story, much in the same way that Rob Shearman was asked to adapt Jubilee into Dalek, and to me at least, Cornell doesn't disappoint. While the snark in me will remark that this wasn't an NA because there was no swearing or sex or Ace in skin-tight jumpsuits carrying a big gun, Father's Day for its compressed format measures up quite nicely to stuff like Cornell's Human Nature and the human bits of Love and War and The Shadows of Avalon (that last dealing with the Brig's own bereavement).
And hey, if you didn't like it, you should be glad to know that by the episode's own logic, it is very likely that none of it even happened, in the end, thanks to Pete. If that's true, then I can honestly say that I didn't cry. Not one bit.
4.5 out of 5. I dock a half point for being so shameless, but it's a good kind of shameless.
But about this week's...
Father's Day
Most people may know of Paul Cornell from stuff he's done for shows like Casualty or Holby City. For me, Cornell was the name on one of the first Doctor Who novels I ever picked up. In the first set of wilderness years between 1989 and 1996, Virgin Publishing started their line of original Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures in 1991. The first NA that made me sit up and take notice, however, was one called Love and War, and that was by Cornell. An incredible story that no summary I make will do justice, it was everything that I thought a Seventh Doctor story should be. Dark, manipulative, high stakes and yet with very strong, emotional consequences. While the dark, manipulative Doctor was not in evidence here, since we have the Ninth Doctor, the emotional stakes were high.
Father's Day is shamelessly manipulative. Well, it really has to be as the plot is really quite thin and quite basic. Rose goes back in time and she changes history by saving her father from dying in a car accident. And everything goes to hell. The A Sound of Thunder scenario isn't new to science fiction by any means, but for a time travel series, Doctor Who has shied away quite a bit from introducing paradoxes. The only serials that deal with it to any serious degree - and even then it's pretty much skimmed over, are Day of the Daleks and arguably Pyramids of Mars and Mawdryn Undead. That's three stories out of 26 seasons' worth. The rest of the time, history is pretty much immutable.
Here, all the rules go out the window. The continuity fanatics will have their usual apoplectic fits as they try to make this fit in with what we know of Blinovitch Limitation Effects and the other conceits that Doctor Who has gathered to itself over the years to deal with paradoxes, and to be honest, after a point I don't quite care. A lot of it can be handwaved away, and it really depends on whether you actually like the story enough to prefer it over the continuity knots it creates. It is a story that really had to be done though, to get the point home to new viewers who are obviously going to be asking themselves, "Well why can't they have a re-do?" and thinking that no one's ever asked the obvious before.
But back to being shamelessly manipulative. The emotional content here is really high, with tearful embraces, intimate cheek touching (no, the face kind of cheek) and lots of "Daddy" terms being used. It's a hard-hearted soul indeed who won't even get a lump in their throat about what Rose is going through or understand exactly why Rose had to try, although she didn't figure on the consequences being so dire. And Pete Tyler's sacrifice in the end is almost as touching. Cornell's story touches on fathers and daughters (and sons), the moving finger moving on and being unable to rewrite it, the way we mythologise our parents... especially if they're absent. In the end, Pete's decision is summed up by what he tells Rose: "I'm your Dad - it's my job for it to be my fault," because that's what parents do. Seeing Rose grown up is what awakens Pete to the responsibility of being a parent, the awareness of the responsibility parents take in raising their children and how their actions reflect on each other. And so he does the right thing.
This is not your classic Who. The programme never dealt with themes this heady or emotional, or layered. The word is that Cornell was asked by Davies to do an NA-style story, much in the same way that Rob Shearman was asked to adapt Jubilee into Dalek, and to me at least, Cornell doesn't disappoint. While the snark in me will remark that this wasn't an NA because there was no swearing or sex or Ace in skin-tight jumpsuits carrying a big gun, Father's Day for its compressed format measures up quite nicely to stuff like Cornell's Human Nature and the human bits of Love and War and The Shadows of Avalon (that last dealing with the Brig's own bereavement).
And hey, if you didn't like it, you should be glad to know that by the episode's own logic, it is very likely that none of it even happened, in the end, thanks to Pete. If that's true, then I can honestly say that I didn't cry. Not one bit.
4.5 out of 5. I dock a half point for being so shameless, but it's a good kind of shameless.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-15 02:49 pm (UTC)I loved this episode. Loved, loved, loved.
And I certainly didn't cry over the episode. My allergies are acting up, there was something in my eye, and I always cry at weddings. So there.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-15 03:13 pm (UTC)(although you can handwave it away by saying that in Mawdryn, the energy was siphoned away by Mawdryn's apparatus, so here, the Reaper siphoned the energy away to allow it entry into the church)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-15 05:33 pm (UTC)Nevertheless, phenominal episode.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-15 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-15 05:34 pm (UTC)