The Next Doctor – Review (Spoilers)
The Next Doctor seems to have split Doctor Who fans with many being disappointed. Well, I loved it.
Warning: Spoilers follow
The Next Doctor was hardly a classic Doctor Who episode, in many ways it stank. But it was a perfect Christmas special. Warm and cuddly with all the right seasonal elements and exactly what was needed for the evening of Christmas Day.
The idea of two Doctors battling the cybermen during a Victorian Christmas was a fun one. I suspect that some people were disappointed because the “secret” behind David Morrisey’s Doctor was revealed very early and turned out to be fairly trivial. That shouldn’t really be a surprise – Russell T Davies went on record ages ago saying that he only thought of the episode’s name after David Tennant announced he was leaving the show. With hindsight the BBC probaby made a mistake in over-hyping this element of the story.
The story was hardly original or complex but was at least appropriate. Whereas the Daleks use brute force the Cybermen have always preferred to work with traitors in the enemy camp. In Miss Hartigan (played brilliantly by Dervla Kirwan) they found the perfect disaffected human whom they betray as soon as she’s no longer needed. Meanwhile we have Morrisey’s character who believes himself to be The Doctor and attempts to behave as such as far as his Victorian understanding will allow. This allowed Morrisey to ham it up something rotten and he was clearly having great fun showing how the character should not be played!
Meanwhile the reaction of Tennant’s Doctor was just right. He’s smart enough to cotton on immediately to the possibility that he’s met himself and also the implications of that. He’s curious yet also careful not to share information that could corrupt his own timeline. However he also picks up quickly on the clues that Morrisey isn’t what he seems and works out the real story.
The atmosphere was suitably Dickensian and appropriate for Christmas Day, complete with children being rounded up to a cyber-workhouse. I imagine that around the country this started many family conversations about what life for kids was really like in those days – social education by the back door.
The other thing I really liked about the episode was the pervading sense of steampunk. In particular Morrisey’s Tardis – Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style – was superb and entirely believable as the result of a Victorian mind trying to comprehend the world of a Time Lord. Similarly the Transformer style CyberKing – which was totally unjustified in plot terms – fitted the whole Victorian steampunk idea.
Perhaps the one thing that I really disliked was the Cybershades. The idea of upgrading lower life forms to perform menial tasks and espionage makes a lot of sense. However their level of intelligence seemed to vary wildly throughout the show. I could have forgiven that if the budget had stretched to more than a man in a monkey suit wearing a mask. That really was unforgivably cheap and nasty.
That aside I really enjoyed The Next Doctor. That’s the key word – enjoyed. It wasn’t great TV, it wasn’t classic Doctor Who. It was perfect family entertainment for Christmas.