Doomsday

Dear Gary—

Doomsday is Doctor Who sending up all its biggest sky rockets at one time, prefaced with a brief “this is the story of how I died” recap of Army of Ghosts.

Cybermen are marching; cars are burning; guns are blazing; citizens are panicking. Meanwhile four Daleks are chilling us to the bone, holding Rose and Mickey and Dr. Rajesh Singh hostage. Daleks and Cybermen in one serial; we know it is only a matter of time before they meet in one mighty explosion of action packed adventure.

I can’t say that I ever longed for a Dalek/Cyberman showdown because I always imagined it would go down pretty much the way it does in Doomsday. Lots of “Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!” and “Delete! Delete! Delete!” and plenty of laser fire back and forth. Not much room for subtlety or strategy or substance. As a backdrop to the grand finale, however, the sound of Cybermen marching in unison and the sight of hundreds of Daleks flying through the air provides the necessary big bang to the production.

Any big bang grand finale worth its salt, though, doesn’t just let loose everything all in one go. To achieve maximum effect the show must be carefully choreographed; it must build to its climax; it depends on the smaller sparks to stoke the fires.

Doctor Who has been stoking those fires all along. No matter how much I dislike Rose, she as well as Jackie, Pete, and Mickey have clearly been established as the heart of the show. The Daleks and the Cybermen might be the big noise in Doomsday, but the emotional content provides all of the sparkle.

It is appropriate, therefore, that Rose stops the Daleks dead with, “Daleks! You’re called Daleks. I know your name.” Her time with the Doctor has fed into her arrogance and vanity and cruelty, but it has also enriched her. She stands before the Daleks with her new found experience, confidence, and ingenuity. Mickey with his massive weapon and Singh with his Torchwood credentials can only hide behind Rose as she stares down the Daleks using nothing but her wits.

This is quickly followed by the first meeting between our two iconic aliens. It is a hilarious standoff at first, and then the Cybermen pragmatically propose an alliance which the xenophobic Daleks reject, and the war begins. (“This is not war; this is pest control.”)

Doomsday treats us to an onslaught of fast paced action sequences interspersed with pockets of emotional depth and flashes of humor, all brilliantly scored with musical cues to help navigate our way through this explosive story. It is unabashedly manipulative.

The Daleks spot the Doctor, Rose identifies him. “Five million Cybermen, easy,” she taunts. “One Doctor? Now you’re scared.” That’s our verbal cue. The Doctor as super star; the Doctor as invincible; the Doctor as an idol. All hail the Doctor. I don’t even keep count of the stand up and cheer moments in this episode. Not to be outdone, however, by the tug at the heartstrings moments ala the Pete and Jackie encounter. All engineered to maximum effect.

Yvonne encapsulates it all. She is like that one firework that starts out with a series of small bangs and slowly grows into one great outburst of color spraying down in the night sky.  The action and emotion combine as she is hauled away by the Cybermen; her voice breaks as she explains to Jackie the fate in store for them; she walks to her doom, terrified but defiant: “I did my duty, for Queen and country. I did my duty. I did my duty. Oh God, I did my duty.” Pop, pop, pop. Her screams punctuate as she is cyberized. But the big burst is yet to come. “I did my duty, for Queen and country,” she repeats as she stands in her full cyber form barring the Cybermen and mowing them down. A single tear rolls down her metal cheek. Kaboom! Right there Doctor Who is making a statement. This is all done for effect people, the show is saying. Let the tears flow, let your hearts pound, and let the lumps rise in your throat as the music swells. This is all an elaborate performance designed for thrills and not meant to be taken seriously as a narrative.

Like those 3D glasses the Doctor is wearing. There is no rational reason for the Doctor to whip these on and off as he does. He doesn’t need any more proof that the Daleks and the Cybermen and Mickey and he and Rose and Pete have all been through the void. He knows this already. I can see perhaps one use of these spectacles to confirm, but after that they are merely done for comic relief and to give some cool special effects for the audience to admire while he explains his whole “via the void” theory.

Now let’s really get down to cases. This whole display is being put on as a lavish tribute to Rose. The purpose and the buildup is all to give Rose a worthy send off. Numerous companions have left the show in the past. Some partings have been abysmal (Leela), some tragic (Adric), and some heartbreaking (Barbara, Ian, Susan). However this is the first such departure for New Who, and for some reason the character of Rose has been elevated far beyond her worth, so her finale demands spectacle.

The Daleks and the Cybermen are easily handled, these two metal races that strike fear at the mere mention of their name. They served their purpose to distract; now it’s time to banish them. Just suck them back into the void. Voila. Wipe hands; that’s done. It is an impressive exhibit, that’s sure, but nonetheless simple. The problem of Rose remains, however. How to be rid of her. Aha! She is steeped in the void stuff (we know that from the handy 3D glasses). She is sure to be sucked in along with the Cybermen and Daleks. But then, so too would the Doctor and Mickey and Pete and the rest of the parallel gang. And so the Doctor works out to send her back to parallel Earth with the rest leaving him alone to hold on tight.

The music is swelling; tears are flowing; our heroes are acting determined. There is no other way.

Oh, well, let’s see. The TARDIS. Pack the entire gang into the TARDIS. Somehow the TARDIS, which one would assume is also soaked in void stuff, doesn’t get sucked in, probably because, you know, it’s the TARDIS. But even if the Doctor isn’t sure about that—take a quick hop to another planet or another time and drop them off in safety while he goes back to deal with the void. That’s a good option, but the Doctor overlooks it. Next, well, Rose is determined to stay. Jackie won’t leave without Rose. The Doctor doesn’t want Rose to be separated from her mother forever. Rose, however, clearly wants to be rid of Jackie. “You’ve got to,” (go) Rose tells her. Why exactly? Jackie is the only one who is safe on this side of the void. She has never been through. The only reason for her to leave is so that she can be with alternate Pete, but she protests that she would prefer staying with her daughter. She has made her choice.  Those three could therefore stay and deal with the void. Jackie would be on hand to deal with the lever when it malfunctions and Rose could continue hanging on for dear life. Or, how about Jackie remaining and the Doctor and Rose universe hopping? Jackie can pull the levers with no danger to herself, although of course she wouldn’t let Rose leave without her. OK then, how about rounding up some stray Torchwood denizens to do the dirty while they all skedaddle? One final option—with all of his know-how, surely the Doctor can rig up some type of remote control to operate the levers while he and whoever decides to remain rides it out in the TARDIS.

But no. The music is swelling; tears are flowing; our heroes are acting determined. This is the whiz bang finish and by golly there is no other way.

This leads us to Rose’s courage in returning, Jackie’s tearful plea to Pete, the Doctor’s wail as Rose loses her dramatic grip of life, and Pete’s miraculous last minute arrival to save her but leaving her stranded without the Doctor.

More music, more tears as Rose and the Doctor stand on either side of that impenetrable wall.

“Take me back!”

This is the emotional payoff for two seasons of the Doctor and Rose show. Regardless of how you feel about Rose, the groundwork has been laid for the devastating impact of this moment.

A few stray sparks remain cascading to Earth in the smoke filled sky, however.

“Last night I had a dream.”

If there were any doubts left that this wasn’t all a well staged melodrama for the emotional wallop it packs, this last little coda dispels them completely. How can there be any doubt when they end up in Bad Wolf Bay?

This one is a slam dunk. No doubt about it. It accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. It threw everything at us and hit all the right notes. Rose is gone and there isn’t a dry eye in the house. It doesn’t really matter that the story itself doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, because it never made any pretense at being substantive drama.

This is where New Who skirts the line, however. I can accept all of the pomp and circumstance for this special occasion, but the show displays tendencies of a dangerous flirtation with the pageantry. There is a difference between taking the material seriously, treating the script and the sets and the aliens with respect no matter how cheap or shoddy or ill conceived they may be, and taking its own self seriously in the wider world of entertainment and as a pop culture icon. There is a difference between quietly making history and deliberately setting out to be epic. It is the difference between dignity and egotism.

That is what I love about the final minute of Doomsday. By all rights the serial should end on the tearful Doctor mourning his lost companion, and that is how I felt the first time viewing it. I therefore resented the presence of Donna and never really warmed up to the following episode. That was then, however, and this is now.

I won’t get into my present thoughts on The Runaway Bride—that’s for my next entry—but I will say that I love the fact that Doomsday does not rest on the exhausting emotional upheaval of Bad Wolf Bay. That was one wild ride we were just on, building to its final crescendo, but life for the Doctor goes on. This is not Romeo and Juliet; this is Doctor Who.

This is Doctor Who, Gary, and life goes on . . . let us hope . . . somewhere out there in the skies of molten silver sprays.