Doctor Who: Season 1

So this review might seem random and out of place but my decision to watch the first season of modern Doctor Who was really random and out of place too. I am on a little bit of a fantasy sci fi kick right now and I had been watching random episodes of Doctor Who here and there, but I wanted to go back to where it started. I wasn't originally planning on doing a review on this season, especially since I've watched this season and random episodes of Doctor Who sporadically over the past few years that I didn't review. I changed my mind after I finished the last episode because there is a lot to say about this season and the impact it had on Doctor Who back in 2005 and today.

After multiple attempts to try and revive Doctor Who with film and I guess an attempt to reboot the series in the states, BBC regained the rights to Doctor Who and aired the new rebooted season in 2005. Now I did not watch the show back in 2005. I actually didn't jump onto the Doctor Who train really until 2012, well into Matt Smith's tenure, but I always wanted to start the show from the beginning, no matter how difficult that was.

Doctor Who begins centered around a young girl named Rose (played by Billie Piper). She has a pretty normal life in London, she lives with her chatty mom Jackie (played by Camilie Coduri) and has a boyfriend named Mickie (played by Noel Clarke).

One day her life is turned upside down when a strange man enters her life, calling himself The Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston). After a brush with death and the end of the world involving living plastic and killer mannequins, he offers her the opportunity to travel with him on his spaceship called The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) which looks like a 1970's British Police Box. Rose joins him and the two go on adventures through time and space, fighting aliens and trying to help people across the universe.

I have no shame in saying this because I know I'm not the only one. When I first started Doctor Who, it took me a while to really get into it. The first season is very different from the rest of the series and the budget was so minimal that visually, it really didn't age well. On top of that, the acting is pretty

hokey and the first three episodes, while I have come to appreciate The Unquiet Dead, are not exactly the most compelling episodes ever. It wasn't really until the episode, Dalek, that the show started to intrigue me and that's the 6th episode. If you're a normal person, you usually don't sit through 5 episodes of television if you don't think it's good. I however am not a normal person and that hasn't really changed (hence why I'm still begrudgingly watching Iron Fist right now).

However, what I have found recently is that Doctor Who does build on itself. The perfect example of this is the episode in Series 4 called Silence in the Library, the first episode to feature the character River Song. I remember watching that for the first time and thinking that it was a really good episode. Watching it now, the episode only gets better and is frankly heart breaking. All these episodes compound on one another and they gain significance after future episodes air and things are revealed.

The same can be said about the first series. While visually it probably hasn't aged well, the stories and the character development definitely has. You can tell that they went back and watched old episodes of Christopher Eccleston and incorporated his performance and story arc into future episodes and it really makes his performance better with future context.

However, when looking at this show objectively (at least as objectively as I can) I do have to think about both the historical context this show finds itself in in regard to the rest of the series, as well as the experience someone might have if they're watching Doctor Who for the first time and have no previous knowledge, like I did.

And in that mindset, I will say, the first series is still a little bit of a handful and it takes some getting used to.

The series starts with the episode Rose, which while it has a great introduction to the character of The Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose, it's a little bit cheesy with the acting. Furthermore, the production value and the visuals really haven't aged well and you're going to feel that the entire season. Now this eventually becomes a subject of nostalgia because Doctor Who prior to the Matt Smith years had this very dirty and almost cheap feeling to it. It wasn't until Season 5 in 2010 when the show's budget was raised and the visuals actually catch up with the science fiction material Doctor Who could create. This is a good thing and a bad thing, especially in Season 1. There's a running joke that the Doctor and Rose are in The TARDIS, a machine that can travel anywhere in time and space and they keep on ending up in Cardiff for half of the episodes. It's obvious the budget was limited when you start seeing the same sets and the same characters reappear, even though there's only 13 episodes. The other episodes would set the standard for what future Doctor Who seasons would look like, a mixture of The Doctor and his companion going to new worlds, meeting strange aliens, and going back in time to either meet historical figures or witness historic events.

Something that I kind of forgot about when watching this season again was the incredibly dark turns this show takes in this first season. A lot of people die in this first season and that's one of the elements that they worked the limited budget into well.

For example, during the Parting of the Ways, did you recall that the Daleks actually attack Earth and we watch the continental shapes change as they bomb Earth. I really forgot how dark those episodes, especially the series finale really was. I think it worked well however, because in probably the best two part episode in the Season, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, Eccleston has this great line where he says, just this once, Everybody lives.

Now if you've followed Doctor Who consistently since this season, you know that it's a little more than just this once. There are several episodes actually where Everybody lives and everyone is risen from the dead by the Doctor in some mcguffin method, however back in the day with this first season, this actually meant something. Like I said, there are a lot of dark episodes in this season and this actually meant something to see everyone live at the end of the episode.

And this segways well into my thoughts on Eccleston as The Doctor himself. The Doctor has had many personalities and many experiences that shape who he is as a character. Eccleston's Doctor appears at a time where he has lived through the Time War and has seen the destruction of the Time Lords. The experience is very new to him and he holds that guilt in.

Everything from his performance to his U-Boat captain clothes shows that he's a man used to war and is now settling into "peace time" and that takes some getting used to.

You can tell that he feels like he doesn't exactly need a companion or Rose in particular, however, you can tell that he wants one and that proves to be necessary down the road as Rose begins to show him his humanity.

Now all of this is pretty high concept for someone coming in cold and not having the rest of the series in mind but it still is something that can be caught onto, especially in the performance of Eccleston himself.

He is very kind but at the same time there are several points in the series where his guilt shows for what happened during the Time War. There are several creatures who were displaced from the Time War and Rose and The Doctor's adventures put them in the path of these creatures.

This performance is only made better if you've been watching the show for a while and you see the fallout of his decision, the events that have happened since, and the 50th Anniversary where you actually see The War Doctor fight in the Time War and make the horrible decisions that The 9th Doctor comes to regret so much.

Watching this season just makes me really bummed that Eccleston did not return for the 50th Anniversary and did not reprise his role as the 9th Doctor. As much as I like The War Doctor, I don't know if he would have existed had Eccleston returned. I could be wrong on that, but even if he had, it would have been fun to see all three modern Doctors interacting together, with or without the talent of the great late John Hurt.

The thing that makes the 9th Doctor so fun is that he's both very serious but at the same time incredibly goofy. He's not Matt Smith goofy where he falls down or makes a fool of himself, but he's got jokes and he brings a lot of comedy to the show as well as some really deep and profound performances. He is unapologetic of who he is and when Rose says in the last episode that he taught her the importance of standing up and fighting for what's right, you see it in his character.

Something that I thought was missing from Peter Capaldi's Doctor was a sense that the Doctor cared for the people he was trying to save as opposed to just saving them because he could. Again, Eccleston struck a balance between being a serious character to having incredible empathy for those in need.

I think back to the episode Father's Day where the couple getting married say that they're not important and the Doctor refuted that saying that their far from unimportant. It was lines like this that I felt were missing from the 12th Doctor's tenure and something Eccleston did really well.

And that empathy was brought out by his relationship with Rose. And my thought was, between the 9th Doctor and Rose, it never NEEDED to be romantic.

I always thought the kiss at the end of The Parting of Ways was always a little bit strange, especially since Rose is supposed to be 19, which is legal, but Eccleston looks like he's in his forties so it was a little bit of an age gap. It made sense with Tennant because they looked as though they were closer in age and there was a little more chemistry between the two of them, but with 9 and Rose, I never felt like it needed to be a romantic relationship. They were just friends traveling and he was like the Magician and she was his apprentice. There's even an episode where the Doctor miscalculates and Rose goes missing for a year and her mom actually questions what a 19 year old girl is doing with a guy like the Doctor, and yeah, it's a valid question.

I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people who have watched Doctor Who since the beginning were very young when they started. I think having such a young protagonist with such a naive look and feel was necessary to introduce new people to the series, especially those who had never seen the old series.

Rose has always had some awkward lines here and there, especially in season two, however in season 1, it fits in as she is just a regular girl. She's not really special in any way, she's just a regular girl and in that way she relates to the audience in that we are just normal and yet there's a possibility of jumping into the TARDIS and going on an adventure, and that's very appealing to people.

Rose is still my personal favorite companion but objectively I understand why there are two camps when it comes to her, people who love her and people who can't stand her. I've met both kinds of people and I understand both arguments. I personally think that at the very least, Billie Piper was phenomenal in the first season of Doctor Who and she was a great companion to begin the series with.

So what does this season of Doctor Who mean for future seasons and where we're at now?

I personally think the first season of Doctor Who is quite the underrated season. Is it the best? Far from it. While I have found an appreciation for all the episodes with the Slytheen and the repetitive Satellite 5 episodes, let's live in reality, they're not the best episodes Doctor Who has to offer.

But if you're an avid Doctor Who fan, I suggest going back and checking out the first season. It only gets better with more context and the knowledge of later episodes.

If you have never watched Doctor Who before, I will warn you, the first season is not the best. There are some really slow episodes and yeah there is an episode where the bad guy is a stretched out piece of skin. However, I highly recommend pushing through and enjoying every minute of the first season as you can because it really does pay off later. It creates a foundation for what Doctor Who is and while it definitely is not the best season, it creates a lot of room for growth, especially for the characters they introduce in it.

I want to continue rewatching seasons of Doctor Who and give full season reviews. Unfortunately now that I've said it I can't say it will come true, however, I'm on a pretty big Doctor Who/Sci Fi Fantasy kick right now so every so often a review like this might pop up.

I want to know your thoughts on this seriously though. Where does the first season land on your list of favorite Doctor Who episodes? Did you start with the first season? Or did you start later on? Let me know what you think of the first season with the knowledge and viewing of later seasons and how it lives up today.

Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. I actually don't think I ever watched this short. If you're familiar with the end of the first season, you'll know that Christopher Eccleston regenerates into David Tennant. This is the interaction that happens after that regeneration. Enjoy!