Waters of Mars. Where to begin. My first instinct is, naturally, an extended comparison with Planet of Fire - but I'll leave that until later. Come, watch my intellectual, rational brain do battle with my emotional inner fangirl, about whether I just experienced a subversive text or a nervous breakdown.
The first half is satisfied - the other, a little shocked. In a way, I was prepared for this. It's been heading this way for a while, and I've sort of known for a few weeks that this is what he was going to do. Don't ask me how, maybe hints Tennant dropped in interviews, maybe RTD saying that regenerations is the only time the Doctor can "change". They couldn't just repeat Fires of Pompeii - especially after referencing it in the episode - and as the episode went on and on, and nothing really happened, even the red herring foregrounding of the water-beasties.
And also, the things I've been doing with the DW continuity - exploring the existance of Mr Chambers, the "evil Doctor" who shows up for a very confusing half hour. I love Chambers as much as a genuine incarnation. The original plan was that Chambers would be the final Doctor, who had come back from the future. The producer recoiled in horror at the darkness of the idea - instead, Chambers is a potential future Doctor made up from the evil bits of his nature between his 12th and 13th incarnations. Lame. I've been working with ideas about him, and naturally one of them was that things should get successively darker, and that finally Doctor 13 would do, well, this: decide he couldn't take it any more, get too depressed about the Time War, take mastery over time and end up as warped as Doctor 1. Full circle. The ultimate downbeat sci-fi ending. I've been writing a short comic in which hand-Doctor does exactly the same thing.
So all the pieces were in my head, and on some level I was hoping for all this as the show's ultimate conclusion. Seeing it on screen is a little different. The rest of the episode was normal, but very polished - good characters, good set pieces, nicely directed and a gorgeous set. Does anyone care? The whole thing is a set up for the end, and that's a set up for Christmas.
I mean, I'm overjoyed. One thing RTD does know how to do is properly unpleasant characters. Characters who do not have noble flaws, but mundane, ugly ones. Rose, for example, who RTD himself described as "selfish". I feel so, so vindicated with every criticism The Doctor Who Establishment has ever thrown at the show - who always fell into the trap of thinking we were meant to sympathise with Rose and like her. We sort of were - she was our self-insert figure. But she was also sufficiently complex that we could hate her flaws. Week after week, I've endured reviews and rants by other fans complaining about "messianic" undertones, that the Tenth Doctor was "smug", that the deification/lonely god thing was a bit OTT. All fair comments, but not fair criticism. Waters of Mars is the natural extention of all this ego-rubbing, and it feels like it justifies all those moments as part of a coherent arc.
There's also a challenging level of playing with audience desires. As soon as Adelade let him walk out of that base, I think we all knew what had to happen - a bit like how if the heist occurs and goes well halfway through a heist movie, you know the shit is really going to hit the umbrella for Act II. This sets up an interesting dilemma. We want out hero to be heroic - we're gunning for him to save the companion/Earth and to vanquish the bad guy. Sometimes, our moral position is put under strain - say in Warriors of the Deep. But broadly speaking, we do have two easy options: either side with the Doctor, and hope he manages to reach his peaceful solution. Or have your fingers crossed for the Harkness Conflict Reslution Method, and hope he kills of the Silurians and rescues the humans. You're still given people to cheer for: the dilemma is merely of who. Genesis of the Daleks is another, though perhaps of the way it is presented as a positive act, or maybe because the Fourth Doctor is someone you want to trust, we are mostly still on his side.
Waters of Mars smartly both frustrates and enacts audience desires. Our gut instinct is to hope he rescues the crew - no, to hope he finds a way to rescue the crew. Crucial distinction. Indeed, to want him to find a way to rescue the crew but to hope he doesn't. While he was doing the slow mo walk thing, my companion-behind-the-sofa bravely interrupted (I'd threatened her with death if she made a peep during the episode) to cry "oh god, save them you bastard!" Not an unreasonable request, but having her vocalise that desire prompted me to think "no, no, no, no, no, that would be the worst thing in the world." Now that's polarity for you. Tricky, tricky. She's not a Doctor Who fan, which maybe makes the contrast more interesting.
Also, there hasn't been a proper proper suicide (self-sacrifice doesn't count) on Doctor Who since Turlough had a go in Enlightenment. And he got rescued. See, when she popped the gun out of the holster I was mildly pleased - because it's a good ending. And when the flash came I just felt sick: DOCTOR WHO KIDS SHOW SATURDAY NIGHT TEATIME. Mary Whitehouse would die twice.
Out of things to say. Now comes the Planet of Fire comparison, which is interesting, although probably requires you to know a fair deal about 80s Who. I'll try to take it slow though, as there are interesting tidtbits.
Naturally, it reminded me of Planet of Fire - they all do - but the comparison is a significant one this time. It's Peter Davison's penultimate episode, but it's the last one featuring the Fifth Doctor: the one in which you get to see him die on screen. You just don't get rid of the actor until an episode later. His final episode, Caves of Androzani effectively features the Sixth Doctor - admittedly, still in cricket gear, but the Doctor character we are presented with is far more like him: determined, arrogant and vicious. Ugh, lots of thoughts - how to explain them. Are you following so far?
Planet of Fire is the one where the deeply moral optimist, the man better than the universe he is trying to save, just gives up. Everything has gone so wrong for him in three seasons of trying to be good that it pushes him straight over the edge, and he suddenly finds himself going way too far in the other direction. He lashes out at both his companions, interrogating and threatening them in a way you just do not expect of that incarnation. He's short tempered with the extras, and the Master he either abandons to die, or cold bloodedly murders, depending on your interpretation of a single 40 second sequence. He kills off a companion too.
It is a kind of death. He's obviously had enough, but what he does in Planet of Fire is a betrayal of everything that makes him him: he gives in, and now he has to die. It's that same expression as he ambles back to the TARDIS, of having given in. Certainly symbolically, especially when you consider the Fifth Doctor only came into being at the moment the Master killed the Fourth Doctor. This confrontation is the sensible place to end it. And then Caves of Androzani happens - and it's traumatic and all, a brilliant slow-motion minute tragedy, but by that point the Fifth Doctor is already dead. It just takes a fatal infection and 90 minutes of ill-treatment to prove it.
Planet of Fire also involves a dusty red planet, dramatic flames and the Doctor abusing a robot, so you can see where the superficial comparison to Waters of Mars lies. But the symbolic match is unmistakeable: the Doctor has been pushed way too far, betrays his fundemental principles and in doing so - yes, that is death. No matter which actor is walking around on screen. I think there's also an interesting companion comparison to be made. Perhaps the Doc's over zealous behavior in Planet of Fire is Tegan's fault: his attempts to solve the previous episode amicably resulted in the second huge massacre of the season, prompting his companion to have a nervous breakdown before dashing off in accusatory tears. The point's been made before, but in Waters of Mars the Doctor really needed a companion. He could have bounced ideas off them, all the slips he'd made to Adelade he would have told them. He'd have felt like someone was watching, someone to show off to. Perhaps it's Donna's request to just save one in Fires of Pompeii which put the idea of saving people into his head. But I think more likely it would have helped to have someone to argue with. Donna would inevitably have asked to save them - at which point the Doctor could have said no, justified himself, played the "me Timelord - you human" card. In other words, accountability. Tegan and Donna are two very similar companions, in the way they actively challenge the Doctor, and I don't think either mess would have happened if they had been there.
It's all something of a kick in the guts. It's also considerably worse than Planet of Fire. Maybe it's Blake's 7 getting inside my mind, but scary as watching the Doctor kill the Master is, it's not as if he doesn't have it coming. During the Fifth Doctor's tenure, the Master scarred the central cast in a way that he never had before: he kidnaps and tortures Adric, kills Tegan's aunt and destroys Nyssa's entire home planet and pinches her father's body. Bizzare as it is, Planet of Fire sees him doing the right thing at long last, even though it comes as a shock. Waters of Mars is wrong, wrong, sick and wrong - I'm not even a Timelord, but the whole idea makes me feel sick because it's all so wrong. I just want a past incarnation to show up and give him a slap in the face. Four maybe. Four whose sense of responsibility towards time included letting the Daleks live, who walked in eternity, who took death prepared and with nobility, instead of raging against the dying of the light.
Oh. And I want to know what Five would have done. For comparative purposes.
No, wait, that's a really nasty idea.
In short, I'm distraught: what more could any piece of great drama demand? But I might not be watching at Christmas. I don't know. It's going to really upset me, as I'm sure you all know, and against that all I get is the positive benefit of writing a great essay afterwards. And now I'm going to watch, yes, I think Pyramids of Mars. Watch how a proper Timelord does it. Sweet Rassilon! Roll on Christmas day!
No comments:
Post a Comment