Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

If I am God, what does that make you Doctor?

The final adventure of the Ninth Doctor, the culmination of the "Bad Wolf" subplot and the full return of the Daleks. RTD has a reputation for putting together excellent set ups in the penultimate episode and then letting things go out with a whimper in the finale. Does that hold true in his first finale and the end of the Ninth Doctor?

Plot Summary

One hundred years after the events of The Long Game, the Doctor, Rose and Jack wake to find themselves on futuristic versions of 21st century game shows being broadcast from the Game Station (formally Satellite 5). The Doctor is in Big Brother, Rose The Weakest Link and Jack What Not to Wear. The Doctor and Rose are confused and rather nonchalant in each of their shows until they witness other contestants incinerated after failing a level.

The Doctor breaks a camera in the house, causing his immediate eviction. However, his life is spared as the program is overwritten. He leaves the house to the station proper with another contestant, Lynda. Meanwhile, Jack pulls out a gun when the two droids attempt to kill him and he destroys them. Fashioning himself a larger gun, he meets up with the Doctor on the lower floors. The Doctor discovers that when he destroyed the Jagrafess, he left the Earth without any information, causing the society to break down, leading to the dystopia that now exists.

Jack manages to locate Rose's signal and they burst into the game just as she has lost the final round of her game. She runs to the Doctor but the Anne Droid incinerates her. The Doctor, Jack and Lynda are arrested by station security and placed in a holding cell, but the trio overpowers the guards and heads up to the top floor. There they discover the station run by a few workers and a controller.

The station briefly shuts down as a solar flare passes by and the controller comes to herself. She reveals that she brought the Doctor there to thwart the powers controlling her. She is unable to reveal that as the flare passes and the station comes back on-line. Jack discovers the TARDIS in a storage room nearby and using it, he discovers that Rose was not killed. All failed contestants are merely transmatted to a location just outside the solar system.

They discover that the location houses a cloaked Dalek fleet. Aware of their discovery, the Daleks transmat the controller and kill her. They then threaten to kill Rose unless the Doctor surrenders. He refuses and instead vows to rescue Rose and destroy the Daleks.

The Doctor and Jack take the TARDIS across the solar system and materialize it around Rose and her Dalek guard. Jack destroys the Dalek with his gun while the Doctor heads out of the TARDIS. Protected by a force field, the Daleks are unable to gun him down. The Emperor Dalek reveals himself to the Doctor, having survived the Time War. He has rebuilt the Daleks using cellular material from slaughtered humans. The Doctor also discovers that the Emperor Dalek has developed a god complex, infusing all other Daleks with both a religious devotion to him and a self-hatred at their impure state.

The Doctor takes the TARDIS back to the station where he begins to build a Delta-wave weapon that will fry the Daleks. Jack and the others head down to the first floor to recruit any former contestants to fight and buy the Doctor more time. Only a few do with Jack ordering the rest to stay quiet on the first floor.

Checking his readings, the Doctor discovers that he doesn't have enough time to create a weapon that will only kill Daleks. Instead it will kill both Daleks and humans. He tricks Rose into going into the TARDIS and then sending her back to her family where she is found by Mickey and her mother.

The Daleks arrive at the station and land five floors below the control room. One group of Daleks proceed upwards where they kill the defenders and blast through the defenses Jack had set up. Another group heads down to the first floor and kills all those who refused to fight and stayed below. The Daleks then reconnect and head to the last of the defenses.

Despite attempts to console and convince her, Rose refuses to accept being sent away. She sees more Bad Wolf signs and recognizes them as a symbol for her to help the Doctor. She decides to pry open the TARDIS console and look into the heart of the TARDIS as that would allow her to communicate with it telepathically. Mickey tries but his car doesn't have enough power.

Jackie tries to dissuade her but Rose refuses also forcing Jackie to realize that it was Rose who bent over Pete when he died. Jackie, realizing that it is the right thing to do, borrows a tow truck from a friend. She and Mickey help Rose pry open the TARDIS panel. Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs time energy directly from the vortex. The TARDIS then disappears as Jackie and Mickey look on.

The Daleks overrun the last of the defenses, killing both Lynda and Jack in route to the control room. As the Daleks enter, the Doctor finishes the delta wave weapon. The Dalek Emperor goads the Doctor to use it but faced with repeating the genocide he committed against his own people to stop the Daleks, the Doctor refuses to discharge the weapon.

As the Daleks move in for the kill, the TARDIS reappears and Rose emerges, full of the time vortex. She admits that she planted the Bad Wolf sign throughout time as a signal to herself. She then atomizes all of the Daleks and even brings Jack back to life. The time energy is killing her though and the Doctor takes her and sucks it out of her through a kiss, releasing most of the energy back into the TARDIS. He then carries an unconscious Rose into the TARDIS and takes off as Jack enters the room to see them go.

Rose wakes with almost no memory of what happened. The Doctor only reminds her of it a little, admitting that he had to absorb most of the time energy, which is now killing him. He comforts her that things will continue but that he must change. He then regenerates into the Tenth Doctor and offers to take her to the planet Barcelona.

Analysis

Taken as a whole, this story is pretty good. However, it does suffer from the typical RTD problem of having a really good set up and then petering out at the end. Some fans blame the literal "god out of the machine" ending but that didn't bother me that much. There were several issues that affected the end but I think the primary problem was that Bad Wolf was clearly focused on the Doctor while The Parting of the Ways focused on the companions, specifically Rose.

Throughout both stories, the Doctor was excellent. He was his caviler self at the beginning and then got serious as the scale of the problem reared its head. He was serious and focused, to a point that you could see how dangerous he could be. But at the end, the damaged Doctor who couldn't cope with inflicting large scale violence emerged. Even in Bad Wolf that is apparent as he casually hands off his gun to the people he's supposed to be threatening. It is funny and also a significantly Doctor-ish moment.

In fact, there is almost nothing not to like in Bad Wolf. The characters are engaging, there is humor but also a strong sense of danger. We also get a wonderful fake out with Rose apparently being killed. This is doubly effective because Lynda has asked to come with the Doctor and he is very open to it. It has the exact feel of an old companion being removed and being replaced by a new companion. You buy it, even to the point where Rose is revealed to still be alive as it is easy to imagine the Doctor's rescue of her failing and Lynda still moving on to be the new companion.

The reveal of the Daleks is also excellent. The preview at end of Boomtown spoiled the review for most people. But if you had been ignorant of that, the reveal was very well done. As Rose wakes up and classic fans instantly key on to the Dalek control room sound as it is the only noise. Even as the Daleks enter their reveal is slow. Rose pins herself against a wall as we view through a Dalek eyestalk, just like Barbara did in The Daleks. As others enter, they are shown in reflection and other oblique ways. It is not until they focus on talking to the Doctor that the full scope of the Daleks is made clear. The build is slow and very well done, giving a proper sense of fear that the Daleks deserve.

That fear pervades through the entire invasion. In the whole battle, the Daleks wipe the defenses with relative ease. Only four Daleks are shown to be destroyed or damaged in the entire attack and with multiple Daleks filling the room each time, the overrun is quick and efficient.

Of all the deaths, I found Lynda's to be the best and the most sad. She is trapped in a room waiting for the Daleks to burn their way in when three Daleks rise in front of the window. There is no sound but you see the lights of the Dalek flash and it's like reading lips to know that he is yelling "Exterminate". The window shatters and you don't hear Lynda scream as she is exposed to space. For having such little time, you got to know the character and enjoyed her company. That you started getting into the mindset of thinking of her as a companion also makes her death seem that much more tragic. Jack at least fought up to the end and even had a moment of defiance before being gunned down. It was a death worthy of the character and felt less tragic even though you know Jack a lot more.

So why does it fall apart at the end? Rose. It's no secret that I don't care for Rose that much but I always felt that she meshed fairly well with the Ninth Doctor. Her rough edges matched well with his more caustic personality. But in both episodes, Rose shows almost no redeeming characteristics. She is over the top in her amusement on The Weakest Link until the reality of the situation dawns on her. She also is the only one who does nothing to help herself. Both Jack and the Doctor are able to get themselves out of their situations so she feels bit a useless in Bad Wolf.

It is The Parting of the Ways that exacerbates things though. The focus of the story leaves the Doctor once he sends Rose away, in what is an excellent bit of acting by the Doctor. Once she is back though, while I appreciate her passion to get back to the Doctor, her methods are annoying to me. She is openly insulting to Mickey, noting that her exposure to the Doctor has left her unable to live a normal life the way they do. It is the most condescending attitude for going back to rescue a person one could imagine. It becomes all about her, which is precisely why I don't like Rose.

Even her scene with Jackie should have been more touching. But instead it becomes this angry event, with Rose forcing Jackie to accept the reality as she and the Doctor changed it. I still fail to see how the acceptance that Rose was at her father's side when he died equates with helping to get back to the Doctor. Yes, helping is the right thing to do and Pete would have advocated for that, but almost nothing Rose has done has emphasized that point. It is still all about what she wants.

As far as the climax with her becoming god-like to destroy the Daleks and then the kiss, I don't have a problem with the idea, but the execution fell short. In this, I have to place most of the blame on Billie Piper. Her acting was not up to the challenge of what that scene required. When you see her do a flash of Bad Wolf as the Moment in The Day of the Doctor, you can see how much she has grown as an actress and the fear and power of that comes across much better. In this scene though, it just feels silly.

It doesn't help that Christopher Eccleston also falls short here. His reactions seem overplayed as well. Only the Dalek Emperor seems to be where he needs to be in terms of the reaction. I also thought the kiss was over the top but they were playing the romance angle (something I never saw) between the Ninth Doctor and Rose so that is expected, if also unwelcome.

I thought the regeneration scene was done fairly well, although I wish the Doctor hadn't been quite so jokey before it. I don't mean that I think he should have been tragic and mopey the way the Tenth Doctor was, but his almost maniacal grin right near the end seemed more creepy than anything else. It's almost a relief to get to the Tenth Doctor at the end.

In the end, it was a high that fell to an average. Not as bad as the drop off from other finales but no where near what could have been achieved. I think if Rose had shown even some humility and selflessness in her quest to rejoin the Doctor and if the director had been able to coax the actors to a bit more gravity in the Deus ex Machina scene, the second episode would have had a lot less fall off. I think this story is still quite enjoyable and a must when revisiting the Ninth Doctor, but it's less than what it could have been due to the way things wrapped up.

Overall personal score: Bad Wolf - 4.5 out of 5; The Parting of the Ways - 2.5 out of 5