The Girl in the Fireplace

I've just kissed Madame de Pompadour.

The Girl in the Fireplace is Steven Moffat's second story (taking his two-parter in Series 1 as a single story) in the revived Doctor Who. It has the interesting distinction of being a story on which there is very little middle ground. Most people either love the story with undying passion or they loathe the story with the fury of a thousand suns.

The story is generally acknowledged to borrow somewhat liberally from The Time Traveler's Wife and it is the romance angle between the Doctor and Reinette that usually divides fans so much. Asexual Doctor advocates tend to fall hard in the hate camp while the Tennant fan-girls fall hard in the love camp.

I must admit that this story caught me a bit flat-footed. I enjoy history greatly and am probably a bit more learned than other casual American fans, but I had no idea who Madame de Pompadour was when I first watched this. In fact, I think when the Doctor goes crowing about how he just kissed Madame de Pompadour, I actually paused the episode so I could look up who this person was. So the historical aspect of this was a bit lost on me, although I thought the costuming and set work looked great.

As far as it's entertainment value, the story is pretty good although it holds up less well over time. The weaving of time with River Song and other characters have left the linear nature of this story with less charm that it had when it originally went out. That's not the story's fault, but going back to watch it after others leaves it a bit stale.

There is also the romance angle. I personally have no problem with the Doctor being a romantic person and frankly I like him better with Reinette than I do with Rose. Rose always rubbed me the wrong way but I thought she meshed well with the Ninth Doctor given his own prickly personality. That did not transfer that well (in my opinion) to the more open and personable Tenth Doctor. Putting the Doctor/Rose romance on the back burner by both the addition of Mickey and the Doctor's embrace of Reinette was a net positive for me.

That being said, the romance angle was a bit forced. Reinette was well established as the mistress of Louis XV and meddling with a historical figure seems rather dangerous. It also seems a bit creepy that the Doctor first established a relationship with this woman while she was a little girl and that he developed feelings for her in the course of a few hours. That the Doctor would become this mysterious champion for her is understandable since she would go years without seeing him and then he pops up to rescue her. Very romantic from that angle. But the compression doesn't work as well on the other end.

The clockwork droids were an interesting if simplistic villain. But a more complicated villain would have pulled the central focus towards it rather than letting the relationship between the Doctor and Reinette drive the story.

I also enjoyed the fact that it ended on more of a tragic note with the Doctor not coming back at the end until after her death. That seemed a more fitting conclusion to the whole affair and also a nice way of avoiding some nasty time tricks that might have come from pulling her out of history. However, it is also a bit contrived. The Doctor should have been well aware by that point that time was moving faster on her side than on his and that it was going to be longer than the couple of minutes that it was for him. Knowing that, he should have hopped in the TARDIS and met her without using the fireplace.

But, I hear you say, why not do that after he learns he is too late? Because she left him a letter noting that he had never come back for her. If he came for her in the TARDIS at that point, it would be thwarting the established time loop (much like Rory and Amy's final transport to 1930's Manhattan which established the date of their deaths). The Doctor had not gone so far as to embrace the full arrogance of the Time Lord Victorious than manifested in The Waters of Mars, although this story does give a hint that the seeds of that personality were there. So, the Doctor is beaten by a convenient slip of the mind.

Overall, I'd rate it a good story, but not the great one it has been trumpeted as. I'm in positive territory but shifted a bit more to the middle than many of the other reviews out there.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5