The Next Doctor

TARDIS. It stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed in Style.

The Next Doctor is a story that suffered from a bit too much hype when it first went out. David Tennant had announced that he would be leaving at the end of the following year, where the only episodes would be a set of specials. Then it was announced that David Morrissey would be playing "the other Doctor" and the rumor mill went wild with speculation about whether Morrissey was actually going to be the Eleventh Doctor, an iteration beyond that or some other explanation. All this led to high viewing figures but the resolution gave some fans a feeling of being cheated. So I think a fair evaluation of this story can only be done in a context far removed from all the hype of that particular Christmas.

Plot Summary

The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851. While wandering around, he hears a woman call for the Doctor. He rushes over but she continues to call. Another man in Victorian dress arrives and calls for the woman to give him his sonic screwdriver. Amazed, the Doctor steps in as the door bursts open to reveal a animal with a copper Cyberman faceplate.

The other man lassos the creature but it pulls him along as it climbs the building. The Doctor also grabs the rope but both men are pulled along up the side and into the building. The Cyber-shade pulls the two men and jumps out the window on the opposite side. The woman, named Rosita, cuts the rope with an axe just before they are pulled out with it.

The other man, calling himself the Doctor, sends Rosita back to his TARDIS and asks the Doctor about himself. The Doctor initially believes he might be a future version of himself but is wary given the man's memory loss, due to an incident with the Cybermen, and gives his name as John Smith. The other Doctor is aware that the Doctor is a different man given his lack of astonishment at the talk of Cybermen but runs off to check out a funeral. Curious, the Doctor follows at a distance.

The funeral is for a prominent reverend and as the carriage leaves, the other Doctor tries to break into the man's house. The Doctor opens the door from the inside, having gone in through the front. He notes that the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver is an actual screwdriver. As they look through the study, the other Doctor tells the Doctor that the reverend was murdered by the Cybermen and that he is investigating other murders and disappearances. He states that it began several weeks ago with the murder and disappearance of a teacher called Jackson Lake and has continued with the disappearance of a large number of children.

The Doctor unlocks the roll top desk and finds two info-stamps. The sight of the stamps cause the other Doctor to fall into a jumble of memories. He recalls their presence at his regeneration and that the Doctor was also there. The Doctor reassures him that he will help him but uncovers a Cyberman waiting in a closet. They run upstairs, pursued by two Cybermen. The Doctor tries to fend them off with a sword but they advance on them. The other Doctor releases the core of the stamp which overloads the brains of the two Cybermen and causes both their heads to explode. The other Doctor collapses, recalling he did something similar the first time. Curious, the Doctor pulls out a stethoscope and checks the other Doctor's heartbeat, promising that they will find what was lost.

At the gravesite for the murdered reverend, a woman, Miss Hartigan, matron of one of the workhouses, approaches, disrupting the service. She notes that killing the reverend was the only way to get so many men belonging to charitable organizations in one place. Cybermen appear out of the fog and attack the men, killing all but the four who run the largest children's homes in London. They are partially cybernized and sent to bring all their children to a central location.

The two Doctors meet Rosita at a stable nearby where the other Doctor has set up headquarters. He has held Jackson Lake's luggage which the Doctor takes a quick rustle through and finds another info stamp. He has the other Doctor show him the TARDIS, which it turns out is a hot air balloon. After that, the Doctor takes the other Doctor and Rosita, sits them down and explains what happened.

Pulling out the fob watch, the Doctor shows the other Doctor that he is in fact Jackson Lake. He was attacked by the Cybermen and defended himself with the info stamp. But that info stamp was the Cybermen's record of the Doctor and that information was downloaded into his head. The Doctor also tells Jackson that his brain accepted the information because he was retreating from trauma. Jackson Lake then remembers that his wife was killed by the Cybermen.

They are distracted by a mechanical beeping and the Doctor finds a belt of info stamps in Jackon's luggage. He also sees a group of children being escorted by a man with cyber plants in his ears. The Doctor tries to remove them but spots a Cyber-shade and opts to just watch. Rosita comes with the Doctor while Jackson tries to sort through his grief. They spot the children entering a building where the sewers connect but are confronted by Miss Hartigan and two Cybermen. The Cybermen take the info stamp and recognize the Doctor. They advance on him but Jackson surprises them with another info stamp and kills them. Rosita knocks Miss Hartigan down and the three escape.

Jackson shows the Doctor a deed to a property nearby which is the house he had bought. Realizing that the Cybermen attacked him in the basement of that house, they suspect there is an entrance from the house to the building where the Cybermen are preparing. Jackson also tells the Doctor that he is sure there was something else in the basement that was taken but he can't remember what. They head to the house, destroying one Cyberman guard. The Doctor finds a dimensional machine, explaining how the Cybermen escaped the void and a passage into the sewer.

Inside the main building, the Cybermen put the children to work at the machinery. Miss Hartigan kills the four cybernized men but she herself is taken by the Cyberleader and placed in the command chair of the Cyber-King. Rather than completely taking over her, her mind begins to rewrite the software of the Cyber-King, harnessing the emotions of hate and rage. She kills the Cyberleader when he attempts to disconnect her, taking command of all other Cybermen. She orders the killing of the children when the power has reached 100% capacity and prepares to launch the Cyber-King.

At the other end of the sewer tunnel, the Doctor, Jackson and Rosita find the children working. They also discover the power rise and see Miss Hartigan overwriting the programing. The three storm into the factory using the info stamp to kill the Cybermen guards. The Doctor orders all the children to flee with Rosita leading them to safety. Jackson hesitates and remembers that his son was stolen when he was attacked. He sees his son trapped on a platform above. The Doctor rescues the boy and both of them flee the area as it destroys itself.

They emerge outside to see a large robot, the Cyber-King - a dreadnaught with internal Cyber factory - rising from the Thames. The Doctor orders Jackson to take his son and find cover while the Doctor runs to the TARDIS balloon. He launches it after having grabbed another belt of info stamps and the dimensional control from the machine that brought the Cybermen to London. He launches the balloon and offers Miss Hartigan a chance to surrender where he will take them to an empty world to live on.

Miss Hartigan scoffs and orders an attack. He then fires a group of info stamps, disrupting her connection to the Cyber-King. The disruption allows her emotions of horror and fear to manifest. They create a feedback loop as the Cyber-King program tries to reestablish itself and both she and the Cybermen are destroyed. The Cyber-King prepares to fall but the Doctor uses the dimensional control to teleport it back into the void. From the ground, Jackson sees the Doctor and proclaims cheers of thanks from the crowd.

Afterward, Jackson offers the Doctor a chance to come to Christmas dinner but he declines. The Doctor in turn offers Jackson a chance to see the TARDIS, to which he accepts. He is overwhelmed and scampers out. However, he also notes that the Doctor is alone, despite all the memories of companions. Jackson insists that the Doctor come to dinner as a memory of those whom he has said goodbye to and the Doctor accepts.

Analysis

The Next Doctor is probably a story best described as a tale of two halves. The first half of the story where the mystery of the other Doctor is engaging with a lot of run around and also some nice back and forth between the Doctor and Jackson Lake. The second half though, once Jackson Lake remembers who he is, loses steam and descends a bit too much into the hero worship of the Tenth Doctor that marked the year of the specials. The second half isn't bad but it just doesn't hold the interest in the same way the first half does.

The Doctor is fun in this story. It's amusing to see his vanity stroked a bit when he thinks Jackson is a future version of him. But you can see the wheels turning swiftly and as he goes into investigative mode, the cracks and interaction with Jackson become even more interesting. Once the mystery is solved, it's back to action Doctor and that is still entertaining, even if it something we're overly used to by now.

Jackson Lake is also interesting in his two halves. He doesn't actually change his performance much between when he thinks he's the Doctor and when he's back in his right mind but I think that's a bit to his detriment. Impulsiveness and brashness work well with the Doctor as it usually is done for comedic effect. Having two Doctor personalities bounce and interact with each other makes for a great deal of fun. But once Jackson gets his memory back, his brashness seems oddly forced and makes him less likable. It also doesn't help that he oscillates between this brash action-hero type and someone frozen by fear and indecision. I especially didn't like the leading the crowd in praise of the Doctor after defeating the Cyber-King as it crossed the line into just too much schmaltz for my taste. But I did like his reaction to the TARDIS and his actual convincing of the Doctor to stay for dinner. So he's just a mixed bag all around.

There's not much to say on Rosita except that she was at least consistent through the whole story. I liked her given that nice mix of sass, adventurousness and caring. I actually wish she could have gotten a bit more screen time, although I'm sure that would have detracted from the time between the Doctor and Jackson. I also wished Jackson had not been so quick to talk about her being a governess and not add anything after the Doctor gave him a bit of a look. I'm sure the line was probably more written as a class joke but with her being black it took a slightly different tone with me. Probably not how it was intended but still it did hit that note.

Up until the launch of the Cyber-King, I rather enjoyed the Cybermen in this story. They were quite menacing and their attack on the funeral through the fog was a nice touch on top of their normal menace. I also liked the fact that the Cyberleader, despite all other intentions, still seemed to have traces of emotion and wit. His manipulation of Miss Hartigan was rather amusing in that dry way.

Miss Hartigan herself wasn't too bad except for the total lack of development she gets. She has that scene by the graveside and her moment of bossing the four cybernized men around but almost nothing else prior to her conversion. Obviously she harbors great hatred for those who have overlooked her and dismissed her powerful mind and wants revenge on society, but how she came to be in league with the Cybermen, understood them and convinced herself that she would not be cybernized is left in the dark. It makes her feel mostly like wasted potential.

Then there is the Cyber-King. That is the point where you knew this story crossed over from being a regular Doctor Who and officially became a Christmas special because it had to have something overly silly as the climax of the story. The Doctor tries to pass it off as an actual ship with a conversion factory in the belly but you can't deny that it's a giant metal robot wandering around 19th century London like Steampunk anime. There is also that fact that it is another example of Cybermen technology being overpowered by emotion; twice in this case. You have Miss Hartigan's mind and the combination of hatred and pleasure at the power she has been grated take over a rewrite the Cyber-King's software and then the whole thing is defeated when the Doctor overrides the fear suppression, allowing that emotion to override everything and destroy both herself and the Cybermen. It is both simplistic and a bit too pat for my taste.

My personal preference would have been for the Cyber-King to just be a conventional Cyber warship that was damaged and that the children were being collected for conversion. This is similar to other plots and I'm sure RTD wanted to avoid something that would have been seen as too close to Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, but something grounded in a bit more reality would have been nice. A Cyberman version of Godzilla is just a bit too much for me to swallow.

I also think it very strange for the Cybermen to expend so much effort on getting all the children only to work for just enough time to get the Cyber-King powered to maximum. Why not use Cybermen or even the Cyber-shades for that? What's more, why talk of killing the children if you have a conversion factory in the belly of the beast? They went through all that effort to get all those children, why not convert them and suddenly there are hundreds of Cybermen and not just the six to ten that seem to be in the facility. It's one of those plot points that just seem a bit too poorly thought out for my taste.

So I guess it comes down to your tolerance for silliness. If you're in the mood for a fun romp with slightly dark undertones, this will do. But with the dark and slightly comic set up in the first thirty to forty minutes, I felt that the ending was just too sharp of a turn for my taste. The set up was good, the acting also pretty good (save perhaps Jackson's son who looked dead inside) and even the direction was pretty nice. But the tone of the writing just took too much of a hard turn for my taste. Enjoyable, especially at Christmas, but nothing to give much overall thought to.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5