Doctor Who (2005) 1-13: The Parting of the Ways

Episode:

709

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Serial:

166

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Writer:

Russell T Davies

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Director:

Joe Ahearne

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Air Date:

18-Jun-2005

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I am almost finished with writing about Doctor Who for a while. I've just got one last episode of the 2005 series to go. It's the second half of the Bad Wolf two-parter, The Parting of the Ways!

I don't want to put any SPOILERS up here in the intro text where anyone can read it, I save that for the rest of the review (and I'm going to be spoiling ever moment of this story, so be warned). But I will say that the title was part of Russell T Davies' original pitch document for the series, from way back when Captain Jack was called Jax. The episode itself was changed slightly due to production issues but the title actually stayed the same.

It was directed by Joe Ahearne, who had proven to be a safe pair of hands by this point, and someone Christopher Eccleston liked working with. Unfortunately it was his last Doctor Who story as he felt a bit worn out after directing five episodes in one series. That's a feat only matched by the legendary Graeme Harper. In fact there are only a handful of directors who made it to five during their entire time on the series.

Okay Saul Metzstein also directed five in one season, but it was series 7, which was split across two years, so that doesn't count!

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Previously, on Doctor Who:

An episode of The Weakest Link went horribly wrong when Rose Tyler was chosen to be one of the contestants. Now Daleks are invading and she's being held captive on her mothership. Also it's the year 200,100 and the heroes have been teleported to the Game Station in orbit around Earth.

The Doctor, Jack and trainee companion Lynda escaped their games and took over the control room but they got a call from the Daleks. The Doctor informed them that he was going to rescue Rose and destroy the their fleet so now he has to find a way to make good on that threat.

And now, the conclusion:

The episode begins with the Daleks revealing that they suck at predicting what their arch nemesis is going to do, which makes sense as he wouldn't be able to defeat them every time if they knew how he was going to do it. Unfortunately they also suck at interrogation, as yelling "Predict, predict, predict!" at Rose isn't working.

Though when Rose says "You're going to kill him!" they reply with "You have predicted correctly," so they're pretty good with a sassy come back.

The Daleks detect the TARDIS flying in space and immediately launch missiles at it, so Rose yells "The TARDIS hasn't got any defences." This is a very useful line, as I would've had no idea otherwise. 

The TARDIS is generally depicted as almost invulnerable, in the classic series too. I remember The Three Doctors made the TARDIS's forcefield part of the plot, so this has been a thing since at least the '70s. In fact it took a transmat beam 15 million times more powerful than normal to breach its defences just one episode ago. It's also generally depicted as disappearing in one place and reappearing in the other, so this is weird for all kinds of reasons. 

Anyway it gets hit and explodes, so I guess the Daleks called it this time. But then it turns out that the Doctor and Jack are using Blon Slitheen's surfboard extrapolator (from Boom Town) to give them a forcefield! So they have at least one, maybe two forcefields at this point.

They're not wasting any time showing off the money they spent on the visual effects with this one. The episode doesn't have a teaser, it goes straight into the opening credits, but they still needed a hook to keep people from changing the channel.

This an interesting way to start the episode though I think. It's perfectly normal for a cliffhanger to get resolved right away, but to me Rose's capture by the Daleks felt like the kind of situation that'd take a third of the episode and a clever plan to solve. Instead the Doctor just went straight there in the TARDIS, which is a strategy so straightforward that the Daleks didn't see it coming.

The Doctor materialises the TARDIS around Rose, which is something new for the series. Though they did materialise around a real police box once. Actually it was another TARDIS in disguise as a police box, but they didn't know that.

Unfortunately they also bring in the Dalek standing next to her, which is definitely a first for the series. Probably. They've had Cybermen in the console room but never a Dalek to my recollection.

The poor guy doesn't get much time to consider how amazing this is as he barely gets a shot off before he gets exploded with a blast from Jack's modified defabricator. That's the gun that the Doctor threw at the terrified TV producers in the last episode, saying something like 'As if I'd shoot anyone', so it's a good thing that he brought Jack along to do the shooting.

Unfortunately that's all they get out of the gun, as blasting the Dalek took all the batteries. No one suggests there may be a replacement power supply for their Dalek-killing weapon on the space station they took it from.

The TARDIS has materialised inside the Dalek mothership, so the Doctor decides to pop out and say hi to his greatest enemies. It's fine, the shield he's got up is completely invulnerable. Jack helpfully corrects him, saying it is slightly vulnerable, I guess to add a bit of danger to the scene.

They apparently only built three Daleks for this episode, so some compositing was required here. Also they extended the set at bit, but they've done a good job of it.

I think this is the first time we hear that the Daleks call the Doctor the "Oncoming Storm". That sounds unusually poetic for a Dalek, but they're not identical robots, they're allowed to have differences. Actually they're not allowed to be different, but they are allowed to come up with nicknames.

It's at this point that the absolutely massive Dalek Emperor reveals that it's been hiding in the dark this whole time to surprise them. It's the bloke in charge so it has the biggest and fanciest shell, in fact it's so big that even the miniature they filmed was two or three feet tall. (It doesn't look very mobile though).

You'd think a guy like this would be too busy to waste time explaining its sinister plan to its arch nemesis, but it kindly makes the time to answer all his questions. In fact its buddies yell at the Doctor for interrupting, but he firmly shuts them up.

The Emperor survived the Time War by... surviving. It was on a damaged ship that fell through time. It decided to hide out in space and construct a new army of Daleks using human cells. They've been taking only the very best from the worst of humanity and processing it like meat. 

Converting people like this seems like more of a Cybermen thing to do, but the Daleks were created this way in the first place, from a race called the Kaled. Their creator Davros was also doing this stuff in Revelation of the Daleks I recall.

Though the episode Dalek featured a Dalek tormented by the humanity it had gotten from Rose, and it turns out then when you make an army of Daleks out of human cells they get driven mad by their own self hatred. Plus they've been here alone in space without murdering anyone for ages.

Even the genetically pure Emperor has gone a bit loopy, setting himself up as a god. This makes them "more dangerous than ever" according to the Doctor, but when is that ever not the case? He's not likely to say "They're a bit less dangerous this week, so don't worry as much."

The Doctor ignores the Emperor's order to stay and swaggers off back to his box with a grin. But the swagger leaves him instantly when he gets inside. He rests his head against the door and listens to the horrifying sounds of energy blasts and angry squids yelling "Exterminate!"

It's one of those moments where the Doctor drops the act and shows what he's really feeling. All that trauma from the Time War. He's feeling that he blew up his people for nothing because the Daleks just came back.

The Doctor returns to the Game Station and immediately gets them to use the transmissions to block the Dalek transmat beams. That's actually really logical, using the technology the Daleks were using to hide their fleet to block their teleportation instead.

They tried transmitting a warning to Earth as well, but they got cut off. They're apparently mad that they cancelled Big Brother and the rest. They also got as many as they could off the station with shuttles, but there wasn't enough so there are still a hundred people left. I wonder why the Doctor doesn't suggest using the TARDIS to get them out. I guess he's busy with his own thing.

Jack figures out that the Doctor's got another interesting use for the station's transmitter: a deadly Delta Wave! This is why I like having companions from different times around, as they change the dynamic a bit. 

Doctor Who (2005) 1-01: Rose

It's funny how the season starts and ends with a plot about an alien invasion and a giant transmitter.

There is a deadline to get the Delta Wave set up though as the Daleks will arrive in 22 minutes. Which is about 4298 minutes less than the Doctor needs. That's fine though, this is a science fiction series and he's the show's Scotty, so he can work miracles.

Meanwhile Jack uses their surfboard extrapolator to put a shield around the station's upper floors to force the Daleks to fight their way up. I guess it's literally around the station, not projected inside, so the Daleks can go around it by going through the station.

Rose is going to stay with the Doctor to strip wires, so Jack kisses her goodbye. Then he kisses the Doctor goodbye too, with John Barrowman making sure to kiss them both in the exact same way. First same sex kiss on Doctor Who, to my recollection, and it doesn't happen often.

It's funny how it feels like Jack's been travelling with them forever at this point, when this is only his fifth episode. I've seen other seasons do a much worse job of fleshing out a companion and giving them an arc over way more episodes.

Jack goes down to the folks stuck here in the lower levels to see if anyone wants to volunteer to join in with this classic 'base under siege' story and fight the Daleks. 

Rodrick, the Weakest Link winner, argues that the Daleks aren't even real, which seems like a pretty terrible reason to stay here. Personally if I was certain the Daleks didn't exist I'd go join up. That way I'd get to hang out with all the brave people and I wouldn't even have to fight anyone! 

This is a good shot I reckon, as it really makes the room look like it's filled with people.

Oh and now they've gone and ruined it with this angle. (Actually this is the one they started with.)

There are about forty people choosing to hide down here and a dozen go with Jack to go prove humanity's worth. Which is good I suppose, as the lift can only fit that many. If they wanted to take more people from a place of safety up into danger (or the other way around) they'd need a transport device that was bigger on the inside...

I'm just glad that the Weakest Link floor manager decided to go with them and be a hero, as she's one of the few characters I can recognise from part one. Also Lynda with a Y is 100% ride or die with TARDIS team at this point.

Back on Floor 500, the Doctor has made even more of a mess of the wiring. I couldn't even untangle that many cables in half an hour, never mind assemble a deadly weapon with them.

Rose knows that he can't just go back to last week and warn them about the Daleks, and he explains that it's because landing her made them part of events. Though he points out that it never occurred to her to suggest the two of them could just run off and leave.

In the early episodes of Doctor Who, running off and leaving was often the goal. They needed to find a replacement fluid link for the console, or Marco Polo swiped their TARDIS, or they got kidnapped by Romans and had to make their way back etc. That hasn't been the case for a long time though.

Suddenly the Doctor comes up with a brilliant idea! Well actually it was Rose's idea, but he claims that he's figured out how to make it work and he's saying all the right Doctor Who lines to convince the audience as much as it convinces her.

Surprise, what he actually did was trick Rose into going into the TARDIS and then remotely send it back with his sonic screwdriver, which is a scary feature for it to have. I'd be paranoid about accidentally sending my time machine back to the Middle Ages without me every time I reached into my jacket pocket.

This is not the first time the TARDIS has taken a trip without the Doctor inside. It happened in The Android Invasion when Sarah Jane left the key in the lock and it carried on to its pre-set destination, which is also a scary feature. If I had a time machine I'd make it so it couldn't go anywhere without me inside of it. Either with advanced biometrics or I'd just hide the on switch somewhere people couldn't find it.

Anyway Rose is understandably distraught at being sent away without the Doctor. When someone who invited you to a life of constant danger thinks a situation is too dangerous for you to be there, it's probably not a good omen for their own chances of survival. Especially if they let you keep their car.

Emergency Program One activates, projecting a hologram with a prerecorded message to Rose from the Doctor. For a moment I wondered if he's been updating this every time he gets a new companion, but I can't actually imagine the classic series ever having a scene like this. Okay, there was the First Doctor's goodbye to Susan I suppose, which incidentally came right at the first year of the original show.

Then the hologram Doctor turns to look directly at Rose, the audio filter goes away, and it finishes with "Have a good life. Do that for me Rose, have a fantastic life". The Doctor's having fun with his hologram programming I guess.

Here's a side effect of staring at screencaps too much: I recognise the street that the TARDIS has landed on. This is exact same place on the exact same road where Rose's dad got hit by a car in Father's Day, I can tell by the stripey brick posts. 

So either the TARDIS is trying to torment Rose by bringing her back to the place of her greatest trauma... or it's just outside her flat.

Mickey heard the sound and came running right away, which is better than he did in Aliens of London when it took him a whole day to notice it was outside his flat. Yeah I know that the TARDIS is supposed to go unnoticed, but not to people who know to look for it.

Jack calls to ask Rose to read some numbers to him, but she's not around. He assumes she went to take a leak, which is something Doctor Who does not mention often.

The Dalek Emperor gets on the screen to point out the Doctor isn't being forthcoming with his allies about his new super weapon. He can't aim it, so if he turns it on it'll murder the human race along with the Daleks. So that's a familiar choice for him. The Doctor points out that it's not the entire human race, there are colonies out there.

This raises a question I don't think Doctor Who ever had any interest in answering: what happened to Gallifrey's colonies? Did it not have any? Did the Daleks wipe them all out?

Anyway, Jack just tells the Doctor to keep working. Now that's been sorted out, the Doctor asks the Emperor about the whole Bad Wolf thing, as he hasn't figured out what it means. The Emperor says that it was nothing to do with them!

Back on planet Earth (just around the corner from the TARDIS by the look of that street outside), Rose is having lunch with her mother and Mickey, who are having a perfectly mundane banal conversation.

Mickey: "Have you tried that new pizza place down Minto Road?"
Jackie: "What's it selling?"
Mickey: "Pizza"

That is exactly what those lines should've been. Though I don't need Mickey to talk about pizza anymore, it reminds me of Plastic Mickey in Rose.

I really like this scene, with Rose demonstrating how far she's come on her character arc. Jackie loves the Doctor right now, as he actually did protect her, but Rose hates that there's nothing she can do to help him. It's true, a warning about Daleks a week before the attack could've helped, a warning 200,100 years before the attack is less helpful.

Bad Wolf on the poster!

Rose's scene on Earth is the opposite to her return to Earth in End of the World. It's not a relief to be here eating chips anymore, she wants to be on the futuristic space station. Being trapped in an ordinary life has become horrifying to her.

It's hard to say you can't just go to work, eat your chips, go to bed, and repeat for the rest of your life without sounding like you think you're better than people. But she has fully bought into the Doctor Who philosophy. You don't just let things happen, you stay and do what's right when everyone else runs. (Or run somewhere safe and figure out a plan, but she doesn't mention that bit.)

One thing we see in Doctor Who over and over is that travelling changes you. It gets you out of your bubble, gives you first hand knowledge of what's going on and how people live. The Game Station isn't something Rose has heard about, she was there, she knows people there. If it was Jackie and Mickey in danger she'd be clawing her way through time for them.

She gets very emotional, smacking the table, so she's definitely still a 19 year old and maybe a bit young to go charging back into a war. But yeah she's changed.

Daleks flying in space! That's something new. It makes sense that their shells would be airtight. This is also the most Daleks we've ever seen, as CGI wasn't really available to them in the classic show. Except for the Seventh Doctor's title sequence I mean. And maybe something else I've forgotten.

Well it's been 22 minutes I guess so here comes the Dalek fleet. Actually it's only 13 minutes in reality, so events aren't playing out in real time like they did in The End of the World (kind of).

Here's a good look at the top of those retro Dalek saucers. The design is so retro that they have rivets! Giant rivets. 

It's definitely rare to see a spaceship spinning around the core like this these days, those less rare for space stations. I don't even know why the Game Station is spinning, aside from the obvious explanation that it just looks more interesting

Back on Earth, Rose and Mickey are sitting outside, and Mickey makes the case for her having a normal life (with him). But Rose is distracted by the words Bad Wolf graffitied all over the place.

To be fair it's a bit hard to miss! Though Mickey points out it some of it's been there for years.

Incidentally, we saw this place in Father's Day as well, as this the road the car raced down after hitting her dad. That building at the bottom of the frame is the one that the TARDIS is currently parked in front of, and this was all filmed in the same location.

I suppose the graffiti is like the "Kilroy Was Here" meme, which spread everywhere without anyone having a clue what it meant. The kid who wrote it on the TARDIS had probably seen it somewhere else and decided to join in... with a little help by whatever force influenced Blon to called her power station project Bad Wolf etc. Rose says she thought it was a warning, but now she knows it's telling her she can get back and save the Doctor!

This is such a RTD Doctor Who move. In the episode it's a big emotional moment: Bad Wolf means that Rose can save the Doctor! But if you think about it for a second it falls apart. She encountered the same phrase wherever she went in time, therefore she can go back to 200,100. What? That's not how logic works!

Imagine if it had been another phrase, like I dunno, 'Torchwood'. If the Doctor and Rose kept seeing or hearing 'Torchwood' everywhere they went, including on the Game Station during the last episode, would that be a message telling Rose that she could get back to the future? Spoilers: no it's obviously not.

I guess the important part is that the words are following Rose and not the Doctor, so she can at least assume the message is meant for her.

Wow, it's very obviously the same place when you see these scenes side by side like this.

Rose tells Mickey "There's nothing left for me here," which would be pretty insulting even if Mickey only thought of himself as her friend. But he still volunteers to help her rip part of the TARDIS console open with his car! Man, the guy is always there when she needs him, always stepping up to get things done.

She saw the TARDIS turn Blon into an egg a couple of episodes ago, and she thinks if she opens up the same panel she can communicate with it directly and give the TARDIS instructions. But the chain breaks before it opens, which makes me think that it was a weak link that was the weak link here. But they reckon it was the car not being powerful enough.

I wonder how they filmed this bit. Did they chain the car to something so they could spin the wheels and make a lot of smoke?

Back in the future, things aren't going well. Jack was wrong (or lying) about their bullets being able to kill Daleks as they're just evaporating against their shields, and the Weakest Link floor manager is killed. At least she went out looking like a badass with an assault rifle.

Speaking of The Weakest Link, the Anne Droid was doing great, hitting Dalek after Dalek with her mouth-mounted energy beam, but a single blast takes off her head. She didn't really kill any Daleks, as the beam is a transmat, so they either ended up on the mothership or in the vacuum of space. Unless that anti-transmat signal the station is broadcasting caused them to teleport nowhere.

They assumed that the Daleks would ignore the humans taking shelter in the lower levels and go straight up to Floor 500 to confront the Doctor, but nope! Daleks will go out of their way to exterminate people.

Weirdly Rodrick comes off as the worst person here, protesting that this can't happen to him as he's the winner! It seems he really was convinced the Daleks didn't exist and unfortunately his own personal reality isn't a refuge from their weapons.

It's a shame really, as he was the only person in this place who was promised a prize from the games. Everyone else here was just playing to not die.

It's always weird to me when Jackie's in the TARDIS.

Poor Rose is feeling a bit frustrated and Jackie's here to push her into giving up. Rose replies that her dad wouldn't give up and mentions that she was there when he died! This is a bit too much for Jackie and she runs out. Lots of emotions in these scenes, the actors are really selling it.

Personally I wouldn't lock up the TARDIS and walk away either. With the Doctor gone it's the safest place on Earth to hide from all the alien invasions. Plus it's got plenty of room and you don't have to pay any bills.

Back on the Game Station, things are going very badly. The Dalek fleet is bombing continents and we the lines getting deformed on the map. Australasia's just gone. 

It really seems like the world is over, whether the Doctor uses the Delta Wave or not. So that's the third time this season that the Doctor's come to a space station and failed to save the Earth.

We get to see Jack's barricade on Floor 499 and the producers from the control room get a nice humanising moment. The guy admits he only joined because of the woman and she destroys all his hopes them going to get a drink later... with a wink to show she's just messing with him. Four lines of dialogue and I'm rooting for these two to survive. Then again I was also rooting for the floor manager and she didn't even have to say anything, she just stepped forward when no one else did. (She didn't survive).

I'm a Battlestar Galactica fan so this shouldn't take me out of the scene, but those are clearly modern guns they're holding and not even weird obscure ones. That's a Heckler & Koch G36. But I realise that if you want to show a weapon physically firing, it's much cheaper to get one that exists in the world already than invent one for your sci-fi show.

Meanwhile, in the past, Rose is about ready to give up. But Mickey won't let her and Jackie won't either.

Jackie rolls up in a big yellow truck with "RESCUE" written on it, like a big damn hero. She was able to get it because Rodrigo owed her a favour, but never mind why.

It's pretty crazy that Jackie is going out of her way to help her daughter rush off into incredible danger in a time machine she can't even operate, because it's what she really wants. That's a strange new level of supportive parenting.

Back on the Game Station, the 'aim for the eyestalk' advice actually works this time as the folks from control room score a hit, causing a blinded Dalek to yell "My vision is impaired!" Funny thing is, I don't know if it's calling for help or not, as would another Dalek bother to help it?

And then everyone at the barricade gets exterminated. 

It's funny how they're still inverting the footage to show the impact of the beams, just like they did back in 1963. I'm not sure that makes any sense, but it looks good.

The Daleks have also found Lynda and one of them starts trying to cut through the door to get to her. Turns out that some of them have cutting torches attached instead of plungers, or maybe they can just switch modes.

There's lots of suspense here, more than other characters got when the Daleks came for them. She's the sweetest and most innocent of the characters, all she's done is help, and she's 100% going to be a companion if she survives this. 

But she doesn't, as it turns out the window was a lot easier to get through than the door. Last episode she said that they were using exoglass that could withstand a nuclear blast! Though to be fair she was talking about the Big Brother house, not the exterior windows.

I don't know how many people figure out that when the Dalek out there flashes its lights, it's saying "Exterminate", we just can't hear it. I hope it's everyone, as it's a great touch.

Back in the present day, Team Tyler achieves everything they intended to, successfully getting the TARDIS console open and letting Rose contact the heart of the TARDIS.

The episode's all about people stepping up to do what's right and to save people they care about while the Doctor's busy doing wiring, and this is a great example of that. It was all left up to them, they had no guidance or help from the Doctor whatsoever, but they decided to do something, they came up with a plan, and they executed it.

It seems like Rose is piloting the TARDIS telepathically using energy beams going into her eyes, so that's new. I don't think we've seen that in the series before.

The TARDIS didn't turn her into an egg, that's the important thing. And yes that is a thing that can happen to humans on this series.

Jack is the last line of defence before the Daleks reach the Doctor, though he's down to his pistol at this point so he can barely even slow them down. We saw this happening a few times in Dalek, people standing their ground so other people could escape, and it never seemed like the smartest move to me. Though in this case what else do you do? The TARDIS is gone, there are no escape shuttles, the planet below has been obliterated, and the goal is to give the Doctor every second he needs to finish the Delta Wave.

The Daleks shoot Jack and he falls down dead, the end. I guess that's why he never made it to the opening credits.

The Daleks swarm into Floor 500 to find the Doctor unarmed. Well, except for the switch that will activate the Delta Wave and kill them all.

The Doctor uses the threat of mutually assured destruction to get the Daleks to listen to reason. Unfortunately the Emperor has become a bit of a lunatic and thinks that it's an immortal god! It actually wants to see the Doctor exterminate the human race, it loves the idea.

So it's basically become a re-enactment of the Time War. Humans and Daleks are about to be wiped out in one instant and he's the one who'll make it happen. But this time he can't bring himself to do it. The Emperor asks him if he's "coward or killer" and he says "coward".

Though the episode's given him every reason to do it, as he's not getting out of this room either way and the Earth's already a mess. I don't think this choice is going to save anyone, as the Daleks are going to finish the planet off and then head to the next one.

But then the TARDIS appears out of nowhere and Rose starts blocking Dalek beams with her bare hands!

She is the Bad Wolf, a deus ex machina who created herself by spreading the words "bad wolf" across space and time, which is illustrated by her making the station's BAD WOLF logo float away. I guess it gets the message across.

It's still bloody weird that Rose saw the words 'Bad Wolf' and thought 'this means I can pilot the TARDIS back to the future!' but I suppose if anyone knows what would motivate Rose into action, it's a godlike entity who knows everything and is also Rose.

I think it's interesting how Billie Piper is playing Bad Wolf Rose as the lines are very dramatic ("I want you safe, my Doctor. Protected from the false god.") but she looks like she's crying. She's not playing it like a badass god.

It's also interesting that the Doctor and Rose have both been learning from each other over the season. The Doctor has become less isolated and angry, and is unwilling to kill in order to defeat the Daleks. Rose, on the other hand, was paying attention when he dealt with Cassandra in the End of the World. "Everything dies".

She just tears the Daleks apart at a subatomic level in a pretty particle effect. The Emperor Dalek is very confused!

I'm a bit confused too to be honest. If the Time Lords had this kind of power in just one of their TARDISes, how were they losing so badly? It seems trivially easy to turn someone into a time god who can obliterate Dalek fleets with a thought, and even if there's a price it's still better than the whole planet blowing up.

Oh, as a bonus Bad Wolf also brings Jack back to life. Not Lynda though, as Rose was jealous of the Doctor giving her attention earlier. So that's everything solved. Well, except for the fact that Rose is dying from all this energy in her body.

But the Doctor can fix that, with a cheesy line about her needing a doctor, some very cheesy over the top music, and a kiss. Seriously, that music comes close to ruining this scene for me, it's comically melodramatic.

So Jack kissed Rose, Jack kissed the Doctor and now Rose has kissed the Doctor. That's it, a complete set, everyone's kissed everyone. There's been more kissing in this one episode alone than all 26 seasons before it. (Note: this is almost certainly wrong).

For some people this is the moment they've been waiting for all series, others aren't so keen on how it collapses the possibilities of what kind of relationship the two characters have. Stories like Father's Day presented them like a father and daughter, while in The Empty Child he was like a romantic rival to Jack. It's definitely leaning closer to romantic at this point!

After taking the energy out of her now he's the one with godlike power. But he understands that there is a way to get rid of it: just let it go.

He gives the TARDIS a gift of breath from his lungs, and the power is returned to the box. Rose passes out and the Doctor carries her inside. Then he leaves without Jack!

Rose wakes up on the TARDIS floor with no recollection of what happened after she stared into the light. All she remembers is something like singing, and the Doctor explains he sang a song to make the Daleks go away. Weird that he's choosing not to tell her what she did, but I suppose he's more preoccupied with his glowing hand.

The Doctor's really going through something right now, with every cell in his body dying, but instead of thinking about himself he puts a brave face on. He started the series blowing up buildings and complaining about humans being stupid apes, but now at the end he's being reassuring and trying to crack jokes to help Rose get through a scary change.

This is the first regeneration of the revival series and viewers at the time had known it was coming for a while; if they were keeping track of the news at least. It's a bit of a shock though if you don't know it's coming, especially if you expected to get five years with Eccleston in the role. The series Supernatural started the same year, 2005, and that kept the same leads until it ended in 2020.

I don't think anyone expected this to happen however. Back in the classic series the Doctor would typically lie down and maybe hallucinate some former companions before sitting up as someone else. Here though he starts burning like a phoenix, shooting flames out of his arms! He's lucky that the energy he's putting out isn't damaging the room or anyone else in it, as that would be a bit embarrassing.

There's a bit of a morph effect and...

... he's now David Tennant!

New viewers are in Rose's shoes at this point, with no clue what this means for the Doctor. Does he still have the same memory, does he have the same personality? Is he the same person at all?

So the fact that he immediately goes back to talking about Planet Barcelona is a bit of a relief, to the audience if not to Rose. Actually he first thing he does is comment on his new teeth, which is smart writing I reckon. It's not necessarily the first difference you'd expect someone to notice after getting a new body, but it makes absolute sense and that combination of it being unexpected and apt makes it a satisfying line.

Tennant wasn't actually present on set at the same time as Eccleston and Piper, he filmed his part of the scene a month later, but he is present in the episode. That means he's been in every season of the RTD era so far! All one of them.

Children in Need Special 'Born Again'

Piper and Tennant did finally get to share a scene later that year in a special mini episode made for Children in Need, which continues directly on from where the episode left off and shows Rose's understandable concern about the stranger standing there in the clothes of the man she loved.

It's nothing essential as it's just a bonus scene that connects Parting of the Ways with The Christmas Invasion, but I think it's worth watching. Even if it's a bit cheaper looking than the actual series somehow. In fact it gets less cinematic as it goes, with the dramatic blue lighting disappearing 5 minutes in. Also is the set shrinking or something? How did they make it look so small?


CONCLUSION

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The Parting of the Ways wasn't meant to be about Christopher Eccleston leaving the show, not originally. I think the title was supposed to be referring to the Doctor sending Rose back to Earth and being separated from her forever. Not that there was any chance of that sticking considering that she had the TARDIS.

Though if someone had come into this completely blind, with no idea of regeneration and just a vague understanding that there have been other Doctors in the past, I reckon they could imagine the series killing off the Ninth Doctor and having Rose take over as the Tenth. The episode certainly make an effort to show how completely screwed the Doctor is, and how much Rose has changed.

In fact this is basically a Doctor-light story, which probably wouldn't have been the case if they'd known early enough that it was going to be Eccleston's last. He's in it for about 24 minutes (out of 43), and that's including the hologram scene. After sending Rose away he has a chat with the Dalek Emperor about what his plan is and then he's basically gone from the episode until the Daleks storm Floor 500 and Bad Wolf arrives. Even weirder is that he doesn't actually do anything besides rescue Rose, send her away, and kiss her at the end. All his high-speed rewiring leads to nothing... well aside from his choice not to pull the switch at the end, which is fairly important to be fair. It's the conclusion of the Ninth Doctor's arc, showing how far he's come from the angry traumatised loner from episode 1. This time he can make the opposite choice.

Rose has a bit of an arc as well. Not within the episode, she's entirely single-minded here, but within this season. After her first trip through time she needed a bit of 21st century normality to recover, but now normality is torture to her. She's like the Doctor, she has to be out there doing things, making a difference. And it almost gets her killed. In fact what she did would've gotten her killed, if the Doctor hadn't taken the consequences on himself.

Pretty much everyone in the future scenes except for Rose dies, which is pretty hardcore even for Doctor Who. It's apparently the first episode to kill its entire guest cast since Horror of Fang Rock three decades earlier, and as a bonus it killed off the Doctor and Jack as well! They only walked away from it because the Doctor can regenerate and Rose resurrected Jack with her god powers. Sorry I meant 'Bad Wolf'... not that really know what the difference is. Is the a comic book thing where you get superpowers and have to give yourself a name, or was she half TARDIS or the Dark Phoenix or something?

I have to be honest, I've never been keen on Rose becoming a god and wiping out the Daleks with her mind. To me it feels like a massive deus ex machina and a pretty absurd resolution to the Bad Wolf arc, especially considering how terrible the explanation for the words being scattered through time is. But I know that other people really love seeing Rose materialises out of the TARDIS and wreck Daleks, so I can't say the moment doesn't work. Or even that it comes out of nowhere.

Though I think the reason they got away with such a blatant deus ex is because it's tied to a sacrifice. Rose's win costs us the Ninth Doctor, so it comes at a heavy price. This is one of the rare cases where rewriting a story to kill off the protagonist actually improved an episode. To be more accurate, it's one of the cases where changing the protagonist's face improved an episode... and that's even rarer.

Eccleston's departure didn't necessarily come as a shock to viewers at the time, this wasn't the surprise regeneration that RTD wanted, but that may not actually be a bad thing. Sometimes it's preferable to know that you're about to say goodbye to an actor, so you can better process it. And the episode itself seems designed to lead towards his departure, whether deliberately or not. It has the Doctor face the choice that's been at the heart of his character arc by putting him in a re-enactment of the Time War, with a second chance to pull the switch. This means that it feels like a resolution for him, and he's not leaving unfinished business. It's weird, but I think Eccleston might have gotten out at the ideal time.

The Doctor's still got that trauma, he's still the Last of the Time Lords, but the guilt and self loathing has been lifted a bit and he's able to admit that during this past year with Rose he's actually been pretty fantastic.


RATING

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Is The Parting of the Ways my favourite regeneration story? Honestly, no. Or maybe yes. I'm not sure. It's definitely in the upper half, despite the fact it's mostly about a bunch of people dying while Rose whines that she's not special enough to her mother and ex. So I think it's fair to give it...

8/10.

It's not quite on The Empty Child's level, but it's a pretty solid resolution to NuWho's first season.

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COMING SOON

Okay, that's it, I've reviewed the final episode of series 1 and I'm only a day late publishing it. Now I can finally stop thinking about Doctor Who for a while. I have achieved closure.

Hang on, wait, I still need to write season reviews for both Christoper Eccleston's run and Ncuti Gatwa's run! I need to think about Doctor Who more than ever!

Please share your own thoughts about The Parting of the Ways, assuming you can even remember the episode. It's a bit of an obscure one, this.