Doctor Who: The Complete Tennant Specials
DOCTOR WHO, a phenomenal British television success story, has always been uneven in its execution. Some of the Sci-Fi elements have been unhappily cheesy, and the characters have tended, as happens in rushed-making television, to be thin, indeed.
But Russell T. Davies is a fecund and sometimes quite profound writer (TORCHWOOD is his spinoff of DOCTOR WHO). Since its debut in 1963, there have been ten “Doctors,” with an eleventh one (Matt Smith) starting up this year. Thus, the “end” of David Tennant, #10, is the basis for this collection of “The Complete Specials.” They include, on five disks, “The Next Doctor; Planet of the Dead; the Waters of Mars; and The End of Time, Parts One and Two.
A fabulous collection, as it turns out. As one who has watch precious few of the past WHO’s, trying to follow the theatrical exploits is challenging, indeed. But Tennant’s verve and sense of fun (sometimes verging on mugging) make it real enough. If you have never seen them, this is not such a bad collection to start with.
“The Next Doctor” heralds the entrance of David Tennant, following (if I got this right) the end of David Morrissey as The Doctor #9, and their adventures using a helium balloon as the transport of mode. “Planet of the Dead” takes a double-decker bus-load of Londoners to a far-flung planet which was recently murdered by some terrible monsters from someplace else in the Universe. “The Waters of Mars” stars the amazing Lindsey Duncan, as the leader of a group of scientists who live in a Mars colony in the mid-21st Century, where, we find, that the evil which bedevils them lies in the water. The best of the batch are the final two episodes, “The End of Time.” It stars the extraordinary John Simm and veteran Bernard Cribbins, as the fellow who would be Dictator of the Universe and the elder chap who works with Doctor Who to stop him. And, this being television, you know that Good overcomes Bad every time, sometimes with collateral-damage, but in ways that help humanity survive invasions. But all of them constitute a rattling good adventure series. A plus at the end of every episode are the fantastic bonuses; explanations of how they do what they do: how they utilize the astonishing CGI (computer-generated imagery), the other technical aspects (cinematography, costuming, set-designs, etc), it is a wondrous universe they invent.
Thus, it will be interesting to see how #11 will fare; in the hands of the brilliant Doctor Davies, one may not doubt it will be handled well.