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The Next Doctor Format Reviewed: TV Review The now traditional Doctor Who Christmas special arrived with a great deal of mystery, rumour, intrigue and speculation surrounding it. Firstly, the title appears as The Next Doctor, and with speculation mounting, and the subsequent announcement that David Tennant would be leaving the role, many surmised that this would be the story where David Tennant regenerates, with David Morrissey taking his place. As has become the norm, fan opinions got very polarised and heated, with much vitriol bandied about towards the show, and other fans. This is rather incredible, but in a strange way demonstrates the passion with which many love the show. It may be that everyone sees Doctor Who as their show, and will passionately defend their interpretation of it. The TARDIS lands in Victorian times, and The Doctor is immediately called by a distress cry. When he finds the source of the cries, he finds someone else calling himself The Doctor, and a Cybershade drags them both through a building. When they come to rest, New Doctor explains that he has lost his memory through the Cybermen, who meanwhile are telling Miss Hartigan about the Doctor. The Doctor and New Doctor are trying to discover how they fit with each other, when a Cyberman is discovered. While trying to convince them to follow him, The Doctor sees New Doctor kill the Cybermen with an ‘infostamp’, a power source. At a local funeral, Miss Hartigan reveals the Cybermen to the congregation, and they kill all but some local owners of orphanages, who are captured. Meanwhile, The Doctor gets to the bottom of the reasoning behind the existence of New Doctor. His memory became influenced by the infostamp’s from the Cybermen, when he used them to kill some of the original ones that arrived. Without the infostamps, the Cybermen believe New Doctor is The Doctor. All the kids from the orphanages are pressed into working for the Cybermen, who reveal that Miss Hartigan is to become one of them. The process is not entirely successful though, and she retains a lot of her own thoughts. She does however raise the Cyberking from the Thames, and the massive creature towers over London. The Doctor uses New Doctor’s ‘TARDIS’, a hot air balloon, to rise into the night sky and fire an attack of energy at the Cyberking, killing it. New Doctor, or Jackson, is reunited with his son and the orphans are saved, and The Doctor has Christmas dinner with Jackson. I’m not sure why, but I was really expecting a massive bang in the Christmas story for 2008. Perhaps it was that in the build up to the screening there started to be a great deal of speculation about when David Tennant would leave the role of The Doctor, and then it was announced he would in fact be leaving at the end of the specials planned for 2009 in place of a regular series.Speculation then became rife over who would replace Tennant, and when exactly this would be. All of this built up the tension surrounding the story, so it became possibly something that could never live up to the hype, and it didn’t. For me it was a damp squib, rather a lot of fannying about in an unnecessarily over elaborate plot. There is also the dichotomy of whether to follow the Cybermen continuity from the classic series in such stories, or to keep with the new parallel world Cybermen. There is a big divergence in back story between the two, and I actually think it would have been better here to return to the classic Cybermen for this story. You had the readymade concept of cybermats that could be formed from any creature, so could have been made from bigger animals than the originals from rodents, and you would then avoid the whole crossing dimensions debate which was never properly addressed here. You then have the Cyberking, which as an all conquering, Godzilla type monster was, for me, largely unconvincing. It just didn’t sit well with the rest of the plot. Exactly what were they going to do with it in reality? The regular cast here consists solely of David Tennant as The Doctor. Confronted with a difficult problem, he does well matching the more stern nature of David Morrissey who is essentially playing the same character. Morrissey essentially heads the guest cast, and possibly proves he could have been given the role of The Doctor, although you would have wanted him to take it in a different direction to Tennant, to more suit his personality and acting style. Dervla Kirwan gives a good performance as Miss Hartigan, and pitches the role well in a very understated way. The final important cast member is Velile Tshabalala as Rosita, who does OK, despite looking a bit out of place. I have been so far very critical of the story, but there are some very nice touches that redeem it in part. Firstly, the character interation between Davids Tennant and Morrissey is really good, and touching. Combined with Morrisseys good portrayal of the Tennant Doctor, this makes the early sequence very good to watch. Morrissey’s performance shows that he could in fact take on the role of The Doctor successfully, despite only playing a parody of the Tennant incarnation. I am sure that adding in Morrissey’s own personality and diverging from previous incarnations that he could do the job. Unfortunately, all this is rather let down by the mish-mash of the remainder of the episode, and this excellent work will be consumed by the mediocrity shown elsewhere. Unfortunately, The New Doctor failed to live up to the tension created by the speculation over the future of the series in the lead up to the episode. What we see are some great performances from Tennant, Morrissey and Dervla Kirwan, showing fantastic interaction, let down by an unnecessarily over elaborate plot that has several large holes in it. The whole production turned into an anti-climax, and rather a damp squib. It is good to watch, as almost all Doctor Who is, but will not stand up well to much repeated viewing.  |