The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances wins Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Written by Steven Moffat and directed by James Hawes. Wikipedia entry lists the competition and here is the vote breakdown. Seems to have been a close run thing with Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus. [via]
Update: On his blog, Paul Cornell describes picking up the award on behalf of Steven Moffat.
I've just read an interview with Steven Moffat where he promises that
his season two episodes will be "sexier" than The Empty Child/The
Doctor Dances.
Sexier???
Is that really possible without Abi Titmuss and Jennifer Ellison being involved (maybe The Star know something we don't?). Have Television X secured exclusive distribution rights? Will series two require a bloody pin-number?
Forget whether this was the scariest Doctor Who story ever made (it is by the way) it was certainly the sexiest - bar none. Forget Leela in her shami, or Lalla in her school uniform (if you can), this was smut and innuendo with knobs on.
Sex, sex, sex. Everywhere you turn: from the bisexual 51st Century Boy, Jack, to the revelation about where that bloke got his "meat" ration from, to the underage bonking admission from Nancy (who you can now fancy, safe in the knowledge that you're not doing anything wrong). Then there's Rose fantising about Jack losing his virginity and the fact that she practically invited the Doctor for a snog (again!), monsters that look like they are all involved in a particularly laid-back swinger's party, and straight-faced references to "resonating concrete" which would have made Robin Askwith blush.
And if the subtext about sonic envy was too subtle for the audience, how about a scene featuring Jack astride a HUGE bomb as he compliments Rose on her, ahem, T-shirt. Hilariously, the fanboys are distracted by yet another Bad Wolf reference to notice that Moffat actually wrote a bloody good 'Carry On...' movie.
And yet it works. Mostly because it's genuinely amusing, but also
because it has so much more to offer. It's been said before, far more
eloquently than me on this very blog, that this episode is choc-full of
iconic moments which certainly would have imprinted themselves on Mary
Whitehoue's minds-eye if she was alive today (and hadn't suffered an
auerism thanks to all the cock references). The TARDIS phone ringing,
the skull-cracking gas masks, the "Are You My Mummy?" mantra, the
psyhic typewriter, the banana shaped like a penis...
The climax was - dare I even use the word? - fantastic. It really is remarkably rare for Doctor Who to get an honest-to-god happy ending where the hero wins through without any loss of life. In any other show it would be par for the course, but with Doctor Who it really is a notable victory, and a well deserved one for the ninth Doctor, given his rather pathetic performance as an intergalactic troubleshooter in the series so far. I was very close to weeping tears of joy and I lit a fag as soon as the end credits were rolling.
Ironically, he was shouting "Everybody lives!" in the middle of a German air-raid so he's probably sadly mistaken too.
Last week I claimed that The Empty Child had raised the bar ridiculously high. The Doctor Dances takes that bar, sticks it in the ground, and then
proceeds to use it for a pole-dance routine so stunning, so liberating,
so unashamedly unique, that even if the next three acts are comprised
of the reanimated corpses of The Roly Polys, you'll still leave the
establishment with a big, fat smile on your face.
I've been writing this motion picture - in my mind - for some time. It opens with a star field shot and a small pin prick of light moving across it, getting slowly bigger. And as it gets closer, you begin to hear music. Indistinguishable at first, then you recognize it as Abba's Dancing Queen as a cruiser is identified at the heart of the ball of light and the action moves into the flight deck and there's our hero, dancing away - alone - round some futuristic chairs. And, in a similar vein, there's plenty of choreographed cannoledling within the first few moments of The Doctor Dances, the Dancin' One pulls one of his favorite poses from Saturday Night Fever.
The Doctor Dances - an interesting title. In the world of Cuprinol television (obvious titles telling you at a glance exactly what the programme's about - ie it does exactly what it says on the tin [© Charlie Brooker]) you expect (and indeed have been fretting for some period of time, you sad little fan boy you) to have dancing from the off. But you don't. Yes there's dancing, but perhaps some of it isn't as obvious or as up front as you were expecting. Hang on, that's going a tad too deep and analytical, and that's not what I'm about.
Getting back on message for a second, why exactly did the Doctor destroy the weapons factory on Villengard and did he have a role in the banana grove that's now there? Perhaps he was involved in a Changing Planets style show a some point in the recent past. You know, with all the old faces, before Linda Barker became famous for snip-snipping her way through Currys adverts and pissing, what passed for a media career, up the wall.
Algy's transformation into a Gas Mask Person is even more graphic than Dr Constantine's. We're up close and personal as the effect takes hold, from spewing up the air filter to seeing his eyes bulge and pop right out. The eye sockets bulging, with the eyes dilating and morphing into the black soulless discs of the mask was particularly satisfying. More sleepless nights and damp mattresses.
Ooooo, you're a naughty one, Saucy Jack. I'm not too sure about this anything-with-a-pulse future that they're describing. I mean, what's the Daily Mail got to say about this? Surely the Mail exists in the 51st century? I can't imagine that they're taking it lying down... hooded and cuffed to the bed post with a dominatrix dispensing lashes with her cat'o'nine tails.... Ahem, where was I? Ah yes, hell it's not even the future as we hear that Mr Lloyd has been messing around with Mr Haverstock, the butcher, for more of his special stuff. Although, even Jack takes this a little far with his Dr Strangelove tribute act as he attempts to hump a German World War II bomb. Shagadelic, baby.
Finally, the Doctor's palpable sense of joy as he's able to, just this once, to save absolutely everybody made the hairs on the back of my neck, the back of my arms and the back of my knees stand to attention. Wonderful stuff. Although as he's standing in the middle of the Blitz, all things are relative. Never has the Doctor taken so much joy from saving people.
And thankfully someone's taken notice of my rabid rantings from this blog as some Dudley Simpson style cymbals accompanies Captain Jack's ship sailing off into a nebula. All in all, a cracking second episode which didn't disappoint at all. And more of Moffat to look forward to next season too.
And I know I've piqued your interesting in this fantastic sci-fi film idea, but that's about as far as I've got - apart from the fact it concerns the discovery of a satellite in an iron age dig. A satellite that's not due to be launched for another couple of months. I can tell you're hooked. It'll take about 17 times as long as it took Hitchhikers to come to a multiplex, book those seats now for the next dancetastic sci-fi cross over. Unless the other voices in my head claim copyright over the idea...
‘Good times for a change Seems the luck I’ve had, could make a good man turn bad So, for once in my life, let me…get what I want Lord knows, it would be the first time’.
(With eternal gratitude to Stephen Patrick Morrissey)
I have a difficult admission to make: watching ‘The Doctor Dances’ this past Saturday, I came to a realisation I’ve been avoiding since the show returned on that balmy Easter Saturday: this is no longer the show I grew up with.
There, I’ve said it. And you’ll say it too one day. Because I know you’re out there, the fans who still wish Eccleston had ‘Doctorly’ hair, wore a ‘Doctorly’ coat and spoke in a ‘Doctorly’ accent. And that the show still had the cosy, teatime air of our formative youths, when we knew the Doctor loved his companions - loved humanity - but was far, far too reserved to say as much on screen. Only the departure of Jo or Sarah-Jane would even come close to cracking his alien façade. And we loved him for that; and later hated him for snogging some San Franciscan cardiologist barely five minutes after meeting her.
But like I say, this is no longer the show I grew up with. Is this automatically a bad thing? Well, no, not really. In fact it’s quite marvellous, and I’ll tell you why. Because it’s actually better than the show I grew up with. And before you start assailing me with accusations of heresy and long-term memory loss, I’ll say this. Doctor Who in the year 2005 - at its best - is as good as the Doctor Who we always hoped to see. And it’s as good as the show we would like to have remembered. ‘The memory cheats’, so said a certain former producer of the show. And in this age of video, DVD and seemingly endless early-morning repeats on UK Gold, it’s at last clear that John Nathan-Turner was absolutely right. The memory does cheat.
Now this is not to say that all old Doctor Who is suddenly crap in some way - as any glance at a ‘Genesis’ or a ‘Pyramids’ or a ‘Talons’ will still prove. But a lot of the rest was rather ordinary; not crap, just rather bland. And very, very slow. Not only has the show changed, but we as viewers have changed too. And in ‘The Doctor Dances’ - with its themes of sexual activity, mother love and teenage pregnancies - we realise two things: us long-standing Doctor Who fans have finally grown up. And the very show we idolise has too.
Stephen Moffat, I have an apology to make. I dreaded your two episodes from the moment I heard that your Coupling-scribing pen was going to come anywhere near my show. What I never expected was ninety of the most tightly written, witty and downright emotional minutes of Doctor Who I’ve ever seen. Surely your inaugural effort will stand as a perfect template for the show’s future dalliances with multi-part narratives.
‘Go to your room!’ - Has the Doctor ever dealt with a threat in such an unexpected, but still believable, way? What this cliff-hanger solving solution underlines is that this story is not about yet another malignant, alien force trying to subjugate humanity to its whim. It’s about a crashed, alien ambulance trying to make the best of a bad situation; and inadvertently rewriting the whole of human evolution as a result. There’s no malice, no grand plan. It is, to put it simply, just an accident of nature. And the threat of Armageddon comes not from some death-dealing, gun-toting extra-terrestrial, but from ‘just a little boy who wants his mummy’.
‘I like bananas…bananas are good’ - What a great trio the Doctor, Rose and Jack Harkness make. After the false starts of Mickey and Adam, finally we have a male spanner in the Doctor and Rose works that lives up to the title. The Doctor and Captain Jack’s sparring throughout this episode witnesses some of the most sparkling dialogue in the series so far. And while their escape from the hospital gets a little too clever - both dialogue and action-wise - for its own good at times, the sheer testosterone dripping off these two more than compensates. (Sonic Gun vs. sonic screwdriver; no contest as far as contrived plot devices are concerned). And it’s only a shame when we realise that this three-way contest has just three more episodes to continue to delight us.
‘Why do you assume I don’t…dance?’ - In an episode which apparently had a fairly spurious title, it’s all the more satisfying to find that ‘dancing’ is actually a key theme. From Rose’s teasing of the Doctor, to Captain Jack’s own apparent admission ‘to batting for both sides’, dancing is a metaphor for sex throughout ‘The Doctor Dances’. And that absolutely beautiful scene where Rose almost gets the Doctor to strut his stuff (containing the episode’s funniest line: ‘Rose, I’m trying to resonate concrete’) encapsulates all the awkward tenderness so inherent in the Doctor’s character. Then you’ve got the suggestion that - in the far future - cross-species and same-gender relationships will be de rigueur if humanity (alien or otherwise) is going to find a way to survive. And in case you’re still under the illusion that this is just a kid’s show, how about Nancy revealing Mr Lloyd and butcher Haverstock’s ‘special’ agreement? Though the less said about Captain Jack astride a rather phallic-looking bomb, perhaps the better.
‘I will always be your mummy’ - but where the episode really scores its most unexpected victory is in the revelation that Nancy is in fact the empty child Jack’s underage mother. Who as social drama, here we come. And not just that, but it’s another example of Moffat’s exemplary skill in producing tightly-plotted narratives, as Nancy’s secret makes perfect sense of the mother-hen relationship she enjoys with the refugee children. Florence Hoath’s touching, believable performance as Nancy is just the icing on the cake.
‘Come on - give me a day like this. Give me this one’ - surely the standout quote from this, one of the most quotable Whos ever. And nowhere else (so far) does Christopher Eccleston’s mix of manic delight and heartfelt passion make him more like the Doctor than in those simply magical words. War-scarred in ‘Dalek’, emotionally detached to Rose’s oh-so human reactions in ‘Father’s Day’, here is the clearest hint yet of the beautiful, tortured soul that resides beneath those twin beating hearts. Because - finally - here is a good day. And, as he poignantly tell us all, ‘Everybody Lives…just this once’.
Disappointments? Well, it would have been nice to have Richard Wilson do a bit more, seeing as his was a piece of inspired casting. But given the lack of fat on Moffat’s two episodes, surely Dr Constantine’s virtual writing-out following his memorably grotesque metamorphosis in part one was an absolute necessity. And he does at least contribute to one of the episode’s funniest lines (which, despite ripping off Star Trek IV’s kidney joke, is still very, very funny). And speaking of Star Trek, anyone else reminded of ‘The Cage’ (Trek’s pilot show of some forty years ago) when the nanogenes’ misguided attempt to repair human DNA results in an unexpected side-effect?
But enough of that. I haven’t even mentioned the sublime moments of direction by James Hawes that absolutely raise this episode to the top draw (the inspired - and repeated - device of having tapes stop and typewriters continue to signify the empty child’s presence). And how even a potentially clichéd scene like Jack’s inevitable TARDIS-rescue is given stylistic innovation by that drawback which takes us through the Police Box doors. In Joe Ahearne’s regrettable absence next season, surely Hawes will be number one name on the directorial list given these two, stunning, debut performances.
And, as a final message to all those who still aren’t convinced, don’t you even dare to cringe as Eccleston finally gets his mojo in that heart-warming climax. Because you may think you have all the moves, but this episode proves - if ever it was needed - that this Doctor can indeed dance…
Outpost Gallifrey has overnight ratings for 'The Doctor Dances' etc.
Strictly Dance Fever - 4.2m (28.8%)
Dr Who - 6.17m (35.9%)
X-Men - 3.2m (19.9%)National Lottery - 4.98m (27.2%)
So still beating ITV for the timeslot, and with a good audience share. Yes, the number of actual viewers watching is down, but it'll be worth waiting for the aggregated BARB finals before worrying about that. It should also be noted that the BBC itself suggested people video the episode and then show it to their kids once they've reviewed it, due to the higher horror content, so that'll help to a degree.
