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Doctor Who: Midnight
June 16 2008 01:30 Filed in:
Television
The preview for Midnight looked pretty filler-ish to be honest. A little bland looking, but on the other hand, sometimes we can get a gem when a story is written completely around the characters and some simple circumstances. This is what we have here.
Nothing earthshaking about this
particular 44 minutes or so of Doctor Who, but we get a little bit
of a science fiction turn of some classic Twilight
Zone.
I’m sure most are going to draw comparisons about the classic 1963 Twilight Zone with Shatner and the goblin on the wing of the plane episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, but that’s not what this episode is
derived from at all.
Any Twilight
Zone fan worth
his/her weight would instantly recognize Midnight as a pretty damned good retelling of
the The Monsters
are Due on Maple Street from the first TZ season in 1960 (see
B/W photo right). In that episode, a meteor falls to Earth and a
series of odd (but not extraordinary) events slowly starting
pitting several neighbors against each other in a web of suspicion
that drives them eventually to irrational and violent
behavior.
In Midnight, we have the same issue. The Doctor, companionless as Donna stays back to relax and sun-bathe (equipped inexplicably at the pool with an old style corded phone with no cord…come on prop department at least COVER the empty standard phone cord jack!), takes a tram across the airless planet Midnight with a handful of other passengers to see a natural spectacle on a sight-seeing tour. As the tram stalls, some creature or entity starts banging on the outside of the tram eventually forcing it’s way inside and in possessing one of the passengers. So begins a quaint psychological drama that begins pitting the passengers against one-another as they try to determine what to do. Hysteria eventually begins to hold as they become suspicious of one another, and in particular the Doctor, who is overtly protective of the alleged victim of the possession while the rest just want to toss her out into the airless planet with a sun who’s rays will cook you to dust in a matter of seconds.
It works. It’s good. Next to the two-parter of Silence/Forest, this is easily the best of the season so far and one of RTD’s strongest scripts in the first four seasons. I experienced very real tense discomfort as the situation broke down over the course of the episode and by the end I really bought hook line and sinker into the drama as the passengers finally all gang up against the Doctor.
Maybe it was filler from a budget standpoint, but a top notch script that feels strangely much more rich and smart than many of Russell’s efforts from the past few years. New WHO is really best when it goes outside the box, so to speak, and plays with the established formula of the show, which this does. If nothing else, one of the weaknesses of the new series is that easily falls into a pattern week after week and becomes tiresome when they go back to the well over and over again for the same style of story. The show isn’t just better, it really excels when we get these type of episodes that just chuck the formula out of the window.
Also, I almost always walk away from a story with a warmer feeling when we end on a more somber or melancholy note as we did with this one. Tennant’s passion and humor as the Doctor really give his more serious and desperate moments a much more meaningful tone and he pulls it off well.
Of course, we also have the intermittently obligatory advancement of the season story arc, this time with a vision of Rose Tyler appearing in the background directly behind the Doctor on the view screen in the tram. No blinking and missing this one, a blind dingo should have seen this one.
If anything troubles me lately, it’s this tendency for the last couple of series to start out weak and build over the last few weeks as the story arc pulls slowly into focus. This year, it hasn’t been quite as pronounced as series 3, partly because Catherine Tate is generally delivering more interesting performances than Freema Agyemon did last year and is overall a stronger companion and personality in the show. However, it’s still been a disappointing run overall up until Silence in the Library.
Now we get the return of Rose next week. I don’t know, I’m a little apprehensive about it now. I love Billie Piper. I credit her, the strength of Rose Tyler and her dynamic with both Tennant and Eccleston’s Doctors for the much of the success of the new show. The end of Doomsday tore my heart out and I was actually more destroyed by the loss of the character as a regular on the show more than the touching goodbye in her final scene. Now, however, with further exploration of the Doctor, especially with the advent of River Song into the mythos of Doctor Who, I feel that we’ve moved on from Rose, which is not to say that I don’t welcome the character back…just that it better be a damned good story that brings her back. I really am hopeful that we get to see RTD bring the closure to his final regular season as producer to a close with a bang before the semi-gap year.
I may not be a huge fan of RTD’s episodes, but as fans, we should definitely give thanks to him for bringing the show back with more success than we could have ever imagined. Those wishing good riddance as he gives up the reigns of the program should be ashamed of themselves. I’m not anxious to see him go, but I’m excited to see what Moffat does with the program in 2010. If it were anyone else but Moffat taking over, I’d be fairly concerned. No complaints with RTD this week, though. Cheers, Russell, for a damned taught bit of drama for us this weekend!
I’m sure most are going to draw comparisons about the classic 1963 Twilight Zone with Shatner and the goblin on the wing of the plane episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, but that’s not what this episode is
In Midnight, we have the same issue. The Doctor, companionless as Donna stays back to relax and sun-bathe (equipped inexplicably at the pool with an old style corded phone with no cord…come on prop department at least COVER the empty standard phone cord jack!), takes a tram across the airless planet Midnight with a handful of other passengers to see a natural spectacle on a sight-seeing tour. As the tram stalls, some creature or entity starts banging on the outside of the tram eventually forcing it’s way inside and in possessing one of the passengers. So begins a quaint psychological drama that begins pitting the passengers against one-another as they try to determine what to do. Hysteria eventually begins to hold as they become suspicious of one another, and in particular the Doctor, who is overtly protective of the alleged victim of the possession while the rest just want to toss her out into the airless planet with a sun who’s rays will cook you to dust in a matter of seconds.
It works. It’s good. Next to the two-parter of Silence/Forest, this is easily the best of the season so far and one of RTD’s strongest scripts in the first four seasons. I experienced very real tense discomfort as the situation broke down over the course of the episode and by the end I really bought hook line and sinker into the drama as the passengers finally all gang up against the Doctor.
Maybe it was filler from a budget standpoint, but a top notch script that feels strangely much more rich and smart than many of Russell’s efforts from the past few years. New WHO is really best when it goes outside the box, so to speak, and plays with the established formula of the show, which this does. If nothing else, one of the weaknesses of the new series is that easily falls into a pattern week after week and becomes tiresome when they go back to the well over and over again for the same style of story. The show isn’t just better, it really excels when we get these type of episodes that just chuck the formula out of the window.
Also, I almost always walk away from a story with a warmer feeling when we end on a more somber or melancholy note as we did with this one. Tennant’s passion and humor as the Doctor really give his more serious and desperate moments a much more meaningful tone and he pulls it off well.
Of course, we also have the intermittently obligatory advancement of the season story arc, this time with a vision of Rose Tyler appearing in the background directly behind the Doctor on the view screen in the tram. No blinking and missing this one, a blind dingo should have seen this one.
If anything troubles me lately, it’s this tendency for the last couple of series to start out weak and build over the last few weeks as the story arc pulls slowly into focus. This year, it hasn’t been quite as pronounced as series 3, partly because Catherine Tate is generally delivering more interesting performances than Freema Agyemon did last year and is overall a stronger companion and personality in the show. However, it’s still been a disappointing run overall up until Silence in the Library.
Now we get the return of Rose next week. I don’t know, I’m a little apprehensive about it now. I love Billie Piper. I credit her, the strength of Rose Tyler and her dynamic with both Tennant and Eccleston’s Doctors for the much of the success of the new show. The end of Doomsday tore my heart out and I was actually more destroyed by the loss of the character as a regular on the show more than the touching goodbye in her final scene. Now, however, with further exploration of the Doctor, especially with the advent of River Song into the mythos of Doctor Who, I feel that we’ve moved on from Rose, which is not to say that I don’t welcome the character back…just that it better be a damned good story that brings her back. I really am hopeful that we get to see RTD bring the closure to his final regular season as producer to a close with a bang before the semi-gap year.
I may not be a huge fan of RTD’s episodes, but as fans, we should definitely give thanks to him for bringing the show back with more success than we could have ever imagined. Those wishing good riddance as he gives up the reigns of the program should be ashamed of themselves. I’m not anxious to see him go, but I’m excited to see what Moffat does with the program in 2010. If it were anyone else but Moffat taking over, I’d be fairly concerned. No complaints with RTD this week, though. Cheers, Russell, for a damned taught bit of drama for us this weekend!