ScuzzBuster.net
It's Crunchy. It's Nice.
Doctor Who: Turn Left
June 22 2008 01:57 Filed in:
Television
It’s
starts interestingly enough. Through some forces we don’t quite
understand, Donna is put back into a position to relive a small
moment in her life where a single decision was a catalyst for a
series of events that changed the course of life on Earth. That
event was simply making a right turn instead of a left one at an
intersection.
From this point on, we relive Donna’s life in pieces going back to The Runaway Bride, the story where she is introduced – of course it was a full season later before she came to the program as a regular. The first and most important impact of her decision is that she never meets the Doctor and as a consequence he dies in the first 10 minutes of the episode.
All of this transpired as kind of a recap of key moments from the show from a new perspective as we interweave Rose Tyler back into Doctor Who mythos. I hate to say it, but even though it’s great to see Billie Piper back on the show again, an ultra-confident, in-charge Rose just isn’t quite as interesting as the Rose we left. It’s a necessary evil though. If we are to believe that she is some big shot with Torchwood in her alternate universe then it would be an insult to the audience to not have shown growth in the character.
Some of the fun of this story is that we get to see glimpses of people and events from the show’s past from a different perspective, as well as some references to Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. None of the non-Doctor Who references are vital, but they are at least fun. For a long term Doctor Who fan, for instance, the death of Sarah Jane Smith seems almost unthinkable…along with a fair amount of other death and craziness from the alternate timeline.
As some of you know, this is the season’s obligatory “doctor-lite” episode. Somewhere in the second half of each season we now have a story that does not feature the main character prominently. The reasons are not worth exploring here. Last year, we got the outstanding Blink in this slot. The year before, we got Love and Monsters, arguably one of the lowest points in the 40+ year history of the program. Turn Left falls into the average category or slightly above.
The only real problem with it is that there doesn’t seem to be much point in any of it other than just to reintroduce Rose Tyler and to tease the story arc conclusion which is coming up over the next two weeks.
What really gives the episode its punch is the final couple of minutes where we pick up Donna trying to recollect the events of this alternate time-line. As we feel the episode winding down it suddenly explodes and catapults us into high emotion and expectation for the next two episodes and thrusting us back in a shocking way to events that happened way back in series 1.
I would have to rank this episode as somewhat satisfying, but not outstanding. Apart from the suprising ending, we do get to see fantastic performances from Catherine Tate as Donna, Bernard Cribbins and Jacqueline King, who I have been very lukewarm on in this series as Donna’s mother, but gives her finest turn in the role yet. If nothing else, we finish with a strong sense that the next two weeks could be pretty exciting as RTD closes out his final regular season as producer of the show.
From this point on, we relive Donna’s life in pieces going back to The Runaway Bride, the story where she is introduced – of course it was a full season later before she came to the program as a regular. The first and most important impact of her decision is that she never meets the Doctor and as a consequence he dies in the first 10 minutes of the episode.
All of this transpired as kind of a recap of key moments from the show from a new perspective as we interweave Rose Tyler back into Doctor Who mythos. I hate to say it, but even though it’s great to see Billie Piper back on the show again, an ultra-confident, in-charge Rose just isn’t quite as interesting as the Rose we left. It’s a necessary evil though. If we are to believe that she is some big shot with Torchwood in her alternate universe then it would be an insult to the audience to not have shown growth in the character.
Some of the fun of this story is that we get to see glimpses of people and events from the show’s past from a different perspective, as well as some references to Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. None of the non-Doctor Who references are vital, but they are at least fun. For a long term Doctor Who fan, for instance, the death of Sarah Jane Smith seems almost unthinkable…along with a fair amount of other death and craziness from the alternate timeline.
As some of you know, this is the season’s obligatory “doctor-lite” episode. Somewhere in the second half of each season we now have a story that does not feature the main character prominently. The reasons are not worth exploring here. Last year, we got the outstanding Blink in this slot. The year before, we got Love and Monsters, arguably one of the lowest points in the 40+ year history of the program. Turn Left falls into the average category or slightly above.
The only real problem with it is that there doesn’t seem to be much point in any of it other than just to reintroduce Rose Tyler and to tease the story arc conclusion which is coming up over the next two weeks.
What really gives the episode its punch is the final couple of minutes where we pick up Donna trying to recollect the events of this alternate time-line. As we feel the episode winding down it suddenly explodes and catapults us into high emotion and expectation for the next two episodes and thrusting us back in a shocking way to events that happened way back in series 1.
I would have to rank this episode as somewhat satisfying, but not outstanding. Apart from the suprising ending, we do get to see fantastic performances from Catherine Tate as Donna, Bernard Cribbins and Jacqueline King, who I have been very lukewarm on in this series as Donna’s mother, but gives her finest turn in the role yet. If nothing else, we finish with a strong sense that the next two weeks could be pretty exciting as RTD closes out his final regular season as producer of the show.