1)"It's not twelve hours - it's twelve months."  It was interesting to see one of the Doctor's "time goof-ups" make this kind of trouble for Rose. Really, you'd think this kind of thing would happen more often, considering the TARDIS' notorious unreliability.  It was good to see them continue exploring the effects time travel might have on someone's life. I particularly liked the interactions between Jackie and Mickey. I'd forgotten how these were not always the most likable people in the world, in the early days. The above said, they pretty much ignored this "missing year" in future stories, as far as I recall. It reminds of a Golden Age JSA story in which the Society was put to sleep for a year, and then went back to their lives without any particularly drastic consequences afterwards.

 

2)Some interesting developments in the relationship between the Doctor and Jackie here, as well, as she tries to warm to him, and he seems outright hostile to the notion of getting close to Rose's family. "Don't you dare make this place domestic!" Of course, it's also Jackie who rats the Doctor out to the Feds, or who ever it was.

 

3)Some interesting notes in the relationship between the Doctor and Mickey, as well.  The Doctor is flat-out mean to Mickey at times, and we get the first instances of him calling Mickey "Ricky" and Mickey the Idiot."  On the other hand, he's the first one to suggest that Mickey come along at the end. I might note that Mickey starts to show his potential here, as well, so you can see how capable he can be.

 

4)The Slitheen are not my favorite heels, but they were sufficiently creepy, here. Sort of like giant, mutant babies.That said, I could've done without all the fart humor, and general "jolly evil fat people" bits. I got a bit of  a Scooby-Doo vibe from some of the chase scenes. "Raxacoriciofallapatorius" sounds as though it ought to be sung by Dick Van Dyke.

 

5)And we got the introduction of Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North. I'd only ever seen Penelope Wilton in Shaun of the Dead, but I enjoyed seeing her again here. I especially liked her line about "You pass it to the left first" during the confrontation with the Slitheen. And the Doctor says, "Harriet Jones, I like you"   and calls her "the Architect of Britain's Golden Age". We'll see how long that lasts.

 

6)We get what is essentially a triple cliffhanger, with the Doctor, Rose and Harriet, and Jackie all in mortal peril, only to have the Doctor's cliffhanger resolved by the somewhat anticlimactic solution of him being somewhat tougher than humans. Of course, the "Next Time" bit pretty much gives it away that they all survive, anyhow.

 

7)I'd forgotten how heart-wrenching alot of this early stuff was, "I could save the world and lose you", and so on. It's alot more "soap opera" than Doctor Who used to be in the old days.

 

8)Some Random Thoughts:

  • "You're nine hundred years old."  He's lying about his age again.
  • I like the touch of the spaceship having a truck horn.
  • We get what I believe is our first Trinity Wells sighting.
  • I liked the Blue Peter gag. I most likely didn't get that when I first saw it, but I've subsequently learned some of the history between the two programs from watching DVD extras.
  • Ah, Doctor Sato, hmmm.... I gather her character here was eventually retconned to be the same character that this actress later played on Torchwood.
  • Wouldn't the date of humanity's "official" first contact with aliens be the sor tof thing the Doctor would know after all these years?
  • He never used to give out TARDIS keys.
  • I liked the space pig.
  • "UNIT - United Nations Intelligence Taskforce" - this is before the UN made them change it.
  • I'm not sure I buy this business of the UK giving control of its nukes over to the UN.
  • Apparently, there was an actual Mr. Chicken.

 

9)Some Interesting Lines:

  • "I am a doctor!" "Then prove it, mate -stitch this!"
  • "You're so gay."  I gather that caused a little hooraw.
  • "Damn. You've seen through my cunning plan."
  • "He had a wife, a mistress and a young farmer."
  • "Take me to your leader."
  • "Excuse me, do you mind not farting while I'm saving the world?" "Would you rather silent but deadly?"
  • "I need to be naked." "Rejoice in your body - it is magnificent."
  • "For all I know, he eats grass and safety pins and things."
  • "There's a scientific explanation for that - you're thick."

 

Overall

I hadn't watched this in awhile - I liked it better than I'd remembered liking it the first time. In some ways, I think the whole Slitheen plot served as a background to the soap opera elements.

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  • On TARDIS Keys and Space Pigs

    Susan had a key in “The Sensorites,” didn’t she? (Still fresh in my mind.) Also, Dodo Chaplet had a key, too, IIRC. Weren’t Ben and Polly returning Dodo’s key when they slipped on board?

    Just as the Ood had an antecedent in the Sensorites, I think the “space pig” did, too, in… oh, I don’t remember which episode, but it was toward the end of Tom Baker’s run. I remember watching whatever-episode-it-was for the first time and thinking to myself that the space pigs hearkened back to it.

  • Susan had a key - I didn't think of her because I guess I thought of her as "family", and thus somehow more entitled to a key.  I think you may be right about Dodo's key - I haven't watched "The War Machines" in awhile. 

     

    As far as the Baker thing goes - are you perhaps thinking of the Peking Homunculus from "Talons of Weng-Chiang", which had the cerebral cortex of a pig?

  • Pigs in Space!

  • I liked Tony Blair's corpse falling out of the cupboard.

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