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5TH APRIL 2008
(50-MINUTE EPISODE)
My brother lives
hundreds of miles away from me
and so
I don’t get to see him
and his two
children as often as I’d like.
However, this year it just so happened that his youngest son’s birthday
fell on the weekend that the new season of Doctor Who began
transmission. My parents decided to throw a party
for him at theirs and so I found, for the first time since Rose was
originally broadcast, I wasn’t watching Doctor Who sat on my own
with a cup of a tea and an overweight cat doing its best to feign interest. Instead, I
was watching the show with a group of people aged between eight and
eighty-eight,
and - irrespective of whether they consider themselves fans of the series
or not - every single one of them loved this episode, and I did
too.
My
elder sister laughed more than I’ve seen her laugh
in years as the
Doctor and Donna each carried out
their separate
investigations into Adipose Industries,
apparently
oblivious to each other’s presence. Russell
T Davies’
riotous script must have been a delight for
David Tennant
and Catherine Tennant to play about
with,
particularly in the early scenes. Their comic timing
is exquisite.
Two Christmases
ago, when we first met Donna Noble
in The Runaway Bride, her
character came across
as being feisty and aggressive – and, to be fair, a
bit
thick. In Partners in Crime,
however, although Donna’s
more forthright
qualities are still clearly evident, she doesn’t come across as being in
the least bit stupid.
In fact, many of
her cutting remarks to the Doctor are
well considered
and even rather droll – “I’m waving at
fat”; “charity
Martha”; and the comment about him not having changed his suit immediately
spring to mind.
“I’m waving at fat.”
Nevertheless,
the most palpable difference between the Donna of The Runaway Bride
and the Donna of Partners in Crime is the character’s depth. Given
thirteen episodes in which
to tell her story, Davies takes the time to
properly introduce us to her family and her ordinary little life. I have
always thought that one of Davies’ greatest strengths as a writer is his
ability to imbue his characters with a great sense of realism, and in
Partners in Crime this is more apparent than ever. The quirks
of Donna’s family are so true to life; I love Donna’s mother’s snide
comments to her like “no one’s unemployed except you”, and how her
grandfather is “always up the hill”. In terms of screen
time, Donna’s mother and grandfather probably only get a few minutes
between them, yet by the end of the episode the audience feels like they
know them both so very well.
Unfortunately
for the Wolverson clan though, just as Donna went ‘up the hill’ to share a
delightful scene with her grandfather, Wilfred Mott, the heavens opened,
bombarding my parents’ satellite dish with hailstones and interrupting
transmission. Thankfully I’d already seen the most important parts of the
scene by way of the epic trailer that hit cinemas earlier this year and,
as my nine-year old nephew pointed out, “it was only a pathos bit anyway”.
I spy another pundit in the making…
Anyway, having
now had a chance to watch the scene in full, I have to say that I
thoroughly
enjoyed it; pathos and all. Bernard Cribbins, who first appeared as this character in
Voyage of the Damned long before it was decided that he would turn out
to be Donna’s grandfather, brings to life a remarkably good-natured and
instantly likeable character – an old man with his daft ideas, his
telescope, and his little book. An old man who scours the night skies for UFOs, yet misses them as they sail past just behind him!
Through this affable old man, we learn how shitty a time Donna
has had since her adventure with the Doctor; all those grand plans she
made that have come to nought.
And then, in a
real masterstroke, Davies immediately switches to the TARDIS console room
where the Doctor is rattling off technobabble, showing off to his
companion. Then he looks up, and he remembers. He doesn’t have a
companion anymore. If anything, this is a more heart-rending scene than
the one that preceded it.
“You want to mate? You’re not mating with me, sunshine!
I’m not having any of that nonsense”.
It seems to take
a long time for the Doctor and Donna to find each other in this episode,
but when they do, every other line is pure gold. The way that she shouts
at him and drags
him around like a rag doll is absolutely hilarious to
watch. It’s also incredibly refreshing to see the Doctor with somebody who
is neither a bona fide love interest nor a young woman with a
schoolgirl crush on him, but someone more mature. Someone who realises
just how peculiar and how alien he is, who appreciates him simply
for what he can offer her in terms of travel and adventure. On the
strength of this episode, if this new season promises to be anything, it
promises to be fun.
It’s not all
laughing and joking though; the script is littered with some delicate,
underplayed moments of genuine poignancy. And from what I gather from Tennant
and Tate’s recent interview on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, as
well as last night’s episode of Doctor Who Confidential, this new
side to Donna will become more pronounced as the series progresses.
All the same,
the scene where the Doctor and Donna see each other for the first time and
furtively mime a conversation (whilst the villainous Miss Foster
interrogates a meddlesome journalist) is perhaps the funniest scene in the
history of the series! It’s uproarious; Nannan Wolverson nearly spat
her teeth out she was laughing so hard. In a sense, Miss Foster’s school-mistressy
line to the pair - “are we interrupting you?” - says a hell of the lot
about this episode. Miss Foster is in fact interrupting the
episode; her low-key galactic felony merely
a vehicle for
Davies to reunite the Doctor and Donna.
The plot of this
episode felt a bit like something you might find in an episode of The Sarah Jane
Adventures. It’s clever, entertaining, and certainly not without its
unsettling moments, but it is hardly the most intricate Doctor Who
story ever told. This, however, is by no means
a criticism – a hefty
storyline would have probably burdened this episode far more than it would
have benefited it. In fact, of all the revived series episodes that have had
the duty of opening a season, Partners in Crime is my favourite by
a significant margin; it’s just so damned enjoyable. That said, it does
have a slight advantage over at least two of its fore-runners in that,
thanks to The Runaway Bride, it didn’t have to explain all of the ‘Doctor
Who basics’ again. This isn’t so much a new beginning; it’s
more of a continuation. Even Murray Gold’s incidental music flows straight
out of The Runaway Bride to underscore Donna’s more potent scenes.
And what’s more,
the Adipose are just something else. Somewhat predictably, as soon as one
of the little fellers appeared on the screen, every single woman in the
room went “aah”. For my part, I was impressed with the incredibly high
standard of the CGI – the Mill have sur-passed themselves once again.
The crowd scenes are just gorgeous, as is the Adiposean saucer. But what
impressed me most of all was the idea behind the Adipose; this notion that
a pill could take somebody’s excess fat and turn it into a cute little
life form. Brilliant.
However, at
first I was a bit perplexed as to what the Doctor’s issue with Adipose
Industries was. Miss Foster’s transgression seemed to be more one of
omission than invasion; she had simply neglected to inform her customers
what would happen to their fat once it had
left their bodies:
whilst she did tell them that it would “just walk away”, she skipped over
the rather key fact that it would be walking a way as a sentient being.
Even so though, I reckon
at least half the fatties taking her pills would have
consented to do so anyway even if they were aware of the consequences –
where’s the harm? I thought. However, I was soon put right through
poor old Stacey Campbell’s rather graphic demise. There’s the harm.
“It is a beautifully fat country. And believe me,
I’ve travelled a long way to find obesity on this scale.”
All the same,
there is remarkably little for the Doctor and Donna to do here
save for sparring with Sarah Lancashire’s (Coronation Street) cool,
calm and collected Miss Foster. Even the Adiposean First Family clean up
after themselves, collecting their offspring from Earth and putting Miss
Foster to the sword in the process.
And then we come
to episode’s really quite staggering ending, which can be summed up simply
by the word ‘Rose’. Now there was no chance in hell that the production
team were going to be able to keep Billie Piper’s return to the series a
secret, and so quite naturally they didn’t bother - they even hyped it to
a certain degree. But even the most speculative internet rumours didn’t
have Rose showing up until much later in the run. Yet here she is.
Day one. Rose
Tyler. Able to walk between universes with apparent ease. David Tennant
promised a “prickle up the spine” with this episode, and that’s exactly
what we got. If I were Donna though, I’d have been peeved that Rose took
off back from whence she came with-out passing the message on about the
car keys.
Like
Last of the Time Lords last year, Partners in Crime was
allocated a slightly longer fifty-minute slot for transmission – and a
controversially early slot at that – but even at that length the episode
seemed to fly by in heartbeat. If you’re fortunate enough to be able
to see past the overwhelmingly entertaining banter between Tennant and Tate,
Partners in Crime is a wonderful reflection on the real life danger
attached to faddy diets and miracle weight-loss treatments. And it has
sonic pens against sonic screwdrivers; outstanding CGI fat blobs; not to
mention sweeping, cinematic action sequences. Best of all though,
Partners in Crime is
a family affair
- there really is something for everybody in these fifty-minutes. Now how
many television shows can say that?
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