Pop Vultures

Doctor Who, S04 E01-02: Partners in Crime and The Fires of Pompeii

Okay, I was wrong. Not once but several times did I declare, on this very site, that Catherine Tate (whom I described as “shouty and annoying”) would be a disaster when she returned to Doctor Who as the Doctor’s new companion. And yet…well, after two episodes, she’s not really annoying me so far. In fact, in the first episode she was pretty likeable. She got a bit irritating in the second one, but she’s still doing a lot better than I expected.

Want more? Recap and spoilers of the first two episodes after the jump.

Tate’s Donna last appeared screeching her way through the 2006 Christmas special, The Runaway Bride. A year and a half later, she’s changed quite a bit. Ever since her encounter with the Doctor, Donna has been regretting her decision to return to her normal life rather than heading off on the Tardis. The Doctor offered her a glimpse of a different sort of life, filled with strange, wonderful things, and she’ll never be satisfied with her old world now. Only her grandfather, played by the wonderful Bernard Cribbins (reprising his delightful role as Bert the newspaper seller in the 2007 Christmas special) understands her need for a wider, more exciting life - he spends his evenings up at his allotment, looking for UFOs through his telescope. To the chagrin of her mother, who’s infuriated by her now unemployed daughter’s seeming laziness, she spends her days investigating strange phenomena, hoping that some day the Doctor will turn up. And when he finally does, she almost misses him.

The first episode, ‘Partners in Crime’, begins with some elegantly shot scenes in which the Doctor and Donna, each unaware of the other’s presence, are investigating the HQ of a new weightloss pill, Adipose. They repeatedly miss each other as they snoop around the office, although it seems they’ve both caught the eye of Adipose director Miss Foster, played with wonderful imperiousness by Sarah Lancashire (it’s a long way from Raquel in Coronation Street). Donna charms one of the workers into giving her the addresses of some customers (along with the free pendent given to each one), but when she visits one woman, she discovers that Adipose does make its users to lose weight – because their fat is turning into cuddly little creatures, which extract themselves from their human hosts every night and toddle happily away.

Much of the objection to Tate’s casting was centered on her shouting and general noisiness. So it has to be an intentional joke that when Donna really does start shouting in this episode, she’s behind a soundproof door and we mercifully can’t hear her. Both she and the Doctor return to the Adipose HQ under cover of darkness and are both spying on Miss Foster, who has captured an investigative journalist in her office - Donna’s outside the door, and the Doctor’s on the other side of the room, outside the window. When they finally see each other across the crowded office, it’s a genuinely brilliant moment - and when Donna starts shrieking in excitement, we (and the Doctor) can’t hear a thing. Miss Foster, of course, has noticed this little exchange, and unleashes her goons. The Doctor and Donna are reunited, and Tate does a great job of conveying Donna’s sheer joy at finally getting what’s she’s been waiting for: another chance at adventure.

There’s a lot of running around, and it’s a lot of fun, especially when it’s revealed that Miss Foster has a sonic pen which allows her to combat the Doctor’s ever-useful sonic screwdriver (and that’s a nice joke for the fans who were starting to object to the Doctor’s constance reliance on that gadget). There’s a sense of genuine tension when we discover that Miss Foster has been using Adipose clients as incubators, making them essentially surrogate parents for the thousands of children of the royal family of Miss Foster’s native planet. Now she’s been rumbled, she decides that she’s going to accelerate the programme - which means the Adipose users are going to totally dissolve into bouncy little creatures. Around London, unfortunate customers are expelling thousands of little Adipose, who are all making their way towards the HQ. Can Donna and the Doctor stop them in time? Of course they can, although the Doctor initially despairs when he realises that Miss Foste is controlling the Adipose through the pendants, and he can’t stop her without one. The looks of joyful dawning triumph on his and Donna’s faces when she produces her pendant are genuinely wonderful. So Miss Foster is beaten, and the cute little Adipose are beamed up to their mothership (it passes over Bert’s allotment, but he’s looking the other way with his headphones on at the time). Alas, there’s no room on the ship for Miss Foster, who has failed in her mission and, despite the Doctor’s efforts to save her, she’s dropped to her death mid-beam.

So what’s going to happen to Donna now? Why, she’s joining the Doctor, of course, and to his bewilderment she’s already packed and ready to go - the boot of her car is filled with everything from rucksacks to hatboxes. And now, the issue that threatened to wreck the programme rears its head again - does Donna fancy the Doctor? There was an amusing moment earlier when she expressed faux pity for Martha’s unrequited passion for the Doctor, but lest we suspect that she was protesting too much, her genuine outrage when she mishears the Doctor’s declaration that he “just wants a mate” (”You want TO MATE?” she shrieks, and yes, she’s shrieking, but it was actually quite amusing, if predictable) puts those fears to rest. So she dumps the car keys in a bin for her mum to collect and asks some random blonde woman to look out for her mum to point her in the direction of the keys. When the blonde woman turned around, I actually shrieked myself. For she was none other than Billie Piper! Yes, Rose is back! I had heard rumours, but I expected a series finale cameo or something along those lines.

I was so excited that I almost missed the genuinely rather sweet scene in which the Doctor and Donna take off and he asks where she wants to go. “About two and a half miles that way,” she says, and they fly over Bernard Cribbins’s allotment and wave at him from on high, which understandably makes him dance for joy. In fact, there’s a lot of joy in this episode, which is probably why I liked it.

And I liked the next one too, but not quite as much, although that might be partly because of my bitterness. You see, Donna and the Doctor have gone back to what they think is ancient Rome but turns out to be Pompeii. A wealthy marble merchant (the always excellent Peter Capaldi) ends up buying the Tardis as a piece of modern art. His name is Caecilius, and he and his family are actually characters from the standard secondary school Latin text books the Cambridge Latin Course. There are two standard Latin text books in this part of the world, and I did the other one. So although I appreciated the coolness of putting those characters in, I kept wishing it was my own old pals/enemies Cornelia, Marcus and their famed pet Hylax the dog. Anyway, the daughter of the house, Evelina, has strangely accurate visions, and she’s not the only one - the city is full of seers, all of whom are blessed or cursed with the gift of second sight. She’s also part of a strange sisterhood of priestesses, and they’re after the Doctor. Another seer, Lucius, is putting together a mysterious stone circuit board. Strangely enough, none of these uncanny prophets have predicted the impending volcano eruption - which is due to happen the next day. This is probably because their powers are coming from an alien race of lava creatures, the Pyroviles, who are lurking under the city, of course, and as a result, the people are turning into stone. The creatures have been trapped under the volcano for centuries, but now they want to escape - and they want to turn all humans into Pyroviles.

One of the episode’s strongest themes is the heavy burden of responsibility that the Doctor must bear. As he battles both lava beasts and Lucius and his minions, he realises that he must choose between saving the world and saving the residents of Pompeii, as the only way to stop the Pyroviles is to force the volcano to errupt. Inititally, Donna can’t understand how he can just let everyone in the city die, but when she does grasp the Time Lord’s responsibility to history itself, she helps him trigger the eruption, even though she believes she’ll probably die herself. She does shout a lot, but she’s very brave, and she’s willing to die to save other people, which kind of makes up for the shouting. She’s the moral heart of the episode, desperately trying to persuade the city’s residents to head away from the beach and certain death, genuinely anguished at the prospect of any of them dying. We know from past experience that the Doctor can be very tough when he has to be, but when Donna begs him to save just a few people from the volcano, he silently gives in, and they head back to save poor old Caecilius and family. So they all live happily ever after. Well, all the characters we care about.

So, two episodes in, Series 4 is looking good. In fact, with the prospect of more Martha and Rose, it’s looking like it’ll be the best (new) series yet. Although I thought Catherine Tate would make it all go downhill, so you never know. I just know I can’t wait to find out.

What about you? What do you think of series so far?