10.11: Love and Monsters

In which we see how the other half lives, and worry about RTD’s views on female sexuality.

Broadcast: June 2006

Watched: August 2021

“We forget because we must” –  RTD stealing from himself again. That’’s in Damaged Goods [RTD’s 1996 Who novel, the first thing he ever officially wrote for the franchise].

Anyway. Brilliant. By showing us Elton’s perspective on earlier episodes, I think it’s the first new series episode to muck around with narrative form, unreliable narrators and that? (Well, Rose does sort of, I guess). Feels like it’s a genre mainstay –  TNG: Lower Decks; BtVS: The Zeppo –  but RTD makes it about how shit it would be to be a minor character in a Doctor Who story, and in the process makes it a sort of meditation on loneliness.

And I’d forgotten how upsetting it gets –  I remembered the wacky stuff, not the sadness. “I’m so sorry you can’t touch me” is genuinely quite heartbreaking, as is the flashback when Elton remembers his mum.

It’s also probably Jackie’s best episode: you really feel how much she just wants to be someone’s, anyone’s, priority. (“Cos it’s never me, is it?” is an echo of what Mickey said in Rise... which makes me wonder if it’s a deliberate theme this season.) When she tries to seduce Elton, the song playing is Unbreak My Heart, and there’s something genuinely sad-making about her deciding not to bang him after all just because she gets a call from Rose. RTD seems to think there’s something a bit unseemly about someone’s mother having sex, which is a bit problematic-y. For god’s sake man let the woman live her life.

Mind you, I had it in mind there was a big age gap between Jackie and Elton, and Warren’s only two years younger, so maybe I’m the gross one.

Other things:

• Different LINDA members respond to the Doctor in different ways: criticism, analysis, fan fic, etc.

• Victory Kennedy is clearly influenced by a number of different people from Doctor Who fandom, who I’m not going to name here because defamation law is a thing. The fact he goes northern when in his disgusting alien form is utterly hilarious.

• Rose comforting Elton after she only found him to scream at him is quite touching.

• The ending, messed up and gross as it is, does fit with the idea that just touching the Doctor’s world will fuck you up.

• Funny to think there was a period in which it was illegal to make a BBC programme without casting Marc Warren. Whatever happened to him?