10.3: Tooth & Claw
In which things get a bit hairy.
Broadcast: April 2006
Watched: July 2021
Watched the next three in a burst in one night, which is oddly pleasing as they’re a single block, I think? Anyway.
“Where the HELL have you been?”
Now this is how you do an album track, there’s loads of good stuff in here. The Crouching Tiger stuff doesn’t fit, but who cares, that’s Doctor Who, and it does look cool. It’s really tightly plotted and directed – the psychic paper is used as a very effective shortcut, and a lot’s done through visuals rather than dialogue (the sequence which cuts between Rose looking at clothes and the drugging of guards is a really efficient way of moving the plot forward). The way Robert and Isobel briefly see each other twice, showing obvious affection and concern for each other, and then he sacrifices himself is quietly heartbreaking.
The best stuff is obviously Pauline Collins though. She’s brilliant when talking about bereavement (“the dead stay silent and we must wait”), and also when murdering fake Richard O’Brien off stage. I love her growing irritation with the regulars (they’re definitely being written as “new partners, showing off, annoying the hell out of everyone else” now), and the fact she exiles them at the end. Also that Prince Albert is the hero, even though he’s been dead nearly 20 years.
Is there any particular reason this one is set in Scotland? Other than giving Tennant the opportunity to use his own voice, and Rose to do that terrible accent. The Jamie reference shows we’re already in the same continuity as the old show, though.
I wonder how many fangirls or gays had their sexual awakening when David Tennant puts on his glasses and starts talking about books.
Other things:
In the pre-credits, only the women scream. Boring.
The effect pasting Pauline Collins’ face into the carriage in which she is clearly not actually sitting would have looked shit in 1972, it’s unforgivable in 2006.
The guy playing the wolf is incredibly creepy.
Captain Reynolds is in his early 30s. Facial hair can really age a man.
How many monarchs is it that now canonically hate Doctor who? Victoria, Elizabeth, Charles II... Any more for any more...? (Louix XV I suspect would be up for some kind of arrangement.)