10.4: School Reunion
In which Rose meets the ex and Mickey proves his mettle.
Broadcast: April 2006
Watched: July 2021
“Break time’s finished early. Isn’t that fantastic?”
Weird how it’s never occured to me before now that this is riffing on stuff like the Demon Headmaster, the Brain Sharpeners, etc, despite that being incredibly obvious.
The other thing that's weird which I didn’t spot until now is: Doctor as teacher, companion serving chips, bloody hell it’s the set up for season 10.
Anyway. Lovely. Fun. But not quite coherent, maybe? In a way that’ll become familiar, Whithouse writes Doctor Who scripts which have all the key elements – ideas and jokes and action and emotional bits and scary bits – without them quite making a bigger whole.
So you’ve got the “current meets the ex” plot – Sladen all but flirting with Tennant, the Doctor’s voice breaking when he first sees Sarah Jane, Billie doing her well-practised jealous face – which got all the attention at the time. The Doctor’s attempt to convince Rose she’s different feels even more hollow now than it did half a dozen companions ago, but his “you can spend the rest of your life with me, I can’t spend the rest of mine with you” is still the best bit. (Why doesn’t he just find a species with longer lifespans to hang out with, hmm?)
But... this doesn’t connect at all with the unconvincing temptation scene (although Anthony Stewart Head is brilliant, and the confrontation by the swimming pool terrific). Then, it isn’t Rose and Sarah working together that saves the day, it’s a couple of forgotten nerdy boys – Kenny setting the fire alarm off, Mickey driving a car through a window and then pulling a plug out. (Incidentally, K9’s “We are in a car” feels like a riff on the Roberts Master’s “This. Is. An. AMBULANCE”.)
It’s fine. It’s good, even – this is probably Tennant’s first really great performance in the role. But it feels a couple of drafts away from being finished, and a lot of the things that made us all gasp in 2006 feel like old hat now.
Other thoughts:
The Doctor says “comrades”. Cool.
The fate of the teacher who gets eaten, who’s been set up as nice but a bit rubbish in an earlier scene, is another example of RTD’s ability to make people more than red shirts (though here as editor rather than writer).
The krillitanes are allergic to oil, just as the wolf was allergic to moonlight. Odd that it’s the same mcguffin two episodes running.
K9 doesn’t do enough to justify the sadness we’re supposed to feel at his sacrifice. Was RTD trying to give him the sort of exit he never got in the 1970s?
When Mickey asks to join the TARDIS, Rose is literally mouthing, “NO!” The fact the Doctor clearly sees this and still says yes feels important, somehow.
The idea Sarah Jane has just spent 30 years waiting is really depressing... but I guess it’s there to set up SJA? Jim likes to refer to later Tennant as “imperial” but it’s this season when RTD is really building his empire.