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Doctor Who Series 1 – 2005

If you’ve never heard of “Doctor Who” – in brief, it’s about an alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in a blue box called the TARDIS, that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. The series enjoyed a successful run on the BBC from 1963 to 1989. A TV movie in 1996, however, failed to revive the show, and at that point, “Doctor Who” was widely believed dead.

Then came Russell T. Davies. After the success of “Queer as Folk”, the BBC brass were willing to do whatever it took to get Davies on board, including giving him rights to “Doctor Who”. The result: a hugely successful return of the series on BBC.

Christopher Eccleston plays the Doctor as a man haunted by a dark secret. In the pilot, he encounters Rose, a London shop clerk, just as the alien Autons hatch a plot to invade the Earth. After the Doctor saves the planet, he takes Rose aboard the TARDIS in search of new adventures – and new dangers. This Doctor never tries to avoid trouble; he seeks it out.

That first episode, though it features an alien menace well-known to fans of classic “Who”, is overall rather a weak beginning to the series. Week by week, though, the stories improve until the explosive season finale brings a full-scale invasion of the robotic Daleks, another classic foe, to threaten the fate of the Doctor, Rose, and all mankind.

Along the way, the Doctor and Rose witness the end of the Earth; do battle against new alien threats, including the Slitheen and the Gelth; and defeat the evil network controller in a dark parody of reality television.

What may be the finest story, a two-parter, comes midway through the season. “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” are set in London during the blitz. A strange child in a gas mask asks everyone he encounters, “Are you my mummy?” – before transforming them into a horrific copy of himself. The Doctor and Rose must figure out if the mysterious and dangerous child is an alien and stop him before all London is lost.

Longtime “Doctor Who” fans and first-time viewers will find much to enjoy in the new series, but it is ironic that a series about a time traveler should suffer from a lack of time – each episode is just 45 minutes long and most of the stories could benefit from more plot and character development. Also, though the Doctor and Rose refer to adventures on alien worlds, every episode has been based on Earth or on a space station orbiting the Earth. Davies promises fans the next series, starring David Tennant as the Doctor, will take the characters further afield.

The BBC have announced that the DVD boxed set, due July 2006 in the U.S., is to include commentaries on all 13 episodes and numerous behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Written by: Auriette Lindsey

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