Companions: Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler, Donna Noble (cameo)
Series 2, perhaps the most well-known Doctor Who season of all time features the pairing of the Tenth Doctor and Rose which has reached incredibly famous heights.
The Review
Here’s the scores for the stories:
The Christmas Invasion: 10/10
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: 10/10
Girl in the Fireplace: 9.25/10
Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel: 9/10
Tooth and Claw: 8.75/10
New Earth: 8.5/10
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: 8.5/10
School Reunion: 8/10
The Idiot’s Lantern: 8/10
Love & Monsters: 6.5/10
Fear Her: 6/10
I might’ve been caught up in the excitement of The Christmas Invasion giving it the score that I did, but I definitely have no regrets about perfect marks to The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, a story I rank among the very best in Doctor Who history. The rest of the season was full of straight up solid stories, with the infamous pair of Love & Monsters and Fear Her sitting as the clear weakest stories in the season. This season had a lot on its plate: having to sell David Tennant as the Doctor right after we all fell in love with Christopher Eccelston, introduce the Cybermen to a modern audience, and bid farewell to essentially the main character so far in Rose. The fact that is largely accomplishes this is a testament to RTD’s writing, places characters front and center.
Story 177, Episodes 722-723, Series 2 Episodes 12-13
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Donna Noble
The dramatic finale of Series 2 brings back the Cybermen and features the new series’ first true goodbye to a companion as the Doctor has to say goodbye to Rose.
The Review
Cybermen reaching this reality
At the beginning of Parts 1 and 2 of this story, Rose keeps telling the audience that she is going to die. She doesn’t, but suffers a fate almost as heartbreaking. For two months now, ghosts have been appearing at regular shifts across the globe, and as he researches it the Doctor flies straight to Torchwood, who we have been hearing about all season. We get the thrill of Jackie finally get upgraded to companion status as she and the Doctor get a tour of Torchwood from their charismatic and kind of nationalist leader Yvonne. The first half is all drama and suspense building, especially around a mysterious sphere. The Cybermen were advertised before this episode, and connecting them to the ghosts was not a stretch. It is still fun to see the Cybermen phasing in across the world, but the real shock is that the void ship sphere they followed to get this reality is filled with…Daleks. Bam. Daleks. Cybermen. Cliffhanger.
The Dalek Cult of Skaro takes on the Cybermen
It is fun to see the Dalek and Cybermen finally meeting after forty years of separately fighting the Doctor, and it is does definitively prove that in a 1v1 fight the Daleks would wipe the floor with the Cybermen. The Daleks have a mysterious Time Lord device called the Genesis Ark, and Mickey (who has returned from Pete’s World) accidentally activates. Turns out it’s a Time Lord prison ships filled with millions of Daleks that begun spreading out over the globe. The Doctor is putting 3D glasses on all episode, and we finally find out that they allow him to see ‘void stuff’. But Torchwood’s technology in reverse, and boom, there go the Daleks and the Cybermen to hell. I’ve heard this called a deus ex machina, but it’s not entirely out of nowhere: the Doctor keeps wearing the glasses for a mysterious reason and the similar time travel background radiation concept is used to open the Genesis Ark. It’s a fun Doctor Who solution, but it is really powerful not for the plot stakes but for the emotional stakes.
Rose wishing she can get back to the Doctor
Rose starts the episode saying that she is going to travel with the Doctor forever, but we all know that nothing will last forever. Early on, Jackie accuses her of changing unrecognizably during her time with the Doctor, something that we’ll see again with Clara later. Pete and Jackie have an emotional reunion together, with their respective Jackies and Petes already having died. Jackie is sent off to live with Pete in his world, but Rose determines that she would choose eternity with the Doctor over seeing Jackie and Mickey again. The Doctor doesn’t want to talk about that he is going to have to leave Rose behind, but he agrees to let her stay with him. When Rose is almost forced into the void, the Doctor screams in horror like we have never seen…but dear old Pete saves her. They’re separated, and the Doctor says one last goodbye to her at Bad Wolf Beach. It’s a crushing return to a reality for Rose. She chooses the Doctor, but is sent back to her family.
It’s got Cybermen, Daleks, Torchwood, Rose, and has everything you want and more. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great.
Fear Her, a hastily arranged episode does no specific thing wrong, but overall just isn’t that good.
The Review
It’s a step above a quarry I suppose
The story takes place entirely on some street in London, where the Doctor and Rose arrive the day of the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012. One problem: kids are vanishing out of thin air. After a space epic from Stephen Fry fell through, Fear Her was hastily created to be as cheap as possible. The Doctor and Rose are back to dangerous levels of arrogance as they investigate around, and Rose almost gets killed by a giant living scribble. Turns out an alien, an Isolus, is possessing young Chloe Webber because both of them felt alone. It is drawing people and transporting them into their reality, and apparently could do this to the entire Earth no problem. The Isolus has to be one of the most powerful beings in the show’s history, and it hoovers up the Doctor and the TARDIS no problem. Unfortunately the show chooses to have the kid playing Chloe speak in a breathy voice when the alien is talking.
The Doctor: torchbearer
The ending with Chloe and her mom singing away the Satanic drawing of Chloe’s dead abusive father could have more emotional pathos, but overall it’s just kind of weird. Rose uses the Olympic torch to heat up the Isolus’ spaceship with the love of the Olympics, which factor prominently as Chloe steals the entire crowd from the opening ceremony. The Doctor picks up the torch and lights the Olympic flame in a moment that is cheesy and extremely low budget. It’s unfortunate that this episode had to be put together in its low budget state, because I guess there’s maybe a good episode here. A kid able to draw people and steal them out of thin air is a great idea, but the whole thing is half-baked. There’s a decent chance it’s the exact same street from An Idiot’s Lantern too. For the last fun outing of the Doctor and Rose, Rose deserved better.
It’s the most medium episode ever.
6/10. Gets worse the more you think about it, so don’t/
Love & Monsters tries to show the Doctor from the point of view of us ordinary humans catching glimpses of his legend and then does a lot of other stuff too.
The Review
Jackie isn’t great at the flirting thing
Let’s start with the good stuff. First off, this episode introduced me to the glory of ELO when I watched it for the first time in 2013, so thank you for that. The idea is pretty genius, and effective when the episode keys in on it: the Doctor appears like a legend to outsiders. It’s Clive from Rose but now in the guise of a fan club of sorts of the Doctor, seeking to learn about this legendary man. The cold open with Elton in the midst of another crazy adventure of the Doctor’s is good fun. The middle of the episode features our protagonist, Elton, getting ingratiated with Jackie Tyler, who immediately comes up with excuses to have him fix stuff at her flat before trying to have sex with him. We think it’s because Jackie is a huge flirt, and it partly is, but we learn that it also has to do with the loneliness that Jackie feels with Rose gone all the time. Despite feeling left behind, Jackie refuses to give up the location of Rose to Elton.
Immortal ageless paving slab girlfriend
Then, there’s all the crazy stuff. God bless you RTD, some days you write The Parting of the Ways, some days you write Love & Monsters. Elton is kind of weird and painfully ridiculous, and so is the entire cast of ‘LINDA’, a weird group of misfits studying the Doctor. As some metaphor for fandom it kind of works, the Doctor brings these lonely weird people together in a beautiful way and then someone like Mr. Kennedy comes along, a tyrant who manipulates the fandom to fit his own self-serving needs. It would work better if everybody just wasn’t so weird. In addition, the true form of Mr. Kennedy, the Abzorbaloff is just gross and weird and not cool. Unfortunately the BBC somehow got the show to agree to doing a contest for a young kid to design a monster that had to be included on the show and I guess this is what we came up with. Elton’s girlfriend, Ursula, played by Shirley Henderson of Moaning Myrtle fame, gets unabsorbed with her head on a paving slab Elton can take home to have sex with. For all the good, there’s more gross, bizarre, and just plain weird in this one.
Going from stopping literal Satan to this episode might be the roughest transition in all of Doctor Who. It just isn’t good.
6.5/10. You get the .5 for the fandom allegory. If only it was better in basically any sense.
Story 174, Episodes 718-719, Series 2 Episodes 8-9
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler
A planet orbiting a black hole, drilling toward an unbelievable power source emanating from its center. Welcome to Hell.
The Review
The brilliantly designed Ood
This might be in my mind a Top 5 Doctor Who story of all time, and potentially Tennant’s finest hour. Right from the start, the story is engaging, the Doctor and Rose land in a dingy base filled with doors (all given numbers that make it sound very official). They immediately encounter a ramshackle crew and learn that they are orbiting a black hole. An earthquake strikes, and the TARDIS is sent careening into an impossibly deep chasm. Immediately you are hooked, what is going on here? There is scrawled writing, but writing so old the TARDIS can’t translate it. The humans have a supposed willing slave race offering themselves up willingly, the fantastically designed and brilliantly named Ood. We hear a voice menacing Toby, but it is an Ood that suddenly tells Rose about the Beast. The takeover of the Beast is slow, creeping, building dread. The Ood start speaking funny, Rose chucks her phone when it tells her ‘he is awake’. The base is very much under siege.
This might be one of the most horrifying sights in the entire series
The Beast has been focusing on the man tasked with decoding the ancient writing found on the planet, Toby. Suddenly, the writing is all over his body, and his eyes glow red. Maybe the most horrifying scene comes when Scottie sees Toby out on the surface of the planet, a vacuum, without his spacesuit, appearing enraptured with his power. When Toby turns and sees her, he grins with malevolent evil and as he closes his fist breaks her window and Scottie is sucked out into the air. We see her body floating, dead, toward the black hole, gorging itself on the ruins of solar systems. The drilling stops ten miles deep, and the Doctor decides to go down with scientist Ida to see what is going on down there. That’s when the Beast makes its move to possess the Ood (we learn they have a telepathy field of Basic 5, when the Beast gets control it shoots to 30 and then 100). As chaos engulfs the base, the Doctor and Ida found ruins of a civilization…and a giant metal seal in the ground that opens up…
It’s a simple shot, but an effective one
The second half of the story takes place in two separate parts. The surviving crew on the base desperately try to flee the demonically possessed Ood. It’s exhilarating, and we get to see Rose being the Doctor and inspiring everybody to fight back. The most affecting scene is gruff security man Mr. Jefferson sacrificing himself to buy the crew more time to take out the Ood’s telepathic field. Just as interesting however is the Doctor and Ida’s conversation about religion and morality as the Doctor is lowered into the blackness of the pit. They wonder if the Beast here is the inspiration for the stories of a horned god of evil across the universe, and if he is, does that truly make him Satan? The image of the Doctor in the soon to be famous orange spacesuit being lowered and then falling into inky blackness is incredible. It’s also hard to miss the lightning making him and Ida look like skeletons inside their suits. The reality of the Beast truly shakes the Doctor worse than almost anything.
The Doctor believes in her
What the Doctor finds is a well-rendered monstrous demon, in massive chains. Rose, Toby, Zach, and Danny have already taken off in a rocket, cutting their losses. The Doctor realizes that the Beast is in a perfect prison, if it is broken the gravity field breaks and throws the planet into the black hole. If the Beast is to be stopped escaping riding in Toby’s head, Rose will have to die too. The Doctor chooses to believe in the only thing he can: his companion, Rose. He breaks the seal and the planet begins to fall in the black hole, causing Toby to go full Beast. Rose breaks the window on the rocket and unbuckles Toby, shooting him out into space. Zach shields the rocket, but they’re still falling. Running away, the Doctor finds the TARDIS, saves Ida, and that’s that. Even at the end, the Doctor genuinely does not know what he saw down there. The Beast claimed to come from before the universe, impossible, right? I think it was truly the devil. The Doctor and Rose go to Hell, and they survive, because they believe in each other. What’s better?
Gabriel Woolf voiced the closest thing to Satan in the classic series, Sutekh. It’s only appropriate that he too voices the Beast. It seems that the devil brings out the hero out of the Doctor the best.
10/10. Base under siege, it got a bit tired at the end of the Troughton era, but I love these stories to bits. They’re to me Doctor Who at it’s most pure, the Doctor and his companion arrive, face a deadly threat with a local crew, and survive by the skin of their teeth. You have to love it.
It’s London, 1953, and Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation is imminent. However, all is not well in the working class families of London…
The Review
The Rose/Doctor chemistry is particularly popping in this episode
Sitting between two seismic two-part stories, The Idiot’s Lantern is and does feel pretty disposable. That said, it’s a good story continuing the trend of Series 2 dialing up the fun quotient. David Tennant sports wild Elvis-esque hair in this episode as he’s attempting to take Rose to meet him, but ends up in London instead. The working class London neighborhood the story takes place in is well-developed and really does feel real. The primary villain is the Wire, an electrical being that is using television sets to feed on people’s brain waves. When we first meet a person whose face has been stolen, it’s disturbing, but it starts to become simply weird. I’m not sure how removing brain activity takes your face away, but it’s effectively weird. The Wire enlists the broke and desperate television salesman Magpie to do her dirty work giving out tvs with the pretense that they’re for watching the coronation. Rose gets zapped halfway through, the Doctor has to restore everybody and trap the Wire in a dramatic radio-tower finale himself.
A cousin of Vernon Dursley no doubt
While the Wire vacillates between genuinely disturbing and pantomime with her cries of ‘hungry’ and ‘feed me’, the story’s other villain, Mr. Connolly is always brusque and rude. He’s never shown hitting his wife, but he constantly verbally abuses her and his son, the nerdy Tommy. Mr. Connolly gets old quick, even as the Doctor and Rose mess with him, but there is an incredible scene where Tommy exposes him for ratting out the neighborhood to the police (who are rounding up the faceless out of fear) and accuses him of now being a fascist like the ones he fought in the war. Mrs. Connolly gathers up the courage to kick him out of the house, but Tommy goes to reconcile with him so hopefully Mr. Connolly can learn the error of his ways. It’s a bread and butter episode of Doctor Who, but not every episode can be bombastic. The coronation setting makes it feel like a Big Finish story, and that’s not a bad thing in this case.
In a light story that is enjoyable in the moment but leaves little lasting impression, we get to pal around London and fight a tv monster. Fun!
8/10. I think the idiot is Mr. Connolly and the television is the lantern. Or I’m the idiot for not getting it.
Story 172, Episodes 715-716, Series 2 Episodes 5-6
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler
Doctor Who returns to a parallel world for the first time since Inferno to re-introduce the Cybermen to a modern audience in a story I liked better than I remembered.
The Review
Hard to argue with the Cyber-Controller
David Tennant’s first two-parter, and it’s a big one: the re-introduction of the Cybermen. RTD decides to have it take place on a parallel world, for many reasons, but one is to show the Cybermen inflicting horrors on a different Earth and not have repercussions in the primary universe. They are here created by John Lumic, a dying insane businessman who owns basically the entire planet. Lumic is a rip-off of Davros, and not a particularly good one either. His conversion into the Cyber-Controller looks cool, but it is not shown how he is superior beyond his intellect. The design of the Cybermen is actually good, the chunky ear-pods everybody wears look awful but the design is very 2006 so it makes sense. The thought of people getting sliced up screaming and placed into Cybermen, shown just off-camera, is very scary and unnerving. The two rebels we meet are punk Jake, and the standout middle-aged tech guru ‘Mrs. Moore’ who is brutally killed off near the story’s conclusion.
“Trust me on this!”
A lot of the obvious narrative arc is about Rose, who immediately sees that in this world her father Pete’s ridiculous schemes paid off and he’s an insanely wealth businessman. Unfortunately this world’s Jackie is even more vain and spiteful with all of her acquired wealth, but it is still shocking to see her converted into a Cyberman. Pete seems like a dope but it turns out that he’s been the mole inside Lumic’s operation, helping to fund resistance groups. He even gets the final kill on Lumic, dropping him into his exploding factory. Rose desperately wishes to bring him along in the TARDIS, but Pete is understandably unnerved about Rose. Lesser writing would have had him ecstatic to have a daughter, but as Pete lived his whole life without one the idea of Rose freaks him out of his mind. In one of the funniest gags of the series, they do have a tiny yorkshire terrier named Rose, which the Doctor bursts into laughter at when he realizes.
Ricky antagonizes Mickey
In this two-parter we finally get the Mickey story that he deserves. Having considerably evolved from his pathetic characterization in Rose, we learn that Mickey’s parents abandoned him and he was raised by his grandmother until she died in an accident at home. The disrespect that the Doctor has consistently shown Mickey really starts to get more and more disgraceful, with him completely forgetting Mickey is even around for stretches of the episode. Mickey meets his counterpart, the supposedly tough man Ricky who turns out to be putting on a bit of an act. Even more crucially, he meets his blind grandmother, who is still alive. When Cybermen kill Ricky, Mickey decides that in this universe he can make a difference. His decision to let Rose go, knowing that she’s fallen in love with the Doctor over him, is incredibly mature. Mickey knows that she found her place with him, while he feels his is here, stopping the Cybermen. Bravo, Mickey.
The Cybermen are introduced, there’s action, humor, and emotional pathos as Mickey’s store seemingly reaches a satisfying conclusion.
9/10. I thought this story would be full of bluster from Lumic with Cybermen stomping around the place, but I genuinely enjoyed it. Noel Clarke, take a bow.
Companions: Sarah Jane Smith, K9, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith
For the first time ever, we find out what it is like for companions after the Doctor leaves them in a seminal episode of Doctor Who.
The Review
Sarah Jane and Rose laugh at their shared experiences
Out of all the classic companions, none quite captured the imagination like Sarah Jane Smith. Independent, spunky, fierce, and committed to the Doctor, Sarah Jane was the ideal companion. Despite having gotten glimpses of Sarah Jane’s post-Doctor life, we’ve never really returned to old companions to see how they’re coping. (Can I say it’s a crime William Russell never returned to the show?) Finally we see it, and it isn’t pretty, especially in that Sarah Jane was pretty unceremoniously dumped. She is still a competent journalist, investigating alien activity in Britain, but without the Doctor. Sarah Jane got over the Doctor, and she and Rose are understandably threatened by each other. Sarah Jane comes to realize that all she really wanted to do was thank the Doctor, and wish him well on his adventures again. It’s a perfect performance by a great actress in Elisabeth Sladen who will soon get an entire show to herself. The Doctor is right, she still does look good.
Mr. Finch is an excellent foe
The actual story itself isn’t anything terribly special, if surprisingly dark. Several people, including young children, get devoured by large alien bats. Mr. Finch is a great smarmy villain as the leader of the Krillitaines, aliens that slaughter species and take their favorite aspects from each of them which in their case is giant bats. They are turning kids into one large supercomputer to crack the universal theory of everything. The heroes of the story are the tin dog K9 and the other tin dog Mickey who tipped the Doctor off to this school. Mickey evacuates the kids and K9 lays down his life in order to destroy the Krillitanes. Fear not K9-lovers, as Sarah Jane gets a replacement from the Doctor. It’s routine Doctor Who, but the plot takes a backseat to the incredible moment of seeing the Doctor and Sarah Jane re-united.
“It’s every man’s worst nightmare, the missus and the ex,” Mickey tells the Doctor. We see why saying goodbye is so hard for the Doctor, but when he does get to, it’s worth it.
The Doctor finally meets both Queen Victoria and a proper werewolf in an exciting 1800s adventure.
The Review
Seeing the Doctor and Rose getting straight up called out by Queen Victoria is pretty fun
After many stories set in Victorian Britain, we’d never met the woman herself, and now we do. Pauline Collins is excellent in the role, portraying a Queen who can fend for herself (she kills a monk with a pistol) but is still deeply missing her dear departed husband. The Ten/Rose critics point directly to Rose’s game trying to make her say ‘I am not amused’ as one of the best examples of how smarmy they get together. I agree, but I feel that it is intentional, as the Queen turns it back on them by telling them that their entire attitude is genuinely not amusing. The Doctor and Rose don’t get the message, and even this early it’s foreshadowing for the entire Tenth Doctor’s run. Surprisingly much of the story is about dealing with grief, it is the Queen’s late husband and her host Sir Robert’s late father who truly save the day, having built into the old Scottish Torchwood Estate a trap that does kill the werewolf. It’s gently and effectively done.
At this point, still a little amused.
The kung-fu monks at the beginning of the story are a little extra, and just another example of RTD cheesiness. We quickly move on from them, and get to talk to the werewolf some while he’s still in human form. The werewolf isn’t too interesting, standard take over the world stuff, but is genuinely terrifying when fully realized. Yes he’s CGI, and yes it’s 2006, but the werewolf looks good and has a great scene where he breaks in through the roof of the library. When the werewolf is evaporated by concentrated light, the boy he was inhabiting gets to speak out, pleading to be killed. Overall, it’s a very straightforward story that is immensely enjoyable to watch. Any Doctor Who story that ends with the Doctor dramatically understanding the situation and concocting his plan is fine by me.
Tooth and Claw once again shows a female leader of Britain in danger, and why she thought we needed a Torchwood in a great thrill ride of a story.
8.75/10. How can you not like werewolves?
The Queen knights the Doctor and Rose before exiling them
Companions: Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler
Rose’s first day out with the Tenth Doctor and he takes her 5 billion years in the future just like the Ninth Doctor did.
The Review
“Now that is proper enigmatic”
Although The End of the World is a good story, I don’t think anybody was dying to see Cassandra again, but here she is again. In a hospital of New New Earth, formed out of nostalgia after the original Earth blew up, Cassandra is living with a back-up set of skin. The fun quickly starts when she sends her consciousness into Rose and is thrilled to be in a body again, a curvy chav no less. Cassandra also gets a chance to jump into the ‘foxy’ Doctor, which is always good fun. The Doctor is here based on a psychic message by the Face of Bo, a giant head in a tank from The End of the World. The Doctor ends up inspiring him to prolong his death, so he does not get told the Face of Bo’s secret much to his chagrin. Partly after jumping into the body of a diseased person, and then her dying half-clone servant, Cassandra finally agrees to die and the Doctor gives her the courtesy of seeing herself in her prime beforehand.
Never trust a cat!
The main villain of the plot are the sisterhood of cat nurses who have developed incredible scientific cures, so incredible that they don’t pass the Doctor’s smell test. Turns out they’ve been growing people and infecting them with “every single disease” in order to farm them for a cure. It’s as bad as it sounds. It turns out that these developed people are alive and horribly suffering, having never been touched or loved or anything. The cat nurses did not consider that they could potentially be creating living new humans. The Doctor cures them by spraying them with a cocktail of all the curses the nurses cooked up, generating a new human race. Overall, this story is good fun, it’s very enjoyable in the middle of it, but there’s not much of a lasting impression to be had. That said, it’s a bit silly, and a ton of fun. RTD Who at its best.
Tennant continues to prove that even with the genius Eccelston gone, there is nothing to fear.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 