Steampunk Doctor

2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor"

Well, this was fun. I have to say, now that all of the ridiculous plots and excessive baggage of series 4 are out of the way, this show is back to its old lighthearted self and quite easily enjoyable. There wasn't even much of RTD's clunky, obvious, message-y writing. It was all good fun with just a tiny hint of misogyny.

And the best part was that it wasn't really a Cybermen story, even though the Cybermen were there. It was basically more of a crazy person (lady, why is it always a crazy lady?) story, so it didn't feel like a retread of all of the previous (and future) Cybermen stories. Of course, as usual, the Doctor just sent the CyberKing thing elsewhere instead of destroying it, guaranteeing that it'll eventually show up somewhere else for him to fight again. He really does that with everything, so the destruction of worlds and lives lost and time and effort expended whenever the things show up elsewhere and he has to fight them again are basically all his own fault. I'm sure the general idea that RTD is getting at is that even though the Doctor's compassion gets him into trouble, it's that compassion that motivates him to help people in the first place. But he never chooses to deal with the fact that if the Doctor wasn't always "helping" people to begin with, he also wouldn't be causing the problems that make people require his "help". (It's possible that Davros pointed that out in the last series finale, but I've blocked all of that out.)

I liked David Morrisey as the pseudo-Doctor. There was a point at the beginning where I wondered if we would find out that he was just a younger version of the William Hartnell Doctor and that whatever had happened had actually messed with 10's memory so he didn't remember himself. That maybe would have been a little too complex to deal with in 60 minutes. I was a little disappointed that Jackson Lake couldn't rescue his own son in the end. It would have been nicer for him to have been inspired enough by being the Doctor for a while to truly empower himself. Oh well. I also liked Rosita a lot more than I thought I would based on the description, even though there wasn't much to her. It was kind of fun that she was already in "seasoned companion" mode so nothing had to be explained, she was already self sufficient, and she could save the Doctors asses pretty easily when needed. For a while I was wondering if we were going to find out that she'd come from some other time, and by the end I was hoping she (and/or the balloon guy, Jed) would go with the Doctor when he left. Maybe that'll still happen if the next special picks up right where this one left off.