No complaints over this Doctor's fee
- Publication: The Times
- Date: 2006-05-01
- Author: Caitlin Moran
- Page: Times2, p. 27
- Language: English
Every Saturday, one wonders "Can Doctor Who get any better? Surely it couldn't, without in some way hurting us?" And yet, every week, it does get better. This week's episode makes the word "humdinger" look positively humdrum: the Doctor goes to investigate a school at the centre of some UFO sightings, and discovers that it has been taken over by Giles from Buffi the Vampire Slayer, who is harbouring, as one always suspected he did, some quite serious plans for becoming ruler of the universe. Of course, the big news of the episode was the reunion between the Doctor and Sarah Jane, which could have been any one of the following: a) crass, b) mawkish c) camp d) full of a great deal of tedious extrapolation ("So then I moved to Middlesbrough for three years, which is where I met my first husband, Steve.") — but was, instead, clever, moving and sharp as a steak knife.
Sarah Jane was quite put out to discover that the Doctor had never mentioned her to his new assistant, Rose. Rose, meanwhile, was jealous of Sarah Jane's history with the Doctor. This resulted, for the first 15 minutes at least, in Doctor Who's first inaugural Diva Assistants' Bitching Fest, with the ladies like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis squabliling over the last false eyelash in the box. From there, the episode developed into a passionate, considered exploration of what happens to the Doctor's assistants when the big man drops them off in Dumpsville, population: one ex-sidekick. "Did I do something wrong?" Sarah Jane suddenly asks, at one point, looking pained and bewildered. "I thought you were coming back, but you never came back. I waited. You never said goodbye." Her life, she explained, had been on hold since 1976. There were no children or grandchildren, as "there was this one guy I did a lot of travelling with, and he was rather a hard act to follow ..." "Humans decay, and I can't watch that," the Doctor explained, suddenly looking rather wild and alien, and every one of his 900 years. Meanwhile, Mickey — Rose's boyfriend, and commonly held by viewers to be the only rubbish character of the new run — had met K9, and come to a postmodern realisation about his role. "Oh my God, I'm the tin dog!" he said. The episode ended with the Doctor asking Sarah Jane if she wanted to rejoin the crew of the Tardis. "No," she said, after a moment's consideration. "I have such a big adventure here, making my life without you. But say goodbye this time, so that I know you're gone. Say it."
I was one year old when Sarah Jane originally left Doctor Who( so I didn't have a danny who she was, really, but even I was blubbing by the end. I can't believe something this good is a kid's show. Children raised on this stuff are going to be light years ahead of the rest of us. We'll probably be their chimp-gimps by 2012. Speaking of which — Ross Kemp is back in Ultimate Force! (ITV1, Saturday). Ah God love you Kemp, with your head like two shark-foetus eyes embedded in a pouffe. Indeed, God love you Ultimate Force, with your SHOUTING, man banter and gigantic camouflage props department, including this week both a heavily camouflaged telescope, and camouflage snood. For those who have not yet experienced the Ultimate Force, Kemp is Sergeant "Henno" Garvie — in essence, Grant Mitchell without the sensitive passages, such as the episode where he tried to kill his brother with a tyre iron. Every week, the British Army put Henno and his Red Squad in a situation where almost all the dialogue can be shouted — in a helicopter, on motorcycles, the final of a yodelling contest — and supply them with huge amounts of weapons and ammunition, so they can really crank up the volume after the third ad-break. This week, Red Squad were in the former Soviet state of "Uzer Baikal", where Henno tried to run his unit like a maverick, before being told: "You can't run this unit like a maverick'. I can't imagine anyone with two X chromosomes being able to watch 4nuch more than 20 minutes of this: it's a show made to please men, with the perhaps intentional side-effect of making women eventually get up from the sofa in a peevish huff, and go and clean up the kitchen instead. By the end "Henno" had, inevitably, gone ahead and run his unit like a maverick, but learned an important new lesson in restraint from the "toffee-nosed" Patrick. The lesson was that shooting someone in the leg is more restrained than shooting them in the groin. "I'M GOING TO EVOLVE," Kemp shouted, thoughtfully, staring into the middle distance, and perhaps contemplating a spot of cave-painting.
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
- APA 6th ed.: Moran, Caitlin (2006-05-01). No complaints over this Doctor's fee. The Times p. Times2, p. 27.
- MLA 7th ed.: Moran, Caitlin. "No complaints over this Doctor's fee." The Times [add city] 2006-05-01, Times2, p. 27. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Moran, Caitlin. "No complaints over this Doctor's fee." The Times, edition, sec., 2006-05-01
- Turabian: Moran, Caitlin. "No complaints over this Doctor's fee." The Times, 2006-05-01, section, Times2, p. 27 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=No complaints over this Doctor's fee | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/No_complaints_over_this_Doctor%27s_fee | work=The Times | pages=Times2, p. 27 | date=2006-05-01 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=13 May 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=No complaints over this Doctor's fee | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/No_complaints_over_this_Doctor%27s_fee | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=13 May 2025}}</ref>
