New Doc's a real card
- Publication: Daily Star
- Date: 2005-03-28
- Author: Charlie Catchpole
- Page: 15
- Language: English
THE Tardis has landed. The Doctor's among us, and all's well with the world. Or pretty much all.
Chris Eccleston makes a marvellous new Doctor Who (Saturday, BBC1).
With his leather jacket, bristling crewcut and piercing gaze, he's brash, brusque, blokey and in-your-face. Like the best Doctors before him, he's also mischievous, charming, occasionally naive and a bit clumsy.
He can save the planet with his trusty sonic screwdriver, but when he tries to spread a pack of cards with one. hand, he ineptly sends them flying in all directions.
Billie Piper (Mrs Chris Evans) is perfectly cast as the Doctor's newly recruited assistant Rose, a lippy, streetwise Londoner with oodles of attitude, a wardrobe from Top Shop, and just enough cleavage on display to delight the dads without frightening the kids.
The special effects are dazzling and the script by Russell T Davies is sharp and witty.
Rose scoffs: "If you're an alien, how come you sound like you come from the north?"
The Doctor responds: "Lots of planets have a north."
Leafing through a celebrity magazine at Rose's house, he murmurs: "That won't last. He's gay and she's an alien."
But (and you knew there'd be a "but" coming, didn't you?) why in the name of the Sacred Orb of Gallifrey have they messed around with the signature tune? It's just about the most memorable and instantly evocative piece of music in the history of television and someone's decided to tart it up by adding a drum machine and a dubbed-on string section.
Doctorin' the Tardis, indeed.
While this unnecessary tinkering may get a few anoraks hot under their nylon collars, I can't imagine anything else about the ninth incarnation of the Doctor upsetting hardcore Who-heads.
Davies, a long-time fan, pays due respect to the past. Although Davies is famously gay, the Doctor has curiously been de-camped.
There's nothing arch, twee or knowing about Eccleston's performance - he plays it straighter than straight.
Space and time machine the Tardis still takes the form of a 1950s police public call box - despite very few viewers today having the faintest idea what that was.
The opening episode was perfectly in tune with the show's traditions, but it could just as easily have stood alone.
A few minutes in, the classic scenario unfolded of a young woman alone and in terrible danger.
Genius
Rose was trapped in the basement of the department store where she worked, being menaced by murderous shop window dummies that had come alive.
Suddenly, a strong hand grabbed hers and pulled her to safety.
It was a stroke of genius to show Rose, after this first brush with the mysterious Doctor, searching the internet and finding the website of an obsessive Doctor Who nerd called Clive (Mark Benton).
When she tracked him down, Clive explained: "The Doctor is a legend, woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he's there. He brings the storm in his wake. And he has one constant companion..." "Who's that?" asked Rose.
"Death!" replied Clive, who was shortly to discover that for himself.
Aided by computer wizardry and a special effects budget that previous producers would have killed for, the Doctor and his game girl disposed of a monstrous, heaving, burping blob that lived under the London Eye and was making everything plastic come alive (including breast implants, Rose remarked - although she wouldn't know much about them).
Then she abandoned her boyfriend (who had survived being eaten by a wheelie bin) and jumped on board the Tardis.
So Billie Piper takes up with a scary-looking, know-all northern bloke. Again.
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- APA 6th ed.: Catchpole, Charlie (2005-03-28). New Doc's a real card. Daily Star p. 15.
- MLA 7th ed.: Catchpole, Charlie. "New Doc's a real card." Daily Star [add city] 2005-03-28, 15. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Catchpole, Charlie. "New Doc's a real card." Daily Star, edition, sec., 2005-03-28
- Turabian: Catchpole, Charlie. "New Doc's a real card." Daily Star, 2005-03-28, section, 15 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=New Doc's a real card | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/New_Doc%27s_a_real_card | work=Daily Star | pages=15 | date=2005-03-28 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 June 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=New Doc's a real card | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/New_Doc%27s_a_real_card | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 June 2025}}</ref>
