Doctor Who Season 1

The fans might track me down and kill me for this.

Not being much of a Whovian (yet), I'm ideally placed to approach it in a cold, calloused manner. For those of you who do not watch Doctor Who, I shall be your pioneer, striding fearlessly through nonsense, disorder, and the truly abominable work of Russell T. Davies in order to bring you news about what is and isn't worth watching.

What We Know Going In:

Dr. Who is a British sci-fi series and the longest-running sci-fi series in the history of anything ever. It chronicles the adventures of the Doctor (whose name we don't know), as he journeys through space and time in his blue telephone booth. He's always accompanied by a human companion, who serves as a conscience, a friend, and (always important) an audience stand-in so the Doctor can exposit about the exotic locales he's visiting. From the general opinion, we can confidently assume it will be full of corniness and cheesiness, but that may be redeemable.

What We Found Out:

Most of our preconceived suspicions are, in fact, correct.

In the first season of Doctor Who, the eponymous Doctor is played by Christopher Eccleston, who is brooding and fond of the word "fanTASTic." His superfluous human companion is Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), possibly the most obnoxious character I have ever encountered. 

I've compiled a list, summary, and general grading of all 13 episodes. They're graded on a 5 scale, rather than my normal 10, since I'm doing 13 episodes at once. Also, Doctor Who is its own grading scale, and general consensus is that the first season is "not half as good as the others." Here's the skinny (and the spoilers): 

1.01, Rose: The Doctor appears in London to combat an alien race who are...mannequins, whom he defeats by dropping a potion (which was specifically designed to destroy them) onto their leader's head. He meets Rose Tyler, takes an inexplicable liking to her, and invites her to join him on his adventures throughout time and space. Because she's got nothing better to do and wants nothing out of life but a buzz, she hops aboard. 1/5.

1.02, The End of the World: The Doctor and Rose jet off to the year 5 billion to watch the Earth get destroyed. The villain of the week tries to murder everyone aboard the viewing ship, and the Doctor stops her—this time by sacrificing the life of a background character who (again, inexplicably) fell in love with the Doctor in about five minutes flat. 1/5.

1.03, The Unquiet Dead: The TARDIS lands in Nineteenth Century London, where the populace are being threatened by zombies. Once again, the problem is solved by a background character sacrificing herself. This time, at least, she does it because she feels a responsibility to do so, rather than because the Doctor made her feel like a woman. Notably, this is the first episode not written by Davies, and it's the first episode that did not, in my estimation, unapologetically suck. 4/5

1.04, Aliens of London: London is taken over by farting body-snatchers. 0/5

1.05, World War Three: A continuation of last episode (with—I cannot emphasize this enough—farting body-snatchers). To no one's surprise, the Doctor saves the day with almost no effort on his part...again. For no stated reason, he knows the master passcode to the world's nuclear programs. And it's always the same password. And it's buffalo. And if you're ever threatened with a bomb, just hide underneath the cupboards! It's perfectly safe! 

The face does not exist that is large enough for the palm I wish to slap against it. Even the appearance by Penelope Wilton can't rescue this heap. 0/5

1.06, Dalek: The Doctor encounters one of his old enemies, and one of the most iconic DW villains. Uninitiated as I am, I still cannot respect Daleks as a threat. It's all very well that they have such efficient guns, but my goodness, they're on wheels! They cannot properly handle stairs! The only things they ever kill are redshirts! STUPID redshirts! Anyway, the Doctor wins the day again, this time because the Dalek has been redeemed by Rose Tyler. Admittedly, this episode is not irredeemable; it shows a whole lot about the Doctor's character, particularly that he's a ruthless, unrepentant war criminal who's not so different from the things he fights. 4/5

1.07, The Long Game: The Doctor, Rose, and their new hitchhiker land in the year 200,000, where they're supposed to find the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Instead they find things being run by a newspaper. After an intensely forgettable episode (but a surprise appearance by Simon Pegg!), the Doctor wins again, and ditches his lame hitchhiker companion. 2/5

1.08, Father's Day: Rose and the Doctor return to the day Rose's father died. In a twist that surprises no one, Rose commits the Great Time Travel Crime and prevents a Major Incident from occurring. This summons demon-bats from the cracks in time (because nothing the Doctor has done so far has required paradox police, no sir). Apart from the transgression against consistency, it's an emotional episode. 4/5

1.09, The Empty Child: The TARDIS arrives in 1941 London. We meet Captain Jack Harkness (just amusing enough not to be irredeemable), a female Peter Pan (sort of), and an intensely creepy child who just wants to know if you're his mommy. Also marks the first Moffat episode this season, and I don't think it's coincidence that it's the first of its kind with a perfect score. 5/5

1.10, The Doctor Dances: A continuation of last episode. Emotional, complex, and indicative of Moffat's style. There's almost no Deus Ex Doctorus, which makes these two episodes unique among their fellows. 5/5

1.11, Boom Town: An extra sequel in the Farting Bodysnatchers plot-line (WHY MUST THIS THING EXIST?), and sets up the denouement of the final episodes. 2/5

1.12, Bad Wolf: The Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack get yanked into a massive, deadly reality TV show. It turns out the whole thing is a scheme by the same person who was running the newspaper company in The Long Game, who was himself being manipulated by—wait for it—the Daleks. 3/5

1.13, The Parting of the Ways: In a Deus Ex Doctorus to be truly admired, Rose Tyler ascends to godhood by communing with the heart of the TARDIS, which turns out to be the heart of a time vortex, which is...whatever, just go with it. Using her newly-acquired power over life and death, Rose saves the Doctor, resurrects Cap'n Jack, and defeats the bad guys. This causes her such devastating physical damage that she's sure to die, except the Doctor fixes it by kissing her and sucking out the time vortex. This would be bad news...if one of the Doctor's innumerable magical abilities (apart from plot-sensing and perfect intuitive leaps) did not happen to be regenerating. So long, Christopher Eccleston, we hardly knew you. Despite the Deus Ex Doctorus, 4/5

What's Good?

Christopher Eccleston, full stop. Recognizing that he will consistently receive scripts with less lucidity than daytime soap operas, Eccleston flies into his performance, Large-Ham style. There's no shame, and his tongue is distinctly not lodged in his cheek. The performance is, in short, utterly fearless, and it's the most redeeming factor for this season.

What's Bad?

I'll try to hit only the major ones.

Inconsistent magic system. By this I mean any kind of technology that can do extraordinary things, from flying through space and time to generating an impenetrable force field. Doctor Who makes up its rules on the fly, generally pulling the solution to a particular episode's problem out of the Doctor's ear. 

This comes out most egregiously in...

Deus Ex Doctorus. No problem cannot be solved by the Doctor's sudden bursts of ingenuity or his infallible gift for making neutral characters his allies/servants/worshipers/whatever. He almost never fails. This would be acceptable except for the fact that it never costs him anything. He just does stuff and it succeeds. There's no actual struggle involved when the climax shows up; the Doctor magically has everything he needs. This method of resolution is, baldly stated, lazy writing, and it's due in large part to...

Russell T. Davies, who is an abominable screenwriter. The episodes he writes are consistently disappointing, with thoroughly unimpressive villains and even more thoroughly unimpressive resolutions. But even Russell T. Davies cannot compare to...

Rose Tyler. I cannot for the life of me figure out why she exists. She's obnoxious, callous, and generally useless, due in large part to the fact that she does not want anything. All she does is flit around the universe, doing whatever confronts her at the moment and not really worrying about anything else. She has no desires, no skills, and no development. Her sole purpose in life is to orbit the Doctor, get captured, and whine. Even when she's proactive, she's useless. I don't understand what the Doctor sees in her.

So, then...

Is it quality? No. Not consistently.

Is it family-friendly? Again, no, not consistently, if only because it would be criminal to subject minors to the works of Davies. Sorry, that's a vague thought. It should be criminal to subject anyone to the works of Russell T. Davies.

Is it daring? Not really. Doctor Who doesn't really push the boundaries of storytelling in any noticeable or meaningful direction.

What's the rating? For the first season, a very solid 2/10. Would not watch again even under duress. Let us hope the next season redeems its brother, eh? 

Fantastic.