Doctor Who has had your stomping, military style monsters.¹ It’s had your floating, xenophobic style monsters. Intransient, giant, round, square, floating, swimming, scribbling. With all these shapes and sizes, it’s hard to make your mark, as a wannabe monster. It’s hard to come into a field this size, and say, “this is what I do, and I do it better than anyone here.”

But not for the Adipose. ‘Partners in Crime’ has a lousy title,² but it introduces to us the cutest aliens you ever did see.

They’re quite scary, too, in a macabre sort of way. When Stacey spawns her first little critter into the sink, it’s hilariously grotesque. For me, the icing on the cake is that the recently born fat-monster waves back at the person from which it’s just forcibly ejected itself. Well, that and the adorable single quasi-tooth hanging from its tiny mouth.³

It’s lucky we do have cute monsters available, though, because the string of hotties galavanting about in the TARDIS is at an end. In their place, comes Donna Noble from ‘The Runaway Bride’, desperate for a second chance at jumping into the TARDIS. While vaguely annoying two Christmases ago, it’s not really fair to judge someone for their behaviour on their wedding day, and indeed, Donna is much more tolerable this time around. And even, on occasion, moving. The best thing about Donna, I suspect, will be the completely different dynamic she creates with the Doctor. Tennant’s Doctor could really do with someone to smack him down and force him to be the sensible one every now and then. Donna would appear to be that person.

The story itself is nicely constructed. While things occasionally get slow, it’s regularly funny, and has a nice contrast to Donna’s previous outing in the climax. And, naturally, the idea of aliens coming to harvest our fat is wonderfully ludicrous in that way that most other SF shows just can’t quite get away with. The story element I liked the most however, was the one that was missing — the moment when the menace is unnecessarily and massively expanded, just in case we’re really heartless bastards, who don’t get even remotely moved by the plight of less than five billion people. It was the only flaw in the otherwise brilliant ‘Smith and Jones’, and I was glad that this time, we’re perfectly happy to be only threatening the million test subjects and no-one else.

If anything let the episode down for me, it was the tone of the thing. Early scenes are written and played for farce — Donna and the Doctor investigating Adipose Industries without running into each other. However, this never gets pushed to the ridiculous, Coupling-esque levels you need to get really funny farce. And then, once the eponymous partners have met, the story ends up feeling a bit lightweight; the farce is gone,⁴ the macabre conversion of humans becomes just fat people jiggling about, and the story becomes a rather by-the-numbers bit of Who, albeit with a nicely unexpected ending.⁵

Ultimately, with the changing nature of the cast, the season premiere of Who these days often feels rather like the equivalent of your waiter getting you comfortable and asking you if you’d like a drink before the actual meal begins. And on these terms, ‘Partners in Crime’ does what it has to do. It’s not special itself, but it does make me think that season four could be. And, it must be said, there are no cuter aliens than the Adipose.

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And just a little mini-rant about endings. I know we always have a “Next Time…” trailer right as the episode ends. I don’t like it, but I’ve grown accustomed to it.⁶ But it shouldn’t mean we get lazy with the last shot of the episode. ‘Partners in Crime’ ends abruptly with Donna’s lovely granddad dancing about. Couldn’t we have zoomed out from him? Couldn’t we have seen the TARDIS disappear? What Who really needs is a fade-to-black caption before the trailer, as some US shows do, in the hope that we could have just a split second of closure.

1. And will again, quite soon. ↩
2. There’s a moment in Army of Two, a recent Xbox 360 title, when someone actually says to the player characters, “You’re like an ARMY OF TWO”. Miss Foster calling the Doctor and Donna “Partners in Crime” is not as bad. But it isn’t good. ↩
3. Presumably, there’s a perfectly rational reason for these, and why they all have them in the same place. They could indeed be noses. ↩
4. The farce may have gone, but there are a series of very unfunny moments with Penny Carter, Stupid Journalist. I mean seriously. I’m tied up, and my captors have guns. Something distracts them and they run out, leaving me alone in the room. It looks like they’ve forgotten to kill me. Do I take the opportunity to try to escape quietly? Or do I call out to them to remind them that they’ve left me behind? If you picked ‘B’, then you’re probably not very funny either. ↩
5. And a very unexpected little twist. I know every time I see a blonde looking the other way in the city, I assume it’s Billie Piper. This has made my life a crushing cavalcade of disappointments, but it’s nice that they’re keeping the hope alive. ↩
6. I don’t see why we need them on the bloody DVDs though. Pah! I say pah. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Monday, April 7th, 2008. It concerns such pressing issues as Doctor Who, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.