The Doctor’s companions are a peculiar bunch. It’s not immediately apparent how he chooses them; his tastes seem quite eclectic. One day he’ll go for a leather clad-savage, or an American student with a thing for tight lycra, and another day he might fancy a catsuit-wearing cyberchick from the future, or a Gallifreyan ice-queen, or a Victorian era cutie. And he does seem to have a thing for men in uniform, or men in skirts, or sailors. Whoever they are though, the pattern’s always the same: they stick around for a few years, and then some convenient reason turns up for them to bugger off: perhaps an implausibly established romance, or a new career as a resistance leader. But apart from turning up on some evil villain’s TV when he throws the Doc into his mind probe,¹ or getting scooped out of time to wander around a quarry in an anniversary special and then having your memory erased,² what happens to you when you leave the TARDIS for good? Can you settle back into life? Will anything compare to what you saw out there? Will anyone compare to the Doctor?

For some reason, it feels odd for the new series of Who to even refer to specific events from the old series. Yes, I know we had an army full of Daleks last year, but no one specifically said “These are those Daleks you met on Skaro, created by Davros and plunged into civil war.” And thank goodness. But this week, an actual character who was actually with the Doctor back in 1974 is here.³ And like Rose, she was one of the good companions — someone who enjoyed her travels, had a strong relationship with the Doctor and had a strong character of her own. When we meet her again in ‘School Reunion’, she seems confident and happy, but when she’s confronted with the TARDIS again, hidden away in a gym closet, she’s almost terrified. And that’s awesome. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

One of the masterstrokes of ‘School Reunion’ is that we start off well into the action. By the time the episode begins, Mickey’s called the Doctor and Rose to Earth, told them of some weirdness going on at a nearby school, the Doctor’s gotten Rose hired as a dinner lady and snuck himself in as a Physics teacher.⁴ This saves buckets of time before the titles even kick in, and allows a slightly more relaxed pace than usual; the Doctor and Rose get to spend a good ten minutes solidly investigating before things really start going to crap. It turns out, of course, that some of the teachers are very, very evil, and have one of the most implausible plans ever shown on television. But I’ll get to that later, as it’s surprisingly unimportant.

The meat of the story is the triangle between Sarah, Rose and the Doctor. Things get bitchy quite quickly between the two companions (though it must be said, Sarah starts it), until things culminate in one of the funniest scenes in Who ever, when Rose and Sarah try to compete with each other by listing the coolest monsters they’ve fought.⁵ But some of the deeper issues aren’t so easily dealt with. One of the best things about the Doctor is how simple his premise is: a wanderer in a magic box, always travelling, never stopping. It’s an idea that echoes myths and fairy tales as much as it does science fiction, and the Doctor’s almost cruel justification for always leaving his companions behind reminded me a bit of Peter Pan.⁶ The Doctor’s scenes with both Sarah and Rose this week could easily have become a bit soppy, but they’re all perfectly understated.⁷

In fact, this is an awesome story for the Doctor. He’s been getting a lot of focus this year — being the new character, in a way, I suppose it makes sense. Oddly, I really feel like we need a quality Rose-based story soon. David Tennant is even better than last week,⁸ putting a bit more brood back in the mix, and getting a quality face-off with the magnificently villainous Anthony Stewart Head. Who is, just in case anyone was still in doubt, not the Master. Which is a shame, if only because it’d be awesome to see him again; he’s probably the strongest humanoid enemy we’ve had in the new series so far. It’d be good to see Sarah again, too — Lis Sladen is still great fun,⁹ and surprisingly cute for a lady of her years. Maybe in Torchwood. Billie Piper was excellent as usual this week too, and looking surprisingly hot dressed as a dinner lady.

This episode also looks like winning the ‘Boomtown’ award for Most Buffy-like episode of the season. Not just because there’s a school, or because Giles is in it — there’s also a much stronger emphasis on the character development, a lot of very witty dialogue, and even some almost metatextual humour — such as when Mickey works out after seeing K-9 that he’s the comic relief. And we also get perhaps my favourite Mickey moment ever, today: “I’ve even prepared a little dance I can show you later.” K-9 turns out to be less annoying than he could have been — for a start, not until the end does he actually have to move alongside the actors, which was always the most painfully awful aspect of the bloody thing. His final charge towards the vats of Krillitane Oil is beautifully noble, especially after being told by the Doctor that he’s a good dog.

Oh yes. The Krillitane Oil. Right oh, lets just talk about the plot. At the start, we see a Krillitane get touched by the oil, at which point she screams, and gets shepherded into a room by her Krillitane mates, who stay in the room with her. Then there’s a sound effect which sounds a little explosion-like, but really just like a flame igniting, and a flash of light. Later, it turns out that the nasty aliens are supposed to explode when put in contact with the oil. That first explosion is so piss-poor and misjudged, and the later one so over-the-top, that I had absolutely no idea why everyone was running from the building at the end. It didn’t help that we only really got one line in the plot justifying it, and though Tennant says it with much gusto, it still lacks that “Yes, that makes sense” factor that I like to have at the end of an episode.¹⁰

And then there’s the Skasis Paradigm. This wasn’t nearly as bad; it had cool glyphs. Perhaps I missed the bit where only British school children could be used to crack the code — if not, it seems that some kind of sweat shop or dictatorship would have been a better place to go, if you wanted to work kids hard with no interruptions. And frankly, I wish it would take longer, too. Perhaps the Krillitane have been working on it with various children, on and off, for millennia, and the Doctor just happened to find them at the end? Yeah, that could work. I can forgive all this, because it leads to a scene where the Doctor wonders if maybe he does have the right to become a god, and Sarah tells him that bad things have to happen — almost an inverse of ‘Genesis of the Daleks’.¹¹

I laughed, I cried, I wondered why that Krillitane on the badly composited roof just swooped down and missed the Doctor. That last bit isn’t such a big deal though. ‘School Reunion’ is pretty awesome. And I never would have thought I’d be so glad to have Mickey on board the TARDIS.

1. No, not the mind probe! ↩
2. Not initially apparent in 1983, but based on dialogue in ‘School Reunion’, it would seem that Sarah has no recollection of the events of ‘The Five Doctors’. Some people have all the luck. ↩
3. I still, however, will not be referring to this season as twenty-eight. ↩
4. In an adorable touch, the way the Doctor gets the old Physics teacher out of the way is by giving her a winning lottery ticket. ↩
5. Though, and it’s been said before, when you try to win an argument like that with “Slitheen” you know you’re losing. Now, Emperor Dalek, that puts you in contention. ↩
6. Or maybe ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’. ↩
7. No one cries, which is good. And we get little musical echoes of the song that played at the end of ‘The Christmas Invasion’. We do however, also get a sweeping chord as the Doctor and Sarah say goodbye, but I suppose that was justified. ↩
8. Though last week was filmed after filming for this story. So it doesn’t mean much. ↩
9. “I still don’t think Lis can act to save her life.” — Keith Topping, author of a few program guides and one or two dodgy novels, on the Outpost Gallifrey forum. Keith, you’re dead to me. ↩
10. I’m not saying that I should have the physics explained to me; just that there should be enough pieces in place to make these things fit. I’ve got to criticise this now, otherwise when the next ‘Tooth and Claw’ or ‘The Empty Child’ comes along, I won’t have anything to praise them for. ↩
11. Whoops, I’m nerding out again. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Saturday, May 6th, 2006. 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.