And here we are. After three hundred and eighty seven days on the Time Treadmill, I have finally arrived in the twenty first century with NuWho. It hardly seems possible. For me it was only two days ago that I said goodbye to the classic series, but those forty eight hours represent a sixteen-year jump from 1989 to 2005. It's a whole new world. But before I dove into the Ninth Doctor, I decided to spend an extra seven minutes with the Eighth Doctor.

So let's talk about them both.

Night of the Doctor

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This seven minute mini-episode did not come out until eight years after the start of the modern series, as a part of the build-up to the fiftieth anniversary. I decided to watch it now because that's where it fits in narratively. Having just said hello to Paul McGann's Doctor yesterday, I wanted to be able to properly say goodbye before moving on.

I am so pleased with the BBC for giving McGann the chance to film a proper regeneration scene. When the series was revived, producer Russell T. Davies (correctly) did not want to give new viewers any stumbling blocks for jumping into the show. That was absolutely the correct decision, but for the first time in the history of the show it left a regeneration unexplained and offscreen.

This short makes some delightfully surprising choices. It opens with a standard crisis (spaceship about to crash, a lone survivor on board in need of rescue), but when the Doctor arrives to save the day it does not go quite as planned. As soon as the woman piloting the ship realizes he is a Time Lord she is immediately repulsed because of the Great Time War that has raged across the universe. When the Doctor plaintively says "At least I'm not a Dalek," she grimly replies, "Who can tell the difference anymore." The ship crashes. They both die.

And then, in a lovely callback to The Brain of Morbius, the Doctor is revived by the Sisterhood of Karn. He has four minutes to decide whether to take their potion and regenerate, or to die. Ultimately he decides it is time to quit avoiding the war and to finally take up his place as the War Doctor.

It's a great, great short and we get a glimpse of the kind of Doctor that Paul McGann could have been on television (and actually was in audio stories for many years). Eventually I'll get to the next regeneration, from War Doctor to Ninth Doctor, but not for a couple more months.

Rose

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Oh what a balancing act the new series had to perform, and oh my does it succeed. I have one or two very minor quibbles, but this is a script that deftly manages to do all of the heavy lifting that needs to be done in bringing new viewers to the series while still respecting long-time fans. The first very smart thing Davies did was to provide a viewpoint character who is fun and engaging, but also someone in which the viewers can see themselves. Rose Tyler (and her mother, and her boyfriend) seems to have walked straight out of Eastenders. Everything you need to know about Rose as a character gets revealed with no dialogue in a two-minute montage of her daily life. You know that she is a young adult who still lives in an apartment with her single mother, that she has a boyfriend, and that she works in a department store. In short, she leads a typical urban life. 

And then the mannequins in the basement of her workplace come to life and she is whisked off into an adventure with the Doctor, and the entire tone of the series is set.

As quickly as he arrives, he leaves. But before he does, he gives one of the great monologues in the modern show's history. In story terms he is explaining to Rose who he is. But what he is really doing is explaining to this huge new audience (the most-watched first episode for any incarnation of the Doctor) who the Doctor is.

Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving? It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That's who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.

Another scene with an internet conspiracy theorist provides some of the needed exposition for the history of the Doctor, and then it's off to the races for the big finale. The Doctor shows up again to rescue Rose from a plastic replica of her boyfriend Mickey, Rose (and the new audience) gets introduced to the TARDIS and the new console room is revealed, and then there's the final showdown against the Nestene Consciousness.

Once again, the writing manages to thread the needle by kicking off with a story featuring a monster from the original series (the Autons), which appealed to fans, but did so without actually naming them or requiring any prior knowledge. Davies knew he had a mountain to climb to get to the massive reveal at the end of the first season, and so he baits the hook with easy-to-chew pieces for the new viewers while giving tasty snacks to keep the geeks on the line as well.

And oh, Christopher Eccleston. Such a surprising and yet perfect choice for the role. He manages to be simultaneously very different from any previous incarnation of the Doctor, while also fully embracing everything that defines the character. He is joyful, engaging, occasionally very alien, and then abruptly dangerous and implacable. Without question, it was his performance that made the series revival a success. It's a shame that he only chose to stay for the one season (although I fully understand his reasons why). His portrayal as the battered survivor of the Great Time War, masking his pain and misery with a toothy grin and and frequent exclamations of "Fantastic!", it is a layered and nuanced performance that is a delight to watch.

I could have done without some of the slapstick with Mickey -- without the belching garbage can, or the wine cork through the forehead of PlasticMickey -- but it wasn't distracting enough to really bring the story down. Also: it's hard to criticize, what with this being a children's show, right? There's more of that kind of thing coming up this season. Fortunately it becomes less frequent as NuWho goes along.

So that's it, I have reached the twenty-first century! How cool is that?

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eighth, Ninth
Companion(s): Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler
Episode(s): Rose
Steps Walked: 7,499 today, 2,534,990 total
Distance Walked: 4.15 miles today, 1,315.01 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 38 today, 283 total
Weight: 249.92 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.38 lbs