I just watched the DR. WHO episode from last week on SciFi, "Father's Day," and I hafta say, it is one of the best little time travel stories I've ever seen, heard, or read. It's a very smart, tight, and sweet little tale.
The episode begins with this Doctor's first Earthmonkey sidekick, Rose, telling the Doctor about her late father. She only knows him thru bedtime stories told by her mother. She described his kindness, responsibility, and brilliance, as well as the romance of their courtship and marriage. After explaining how she never really got to know her dad, Rose persuades the Doctor to arrange some low-key visits to moments in her father's life, including his wedding to her mother and the last day of his life, the day he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. Her mother had told her that he was alone when he died - he was found dead some time after the driver sped off - and Rose wants to change that. Not to save him from death, but simply to be there when he does pass away, to hold him, to let him be with someone who loves him in his last moments. However, when the Doctor gives Rose this chance, she finds she cannot resist rushing to save him.
HelLO!~ McFLY-yy!
As Philip J. Fry could have told her, "Duh, your actions upset the flow of Time." But y'know, we've gotta suspend disbelief or we won't have a story. =)
In order to heal the wound created by Rose's interference, the cosmos dispatches a legion of Tommyknocker-esque spacetime antibodies, dead set on sterilizing the damaged area, specifically, humanity on Earth in the year 1987. When the Doctor returns to the TARDIS, presumably to jump to a point in time when he could return its flow to its correct path, he finds that the tesseract is gone! The police box interior is simply... an empty police box. The Doctor is NOT pleased to find himself trapped with the monkeys, but what's a Timelord to do? He and Rose regroup and rally to protect a small group of survivors in an old chapel, but without the TARDIS, they can do nothing to change and fix history...
While the Doctor brainstorms, Rose gets to know her parents better, and worse...
I really fell hard for the obligatory "no man is an island" explanation of the significance of the life of an average, "unimportant" fellow doing his own little thing day after day for as long as he does it. The Doctor also expresses his admiration and even envy of these simple lives compared to his long-lived and adventure-filled own.
The Timelord science that governs this damage to the timestream, its cosmic treatment, and possible undoing is pretty simple and clever, with any rough edges hidden behind the word "Paradox." =) I very much appreciated it.
As Rose and the Doctor do their best to protect her parents from the mindbending truth of the cause of the wound, never mind Rose's identity, her father starts to put it all together on his own...
Frack, I really can't go on anymore without totally giving up the really fun bits of the story, but I will say those fun bits are classic, timeless (*groan* I know!), even.
In general, I've seen most of the SciFi broadcast episodes of this incarnation of the Doctor and find it to be as much fun as Tom Baker's stint back in the 80s. Honestly, I lost track of the Doctor in the bewteen time, sampling the post-Baker Docs in random episodes and TV movies on PBS.
I'll keep this episode saved on my replay a while. If anyone of my friends who reads this is interested, and is local, maybe I can have you over for a viewing before my saved-up OCs and SMALLVILLEs force me to kill it. =)
Keep on keepin on~
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