Smart Girl Reviews Doctor Who

Smart Girl and I have spent much of our holiday break watching Seasons 1 and 2 of Doctor Who.  This is the re-launched version of Doctor Who that began in 2005 -- not the "classic" series that ran from 1963 to 1989.  So the episodes we watched covered the first two seasons of the re-launch, in 2005 and 2006.  You can find them on Netflix.

Here is Smart Girl's review of what we've seen so far:

Hi all, Smart Girl here.  I finished the second season recently, so here's my reaction.

Season One (Warning: there will be spoilers)

Summary: This was the season that started the re-launch.  The Doctor for this season was the Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston.  In the first episode, the Doctor meets a 19-year-old girl named Rose Tyler and with her help, saves the world from living plastic.  At the end of the episode, Rose decides to come along with the Doctor and become his "companion."  They travel through time and space, meeting aliens like the Slitheen, the Gelth, and the Face of Boe.  They also find another person to join their merry company, Captain Jack Harkness.  All through their travels, they see and hear references to the "Bad Wolf."  In the last two episodes, we meet a new (and old) foe, the likes of which we have never seen before, foes that shouldn't exist.  A foe whose only goal is to "exterminate."  The Daleks.  The humans mount a last defense, but the worst thing that they can do to a Dalek is "impair its vision."  The Doctor has sent Rose back to her own time to keep her safe and keep his promise to her mother.  He has built a machine that will destroy all the Daleks, but kill everyone on planet Earth as well.  The Dalek Emperor taunts the Doctor, saying that the Doctor will become "the great exterminator." The Doctor chooses to be a coward and refuses to start the machine.  Meanwhile, Rose has looked into the heart of the TARDIS and comes back, spreading "Bad Wolf" across the universe to bring her there and destroying all the Daleks.  Unfortunately, you aren't supposed to look into the heart of the TARDIS, so the Doctor takes on all that energy, ensuring his death.  In the last moments of the season, the Doctor "regenerates" into the Tenth Doctor,(David Tennant)  the most iconic of the re-launch.

My Opinion:  Whew, that summary was long!  Well, I really liked this season, and it will always have a special place with me, because it is the season that made me give Doctor Who a second chance after having a bad experience with a later episode I had seen.  I like the Ninth Doctor and thought he was very funny.  I thought this season, especially the first episode, was a good way for me to get into it because the special effects were so obvious to my 2012 eyes that it never got too scary.  The two main things I didn't like about this season were the Slitheen and Rose.  I thought the Slitheen were a little overused, and I felt like their reasoning for one of the Slitheen re-appearing in a later episode was little more than an excuse.  More annoying to me was Rose and the people associated with Rose.  Her mother was annoying and her boyfriend Mickey was, well frankly, an idiot.  The thing that irked me the most, though, was Rose's relationship with the Doctor.  In my opinion, the Doctor shouldn't have romantic relationships with his companions at all.  I think the Doctor should be attached to them, but not romantically.  They should be like a brother or sister, or a best friend.  The only other thing that really bothered me was that Rose didn't do as much as I thought she should.  She spent a lot of time being a damsel in distress.  Other than those things, I really liked this season, especially the Daleks.

Season Two (Once again, there will be spoilers)

Summary:  This season begins with the Rose getting used to the new Doctor.  In this season, we meet more colorful alien life, such as the Abzorbaloff, "the Wire," and another blast from the past, this time, in a parallel universe, the Cybermen!  In this season, in almost every episode, there is a small reference to "Torchwood."  At the beginning of the last two episodes of this season, Rose tells us that this is the story of how she died.  It starts harmlessly enough, with a return to home for Rose.  Things soon turn bizarre when a "ghost" comes and nobody but Rose and the Doctor is alarmed.  The Doctor, naturally, looks for the source, and finds these "ghosts" are coming from the mysterious Torchwood.  They discover that Torchwood, which the audience witnessed the founding of in an earlier episode, is the part of the British government that deals with aliens.  So, naturally, they are doing something stupid, namely, expanding a hole between our universe and a parallel universe.  We find that the Cybermen from the parallel universe have traveled through the hole into ours.  Unfortunately, they didn't make the machine that can go between the universes.  "But then who did,Smart Girl?"  You ask.  Well reader, it was a very old foe who we already defeated.  That's right.  Our favorite villains, the Daleks!  But this time, these are the last four, we promise!  All the others are gone!  Oh wait, they have some "Time Lord science."  But not just any Time Lord science, they've got a prison ship!  Filled with millions of Daleks.  Oops.  However, the Doctor has a plan.  He is going to close the hole between the worlds and all the Daleks and Cybermen will be sucked into a "void," leaving them trapped between universes where they can do no harm.  However, since our heroes have all been through this hole, they would get sucked into the void as well.  The Doctor manages to send the other heroic characters (except for Rose) across to the parallel universe.  He and Rose plan to open the hole, then hold onto some super-spaceman handles until the hole closes.  They will be in one universe, their friends will be in the other, and everyone will be saved.  Everything is working perfectly until the machine that opens the hole starts going offline.  Rose pushes the lever back up, but is being sucked into the hole when suddenly, her dad (from the parallel universe) comes and takes her back to the other world.  The hole closes before she can go back and she and the Doctor are stuck in parallel universes, the only things the TARDIS can't go through.  So they are separated forever.  They have one last goodbye, where Rose confesses her love for the Doctor, but they're cut off before the Doctor can confirm or deny if he feels the same.

My Opinion:  This season was even better than the first.  The Tenth Doctor is awesome and hilarious.  This season also has my favorite episode so far, the last one.  Not because Rose and the Doctor were separated, but because of one section of dialogue between the Daleks and the Cybermen.  Now, I'll do a little explaining here.  The Daleks only have one emotion: hatred, and want to destroy all other species because they are inferior. They're also nearly impossible to kill.  The Cybermen have no emotions and want to turn all humans into Cybermen.  They are easier to kill.  The dialogue goes something like this:

Cybermen: Join with us and together we will upgrade the world.
Dalek: Are you proposing an alliance?
Cybermen: Yes.
Dalek: Request denied.  Exterminate! (Dalek kills the two Cybermen it was talking with)
Cyberman Leader: You have declared war on the Cybermen.
Dalek Leader:  This is not war.  This is pest control!
Cyberman Leader:  We are 5 million!  How many are you?
Dalek Leader:  Four!
Cyberman Leader:  You would defeat 5 million Cybermen with four Daleks?
Dalek Leader: We would defeat 5 million Cybermen with one Dalek!

And I believe they could.  See why this is my favorite episode?