There are many series (both TV series and book series) that I have yet to review and Doctor Who is one of them. I won't be reviewing the entire series. Rather, this series will focus on the first season of the revived Doctor Who, which began after a long hiatus in 2005. I will attempt to keep this as spoiler-free as possible so that those who have not yet been hooked can learn about and go watch it!
World-building: Frequently awesome
Characters: great - awesome
Plot: great when it forgoes the monster-of-the-week approach
This first season made in 2005 is a great entry point for newcomers to the series. We are introduced to the Doctor's world through the eyes of Rose, a young 19 year-old girl who becomes entangled in some weird goings-on and is saved by a man who calls himself "The Doctor". Because this series is so long-running with so many years on the air, starting from the 60s, many different actors have taken on the portrayal of the doctor's character, but this ends up being quite an important part of the Doctor's characterization as you will see in the final episode of this season.
The first episode is nowhere near the best, and to be honest, a few of the other episodes this season didn't really work too well for me, but if you stick with the first few you will soon grow to love it obsessively. What I love about this show, and what I think has made it so successful is that it has everything: different worlds, different problems, and various different genres all rolled into one. The Doctor and his companion Rose are the only real constants holding together this great journey through so many different types of stories.
Fans are not in agreement over the effectiveness of ninth doctor, portrayed by Christopher Eccleston. Many say he is far from the best and others love him. Personally, I really enjoyed his character. He would go from being very serious and responsible one moment to being inappropriately cheerful during a crisis the next and this worked for me because it emphasized his difference from the humans around him. Both the doctor and his companion Rose have a series long character arc. Comparing their character in the first episode to the last you can see a huge development and change and there are various moments in the series where you can see the doctor realizing something, learning something, and having to change his philosophy a tiny bit to accommodate the new realization. This strong character development helps keep even the silliest episodes watchable and somewhat engaging.
No show, of course, is perfect. This show has quite a few flaws, including the annoying monster-of-the-week episodes (I particularly despised the Slitheen, which are first introduced in "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" but end up being reused later in the series, supposedly because the writers couldn't think of anything else...). Another flaw which hasn't been commented on as much is the negative portrayal of Rose's boyfriend, Mickey. He is constantly portrayed as silly, stupid, and used for comic relief, especially in the first few episodes, and I must admit this irked me a lot because I kept wondering, would he have been so unfairly villified if he hadn't been Black? Fortunately, near the middle of the series, Mickey starts to do some cool things and helps save the world a bit and his character moves from the comic-relief character to a more 3D one.
Another character that I didn't love was their portrayal of was Harriet Jones in the Christmas special. She started off being awesome in the Slitheen episodes, but then, in the final moments of the Christmas special, her character was destroyed as she made a very immoral decision. It's not that it didn't work, I think it did work considering her position in government and it resonated with some of the things politicians often say to excuse their decisions in relation to wars. The reason I didn't like it is simply because I LOVED Harriet's character the first time I saw her and I personally felt that it was a shame she had changed so much. I guess that means the writers of the show were doing their jobs!
I've talked about some of the episodes I didn't like as much so I should mention some of the ones I loved. My favorites were Dalek, Father's Day (I know, I know), the very creepy two-parter The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and of course, the final two episodes, which tied everything together very nicely. Your personal preferences, however, may be very different from mine, because, as I said, this show has so much variety.
I would highly recommend this show to fantasy/sci-fi lovers who have not yet seen it, and this season with the ninth doctor, is an excellent place to begin.
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