The Who finales are always epic, but this one remains my favorite. It’s legitimately hide-behind-the-couch scary, equally funny, puts Our Guy and Our Girl front and center and throws a nightmare of Big Bads at them, and the pay-off at the end is searing and satisfying and right, tragic and true. We’ve talked a lot about endings in the McDaniel class, but the big takeaway is that if the end doesn’t work, the rest of the novel/story/episode/series is toast. It’s what everything that has come before has been building up to. It’s the Big Finish, the Payoff, the Climax in every sense of the word. Davies very carefully built the whole season to culminate in this two-parter, layering the Doctor-Rose relationship so that it could only end in this way, building all the characters so that their actions here are the sum of everything that has gone before. Davies does what Joss Whedon always did, he ENDS the season, he doesn’t shill out his narrative with a tacky cliffhanger because he knows if he delivers at the climax, his audience will be back. Cliffhangers fall into the same category as prologues and epilogues; they’re weak writing, a sign of a writer who doesn’t trust his or her audience. One of the great things about this two-parter is that while it’s both an ending and a beginning, it makes the season complete, a unified whole, a great filmed novel. So let’s talk about endings this week, along with everything else.

Fun fact: There’s a “Bad Wolf” mention in every episode of Season One (and several after that in later series) although some are so hidden they’re hard to find.

“Boomtown” is a reward moment for faithful viewers, bringing back people we know in a character-driven script. It doesn’t have the emotional impact of “The Doctor Dances” or the big explosions of “WW3,” it just pits a lot of people who know each other and who have been through a lot together against a smart enemy they’ve fought before, and then fights that fight all over again, this time with trickery and finesse instead of blowing up 10 Downing Street. There’s a great deal of pleasure in watching characters we love do what they do beautifully, and the episode, sandwiched between two epic two-parters, is that small, quiet moment before the Big Finish, a chance for viewers to rest before going to war in “Bad Wolf.” There are more very very close shots of characters in this show than in any other in the series; the camera practically goes up their noses. It’s not one of the Great Who Episodes, but it’s a wonderful example of that (comparatively) still moment in any narrative before everything goes all pear-shaped.

What are you celebrating this week?

Also on io9: a summary of the different flavors of Who through 32 seasons.

I was going to skip “Boomtown,” another Russell T Davies episode (when did the man sleep?), but I think it’s interesting because it’s a comparatively low key story that comes between two huge, high impact double episodes, so it acts as a valley, a small quiet story that relies on character, particularly drawing on what viewers already know of all the characters. It’s a good look at how to pace a novel or, in this case, a series, without undercutting the tension. And for a Who, it’s very talky; the ratio of explosion and panic to discussion is reversed.

Fun fact I just discovered: Captain Jack was written with Barrowman in mind, which helps explain that perfect fusion of character and actor.

“I’m looking for a blonde in a Union Jack. A specific one, mind you, I didn’t just wake up this morning with a craving.”

Russell T. Davies brings us The Blitz, people turning into monsters, Rose stranded on Big Ben, and Captain Jack. Not to mention the creepiest repeated line in Who history: “Are you my mummy?” I talked about motif and metaphor in this story in the lecture I gave the McDaniel students, but there’s so much more. This double-episode makes just about every Best of Who list out there: creepy, heart-breaking, funny, and romantic. Plus, Captain Jack. I wish I could write like this.

We’re skipping three episodes this time, “Dalek,” “The Long Game,” and “Father’s Day,” (I know, I know, but there are seven seasons to skim through, so we’re going to be skipping some good stuff), but we can’t skip “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.” If you forced me to pick the best Who story it would be this one, a blend of horror and comedy, heartbreak and jubilation, Who at its best. You’ll never hear the word “Mummy” again without shivering, so one thing to look at is the way Davies never undercuts the horror with the comedy but balances the two to create just the right amount of tension. Also metaphor: there’s a lotta talk about dancing going on here.

ETA: Cherries at RT, Jill and Kieran.
Also, this is Argh’s 900th post.

One thing to look at in this story is managing huge casts. I love a large cast of characters to work with, but this story has a lot of speaking parts–the Doctor, Rose, Mickey, Jackie, Harriet Jones, the Slitheen who show up in different bodies, the political aide who should have been wearing a red shirt, UNIT, a platoon of soldiers, the morgue attendant, the pig–and they’re all established pretty well, both visually and by their character actions. I have to confess, I like the smaller cast stories because they feel more intimate (see the two episodes we’re skipping), but I think handling this many characters takes skill, although it does help that the plot is your basic Aliens Here To Take Over the World. Thank God they’re calcium based.

When Russell Davies rebooted the Dr. Who series, he took on an epic with all the troubles that entails: You don’t mess around with the Doctor. He had to satisfy fans, most of whom were adults with very clear and very rabid ideas from their childhoods of Who the Doctor was (that would be twenty-six previous seasons, starting in 1963). But he also had to make the series accessible to people like me, who’d never seen it before. He had to make it old and make it new and make it on what was evidently a limited budget, although not as limited at the classic Whos (compare the first season to the seventh and you’ll see a big budget increase apparent on the screen).

A lot was riding on “Rose,” the first episode. That made it a big undertaking for him, but a perfect place for us to talk about how to begin a story. For example:

What makes “Rose” a brilliant reboot to the old series? (You can disagree that it’s brilliant, of course, but really, did you watch it?)

What shorthand did Davies use in characterization to get the major players in the viewers’ minds quickly and indelibly?

How did Davies handle twenty-six seasons of back story for the new people?

Feel free to add your own questions, too. Much like the Doctor, we’re here to explore, just looking for things that make us say, “Fantastic!”

Oh, and if you haven’t see “Rose” yet, you might want to avoid the comments:

[Note: I can't find the original of that image; if anybody knows who made it, please let me know so I can give credit.]

My plan, which can change depending on the comments, would be to take one Dr.Who episode a week, selecting stories that I think would generate good craft analysis. We’d concentrate on the new series–Doctors Nine, Ten, and Eleven, aka Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith–and I’d choose a couple of stories from each year (there are seven years, we’re not going to do them all) to see the arc of the new Who. I think the change of showrunners between ten and eleven (Davies to Moffat) does interesting things to the stories, too. So I’d choose a show (feel free to nominate in the comments) and then I’d put up a post on Sunday with a short intro and a starting discussion question and let the rest of you take it from there, talking about whatever you wanted to in regards to the storytelling (I bow to no one in my ability to squee over Eccleston, Tennant, and Barrowman, but it’s not terribly fun or helpful to read that stuff, so let’s stick to the writing).

As an experiment, let’s do “Rose,” the first episode in Season One of the new Who, free on Amazon Prime. (I’m ambivalent about Amazon in general, but Amazon Prime is a great deal.) If it works, we’ll keep going, picking at least three stories per season (some stories are two-parters so we’ll do both parts) and taking them apart to see how they work, the good and the bad. Three times seven is twenty-one so that’s about four months of Who Sundays if we decide to go for it. If we start and then it turns out to be a dud, I’ll pull the plug, but it could be a good time.

So is this something you’d like? What would you want the series to cover/concentrate on? (I’m thinking writing craft, but I’m open.) For those of you who are already Who fans, what episodes must be covered? (“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances,” “Blink,” and “Let’s Kill Hitler” are already in as far as I’m concerned.) Feedback please. And then we’ll do a trial run on “Rose” on Sunday.

So what do you think?

But some readers don’t. (I had a complaint about “Andromeda.”) What’s your take on names in books? (Don’t feel you have to stick to heroine names, not that you would.)