Charlie Brooker's screen burn
Saturday July 8, 2006
The Guardian
Goodbye, England's Rose. Yes, tonight's the night Billie Piper exits Doctor Who (7pm, BBC1) following her two-year tenure. When it was first announced that the revived Doctor's travelling companion was to be played by Piper, a former kiddywink popstar, I rolled my eyes so violently I found myself staring backward into my own skull. It's Bonnie Langford all over again, I figured.
How pitifully wrong I was. Anyone who thinks she's been anything other than excellent is a brick-hearted stump of a being. Effortlessly balancing feistiness and charm, vulnerability and goofiness, Billie Piper out-acted almost everyone else on television.
Out-sassed them too. She's extremely good-looking in a most peculiar way: her eyes, mouth and nostrils all seem to be competing to see which can look biggest on her face. At times she resembles a Spitting Image caricature of herself. It shouldn't work, but it does. You'll miss her when she's gone.
As for how she's gone, I've no idea - at the time of writing, no preview tapes of tonight's finale were available. I like that. Makes for more of an event. Not enough of them these days. As for series two as a whole... well, it's been bumpy. My series three wishlist runs as follows:
1: Curb the zaniness. David Tennant's Doctor alternates between "boggle-eyed schoolroom wacko" and "concerned intergalactic statesman" almost without warning. There's too much of the former, not nearly enough of the latter, and precious little in-between. A bit of mucking about is fine; too much and it all starts to resemble The Adventures Of Timmy Mallett In Space.
2: Enough déjà vu, already. Too often, the Doctor seemed scripted as a seen-it-all-before smartarse hell-bent on greeting every creature, artefact, space station and gizmo with a loudly over-familiar "oh, it's YOU" bordering on camp. At its worst, this is a bit like going on holiday with someone who's visited your destination before, and behaves like a squawking tourist guide the whole time you're there, pointing out the best cafes and choosing from the menu on your behalf until you feel like ramming their digital camera up their arse, just so they'll be able to take home a picture of something they haven't seen before. I know the Doctor's been exploring the universe for eons, but a touch more humility would be nice.
3: More two-parters, please. Several three- and four-parters wouldn't go amiss either. Partly because it'd be nice to give some of the stories more space to breathe, and partly because I'm presuming the economies of scale involved might make it possible to do away with the occasional "cost-cutting" talky episodes altogether.
4: More episodes directed by Euros Lyn. Not only were his episodes the most visually interesting, but his name sounds like a space station and therefore looks really cool in the credits.
5: My suggestions for next companion: Bez; Wayne Rooney; the entire cast of Channel 4's Coach Trip; a purple CGI blob with a retractable anteater's proboscis, voiced by Tim Westwood; Lisa Simpson; Chloe from 24; Charles Kennedy; Pink.
6: More scary monsters. OK, so tonight we're being treated to an all-out bundle between Daleks and Cybermen. That's great. But some new regular nasties would be nice. Not the Slitheen; they're just silly. I want to see an all-new race of humourless, fascistic bastards worthy of ranking alongside the old favourites. Oh, and they should be armed with drills. Not lasers. Drills.
7. Stop the continuity announcers talking over the end credits so we can hear the theme tune properly.
Anyway, that's my two penneth. Said gripes and suggestions are, of course, borne out of love. Although I found myself in the uncomfortable position of utterly hating one episode this series (the Love and Monsters wack-a-thon starring Peter Kay), and although it's a series aimed primarily at an audience yet to experience puberty, it's still the most consistently inventive, lovingly-crafted British drama on TV. Fact!
