Have the other two ready to listen to some day, but for now I must say that the first boxset is absolutely brilliant. It’s what if we did Doctor Who, but except for saving the day, we just like, didn’t do that. Each time (not each time, but let me be hyperbolic it reads nicer) still, they give you that hope, that yes! We’re gonna save the world! and then they don’t and everybody dies horribly.
We’re going to places to have an adventure, but unlike DW, there’s no real goal to it. It’s a very vague ‘find David Tennant’ at best. And Rose and company arrive, and they walk around, and they do stuff. They try to help whoever they meet, and that’s it. And sometimes they only help those who can give something back. They’re no saviours like the Doctor, they’re just people in the end. That’s what we all are.
That’s what the boxset is about. Every story has these enormous end of the world stakes, but it’s not about those stakes. Doctor Who always has to go: “If we don’t stop these Daleks, it will mean… The end of the world! cliffhanger sting” But here they go: “We’re in a crisis, our planet might die out in a few years.” And then focus on the relationship of two people. It’s very intimate drama, told through end of the world alternate universe sci-fi. We’re not here to save the world. We’re here to give these people their small moments of hope and happiness. And that’s it. Once that’s done we go. Because that’s what life really is about. Even if they all still die once we’ve left. Even if in the end it’s all meaningless, because the fact that it’s all meaningless is meaningless. Do it just because.
And I really love how the last story ties it all together. Previously, yes, it was the end of the world, but it didn’t feel like it had to be. There was still hope. That glimmer to make you think that this time, they are going to survive, and each time they stretch out that hope a little longer. Now, at the last story, we’re finally gonna save them all. And it’s not that. It’s more explicit than the previous story could be. It’s all those themes but made much more literal. It is the end of the world. And there’s nothing you can do about it. At the end of this story everybody you’re gonna meet and sympathize with will die. But it’s also the story with the least bleak outlook on humanity. Ironically, for being the story without one, it’s the story with the most hope. Because like I said, it’s not about the end of the world and they couldn’t make it clearer in the last one. There’s nothing interesting to do with the end of the world. It’s completely inevitable, so why care. And it’s simply stories about the people.
And then in a twist, after Rose and Jackie leave, and you’re expecting to hear the sounds of everybody screaming and crying, because the inevitability of death has come upon them- It doesn’t come. Because in the end that’s not what mattered. The little moments did, and you got those. And the only story which absolutely confirms to you at the beginning that everybody is going to die is the only one that doesn’t show it. As the Curator once said: “Now what do you think that means eh?”
So again, absolutely genius boxset, one of the best pieces of Doctor Who media ever released. Even if I think that Ghost Machines isn’t a 10/10, all the stories together, and how they thematically link up make that the set in its entirety still is. Peak, as they say.
