Inspirations - Parting of the Ways

 

If you were coming new to Doctor Who in 2005, you would have expected the season finale to be epic in scale, with spectacular VFX. This was simply how sci-fi / fantasy TV series worked these days. Computer generated imagery had started to come in during the final years of the original series, but was now the norm for such programmes.

Those of us who had grown up with the Classic Series knew that the programme could not compete with big movies like Star Wars or Close Encounters. Apart from the odd hero model shot, Doctor Who simply didn't try to compete. It preferred the single villain to the massed ranks of monsters.

We all knew that there were only ever 4 or 6 Dalek props at any one time. The only ways you could show more would be to have photographic blow-ups, as they did in the earliest days when old 405 line TV's could let them get away with this; or use the commercially available toys, which unfortunately didn't look right. 

Another trick was to have the same 4 or 6 Daleks pass through a doorway, go quickly behind the camera and then come back round through the same door again.

If we wanted to see huge Dalek armies, flying through space, then that was reserved for the imagination or for comics and written stories.

One thing Russell T Davies could now do was finally show such images on the small screen. 

Because he could, he did.

After showing the carnage that a single Dalek could create in mid-series, it was now time to show the threat that an entire army posed.

Series such as The X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer were structured to have a certain number of stand-alone "monster of the week" stories, accompanied by episodes which were part of an overarching story arc. This arc always dominated the final few episodes, and formed the main thrust of the finale.

The only comparable event to this one from the Classic Series, would be Planet of the Spiders - in that it drew together themes and incidents from earlier stories - namely The Time Monster, The Green Death and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. (Seasons 16 and 23 were specifically set up as arc seasons, with every episode related to the overall plotline - a single story played out over a full series).

It also became common in the 1990's for the season to have a resolution to the arc, but then to throw up a cliff-hanger in the last few moments, to make sure viewers came back after the lengthy break.

Doctor Who elected to do this as well, with a link to the Christmas Special, which was generally the next episode that people would see once a series had ended.

Davies was rather forced to have a major cliff-hanger at the end of his first series, as Christopher Eccleston had announced early on that he would be quitting the show after just one season.

Had Eccleston decided to do a second series, it may have been Rose Tyler who would have departed in this episode.

This series' story arc had been the frequent references to "Bad Wolf", which had culminated in the previous week's episode being set in the same location as The Long Game, but renamed the Game Station - run by the Bad Wolf Corporation.

Who or what "Bad Wolf" was we had still to learn. The trailer for Parting of the Ways featured the Doctor responding to a booming voice which claimed "THEY SURVIVED THROUGH ME!", and in the final week before broadcast speculation was rife as to who this might be. Everyone assumed that this was the voice of Bad Wolf. The main suspect was Davros, what with this being a Dalek story. Characters from the classic era such as the Black Guardian, Omega or the Valeyard were also suggested. Some people thought that it would turn out to be Adam Mitchell - that his character was also part of a long game.

It turned out to be Rose Tyler, becoming Bad Wolf after being possessed by the Space Time Vortex through exposure to the TARDIS innards.

Instead of the clues leading to Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf led to the clues.

That booming voice turned out to belong to the Emperor Dalek. There had been two previous Emperors, the first of whom had been referenced in the previous episode by the imagery of the Controller, as we mentioned last time.

This new Emperor, like its first predecessor, is much larger than a normal Dalek and is immobile, being built into its surroundings.

Captain Jack had been introduced as the series needed a soldier to fight in the finale - a role which would not have been right for either the Doctor or for Rose to have performed.

Jack's resurrection was all part of the plan, already formulated, for the Torchwood spin-off series, which would star Jack. "Torchwood" was first mentioned in Bad Wolf in one of the questions posed to Rose in The Weakest Link. The title is an anagram of "Doctor Who", and had been used as a code to disguise production materials for the 2005 series.