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Doctor Who: The Next Doctor

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor (2008)

December. 25,2008
|
7.4
| Adventure Fantasy Science Fiction Mystery

The Doctor arrives in Victorian London. It's Christmas, but snow isn't the only thing descending on the tranquil and jubilant civilization, as familiar silver giants from an alternate reality are amassing in numbers. The Cybermen are on the move again, and the only beings who can stop them are the Doctor and... another Doctor?

...

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Stometer
2008/12/25

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

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Tedfoldol
2008/12/26

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

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Voxitype
2008/12/27

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

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Kaydan Christian
2008/12/28

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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Dr Moo
2008/12/29

It's Christmas in Victorian London and The 10th Doctor shows up there currently companionless which will be important. On arriving he hears a woman screaming for The Doctor but when he gets there he meets what seems to be the product of a future regeneration (complete with a companion named Rosita -- Very subtle, Mr Davies!) but this new Doctor has no memory of anything from before he recently got attacked by Cybermen. This is an interesting idea that RTD wastes no time playing around with.The titular character is, of course, not an incarnation of The Doctor but is in fact a human named Jackson Lake who got attacked by a group of Cybermen and, through an astoundingly unlikely series of events came to believe he was a newly regenerated Doctor. David Morrisey plays the role and does a pretty good job of it too. It allows for a nice role-reversal as David Tennant's Tenth Doctor is relegated to companion to Lake's apparent Doctor and RTD uses this concept to its full potential, taking advantage of the current absence of a companion, and you'll really wish Morrisey could be The Doctor at some point in the future -- although that's pretty much impossible now.The weak point of the episode lands in the tricky balancing act of maintaining Lake's story at the same time as that of the villain, Mercy Hartigan, who is working with the Cybermen to awaken their king that they may conquer the universe. Hartigan is played by Dervla Kirwan who does her best with what she has to work with but sadly her character is wasted. What starts as a cruel and calculated menacing figure when she turns up at a funeral and deadpans that several invitees are to die doesn't take long to descend into pantomime territory as she ends up piloting a giant Cyberman that threatens to crush London.The giant Cyberman is the Cyberking and it is a poorly realised monster. It is effectively an oversized steampunk Cyberman and the production team seem very self-aware of the ridiculousness of it as we only get to see it properly a couple of times as The Doctor's main confrontation with it is actually with its pilot Miss Hartigan. Tennant and Kirwan both deliver a great performance here but the situation is a little daft and it falls to the two actors to make it work. Thankfully they do exactly that with ease and the end result is a very memorable confrontation as the villain is, upon her defeat, ultimately a victim of her own actions but her demise is still very unpleasant, especially for a Christmas Special.This is not quite an excellent episode but still very good and, most importantly for a Christmas Special, lots of fun. Davids Tennant and Morrisey are both excellent together and if you ignore the poor production of the Cyberking at the end you'll find an episode that is extremely creative and manages to pull off a bizarre set of ideas with a surprising level of success. 8/10

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Matthew Kresal
2008/12/30

It is inevitable that there will be certain Doctor Who stories that will only really work upon a single viewing. There's the hype that surrounds the story or the plot twists that, once they occur, mean that the story will never be the same again. Due to those things, the 2008 Christmas special The Next Doctor was perhaps destined to be one of those stories.Thinking back nearly five years to 2008 is hard to do now: David Tennant had recently announced he was leaving alongside Russell T Davies, which left both fans and the press in particular speculating about who the new Doctor would be. In that atmosphere, The Next Doctor was a perfect fit especially once both the title and the Children In Need preview of the special's teaser sequence had been released. Hype though can be a double edged sword as can time itself, for with the perspective of time, the weaknesses of this special are all to apparent.Perhaps the biggest of those would be the conceit that lies behind its title. With the perspective of time, The Next Doctor feels like a story where the title came first and the script followed suit and both the weak plot as well as the aforementioned weak ending bare that out. The central conceit, that the tenth Doctor is meeting some amnesic future incarnation, quickly falls apart as Davies gives not so subtle clues about what's going on. So quickly does it fall apart that Davies gets rid of the whole notion less than halfway through, something else that perhaps speaks to his own acknowledgments of the weakness of it.From there, the other weaknesses are made more apparent. Driven by that central conceit, the story rushes along at a great pace with everything else falling by the way side. Beyond the character of Jackson Lake, roles such as Rosita and Miss Hartigan end up becoming caricatures rather than characters, one a caricature companion and the other a caricature villainess. Even the Cybermen, whose return was much trumpeted when the "Next Time..." clip was shown at the end of Journey's End, are reduced to being caricatures of themselves.There's the fact its got a weak ending. The Davies era was driven (by his own admission) by spectacle, of trying to top whatever had come before. While the idea of a giant steam punk Cyberman (sorry Cyberking) marching through Victorian London may have done that trick on the page at least in theory, the unconvincing CGI creation we got to represent it says otherwise. It's Undermining that weak idea is a weak ending. The ending consists of the Doctor in a hot air balloon first causing Miss Hartigan, whose controlling the Cyberking, to effectively go insane before using the rifle like Dalek Dimensional Vault to disperse the Cyberking in the time vortex before it comes crashing into Victorian London. It's rushed, it's covered by clichéd Who technobabble and it simply doesn't work. Indeed, there's something rather telling about the fact Davies himself has since acknowledged the problem of the ending and indeed suggesting an alternative version which might actually actually have given Miss Hartigan a chance to be more than the caricature we ended up with.That isn't to write off this special entirely however. There's David Morrissey's excellent performance first as "The Next Doctor" and then as Jackson Lake. It's his performance more than anything else that carries the conceit as far as it foes. Morrissey captures in a couple of scenes a potential future Doctor full of both the enthusiasm and the hints of pain that the Doctor's of the New Series have all had. It also helps that Morrissey and David Tennant share an excellent chemistry together with the two of them really carrying the story right up to its lovely final scene.Looked back on with a perspective of time, The Next Doctor feels like a missed opportunity. Not only would Morrissey have made a splendid Doctor (if his performance here is anything to go by) but given when this first aired, this could have been the perfect place to have introduced a new Doctor. Instead it feels like a one trick pony trotting around a publicity stunt. It's a shame really for it could have been so much more.

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ShadeGrenade
2008/12/31

The Tardis lands in Victorian London at Christmas. Hearing someone calling his name, the Doctor rushes off, to find a young woman cowering in terror from something behind a locked door. A young man ( David Morrissey ) in Dickensian clothes appears, proudly announces himself as the Doctor, and takes charge of the situation...Another Christmas, another 'Dr.Who' Christmas Special. I enjoyed this one, but for a change I'll start this review by stating what I did not like about it. Firstly, the Cybershades were awful, reminiscent of the sticky tape and cardboard box monsters of the classic series. It was impossible to be unnerved by creatures that looked exactly like what they were - blokes in gorilla suits wearing coal scuttles. Worse, there was no need for them to be there. Cybermats could have been used instead. Secondly, the mystery of the 'next Doctor' was unnecessarily protracted. All the Doctor had to do was to whip out a stethoscope and listen to Lake's heart ( apparently such a scene was filmed but deleted from the finished broadcast ) to see if he was a Time Lord. Lake believed himself to be the Doctor after being exposed to a backfiring info stamp. Now we know Morrissey will not be the eleventh Doctor - thank heavens for that. Colin Baker was wrong when he said the role of the Doctor was 'actor proof'. The wrong person in the role would kill the show forever. Morrissey was hammy as 'the Doctor' yet first-rate as 'Lake'. Loved his 'sonic screwdriver'! His 'companion' was called 'Rosita' in a nice homage to Billie Piper's 'Rose'. The Cybermen seemed a bit wasted, getting to do little more than march about and look menacing. The scene in which they attacked funeral mourners was brilliant though, emerging through a snowstorm just as they did back in 1966's 'The Tenth Planet'. The real villainy came from sexy Dervla Kirwan as 'Miss Hartigan', easily the best female villain in the show for some time. She had joined forces with the Cybermen to help them construct a 'Cyber King', a giant Cyberman who proceeded to stamp Godzilla-like on poor old London Town.Why did the Cybermen need children to work in their factory? Surely adults could have done the job more efficiently.Tennant as ever performed wonders with what was basically an average script. The appearance of the earlier Doctors was nice, and there were some good jokes. As I said earlier, I liked this very much, and, following its repeat at Christmas 2010 ( presumably to take away the bad taste left by the appalling 'A Christmas Carol' ) enjoyed it even more. The Russell T.Davies era of 'Dr.Who' looks more and more impressive with each passing year.

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Welshfilmfan
2009/01/01

This Doctor Who episode was featured as the main programme of the evening on Christmas Day 2008, I have to admit I'm not really a Dr Who Fanatic as I've only dipped in and out of the Current Series although I have found David Tennant The Best 'Doctor' of all time a huge improvement on Christopher Eccleston who made the character Too cocky and unlikeable.The Story starts as The Doctor (David Tennant) arrives in London during the Christmas of 1851.... He soon becomes puzzled as there seems to be another 'Doctor' (David Morrissey) along with his companion Rosita (Velile Tshabalala)Soon enough The Cybermen are on their tail along with a mysterious lady, Mercy Harttigan (Dervla Kirwan) and both men have to work together to defeat Evil and save the World.Pretty Good Christmas Fare - One of the better episodes****1/2 out of *****

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