The end, it is the tricky bit to write if you don’t start with it. Some like to start with the end because at least then you’ve got something to aim for. Others, (the fools) like to leave it for last. There is a problem with endings now, often they are the jumping-off point for the next series, new movie, or they just don’t end. The latter being what Chibnall thought was interesting and had pitched to the BBC for a long, long, while. I like writing the end or at least planning the end; I am the end, I bring closure and I reveal all.

We can talk about the end later, my stupid pontification on writing isn’t what we need when I have to explain “Bad Wolf.” Not just the episode, but the concept, which is difficult to explain to someone who’s never seen the show. In fact, my editor sometimes wonders what madness I’m talking about each week. This week it is the end of 2005’s series 1 of Doctor Who, with the two-parter “Bad Wolf” and “The Parting of the Ways.”

Starting much like last week’s episode did, we got a recap of what’s important: The Might Jagrafess of the holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe and Satellite 5. A whole 100-years later, The Doctor bursts out of what looks like a lift (“Elevator“). He is confused about where he is, as the UK Big Brother theme plays and the android voice of Davina McCall calls him into the dairy room. I’ll say it now, if you don’t have a good bit of knowledge of TV shows from the UK, you might have a bit of trouble parsing what is part of a reference and what’s normal in the show.

Rose wakes up on a dark studio floor with someone standing over her, telling her the same thing The Doctor has been. Something about a transmat, a way of teleportation. Time for her gameshow to start much like the one for The Doctor. This one has a number of lecterns with names on them, surrounding a robot dressed in black with orange “hair.” It is time to play, The Weakest Link. She stands next to Rodrick, the “Anne Droid” is activated and Rose is just as bewildered by the whole circumstance.

Meanwhile, Jack wakes up from the transmat with two robots looking over him, assessing him and his fashion. When asked where he got his clothes, he says statically “Top Shop” (Nordstrom for the Americans), and gets disapproving sounds from the robots. They hit the de-fabricator, giving Trine-e, Zu-Zana, and millions of viewers, a view gay men could only dream of, Captain Jack with his ship out.

So with Rose playing The Weakest Link, and Jack playing What Not to Wear, The Doctor is left trying to escape Big Brother with Lynda Moss, played by Jo Joyner. Joyner is known in the UK for being in the daily soap opera EastEnders. Think of Lynda like that child that will keep asking questions, though given this is a satirized version of future reality TV, she’s a bit self-obsessed and a bit ditzy. He remembers what happened, and it’s all a bit fantasy with Eccleston giving it a bit too much. He overacts a bit when talking about leaving Raxacoricofallapatious for 13th-century Japan. He knows something wanted him here of all places.

If it wasn’t obvious already, we cut to a control room with producers of these many games and see floor 500 of what was once called Satellite 5. Coming back from a break, Rose is playing The Weakest Link, laughing at those who get the answers wrong. The young lad on the end gets the Torchwood answer wrong (Idiot!), giving Rose a look of slight anger. When she can’t answer something, she continues to laugh it off, with producers upstairs wondering why she’s laughing and why The Doctor is in Big Brother. Cupping Zu-Zana as she suggests cosmetic surgery to Jack, Trine-e removes a hand to replace it with a chainsaw.

In the elimination, Rose votes for Fitch while the Anne Droid does the usual Anne thing. No not complain about not being able to go fox-hunting. She belittles someone and makes someone else cry. Asking Rose why she’s voting for Fitch, Rose acknowledges that she can’t vote herself off. “It’s just a game, that’s how it works,” she says as Fitch cries. Knowing what is going on in the “game,” Fitch begs and pleads for another chance, almost like her life depends on it. Firing from her mouth, the Anne Droid kills fitch off the show by actually killing her. Now Rose realizes what’s wrong, and the young lad on the end makes a run for it as he doesn’t want to play, he’s killed too.

Eviction night at the Big Brother house isn’t how The Doctor wanted to spend his time, huddled on a couch with three people he doesn’t know. There’s Lynda, Strood, and Crosbie, the typical Big Brother cast: protagonist, gay man, and gay man’s best friend. Crosbie is voted out and The Doctor isn’t bothered because he knows how this boring human ritual is done, emotion, walk out, and screaming fans. The feed of her “eviction” is broadcast on the TV in the house, something that piques The Doctor’s interest when the door doesn’t open and she’s disintegrated.

The producers talk as they try to figure out what’s going wrong with The Weakest Link and Big Brother, mentioning the rumors of Satellite 5. They also talk of a “controller” who would know, as she watches everything. The controller is someone plugged into the broadcast picking out things, essentially working as an editor for a newspaper but with hundreds of reality and game shows. It turns out, in conversation with Lynda (and Strood), everyone that plays the game is picked at random. Anyone on Earth can be chosen, and there are 60 houses running at once. It is time to leave, time to get evicted by choice.

Bringing out the chainsaw, it is time for the face-off round of What Not to Wear, this episode it is flesh. Wanting to make a P.T. Barnum mermaid with Jack, Trine-e and Zu-zana suggest replacing his head with that of a dog, stitching his legs to his chest, and so on. Jack might be naked, right down to his hairless chest, but he gets a gun from behind himself; At least he’s prepared. He’s the first one to break free killing the two of them, all while Rose’s friend Rodrick boasts about taking her to the end so he can get some credits from “The BAD WOLF corporation.”

Now that most of the revelations are out the way, let’s talk about that mess for a minute. Following a montage of everywhere apart from the posters in “Father’s Day,” Rose suggests the words are following her, it is written all over the universe, as if someone has been planning this entire thing. For those of us ahead of the curve, aren’t you glad they didn’t use Torchwood as the word for series 2? We’ll get to all of that in a minute, but Christ this was a mess and a half to be cleaned up. As much as I think Davies is a showrunner with a vision, sometimes he did end up writing or having a guiding-hand in some outright twaddle.

Happy with his eviction, The Doctor demands to be disintegrated by the BAD WOLF corporation, something a producer says is an automatic process. He knows he’s safe, and that something brought him there for a reason. Nothing can touch him, including the deadly beam killing everyone else. Using his Sonic Screwdriver to get out, he opens both doors, offering Lynda a chance of getting out alive against a 50-50 chance in there. Outside, he realizes that he knows this place, “Satellite 5” is now “The Games Station.” After a couple of questions, Lynda laments him with gruesome versions of British game shows like Countdown, Call My Bluff, Wipeout, and Stars in Their Eyes.

Tonight Matthew, I am horrified. I do like his reasoning why he hasn’t seen any of this, even though Lynda says that everyone else has. He says that he “never paid for my license.” For those that don’t know (anyone outside the UK), the BBC charge everyone in the UK a tax for owning a screen. If you don’t pay it you can be executed. After a bit more characterization, Lynda offers to jump in the TARDIS. Of course by then it would be three companions and The Doctor, who would do that? A bit of fliting later, Lynda goes to find a light, illuminating a big sign with “BAD WOLF Corporation” on it.

Producers continue trying to figure out The Doctor, with one even asking the controller for a bit of help. Of course, like anyone in management she tells him to go away and work. Jack is dressed in a white shirt with a black vest and some jeans, an awful combination. He tinkers with the de-fabricator to get himself a bigger gun and then he’s off to find The Doctor. All the while, Lynda and The Doctor talk about environmentalism and Orwellian-style mind control as humans are too lazy to do anything other than watch the 10,000 channels coming from The Games Station.

This is where I’ll praise Eccleston and Davies, doing what really hits The Doctor hard, showing him that his actions caused consequences. Thanks to him closing Satellite 5 100-years ago, everything stopped. All the information that people were used to ingesting during their day (to use a metaphor) by checking their Twitter feed suddenly stopped. He caused a major disruption to human progression towards becoming the 4th great and bountiful human empire. Eccleston’s Doctor is characterized by “am I a good man?” and he is the catalyst for causing all he sees wrong with this world in this moment.

With Anne killing everyone but Rose and Rodrick, Jack finds The Doctor and Lynda. The three of them join up to try and find Rose before her game goes to its conclusion. With Rose assuming that BAD WOLF is following her, The Doctor thinks it is tied up with him, and Rose is just along for the ride. It might be accidental, but it is great that the episode with reality and game shows, shows where you think about yourself first, have our leads thinking only about themselves. She loses and is shot by the Anne Droid in a fantastic tense scene, as The Doctor burst into the room just a little too late. Leaving nothing but ash, The Doctor is broken while Jack points his gun around.

Following a short stint in jail, they head up to floor 500 and demand to speak with whoever is in charge around here. Brandishing a gun at the producers, they ask for The Doctor not to shoot. Honestly though, how stupid do you have to be to believe he would shoot. He chucks them the modified de-fabricator and does what he does best, talking himself in or out of a problem in front of him. Jack goes for a wander, finding the TARDIS locked away in a back room. It is registering a heartbeat, a single heartbeat that’s meant to be there, and it isn’t Jack’s. It is kind of spoiled by the 14-years since series 2, but Rose is alive.

Talking with one of the producers, they ask to be released since they aren’t being held hostage and they are terrified. “The same staff that executes hundreds of contestants every day,” to which she says it is just her job, “and with that sentence, you’ve just lost the right to even talk to me.” Again, Eccleston shows anger and passion in his semi-pacifism, followed by a return to his usual concern. The Controller starts asking for him during the solar flare, talking about her masters. They were hiding in the shadows forming the earth for many years, growing in numbers, all speaking of their fear of The Doctor.

Bursting in with energy, Jack tells them the TARDIS is in the cupboard and he’s worked it all out. Ordering Lynda to stand by the door, he “disintegrates” her and reintegrates her next to The Doctor, everyone that’s “died” is really just transmatted across space. Waking up once again on the floor, she’s greeted with a blue-tinted point of view shot, something she’s scared of and backs away from. The Controller, defying her masters, tells The Doctor where to look, where they are, and where they ultimately take her moments later. Her masters ultimately kill her with an electric whisk of death.

Doing what everyone is doing, Jack, The Doctor, Lynda, and two of the producers watch a screen that shows where the transmat is taking everyone. Canceling the signal blocking what is meant to be there, The Doctor finds a ship he knows. In fact, he knows it too well, it is one of the ships he saw in the Last Great Time War, one of 200 ships with half a million Dalek on them. Ordering Rose up, they Skype The Doctor to do the usual rigmarole, they gloat. He tells them what he’s going to do, and by the end, a majority of them will be back to being bins in the Reichstag by Tuesday. With no weapons, no defenses, and no plan, he’s coming to get Rose.

That was a good first part, teasing enough and doing what it needs to. However, it is a two-parter and that’s is the root of the problem. Everything was front-loaded to keep up the pace and made for a good episode with a couple of moments faltering in it. The second part, “The Parting of the Ways” is a mostly skippable episode as Rose gets fired back to Earth once she’s saved; while The Doctor and Jack make for a last stand on The Game Station. It isn’t a bad episode, it just doesn’t feel as meaty as the one before it leading up to this climactic reveal and collection of revelations. It is the one where we talk about the reveal of BAD WOLF.

Materializing around Rose and a Dalek, Jack uses his modified de-fabricator to blow this one Dalek roof high. Now it is just a piece of useless crap metal, the Dalek and the gun. After running straight out into the line of fire, surrounded by a ship of two-thousand Daleks, The Doctor stands steadfast. He repeats his plan to wipe them out. They can’t touch him, standing in front of their greatest fear, and they can’t get him because of the TARDIS’ forcefield. Asking how they survived the Last Great Time War, The Doctor is interrupted by the Dalek Emperor, whose ship was the last one to survive the war.

Two revelations come from this, they are half-human and they have a concept of blasphemy. Yes, not only are the space Nazis genocidal megalomaniacs with a plunger and a whisk for weapons, they now believe in a self-made god. They are mentally-broken Nazi dustbins sitting on the edge of the universe for hundreds of years, recreated from the thing they hate most, humanity. That right there is brilliance as its finest; adding to the canon, moving the story forward, and giving us more of it for years to come… sadly. Listening to them blasting at the doors of the TARDIS before leaving, The Doctor has a moment of regret for the war, his people were wiped out for nothing, and the Daleks lived on in spite of it all.

Rallying everyone they can muster, Jack takes all the guns and people to take on the sieging horde of Daleks coming; Leaving Rose and The Doctor with a kiss each. Only collecting a hand full of volunteers, Rodrick and a large group of others huddle up and stay quiet. Of course, they die. Sitting with The Doctor, Rose suggests going back a week to give a warning, breaking rule 1 of time-travel. Though he suggests that they could leave, let the Daleks rule and kill everyone without even trying to save them. She responds that he wouldn’t imagine doing that. “You could have asked,” he says and proves that Rose is a good companion, she never thought of doing it either.

Checking the delta wave, their only shot and killing all the Daleks; he realizes it is futile, but has one last thought. The two of them run into the TARDIS and he orders her to hold a switch down, he runs out to get something, and never comes back. He has sent her back to London, back to 2005. In his last message he tells her to let that old box die, he’s keeping his promise to keep her safe, and tells her to live a good life. In the most heartbreaking way, she flips, flicks, pushes, turns, and hits everything on the console, none of it works. She’s left stranded in boring old London, back with her mum, back to Mickey as he runs down the street hearing the sound of the TARDIS.

I’ll say it, that’s the only good bit of domesticity in the entire series, it felt earned as she poured her heart out for the adventure she was willing to die for. It was earned as Eccleston beautifully shows his resignation to his own death. He can’t save everyone, so he’ll save the one that matters most to him in that moment. The reason he sent her home is the lack of refinement in the delta wave, he can’t pinpoint it at one thing and kill that, he needs to kill all living beings, including everyone on earth. In his last-ditch effort to solve the puzzle, The Doctor asks the emperor where BAD WOLF came from, something he didn’t do.

Back in London Rose keeps trying to start up the TARDIS and arguing. After fighting with Ricky and Jackie she runs off to a park, seeing BAD WOLF everywhere. She works out that it is a message telling her she can get back, she just needs to work out how. This is where I jump back to something I purposefully skipped from the last episode for this very reason. One of the panels opened to reveal the heart of the TARDIS. It sucked in Blon and was the solution to all their problems in the last episode, Rose just needs to open it up.

Back at the siege of The Games Station, which just sounds like a 90s knockoff of GamesMaster; the Daleks are marching through the halls, killing everyone. After talking with Jackie about how Pete would try and try until his last breath, Jackie goes off and gets a massive tow truck, one big enough to tow a bus. They use it to break open the panel and show Rose the heart of the TARDIS, doing what she and Blon were told not to do, looking right into it, connecting with it. The doors close and the engines fire as she is taking all the energy and power the TARDIS can give her, something that will kill anyone else.

Jack, backed up against the wall with Dalek in front, is killed. The Daleks make it up to Floor 500, getting ready to kill The Doctor, who is surrounded on all sides. Playing a game of chicken with The Doctor, the emperor asks him if he’s a coward or a killer, “coward, any day.” That is The Doctor, that right there is the moment that solidifies to the new generation who this alien is, a coward. Someone who will run, who will try to save as many lives as possible, and try to actively take as little life as possible, a good man.

With the TARDIS materializing behind him, it is time to talk about the end, the reference I made at the very beginning. “I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words, I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here,” yep! Most would write something like “8:30 Doctor’s appointment;” but no, let’s make it a mystery that turns out to be just a bit crap. The thing is, that’s why I like Doctor Who, despite it sometimes coming off a bit hokey or downright awful, that’s charming. Watch any Netflix show, any major tv-show, or blockbuster hit movie, they are refined to an edge and lack all charm. That’s what makes Doctor Who distinctly British, even with its later broad appeal, it still had charm.

Yes, I’m going to verbally kick Chris Chibnall to death here, because that is what is missing from recent years and particularly his run as showrunner. Put aside his lack of vision, his feigned interest in sci-fi, and awful writing a majority of the time; there is just too much polish. That charm of hokey acting, crappy lines, and monsters like the Raxacoricofallapatorians has been rubbed away due to Moffat’s fascination with serious horror and Chibnall’s lack of ambition. This is when Doctor Who is at its best; When I’ll defend something I hate because it is so bad it makes the show better for it.

As the BAD WOLF, Rose can separate atoms and scatter them, destroying the Dalek empire. She can also control life, day, night, and everything. Bringing Jack back to life, The Doctor and Rose share more hokey lines that give the show its charm. He finally kisses her, taking the energy from the time vortex that is in her after looking into the heart of the TARDIS, releasing her of all that pain. Hearing the engines fire up, Jack runs for the TARDIS that is already leaving. Once again Rose wakes up on the floor, as The Doctor is flying the TARDIS, still holding residual energy from the time vortex. He knows what is about to come.

He starts talking about what HE would have done if he had more time, however, The Doctor will go on, just without that face. Jolting back as if he was shot in the abdomen, it is time for a regeneration. Even he can’t take all of the energy from the time vortex. It is time for the fantastic Doctor to die. Now it is time for that Scottish bloke from Jessica Jones.

I can watch this episode as many times as I like, I’ll always love it for showing you can always be the coward. I find a lot of this series to be stupid and useless to my own taste, but it is the reason I fell in love with Doctor Who. There is a reason I’m talking about it 15-years on, and there is a reason I’m going to continue that: Christopher Eccleston and Russell T Davies. Next week it is Christmas, get ready for some socks, some tat out of a cracker you popped, and a dinner that was slightly overdone. Oh and all the many people standing on the edge of rooftops ready to jump.

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"Bad Wolf" & "The Parting Of The Ways"

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7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• A wonderful last outing for the coward.
• Showing charm with something that didn't work.
• Eccleston's final speech.
• Giving the Daleks more to work with.

Cons

• Part-two lacks the energy of the first.