“WORLD WAR THREE” – Series 1, Episode 5, Story 161b – Written by Russell T. Davies; Directed by Keith Boak – It’s a continuation of ALIENS OF LONDON, as the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Harriet Jones, MP Flydale North, are trapped inside the big conference room at 10 Downing Street. The Slitheen are walking around, either big and alien or human and farting, trying to convince the United Nations to give up the codes for nuclear weapons. The Slitheen say it’s to destroy an alien spaceship parked right over London, but really it’s to start a nuclear war. Ironically, my last date used that same excuse to bail early; she didn’t want to start a nuclear war but she did want to go make out with some dude named Not Me. With the Doctor trapped without a computer, it’s up to Mickey to hack into UNIT and up to Jackie to stop nagging him for a few minutes. The fate of the world is up for grabs, but the Doctor hesitates because Rose might get dead in the process. So Harriet Jones orders him to do it. Because Harriet Jones Just Watched Star Trek II And She Knows The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The One.
There’s really not a lot for me to say about WORLD WAR THREE. (It’s generally a mistake to write that sentence first, as I will now spend about 2,000 words saying “not a lot about WORLD WAR THREE.”) It’s largely a mess of an episode, with a lot of standing around and shouting and worrying. (Sort of like the last half of Star Trek II.) The Doctor, Rose, and Harriet Jones are trapped inside 10 Downing Street and Mickey and Jackie are trapped with each other and the Slitheen are still farting a lot.
As we’ve been discussing, Russell T. Davies likes to build his stories around a few emotional showcase scenes, so whatever happens in the plot almost always tends to serve that big emotional showdown. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with WORLD WAR THREE. Davies wants to get us to a point where the Doctor has to choose Rose or The World, so he needs to raise the stakes so high that saving the latter may doom the former, but not so high that he can’t be talking to Jackie on a conference call at the same time.
Yes, I just went, “ugh,” too.
Here’s how we get there:
From 10 Downing Street, the Doctor is instructing Mickey (who’s in his apartment with Jackie) on how to hack into UNIT’s computer system and launch a missile at the building he’s in, because the only way to stop the Slitheen is going to be to blow them up. (Allegedly, at least. The Doctor doesn’t reach out to any of his Earthly allies in UNIT for help; instead, Davies has him give lip service to this idea, saying that everyone he knows is downstairs, dead.) The chemistry between Mickey and the Doctor is the best aspect of this two-part story; even the forced, childish hokiness of the Doctor continuing to call Mickey, “Ricky” in order to “wind him up,” in Rose’s words, has a nice pay-off when things get serious.
“Mickey,” the Doctor says on the phone, “I might choke before I finish this sentence, but I need you.” What makes the scene isn’t so much the Doctor’s admission or Mickey’s response, but Rose’s reaction to the Doctor’s asking Mickey for help. Director Keith Boak positions Rose just off the Doctor’s shoulder. From our vantage point, he’s turned to his side, allowing Rose to stand facing him (and thus the camera). As the Doctor makes his plea to Mickey, Billie Piper has Rose break out in this wonderful smile that only a woman wanting to see a man twist in a bit of uncomfortableness can pull off.
It’s that playful look women give when they’ve changed a guy just enough, when there’s that first, slightest indication of their influence on him. It’s the look that signifies they’ve had an impact on you, that you are now, however subtly, something that bears their mark. That smile is a great look and Piper pulls it off so well that I’m guessing an ex-boyfriend or two has been on the other end of that grin.
Piper plays the small moments exceedingly well, and she, Davies, and the various directors really deserve credit for these background moments as it helps to show a completeness in their thinking about the character. Rose’s smile is easily the best moment in this entire episode; despite all the bluster and complaining and killing and explosions and, well, farting the most powerful moment in the episode is one small grin and the brightening of eyes.
Mickey agrees to help, Jackie threatens to interfere and stop him, but she doesn’t.
The big emotional centerpiece of WW3 is where this episode really falls apart. The Doctor has led Mickey through a successful hack of UNIT’s network and all he has to do is give the final word for the missile to be launched, the Slitheen stopped, and 10 Downing Street to fall down on their heads.
And he hesitates.
It’s not like the Ninth is unwilling to sacrifice himself, and it’s not like he’s unwilling to sacrifice Harriet Jones, and it’s not like he’s unwilling to sacrifice any other cops, soldiers, and politicians who might still be in the building. He’s simply unwilling to risk the life of his Companion.
Through the conference phone, an emotionally disabled Doctor decides now is the time to have a chat with Rose’s mum about this adventuring life of his. “This is my life, Jackie,” he tells her, attempting to make a stand against his weepy fatalism. “It’s not fun. It’s not smart. It’s standing up and making a decision because nobody else will.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Rose asks.
The Ninth looks up at her with wet, fatalistic eyes. “I could save the world,” he comes clean, “but lose you.”
It’s all a bit maudlin.
What’s unspoken here is that the Doctor is traumatized from the events of the Last Time War. When he tells Jackie that his life isn’t fun or smart, but it’s about standing up and making the decision that no one else will, he’s talking about the war he just left more than the war that he could be preventing if he’d just get on with it, but because none of this is brought up or discussed, and because whatever it was that happened to the Doctor in the Time War, or whatever it was that he did, hasn’t been on the table in this episode, the scene just doesn’t work.
The Doctor’s inability to act is, I think, much more about his own issues than with an overriding concern for Rose. It’s not that he’s uncaring for Rose, of course, but it’s becoming more and more clear that we’re dealing with a Doctor that is severely traumatized (especially when death is on the potential table) by whatever the specifics of his involvement in the Time War actually entail. I’m not saying everything needs to be crystalized for the audience, but when you take this scene and look back to the earlier sequence in ALIENS where he told Rose to stay with her family as he went off to investigate, this “I could lose you” moment plays out as simply concern for Rose instead of an emotional sequel to his “Time Lord family” being lost in the war.
To be blunt, I think this episode would have worked much better if Davies had chosen the two-parter to lay in the details of the Time War – at least as it relates to the Doctor being “the last of the Time Lords.” We’re at the point where we need to know what happened: What did the Doctor see? What did the Doctor do? How did he survive and everyone else die? Did he lose a Companion in the process? Did he fight in the war without a Companion?
Failing that, Davies might have been better off going with a set of aliens that we already know, so we see the Doctor’s history with them through the lens of that previous context. If this story was the return of the Cybermen, for instance, Davies could have layered in some resonance between the potential death of Rose and the actual death of Adric back in EARTHSHOCK. He wouldn’t need to lay in all of that continuity in any heavy-handed way, either, but after Rose’s “then what are you waiting for?” question, he could have looked at her exactly as he does but instead of answering with, “I could save the world but I could lose you,” he could have given her a, “They took one Companion away from me, I don’t want them to take another” line.
People who are familiar with EARTHSHOCK would have gotten it, and people who aren’t wouldn’t need to know to understand the weight of the Doctor’s decision.
The way Davies has chosen to play it results in everything being placed at Rose’s feet. The Doctor is contemplating not acting because he doesn’t want to risk her and her alone, and I don’t think that’s entirely the case, unless we’re supposed to think there’s a massive difference between putting Rose in a dangerous situation where she could get killed by killer mannequins, alien consciousnesses, exploding suns, killer robot spiders, fearful morticians, gaseous aliens, and farting aliens and risking her life in the service of saving an entire planet.
No. Without diminishing his feelings for Rose, there’s more going on in the good Doctor’s head than a simple need to protect Rose. Jackie’s slap might have stung, and it might have caused him to re-evaluate what he’s doing (not that we’re shown such a re-evaluation), but it didn’t scramble his entire value system.
Why’s he really hesitating? Because he might be the one that causes Rose to die? If so, then it’s likely not about Rose at all, but rather stems from a desire to not have to relive the Time War.
Rose is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of the planet and it looks like the Doctor is going to reluctantly agree with her, but Davies gives him an out when he has Harriet Jones order him to do it. He doesn’t have to follow her orders, of course, but Jones gets to make the big decision. It’s unfortunate – not that she makes the call, but that the scene has pushed her so far into the background that it’s almost like her pronouncement serves to remind us she’s still there. It’s a big moment for the self-proclaimed “back bencher,” but with so little focus on her during the Doctor, Jackie, and Rose chat that it robs Harriet’s moment of its potential impact. When the after effects of this scene play out and the Doctor tells Rose that Jones goes on to become Prime Minister, “residing over Britain’s second Golden Age,” it just gets in the way of the conversation you want to see them having over their own relationship and how it is starting to effect his decision-making.
In total, the episode just doesn’t work. The big emotional centerpiece isn’t adequately built up or constructed, and there’s more illusion of action than actual action. I referenced Star Trek II up top a couple times and I’ll repeat the lesson learned there here: people yelling into phones is rarely exciting, and when they’re doing it so they can fire missiles to solve their problems instead of hitting that problem head-on, face-to-face, the scene loses something.
Now that the reaction is out of the way, I’m going to rag on the title. Not specific to DOCTOR WHO, but just as a general rule, WORLD WAR THREE is such a stupid, cheeseball title that people who are smart enough to write television programs, movies, and comic books should be smart enough to never use it again, especially if the stupid war not only never happens, but never even comes close to happening. You know what would have made a good title for this episode? How about ALIENS OF LONDON, PART TWO. Barring that, how about PANIC AT DOWNING STREET? HARRIET JONES SAVES THE WORLD? BIG FARTY ALIENS?
Or if we want to go the truth-in-advertising route, how about calling it what it is: THE FIRST CLUNKER OF THE DAVIES’ ERA.
