The Other Review (What if Doctor Who Wasn't Axed?)

Please Note - This is a review for the story the Other from the What if Doctor Who Wasn't Axed Series which explores an alternate timeline where Doctor Who Wasn't Axed. To view it click here:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEfK7Qf8yhwwtvwIY3G09-015UqzHXiML This review is written as if it's a review from the time of this episode’s transmission written by a fan. Please enjoy!

The Other

written by Russell T Davies

directed by Nicholas Meyer

Broadcast - 25th October-15th November 2003

Review Written by: Aiden James

So… with the 40th anniversary present of the incoming movie(!) on its way for Sunday the 23rd of this month, I must look back at the last story of the current season with a certain glee in my mind.

With the whole season this year being all about remembrance, I had the thought in my mind that the final story of this season would be a lot like The Five Doctors or The Dark Dimension as we headed towards the big day. However, as soon as more information about the feature film was released… this had proved to be wrong. So, going into this was a bit of a different experience this time.

What I had surely being missing during the season was the progression of our current Doctor, Richard E. Grant. As much as I have liked the other stories with the past incarnations, I think we have been a little bit taken away with only having Grant for two of these stories. But he is still on top form here as he never disappoints for even a second on screen.

Russell T Davies returned as Script Editor this year and so he gets the final story, once again. After the failure of his heavily ‘Chris Sanderman-ised’ story last year “The Name’s Shakespeare, William Shakespeare”, things have been stepped up a game here certainly. This story was very captivating to watch as a viewer and a fan of the Gallifrey based stories I believe, RTD certainly does Gallifrey very well and makes it much more interesting and lively than perhaps it was in ‘Arc of Infinity’ and has given it a much more human element. A lot of the moments in this story, especially when Grant’s Doctor goes into the past events of Gallifrey, have been standout for the Sanderman era.  Our standout guest star of course was Patrick Stewart, playing a younger version of Omega - a few months before the experiment with the Hand of Omega. Also we have another standout guest star in the form of Don Warrington playing a new time lord called ‘the Keeper’ who by the end of this story has become acting President of the Time Lords which is quite an interesting turn of events and will come to be important in the movie.

However, it isn’t all praise to this story as it does have its fair share of flaws to be pointed out.

One of them must be done with Rassilon (played by past Doctor Who actor of the Troughton and Pertwee era, Donald Sumpter) and how in his resurrection, he wants to destroy Gallifrey. Yes, you could argue in fact that since he his resurrection, he has had different thoughts since his previous incarnation, but RTD hasn’t made this entirely clear in the story, so it either it was written in an earlier draft of the script or possibly was edited out to make him more a threat.

Another one of my gripes is the inclusion to add the previous incarnations of the Doctor as a device to remind the current Doctor about ‘The Other.’ I think this was not a conscious Russell choice and more of a studio/Sanderman choice to include them for the 40th anniversary, which would be fine if the whole point of the season was NOT to showcase new adventures of past Doctors. I also got reminded of “The Prophets” of Deep Space Nine whilst this was happening, so that was also an annoyance whilst watching.

My final one and biggest of all was that looking forward to the film, I did help to wonder a little that this story was just a ploy to be a prequel for the film. I have read the main plot synopsis in DWM lately and it seems to make sense, which sort of wastes the point of having this be the last story as the film will touch on it a little (because it now has to cater to a lot of movie-goers that won’t have watched this episode) or be the main focus (which confuses a lot more people unless you have watched this story.) of the film.

But time will tell when the film premieres on Sunday in the United Kingdom to see if any of my last complaint will be false or not.