Doctor Who: Gridlock

PEOPLE GO MISSING on the motorway, or at least they do in this far flung future driven episode from the current season of Doctor Who. This episode Gridlock (Episode 3, Season 3) refers to the endless traffic jam which people find themselves in – some travelling for decades on a motorway moving mere yards per day – all in the hopes of a better life outside the city of New New York. Anyone making it as far as the fast lane tends to dissappear, but no one knows why. Enter the Doctor and Martha on another sightseeing tour which goes wrong.

So then, how does this latest episode stand up and is the relationship between the Doctor and his new assistant working or not? Well in my humble opinion there are good, bad and ugly points about this episode.

First let’s deal with some of the “good” points. As a concept it wasn’t bad; the idea of generational gridlocks resonates loudly in our current conciousness as we all know what queuing on the motorways is like every morning heading for work, and I suppose every evening returning… but this concept takes it to a whole new level. I also like the twist in the tale, the reason for the gridlock itself which is not apparent from the episode until well into the third act. In this respect it turns your initial views on their head, which is always a good thing.

Better still is the developing relationship between the Doctor and Martha, and the trust which is beginning to build up between them. It’s nice to see some emotional depth to the character of the Doctor as he describes his lost homeworld to her in some detail.

However the outstanding piece of the episode for me is the empathy between the Doctor and the Face of Bo, and of course the revelation that the Doctor is ‘not alone’ leaving us with some tantalising options for another Timelord later in the series. It’s nice to see some continuity between previous episodes too (This is not the first time the Doctor has been to New New York or encountered the Face of Bo) and I like the way the writers are setting us up for future storylines with hints of what is to come. I guess as a standalone episode it’s not bad, but it certainly isn’t one of the better ones, however its saving grace is the various strings it pulls on an emotional level which saved it from being relegated to a cheesy and easily forgotten episode.

As for the “bad” points well there are a few right enough. For starters the pace of the episode is all wrong and frequently feels rushed. The characters are pretty weak as well, especially some of the travellers on the motorway. Worst of all is the use of the ‘things’ at the bottom of the fast lane. Without spoiling it for anyone who has yet to watch it, I will just say that as a plot device it was pretty weak, and given the central nature to the plot (e.g. people dissappear in the fast lane), when the payoff happens it doesn’t really live up to the setup and the presence of these things is never really explained, or dealt with in the final act to any degree of satisfaction.

Worse still (let’s go with “ugly” for now) was the character of Thomas Kincade Brannigan played by Ardal O’Hanlon (see photo inset). If you’re going to play a character in Doctor Who, then act like one for fucks sake. Apart from some makeup he sounded and behaved exactly like himself, which is to say annoyingly upbeat and unfunny. To then throw some pussy cats into the mix and refer to them as the ‘children’ – produced out of the union of a woman and a cat/man – was just a stretch too far. Really really sloppy stuff here and it just didn’t work.

Still – overall I enjoyed the episode, more from the perspective of the developing relationship between the two central protagonists than for the actual ‘plot’ itself. It was better than last weeks effort,  it had the right ‘feel’ to it and when the emotional stuff kicked in it worked, but the actual plot itself wasn’t fully realised and the story didn’t have a natural ending; it just felt too rushed. I’m getting the impression that there might be more to this episode somewhere on the cutting room floor, edited out during the post-production process to meet the 45 minute episode guideline. It seems that it’s not just people who go missing on the motorway, sometimes it’s the plot too!

Oh well – at least next week we are in for some Dalek action again – if the trailer is anything to judge by