Doctor Who (Series 1)
From Iwe
| Doctor Who (series 1) | |||
| DVD box set cover art | |||
| Starring | Christopher Eccleston Billie Piper | ||
| Country of origin | United Kingdom | ||
| No. of episodes | 13 | ||
| Broadcast | |||
| Original channel | BBC One | ||
| Original run | 26 March – 18 June 2005 | ||
| Season chronology | |||
| ← Previous Season 26 (series) Doctor Who (special) | Next → Series 2 | ||
| List of Doctor Who serials | |||
The new first series of British science fiction series Doctor Who began on 26 March 2005 with the episode "Rose", which marked the end of the programme's 16-year absence from episodic television following its cancellation in 1989, and the first new televised Doctor Who story since the broadcast of the TV movie starring Paul McGann in 1996. The finale episode, "The Parting of the Ways", was broadcast on 18 June 2005. The show was revived by long time Doctor Who fan Russell T Davies, who had been lobbying the BBC since the late 90s to bring the show back. The first series comprised 13 episodes, eight of which Davies wrote. Davies, Julie Gardner and Mal Young served as executive producers, Phil Collinson as producer.
The show depicts the adventures of a mysterious and eccentric Time Lord known as the Doctor, who travels through time and space in his time machine, the TARDIS, which normally appears from the exterior to be a blue 1950s British police box. With his companions, he explores time and space, faces a variety of foes and saves civilizations, helping people and righting wrongs. The first series features Christopher Eccleston as the ninth incarnation of the Doctor, his only series as the Doctor, accompanied by Billie Piper, as his first and main companion Rose Tyler, whom he plucks from obscurity on planet Earth, and to whom he grows increasingly attached. He also travels briefly with unruly boy-genius Adam Mitchell, played by Bruno Langley, and with 51st-century con man and former 'Time Agent' Captain Jack Harkness, portrayed by John Barrowman. Episodes in series one form a loose story arc, based upon the recurring phrase "Bad Wolf", the significance of which goes unexplained until the two-part series finale.
The series premiere was watched by 10.81 million viewers, and four days after the premiere aired, Doctor Who was renewed for a Christmas Special, as well as a second series. Series 1 was well received by both critics and fans, winning for the first time in Doctor Who's history a prestigious BAFTA Award. Most surprising was the approval from Michael Grade, who had previously forced an 18-month hiatus on the show in 1985, and had postponed Doctor Who out of personal dislike on several occasions. The show's popularity ultimately led to a resurgence in family-oriented Saturday night drama.
Contents |
[edit] Series summary
[edit] List of episodes
Unlike the previous incarnation of the series that ended in 1989, the plan with the new series was to have each episode as a standalone story, with no "serials". Of the thirteen episodes in Series 1, seven of them followed this format; the remaining six were grouped together into three 2-part stories. Also, for the first time since The Gunfighters in Season 3, each episode was given an individual title, which was the case with the standalone and two-part stories.
| Story | Episode | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Prod. code | UK viewers (millions) | AI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 157 | 1 | "Rose" | Keith Boak | Russell T Davies | 26 March 2005 | 1.1 | 10.81 | 81 | |
| In the basement of the shop where she works, plastic mannequins begin to attack Rose Tyler. A mysterious man known as "the Doctor" rescues her and they flee the building, which he blows up. The next day Rose and her boyfriend, Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) visit the man named Clive (Mark Benton) who runs a conspiracy theory website about a man fitting the Doctor's description who has appeared throughout history. While Rose is talking to Clive, Mickey is kidnapped and replaced by a plastic duplicate. Rose meets the Doctor again where he reveals Mickey to be an Auton and he and Rose locate the Nestene Consciousness which controls the Autons: the London Eye. At this point, Autons come alive everywhere (mainly mannequins), and start killing other people. Rose saves the Doctor and many others the Autons had been killing and she decides to travel with the Doctor through time and space in his TARDIS. | |||||||||
| 158 | 2 | "The End of the World" | Euros Lyn | Russell T Davies | 2 April 2005 | 1.2 | 7.97 | 79 | |
| The Doctor takes Rose to the year 5 billion where they land on a space station (Platform 1) which is orbiting the Earth and observing its destruction by the expanding Sun. Among the elite alien guests assembled to watch the phenomenon is Lady Cassandra (Zoë Wanamaker), who takes pride in being the last pure human, though she has received many operations that have altered her image. It is discovered that Cassandra, to receive money for her many operations, plans to let the guests die and then profit from the stock increases of their competitors. She releases discreet robotic spiders all over Platform 1, and they start interfering with the systems. She departs via teleportation and the spiders bring down the shields, causing harmful direct solar radiation to penetrate the station. The Doctor manages to reactivate the system and save Rose, after which he brings Cassandra back and she ruptures from the intense solar heat. | |||||||||
| 159 | 3 | "The Unquiet Dead" | Euros Lyn | Mark Gatiss | 9 April 2005 | 1.3 | 8.86 | 80 | |
| The Doctor and Rose travel back to Cardiff in 1869, where a funeral parlour run by Gabriel Sneed (Alan David) with his clairvoyant servant girl Gwyneth (Eve Myles) contains corpses which have been animated by a mysterious blue vapour. Sneed and Gwyneth kidnap Rose and the Doctor teams up with Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) to track her down. In the funeral parlour the group is reunited and the Doctor determines that the blue vapour is the result of a being trying to cross a rift in spacetime the parlour is built on. They are revealed to be the Gelth, who animate bodies until they can build their own and are using Gwyneth as a bridge. As the Gelth respond negatively to gas, Gwyneth volunteers to ignite the gas which will kill all the Gelth, and the Doctor, Rose, and Dickens escape before the parlour is engulfed in flames. | |||||||||
| 160a | 4 | "Aliens of London" | Keith Boak | Russell T Davies | 16 April 2005 | 1.4 | 7.63 | 81 | |
| The Doctor takes Rose back to her home, but they arrive a year after she left. Her mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) is furious with the Doctor, and Mickey has been suspected of murdering Rose. Rose and the Doctor witness a spaceship crash into Big Ben and fall into the River Thames. The Doctor suspects this is a trick and discovers that the ship was launched from earth and the pilot is a pig modified by alien technology. The Prime Minister cannot be located and is replaced by Joseph Green (David Verrey), while Margaret Blaine (Annette Badland) and Oliver Charles, other high-ranking members of the government, are also called. The group is revealed to be Slitheen, an alien family who have compressed themselves into human "suits". | |||||||||
| 160b | 5 | "World War Three" | Keith Boak | Russell T Davies | 23 April 2005 | 1.5 | 7.98 | 82 | |
| The Doctor learns that the Slitheen are not invading Earth but rather raiding it for commercial gain. The Slitheeen claim there is a threat to national security and request that the United Nations release the nuclear activation code so they can strike down a dangerous ship hovering over London. The Doctor speculates they will fire at other countries and start World War III and sell the remaining radioactive weapons. The Doctor helps Mickey hack online to fire a non-nuclear missile at 10 Downing Street to destroy the Slitheen gathered there, and the Doctor, Rose, and MP Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton) manage to hide in a reinforced cabinet and survive. Meanwhile, the Doctor has earned Jackie's trust and she allows Rose to continue travelling with him. | |||||||||
| 161 | 6 | "Dalek" | Joe Ahearne | Robert Shearman | 30 April 2005 | 1.6 | 8.63 | 84 | |
| The TARDIS is drawn off course by a signal and Rose and the Doctor end up near Salt Lake City, Utah in 2012, in an underground bunker owned by Henry van Statten (Corey Johnson), a rich collector of alien artefacts. The Doctor encounters his one living exhibit which the Doctor is horrified to discover is a Dalek that survived the Time War, the last survivor of a race of genetically manipulated mutants bound on purging the universe of all non-Dalek life and the Doctor's greatest enemy. One of van Statten's technicians Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley) leads Rose to the Dalek, but she takes pity on it and touches it, allowing it to absorb her DNA and become active. The Dalek kills many soldiers before catching up with Rose, Adam and The Doctor. Rose becomes trapped with the Dalek, but it spares her life as it has gained sympathy from Rose's DNA and destroys itself. As the Doctor and Rose leave, Adam boards the TARDIS to avoid the closure of van Statten's Vault. | |||||||||
| 162 | 7 | "The Long Game" | Brian Grant | Russell T Davies | 7 May 2005 | 1.7 | 8.01 | 81 | |
| The Doctor, Rose, and Adam travel to the year 200,000 and land on the space station Satellite 5, which controls journalism. Ever since the satellite began broadcasting, something has held the human race's attitude and technology back. The Editor (Simon Pegg) invites the Doctor and Rose to the elite Floor 500 where he holds them captive, explaining that he and a creature known as the Jagrafess have made through Satellite 5 the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire a place where the news has installed fear in the human race, keeping them in a closed society. Meanwhile, Adam has installed a port in his head and is transmitting all the knowledge on Satellite 5 to his parent's answering machine at home. Meanwhile, Cathica (Christine Adams) (another journalist with an info spike linked to Adam's) redirects the heat to Floor 500, allowing Rose and the Doctor to escape, while the Editor and the Jagrafess are destroyed by the heat. The Doctor is furious at Adam and returns him to his house, destroying the answering machine and banishing Adam from the TARDIS. | |||||||||
| 163 | 8 | "Father's Day" | Joe Ahearne | Paul Cornell | 14 May 2005 | 1.8 | 8.06 | 83 | |
| Rose asks the Doctor to take her back to the day her father Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwall) died in a hit and run accident, but when she saves him she creates a paradox. The TARDIS appears to be an ordinary police box and flying creatures known as Reapers appear and attempt to treat the wound in time and space by consuming everyone in it. Everyone hides in a church while the Doctor tries to summon the TARDIS. Jackie accuses Pete of having another daughter, and to prove that Rose is the same as the baby Rose, he puts the baby in the older Rose's arms, causing a bigger paradox, and the Doctor is taken by the reapers. Pete realises he must die for everything to be repaired, and throws himself in front of the car which has been appearing and reappearing around the corner of the church, causing the Doctor to return. | |||||||||
| 164a | 9 | "The Empty Child" | James Hawes | Steven Moffat | 21 May 2005 | 1.9 | 7.11 | 84 | |
| Chasing a metal cylinder marked as "dangerous" through the Time Vortex, the Doctor and Rose land in London during The Blitz of World War II. Rose follows a young boy in a gas mask (Albert Valentine) who repeatedly asks if she is his mother; she climbs a rope which is attached to a barrage balloon that rises into the air. Meanwhile, the Doctor talks with a young woman named Nancy (Florence Hoath) who seems to know about the boy, whom she knows is connected to a bomb-like object which had fallen. Rose is rescued by a Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), a time agent-turned-con man who interests Rose in buying a valuable warship. Nancy directs the Doctor to a hospital where Dr Constantine (Richard Wilson) shows him patients with injuries and gas masks identical to the child's, who Nancy claims is her brother, Jamie. Rose and Jack arrive to save the Doctor as Constantine begins to transform like his patients had. | |||||||||
| 164b | 10 | "The Doctor Dances" | James Hawes | Steven Moffat | 28 May 2005 | 1.10 | 6.86 | 85 | |
| Jack explains that he sent the metal object through the time vortex to attract "Time Agents" to this time period, where he would have them pay for the object, but before they could receive it, a bomb would fall on it. Jack claims that it is a perfectly safe and "empty" old medical transport, but the Doctor is suspicious. At the site where the transport is held, the Doctor realises that it once contained nanogenes that are able to heal wounds and deduces that the nanogenes attempted to heal Jamie, but thought that all humans should have similar injuries and a gas masks. Nancy claims it is all her fault as she is actually Jamie's mother, which she admits in front of the child. As they hug, the nanogenes identify Nancy's DNA as being his mother's and reverse Jamie's transformation so that they resemble each other; the rest is done to all the others who had been converted. Jack captures the bomb that would have fallen on the site and the Doctor and Rose rescue him before it explodes, inviting him on the TARDIS. | |||||||||
| 165 | 11 | "Boom Town" | Joe Ahearne | Russell T Davies | 4 June 2005 | 1.11 | 7.68 | 82 | |
| The Doctor, Rose, and Jack visit Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS at the rift, and Mickey meets them there. They discover that the Slitheen impersonating Margaret Blaine is now the mayor of Cardiff and capture her, suspicious of what she has done. The Doctor sees that she has created a nuclear power plant designed to open the rift and destroy Earth, and a device she would use to flee. Margaret objects to being taken back to her home planet, as she is considered a criminal there. After several failed attempts in killing the Doctor, Margaret requests to be taken to another planet. Jack sees the opportunity to use Margaret's extrapolator to speed up recharging the TARDIS, but this proves to be a trap as it was meant to send the nearest alien power source to the rift. As an earthquake strikes Cardiff, Margaret looks into the heart of the TARDIS, which gave her a second chance at life, restoring her back into an egg. | |||||||||
| 166a | 12 | "Bad Wolf" | Joe Ahearne | Russell T Davies | 11 June 2005 | 1.12 | 6.81 | 85 | |
| The Doctor, Rose, and Jack wake up from amnesia into various reality television and game shows; the Doctor is in a Big Brother-like house, Rose is a contestant on The Weakest Link where those eliminated are thought to be disintigrated by the Anne Droid (Anne Robinson), and Jack is on a What Not to Wear-like show where two female robots (Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine) offer to give contestants a new image. The Doctor and Jack escape from their shows and find they are on Satellite 5 one hundred years later, where it is run by the Badwolf Corporation and known as the Game Station. The Doctor, Jack, and Big Brother contestant Lynda (Jo Joyner) find Rose as she is disintegrated on The Weakest Link and travel to Floor 500, where the Controller (Martha Cope) informs them that the contestants are not disintegrated but rather transmatted to a point in space. They learn that Rose has arrived on a ship containing Daleks and the Doctor vows to rescue her and destroy the Daleks, which prompt the fleet of 400,000 Daleks to begin invading Earth. | |||||||||
| 166b | 13 | "The Parting of the Ways" | Joe Ahearne | Russell T Davies | 18 June 2005 | 1.13 | 6.91 | 89 | |
| The Doctor and Jack take the TARDIS to Rose and return her to the Game Station after confronting the Dalek Emperor. The Doctor prepares to destroy the Daleks using a Delta Wave and tricks Rose into entering the TARDIS; outside the TARDIS, he uses his sonic screwdriver o send her back home to safety. The Daleks invade the Game Station, killing Lynda and Jack among many others. Regaining her composure at home, Rose notices the words "Bad Wolf" around the area, and realises it is a message. Mickey pries open the heart of the TARDIS and Rose establishes contact. Empowered by the Time Vortex, Rose returns to the Doctor, where she uses the vortex's power to destroy all the Daleks, resurrect Jack, and scatter the words "Bad Wolf" throughout time and space to lead herself here. To prevent the power from killing Rose, the Doctor absorbs it by kissing her; she wakes up in the TARDIS just as the time energy is destroying the Doctor's cells, causing him to regenerate into the Tenth Doctor, who instantly offers to take Rose to the planet Barcelona. | |||||||||
[edit] Cast
[edit] Main cast
[edit] Recurring and guest cast
[edit] Production
[edit] Development
[edit] Writing
[edit] Production blocks
[edit] Filming
[edit] Release
[edit] Promotion
[edit] Leak
[edit] Broadcast
[edit] DVD release
[edit] Reception
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[edit] Soundtrack
- Further information: Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack
