Doctor Who - "The Girl In The Fireplace"

WHOSCALE: 6.9 OUT OF 10

This was the next story we got from the mastermind Steven Moffat since "The Empty Child" two parter with Eccleston.

While Moffat maintained his reputation for keeping things explained, plausible, and generally science fiction in nature, the bulk of this episode was essentially a love story between The Doctor and Madame de Pompadour, which in turn was the largest contributing factor to the episode's Whoscale score.

I have openly admitted and am often accused of being partial to Steven Moffat's stories versus those penned by Russell T Davies, but in watching this episode just before writing this review, I tried to maintain my perspective from a classic Who standpoint, and set aside my favortism for Moffat. I certainly hated to give such a low score on a Moffat episode, but remember that the Whoscale indicates how closely the episode played out according to the standards set by the original series. That being the case, this episode was an unusual move for Moffat.

The episode is ofcourse, not without it's redeeming qualities. I suppose for me the most rewarding element was the fact that Moffat once again utterly and deliberately avoids a Doctor/Rose relationship altogether again, just as he did in "The Empty Child." In fact, given The Doctor's behavior around Rose throughout this episode, you would never know that Davies was pushing for a dominate soap opera/romance factor in the series. I've heard alot of complaints about this episode from fangirls of Tennant; not because of the usual Moffat twist on time travel that takes intelligence to understand, but the most frequent complaint I see and hear is that they disliked this episode because The Doctor had "an affair" with Madame de Pompadour, when he was supposed to be with Rose. Ofcourse, on the Doctor/Rose issue, I've always been on Mickey's side - the fangirls are so cold-hearted, vain and tranquilized by Tennant's looks and the prospect of a "happily ever-after ending" between The Doctor and Rose, that none of them ever stop to think about what Mickey's feelings are.

As I mentioned above, Moffat toys with two separate time periods, and additionally sets the future side of the episode on a ship two galaxies distant from Earth. That in itself was perhaps the most redeeming quality, since all of the episodes of Tennant's run had been set on Earth since "The Christmas Invasion." Additionally, Moffat is able to convey the fact that we are in 18th century Paris without having to show CGI scenes of Paris. Moffat has demonstrated a knack for writing stories that require close examination, and then re-examination in order for us to understand, and his tinkering with timelines often require us to sit at the edge of our seats with the volume up a little higher, so that we don't miss a beat - which is great. I have always admired how Moffat makes no attempt at all to "dumb down" his stories for the sake of the audience that aren't regular sci-fi fans, and would otherwise be left scratching their heads at the notion of a "window" in space-time allowing one to travel instantaneously between the past/future.

Moffat also introduces again in this episode what I call "passive villains." A passive villain by my definition is a villain in a Doctor Who story that essentially isn't violent or aggressive in nature, they've just become victims of circumstance (or in this case, programming) and that then leads them to behave so that they fall into a threatening category. To elaborate, the clockwork droids from the spaceship weren't aggressive, they were simply doing what they were programmed to do - repair the ship by any means necessary. Since their creators didn't anticipate a ship without a humanoid crew, they didn't bother to program the droids with skills and the possibility of setting a course for a repair yard or sending out a distress signal; that would be a job for one of the human crewmembers.

On a unrelated note, I wanted to comment on Mickey's tee shirt in this episode, which was partially covered by a jacket in "School Reunion." I knew that the image was an NES controller on his shirt, but I never knew what it said until I googled the shirt design and discovered that it reads, "Know your Roots." I'm very partial to the old NES and SNES systems, so naturally I liked the shirt.

The constant love-theme score that played throughout this episode (which was no doubt there to accompany the love-story themed story) was another determining factor.

Overall, it was a great episode, with some great moments. For me, the most chilling was when the Doctor discovers the droid under Renette's bed, and when he points his sonic screwdriver at it, it lashes out in an attempt to grab it. The Doctor leaps back, and then glances under the bed again, only to see the 18th-century shoes, feet and legs of someone standing on the other side of the bed.