Doctor Who - "Turn Left"

WHOSCALE: 4 out of 10

Following the "Donna-lite" episode titled "Midnight," Russell T Davies followed up with a "Doctor-lite" episode. Although this one faired better than Davies' disasterous "Love And Monsters," "Turn Left" still left a lot to be desired, and a lot of it felt like it was strictly aimed at Billie Piper fan girls, rather than Doctor Who fans.

At the close of "Doomsday," we left Rose Tyler trapped in a parallel world, with the walls closed FOREVER. Davies uses that word ALOT, and then later undermines it. Another example is the Doctor explaining that travel between parallel worlds is not only unsafe, but IMPOSSIBLE. Yet on two different occasions, Daleks, Cybermen, Rose Tyler and a parallel Torchwood have managed to traverse the walls of realities with very relative ease.

This episode was just such a technical oversight that some thing

s just didn't make sense - the result of merely doing something solely for the sake of drama, I suppose. Travel between realities was done via devices worn around the travellers' necks in "Army Of Ghost"/"Doomsday." However, in the case of Rose Tyler, her method of arrival and departure depends on the mood of the particular scene. Recalling "Partners In Crime," where Rose is first seen in this season, she slowly fades away as she walks away from the camera. Purely a drama device. Yet in "Turn Left," she sometimes arrives/exits by dashing into thundering, flashing lights off-camera, while other times, she just fades away in front of Donna's eyes.

DRAMA DEVICE!

What was more grinding about this one was the fact that after a mere two years, Rose suddenly now has enough in-depth knowledge about quantum mechanics to cannibalize the TARDIS and build a make-shift time machine. Which brings me to the most obvious plothole of this story - if Rose was capable of traversing time, and she has knowledge of Donna's life-changing choice, why didn't ROSE just zap (or fade in and out) back to one minute past ten on that day and undo the damage herself?! There never was any indication that Donna had to be the one to make the change.

Additionally, Rose seemed to be flying solo for the most part of the episode, but when Donna finally agrees to go with her, suddenly Rose has been working with UNIT for some time.

The more I think about this episode, the less I like it. Moffat is clearly the only writer to pull off a successful "Doctor-lite" story between he and Davies.

Of course, the two usual Russell T Davies staple scenes were in this one - the panicky news anchors, with close-ups on their eyes and mouth, all done using shaky cams; and then the scene of the woman screaming just before Donna is hit by the truck. That scene was an instant reminder of the little girl in "The Runaway Bride."

Probably the thing that just winds me up about this one is Davies' outright plagiarism of the nature of the Trickster's Brigade. Apparently, the creature on Donna's back lives off days that would have come, by altering it's hosts' future. TWO WORDS: WEEPING ANGELS. I suppose it's personal for me, because I consider Moffat a hero when it comes to Doctor Who.

Maybe it was me, but the effect Piper's teeth had on her teefff....err.....TEETH seemed worse than it used to be. I couldn't help but notice things like "TARDISHH." That annoyed the hell out of me. The whole writing of Rose's character in this episode annoys me, because its almost like Davies is making her into a female equivalent of The Doctor (ummmm, Romana says NOT A CHANCE, BLONDIE!), so fan girls can have a bit of heroine worship while the boys root for our good Doctor.

Overall, as I said, this one is better than Davies' Series 2 epic fail, but it lacked the spirit and format of Doctor Who, nonetheless. I think its largely due to just the absence of The Doctor ALTOGETHER, save for the pre-title sequence and the final three minutes. Besides the marvelous Weeping Angels, I think what made "Blink" such a successful Doctor-lite episode is that even though there were only two actual scenes of The Doctor, we still continually saw him throughout the episode via Larry's DVD easter eggs.

I gave this episode a 4 because it was a novel idea, but it could have been done better if he hadn't just been so preoccupied on pleasing the Rose fans, the Doctor/Rose lovers for life fans, and just the fan girlies in general.