Written by Russell T. Davies
Directed by Graeme Harper
“You liar! You said I was special!”
Hmm…this one left me a bit…ambivalent.
Turn Left is grim. It’s post-war/post-apocalypse/post-traumatic grim. The what-if/Doctor-less future it paints is bleak, mundane, depressing, sad, and devoid of any spark of colour or life…and those that do appear (such as the Italian house mates in Leeds) are squashed mercilessly and tearfully. If all of us believed Midnight plunged into the darkest abyss of the season, Turn Left dove in even deeper! Was there any bleaker moment in Doctor Who than the labour camp departure scene? Perhaps the scene where Donna admits that this war-deprived society isn’t even fighting a war; it’s all for nothing, and they have become nothing.
Turn Left is hard work, because it requires a great deal of short hand. Time moves so quickly…events, catastrophes, crises…that it’s not only overwhelming in scope and content, but occasionally rather irritating. Not because it’s even remotely terrible (far FAR from it), but the plot could fill two entire episodes, and it leaves the audience begging to see EVERYTHING.
That is succeeds as well as it does is certainly down to the direction and the acting. Russell Davies is playing with a tried-and-true SF formula - it’s easy on his end. But Graeme Harper manages to fill every frame of this alternative non-Doctor Who universe with enough evocative eye candy to keep the audience entranced…and the Noble family does the rest.
If there remains ANY naysayer in existence that continues to believe that Catherine Tate doesn’t have the acting chops to be a successful Doctor Who companion, such as person must surely crawl under a giant rock and die a horrible, gooey death. Tate has never been as brilliant as she is here, delivering what could well be the performance of her career. She is matched by the legendary Bernard Cribbins, who manages to steal every single scene he’s in…and own every single second of his screen time as Donna’s grandad. A special mention to Jacqueline King as Donna’s mum, who’s descent into depression is poignantly portrayed.
Hmm…and then there’s Billie Piper’s return as Rose. She’s working on remembering the accent (annoying, and misfiring as a lisp on several occasions), she’s ridiculously Doctor-ish in her cryptic attitude (interesting), and she doesn’t offer a lot of answers (irritating). That said, she certainly adds an unearthly presence to the episode…but she can be strangely off-putting to watch. I honestly don’t know what to think of it…
This was a necessary step to the fireworks coming in the next episode…but in some ways, it’s a spectacular flop. There’s too much stuffed into a single 50 minute adventure, and despite their absolute BRILLIANCE, the actors are forced to carry all of it on their own shoulders. The entire episode owes its success to their combined talents, and in lesser hands, it would have been a disaster.
So we’ll give it a 8…and see whether or not this fascinating detour grows on me over time.
That said, I appreciated all the details that acted as loving hommage to the previous end-of-the-universe apocalypse in Doctor Who: 1981’s 4th Doctor swan-song Logopolis. You know the old saying…the more things change… ;-)
