Trollheart

ENEMY MINE

Technically, there originally is no real enemy for the Doctor to fight in this episode. His real enemy is time ––– usually his best friend and his stock in trade. As he races against the clock to try to save everybody on board Platform One, he knows that somebody has sabotaged the spaceship, and that whoever has done so will end up being the enemy he chases. In the end, of course, it is Cassandra, the so-called last human who turns out to be the true enemy. She is not what you'd call a very formidable enemy: she doesn't have great war fleets at her disposal, she doesn't have any superpowers, she doesn't even have a body. But what she does have is a small army of metallic robot spiders who have dismantled the ship's defences and left it vulnerable to the awesome power of the exploding sun.

Cassandra is not a likely foe. Nothing more than a face on some tightly stretched skin held in a frame, she can't run from the Doctor, she can't fight the Doctor, she can't even do anything for herself. She has servants that see to her needs, including moisturising her, in case her tightly drawn skin should dry out, as it does at the end, leading to her demise. Although the Doctor does not kill her, in a way he sort of does, as he could easily save her by just spraying her with water, but he chooses not to act, rationalising that Cassandra has lived for far too long, has been prepared to murder a whole ship full of people for nothing more than financial gain, and of course, has been responsible for the death of Jade, who was his friend. It is said that for evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing: here, evil does not triumph but is actually defeated when a good man does nothing. But then again, is the Doctor a good man? Could a good man stand by while another creature dies, knowing he could save it by simply lifting one hand?

So perhaps the Doctor is not as pure in his motives and his ideals as we at first thought. He may not be human but he has human failings, the need for revenge being one of them. Would Jade have wanted this? That's a hard question to answer. The tree seemed to be quite compassionate, but then she was also a multi-millionairess, so would she take kindly to Cassandra's attempts to fleece her of a fortune while also taking her life? We will never know. But you'd have to believe that this is a dark chapter in the Doctor's long legacy; a moment when he could have saved somebody but chose not to. He may not have pulled the trigger, so to speak, but he may as well have done.

Of course, it's not as if Cassandra was an innocent. The Doctor doesn't do letting innocents die, in fact, he would probably sacrifice his life to save that of even one innocent. But Cassandra had committed many sins, and although principal among his motives is revenge I think also he was a little bit disgusted, a little bit repulsed by the fact that Cassandra believed she was human when in fact she had lost almost everything about her that makes someone human. The Doctor knows humans; he has dealt with them, fought against them, fought for them, travelled with them for hundreds of years. To think that the race might be reduced to this, that this might be all that is left behind of the proud race who were the dominant lifeform on the planet that is just about to explode, must fill him with loathing, and he may see it as nature having the final laugh, evolution coming to a halt, the universe sniggering behind its sleeve.

FAMILY

Consider this: you're five billion years into the future, watching the planet you grew up on (which for a long time you believed to be the only planet that contained intelligent life) about to explode as the sun swallows it, travelling with a strange man in a time machine to the end of the world, and he has left you on your own. Who ya gonna call?

JACKIE

We've briefly met Rose's mother in the first episode, when she was out shopping as the living plastic started attacking, and in her own house too, when the Doctor came calling, and now we see her again, going about her normal daily tasks: filling the washing machine, worrying about the bills, worrying about her daughter. If there's one thing that Jackie Tyler cares about more than anything in the world it's her daughter Rose. Like a lioness whose cubs are threatened, she will fight tooth and nail to save her daughter if she can.

This will bring her on a direct collision course with Rose's new friend. Realising that the Doctor is a dangerous man to be around, Jackie will worry about Rose and try to convince her not to travel with him in the blue box. Without success, of course: what daughter ever listened to her mother at that age? However, she will make one thing very clear to the Doctor: she is holding him directly responsible for the safety of her daughter.

The fact that the Doctor realises that Rose misses her family shows that he does have some human compassion after all. When she laughingly tries her mobile phone, five billion years in the future, not surprisingly she can get no signal. But he uses his powers of science and the technology of the future to give her phone the ultimate upgrade, and now she can call from anywhere and anywhen, whenever she likes. It's a slightly touching little cameo; it's not something that he would have thought of doing, but when he sees Rose so distressed that she can't call her mother he takes steps to make sure that she can. This ability to call home will impact on future episodes also.

But it shows the Doctor one thing for certain: there is nothing like family, even when you're speaking to a woman who has been dead for so long that even her bones have turned to dust and the dust has turned to ––– whatever dust turns to when it has been long around for too long. Jackie, and every other inhabitants of the earth, including Rose, are long long long dead by the time Rose Tyler makes the phone call. But it doesn't matter: although she realises that after she has hung up, she is still glad she was able to speak to her mother and tell her that she was okay, even if that message has been sent across five thousand millennia.

A long and lonely life

When the Doctor meets Jade, it's clear that the two of them have hit it off. Whether they are compatible or not is another question, but even whether the Doctor intends to get intimate with the tree or not, he still warms to her very quickly, liking her almost instantly and they quickly become fast friends. He may indeed reflect, as people in his position often do, that anyone who gets close to him ends up dying. This certainly happens to Jade: while holding down the lever that prevents the massive turbofans turning which are blocking the way to the manual override, she sacrifices her life. As the temperature rises, the wood in her begins to burn and it's not long before she's in flames, dying before his eyes.

This may reinforce the belief in the Doctor as to why he never makes any real friends, especially of an intimate nature. When danger follows you around as it seems to, when death is your constant companion, it's best not to involve other people. They just end another casualty of your lifestyle.

Laughing in the face of death

I'm changing the title of this section from that in the previous episode, to coincide with this section in any other series write-ups I do.

Although death and drama haunt this episode, there is plenty of comedy too, much of it supplied by Cassandra, who seems to think that she knows more about Earth than she actually does. She presents the jukebox as an iPod, comments that the ostrich on Earth had a wingspan of fifty feet and belched fire, and think songs like "Toxic" by Britney Spears and "Tainted love" by Soft Cell are classical music. Her acerbic comments about her various husbands are also quite amusing, if bitter. But there's more.

Prior to his messy death, the steward makes a Tannoy announcement asking the person who left the blue box to please move it. You can almost imagine the registration being read out over the address system. When the Doctor upgrades Rose's phone he says he will do so with some jiggery-pokery. She smiles, despite herself, and asks him is that what he does: jiggery-pokery? He replies he came first in jiggery-pokery in his class. The small maintenance creatures who seem to service Platform One –– kind of look like jawas really ––– hand the Doctor a card on which is alien script, or so we think, until we look closer and we see it says "Have a nice day".

And isn't that…?
Who could fail to recognise the voice of Cassandra as that of Zoe Wanamaker, best known for her role as Ben's wife in the BBC TV sitcom "My family", and also from the Harry Potter series of films.

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