| GRIDLOCK by Russell T Davies |
| Story 25 Synopsis: The Doctor decides to give Martha a trip into the future, landing the TARDIS on New Earth in the year 5 billion and 53, in an Undercity, Pharmacytown. Martha is soon kidnapped, and the Doctor follows her to the Motorway. Her kidnappers used her to allow them access to the Fast Lane, beneath the continual traffic jam. The Doctor suspects something is very wrong, and scrambles down through the traffic to reach the lower layers. He sees the creatures living under the traffic - Macra. Then he is found by Novice Hame, who transports him to the Senate of New New York - where the Senators are all dead, the planet quarantined. The people on the Motorway are the only survivors, but Hame cannot help them, and her ally, the Face of Boe, is struggling to keep everyone alive at the cost of his own health. The Doctor rejigs the systems, opening the way for the traffic to return to the surface. Martha is brought safely to the Senate to witness the dying throes of the Face. He gives the Doctor his message: "You are not alone". The Doctor won't explain to Martha, so she insists, and he tells her of the Time War, against the Daleks... |
| Review:- In the spirit of the sagas we get these days, the follow-up to The End Of The World and New Earth. This time, to New New York itself, but there's a grimy, dirty secret hiding there, and a people trapped in a mass delusion... So, not original, but I must say first of all, I enjoyed this a lot. But then, it reminded me of The Long Game, and I was in a minority for liking that, too. The story's pretty simple, and all the better for it. The people have taken to their vehicles, and got stuck in a traffic jam without realising how long it should take. Those who do try to buck the system come a cropper in the nastiest way... those who sit and wait stay alive. Hmm... there's a moral there. By keeping things so simple, all the story has to do is show us each small band of characters in their little environment. They're understandably motivated, and so the viewer is never lost. The Doctor has a simple objective: recover Martha, and a less-simple objective: sort out the mess. The pace is fairly gentle, building slowly as the mystery of why everyone's stuck in traffic leads to why people in the Fast Lane never return, or where the police are when they should be on call. The recurrence of the Face of Boe leads to a suitably mammoth bit of jiggery-pokery, as the Doctor takes the simplest action to release the blockage. Along the way, cynics can carp that the budget that went on the effects of flying cars was countered by the car interiors being presumably the same set redressed over and over. That is, when they're not asking why people would stay in their cars all that time instead of looking for an alternative route... There is also a slightly surprising appearance from the Macra, last seen in 1967 in The Macra Terror. One of the old series' less successful monsters are obviously much improved by modern special effects, and are thus a sensible inclusion, albeit one that begged a lot more questions, not the least of which was why was there no explanation of what happened to them (presumably the traffic going elsewhere meant a loss of their vital gas, but a line to confirm this wouldn't have hurt). Unless they're coming back in the 4th instalment of the saga (the production team claim this story marks the end of the trilogy in this time period. However, they've gone back against themselves before, so who knows?) The drug angle tied in with the story's theme of dependency (the drivers depending on their destination offering a new chance, the Macra depending on the gas etc), but seemed to fizzle out before the surprise that the Senate had all died out because of a drug. This particular aspect didn't quite lead anywhere, which was odd. So, Boe finally delivered his slightly surprising message (assuming you had avoided it before), and Martha queried what it meant, and demanded answers from the Doctor, who finally realised it was his fault that Martha was in trouble, and owed it to her to come out of his shell (ahem) a bit. This is, of course, part of the ongoing theme of the series, but so far it appears to be going a lot better than the previous two themes were. The mention of the Time War at the end is a nice lead into the next adventure, too. So, a simple piece of entertainment that intrigued and surprised from start to finish. And hey, they even bunged in a bit of "The Old Rugged Cross", for which I am truly thankful. This was one of the better stories in the new series. |
| Disclaimer: I have watched this story. |