Woof bloody woof
Now that it seems Bad Wolf spoilers are creeping out of the BBC, it might be time to stick my neck out a bit before all is revealed.
But first, a bit of appreciation, because the whole affair is a wonderful exercise in viral something-or-other. Not marketing, exactly. Just viral fun, I think. Most viewers couldn’t care less, I’m sure, but for the geeks both sides of the camera it’s been a lovely game of observation, detection, and some fantastically extrapolated guesswork. It’s three-dimensional story-telling.
That the Bad Wolf might be The Doctor himself — that the person we’ve been watching all through the series might have been somehow substituted or taken over, only for the true Doctor to prevail in the end — is an idea dazzling in its mind-fuckness, but way too daring for the programme’s remit. Likewise for Rose. And both of those despite the playful little red herrings that have been seeded: Rose as Red Riding-Hood and such.
Nah, Captain Jack now seems obviously to be the key. His two years of missing memories were insufficiently motivated by the last story, and promise further utilisation. He’s a time traveller, which provides endless possibility. He lured The Doctor and Rose to his time and place on Earth, for reasons which might end up being even more complicated than the gothic gas-mask plot. He’s now with them, and would serve very nicely as a Trojan horse.
I don’t think it’s him, though, otherwise his innocent soliloquising at the end of the last episode would have to have been implausibly meta. So he’s either carrying something, in the manner of Twin Peaks’ Bob; or he’s being controlled, quite possibly without his knowledge, by some other bad-guy.
It’s the Bad Wolf because “Who‘s afraid of the big bad wolf”, of course, not because it’s going to be particularly lupine. It’s something The Doctor is afraid of, probably connected with the Time War that’s been bubbling under as a bit of fertile back-story. Some foe from that war, who is using Captain Jack as a Trojan horse in order to get to The Doctor to kill him. That’s my guess, anyhow.
I somehow doubt it’ll be an enemy that we’ve seen before. I actually hope it isn’t, because one thing this series has conspicuously missed is a threat with the weight and character to carry a prolonged narrative. Something notably humanoid, because that just makes for a better conflict. The Master would do, I suppose, but I have a hankering for a new Nemesis, and I have a feeling that Russell would too.
If it is Jack, it might be nice to see him do some mean things to that ‘excellent bottom’ of Rose’s first. Hey, if bisexual characters are okay in kids’ programmes, a little bit of meanness to an excellent bottom would seem harmless.
*blink* I’ve always known I was very unobservant, but honestly, this post is the first time I’ve heard anything about a bad wolf, and that it’s supposed to be a great puzzle. OK, there was a mention in last night’s episode, and it was pretty explicit (as in, the Doctor says that the words “follow them everywhere”), but I saw it here first.
Er… it looks like they do follow them everywhere, doesn’t it?
Not going to go into speculations (I haven’t even seen all episodes!), but I have to say that when I dismissed Dr Who as an inferior work of SF, I was very, very wrong.
Oh, it’s been inferior and superior and everything in between in its time. It’s what you get when something’s been going for the best part of 40 years. It’s easy to forget that it was originally intended as a children’s programme with a very BBC quasi-educational remit, hence the prevalence of historical storylines early on.
But it’s always been best when it goes all gothic horror, which the gas-mask thing played very nicely. The giant maggots in The Green Death were one of my hiding-behind-the-sofa moments as a kid.
Oh, did you see this yet?
Thank goodness for BitTorrent, that’s all I can say. The Beeb still hasn’t managed to sell the new stuff to anywhere in the US. And, after the last episode’s bisexual undercurrents, I’m not entirely surprised.
I hadn’t noticed the “bad wolf” stuff until Paul pointed it out.
But I just wanna say that I *love* Dr. Who and whine a lot while waiting for the downloads.
Er… that’s the only way we can see them, really. I don’t have a very strong background in SF or fantasy. But I do tend to know what I like.
I will say that I’m unsettled by this whole idea of the transforming change. They seem so right to me. And I hate change. ::sniff::
(HEY! Who ya calling a malicious script Paul?)
1. What’s “Bit Torrent”?
2. Educational show? They didn’t think that a child’s educational needs included physics, then 🙂
3. Annie, when you say that you don’t have a huge background in SF, I get the feeling that you and the writer of the show have this in common. It’s like he has this idea about what a SF show has to be, and works very hard to include all the bits (and doesn’t particularly care for them, either). Things like nonsensical technobabble, bizarre sentient monsters with implausible motivation, and stuff. As he doesn’t have much of a background in these things, and is, perhaps, not interested in them, he camps it up on the over-the-top showy SF-y stuff, making it much worse than it needs to be.
And what he really wants to write about is people, relationships and all sorts of emotional things. And he’s really good at writing these. And if somebody told him: “Hey, it’s OK, you don’t have to shove in every little thing that you think SF shows must have, because they don’t have to” – then, perhaps, it could really sparkle.
It’s pretty sparkly anyway, but some things about it annoy me, and they needn’t be there.
Hope this makes sense!
4. It absolutely sucks they haven’t secured Eccleston for another season. I was just beginning to fall in lust with him…
Vic:
> 1. What’s “Bit Torrent”?
What, has Google not reached the north-east wastelands yet, lazy girl? It’s this.
> 2. Educational show? They didn’t think that a child’s educational needs
> included physics, then 🙂
Yeah, well, when you start with travelling in time inside a police box that’s bigger on the inside than the outside, you have to think that the physics of the situation aren’t terribly important. 🙂
> 3. Annie, when you say that you don’t have a huge background in SF,
> I get the feeling that you and the writer of the show have this in common.
> It’s like he has this idea about what a SF show has to be, and works very
> hard to include all the bits (and doesn’t particularly care for them, either).
Not SF generally, but Doctor Who specifically. Its place in British pop culture is such that anyone taking it on, as Russell Davies has done, carries an enormous weight of conflicting expectations. It’s a bit no-win, and in that context I think he’s done amazingly well at giving it a new lease of life.
The differences between the episodes he wrote in this series, though, and the ones written by others, are pretty clear. The others have written more traditional Who stories, and he’s concentrated mostly on placing Rose and the Doctor in amongst a complex of relationships. Davies is definitely better at that than the SF, but then he is best known for Queer as Folk, and there’s not a lot of SF in that either. 🙂
> 4. It absolutely sucks they haven’t secured Eccleston for another season.
> I was just beginning to fall in lust with him…
Honestly, I think he’s good, but his performances have been a bit overplayed and erratic for me. I’d have liked to see him settle down a bit into another series, but I think it’ll be cool. Billie Piper’s been the revelation. I don’t think anyone gave her much of a chance, and she’s shone all the way through. I’ll miss that excellent bottom of hers more than the U-Boat captain. 🙂
FWIW, some good stuff on Who at Wikipedia, including a list of the spoof web-sites that the BBC put together.