Father's Day by: Paul Cornell and directed by: Joe Ahearne

 

“Father’s Day” stars Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with Shaun Dingwall as Pete Tyler and Camille Coduri as Jackie Tyler.  It was written by: Paul Cornell and directed by: Joe Ahearne with Helen Raynor as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Mal Young as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 14 May 2005 on BBC One.

 

With the cancellation of Doctor Who in 1989 it only took two years before the continuation came in the form of original novels, the New Adventures, continuing Andrew Cartmel’s push for bringing new writers into the show and subsequent franchise.  It is with these novels that Russell T. Davies got his start in Doctor Who long before the revival came along, but among the now prolific Doctor Who authors who got their start in these books, among them Kate Orman, Jonathan Blum, and one of the few to make the leap to television Paul Cornell.  The eighth episode of the revival was always meant to be a story about the death of Rose’s father, however, it didn’t really take shape until Cornell was assigned to write “Broken Time” with the premise that Rose would in the spur of the moment decision save her father from the car crash that would claim his life.  Time would then start breaking down with several eras blending into one another.  This pitch would be refined into “Wounded Time”, eventually placing the setting in a church before a wedding and the refinement of the monsters into flying creatures come to sterilize the wound, before further refinement led to the broadcast title “Father’s Day”, again a few months before broadcast.

 

The consequences of changing history is something that Doctor Who had toyed with throughout the classic series with serials like The Aztecs and The Reign of Terror having established historical events with the potential to be altered as something that cannot happen.  Pyramids of Mars showed time in a state of flux in the middle of the events that would have seen the villain succeed, however, rarely was anything concrete concerning what would happen when history changed.  “Father’s Day” attempts to rectify this with the concept of the Reapers, extratemporal beings which rip people’s lives out of the timestream throughout the episode.  This actually poses a problem for Doctor Who going forward since there are several examples of other stories where history is significantly changed, however, the Reapers do not appear again.  They are also a classic example of a Doctor Who story having some sort of monster added for tension which this story honestly doesn’t need, at least not concretely.  Giving the Reapers a physical form actually hurts the episode as they could have been fairly unseen which would have assisted the original intent of this episode to be a budget episode with less need for special effects.  The Reapers just have an identity and easily recognizable form when the episode does want them to be a recognizable villain.

 

Outside of the villain that doesn’t need to be there, Cornell does what he does best with this episode: using some aspect of science fiction to explore our characters and what makes them tick.  The episode is framed by this little frame story of Jackie Tyler telling a young Rose stories about her father, romanticizing the man to have been the perfect father and husband.  Camille Coduri as an actress is often underestimated for the more comedic relief portrayals of Jackie Tyler in Doctor Who but this episode may just be her best performance in the show.  The frame story shows Jackie as someone who while having come to terms with being a single mother and losing her husband by romanticizing it, her love being the way she remembers him.  This is an immediate contrast with the reality of the situation, Jackie and Pete had a fairly normal marriage that at the point where Pete dies it was in a rough patch.  Pete Tyler, played by Shaun Dingwall, is a mediocre man with very few prospects, business schemes piling up in their flat and a genuine fear that there won’t be enough for food.  Jackie has also become paranoid that Pete is being unfaithful and all these little things boil over into Coduri’s performance which is fueled by frustration and anger.  Cornell’s script and Joe Ahearne’s direction is also very careful to not boil over this relationship into hatred.

 

Pete is also just a mediocre man and that comes through in Dingwall’s performance.  He probably would have been a good father to Rose, but what really shows this are his final acts in the episode.  Pete sacrifices himself so time is corrected after the Doctor’s plan to fix things goes awry due to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect allowing the Reapers inside the church.  Billie Piper as Rose is also great throughout, Rose making the mistake of changing time in such a way that the Doctor should kick her out of the TARDIS for failing, but he doesn’t.  Mainly because Rose genuinely just wanted to be with her dad when he died alone in the road after being hit by a car.  Eccleston as the Doctor also has this great rage and sadness throughout, thinking he’s finally found a companion who won’t ruin the web of time, hinting at regret at his own actions and perhaps some previous companion who wasn’t so good.  His best scene, however, is one seeing the bride and groom, friends of the Tyler’s, and hearing about how they met and why they’re getting married.  It’s a small little scene, but it’s the little moments of human joy that keep the Doctor going through times like these, something that while recurring perhaps a bit too much in the revival, really works here because of proximity to the Time War.

 

Overall, “Father’s Day” is an excellent example of what Paul Cornell does at his best.  Yes, the monsters don’t need to be there, but this is a necessary episode to really see what happens when history is changed, moving Doctor Who into new territory as well as progressing the Doctor and Rose’s relationship with revelations about a romanticized past just being human.  And being human is sometimes the best thing in the world.  9/10.