About JE Smith
Location: Irving, Texas
Occupation: Freelance
Bio: JE Smith, aka Jeff S., is a forty-something guy who was born in Illinois, but has been living in the wilds of Dallas, Texas for almost twenty years. He has been a movie nut ever since seeing Escape from the Planet of the Apes at Steeleville Theater in 1971 and is also obsessed with Doctor Who, Ultraman, Star Trek, The X Files, Batman, Spider-Man, Doc Savage and many other pop culture icons. For fifteen years (1981 - 1996) he published the sf/horror filmzine Wet Paint, and tried his hand at self-publishing his own comics with Bulletproof (1999, 3 issues) and Complex City (2000 - 2003, 4 issues and a trade paperback), both of which bombed. He's been writing film reviews for almost thirty years and is just getting the hang of it. Married to the lovely Barbara for over 15 years, and owned by a sleepy cat named Max.
Posts: 176
More from this author
Jack’s Back! Captain Jack Harkness that is. He’s sick and tired of being on a crappy show like Torchwood and finally comes back to Who. But the Doctor’s none too happy about it. Plus, the evil future of mankind is body piercing and tattoos.
Plot Points – The Doctor stops off at the time rift in Cardiff (see 1.11 “Boomtown”) to re-fuel the TARDIS, but spots Capt. Jack (John Barrowman) rushing towards him, and quickly dematerializes the ship. But not before Jack manages to grab hold, which sends the TARDIS careening to the very end of time, and a desolate planet where the last vestiges of humanity are boarding a rocket in hopes of reaching the fabled Utopia. There the Doctor meets Professor Yana (Derek Jacobi), a scientist who is trying to get the rocket flight worthy, before the savage “Futurekind” (tattooed, heavily-pierced humans with nasty big pointy teeth) break into the complex and wipe them out.
Doctor Who? – As he did occasionally in the classic series, the Doctor refers to himself here as a doctor “of everything.”
Martha My Dear – Seems notably petulant at the mention of Rose’s name, and is obviously attracted to Captain Jack. Once again, she blubs to a minor character (Chando) about the Doctor not loving her.
Capt. Jack – For those who may have wondered why, in the first season of Torchwood that Capt. Jack had had some kind of charm-ectomy, here we get part of the answer: he’s been stranded on Earth since 1860, almost 150 years, waiting for the Doctor (seems like he’s missed a lot of opportunities, especially in the 1970s, but whatever...). He keeps the Doctor’s dismembered hand (see 2.0 “The Christmas Invasion”) in a jar, and refers to it as a “Doctor detector.” For the first time in the history of the new series, an actor other than the Doctor and the Companion is listed in the opening titles (i.e., Barrowman).
Too Cool – In more than 30 years of Doctor Who, we’ve never seen anyone cling to the outside of the TARDIS while it whirls through the vortex, so I’ve gotta give Russell that one.
Weird Science - Writer Russell T. Davies is up to his old tricks again. This story is set trillions and trillions of years in the future, and yet humans still look and act essentially the same as they do in 21st century London. He puts in a throwaway line about them going through several different evolutions before “reverting” back to the basic human form, but this is gobbledygook B.S., as usual. The TARDIS has never needed to “refuel” before (another bizarre holdover of the Time War?) so why here? There’s also a bizarre sequence with a room that is full of “stet” radiation (an invention, of course, so it’s hard to get too picky, as the writer doesn’t bother to outline its exact nature) that seems highly lethal (one guy is instantly vaporized), and yet everybody opens and closes the door to this room without any kind of “airlock” (they all just duck to one side, as if radiation has the same properties as a light breeze), plus the room seems to open directly to the rocket tubes of the spaceship… huh?
Dumb Stuff – The Doctor materializes (and later de-materializes) the TARDIS in the Cardiff town square in broad daylight with plenty of bystanders milling around. Why not do it at 3 a.m. or something? It is a time machine after all. And it’s not technically a mistake, but the final episode of Torchwood season 1 strongly implied that the TARDIS had materialized inside Torchwood headquarters, rather than out in the square. The Professor has no apparent connection to the Face of Boe, so why would he adopt a name that is an acronym for Boe’s cryptic final comment? It makes for a nice “spooky” moment, but really doesn’t make any sense. Also, the location of Utopia seems muddled – is it on another planet, or elsewhere on this one? It’s implied that there aren’t any other planets, but this is a big honkin’ spaceship if they’re just traveling a few thousand miles down the road.
Rosewatch - With Jack’s return, it was inevitable we’d get more yakking about Rose. The Doctor tells Jack that Rose is safe on a parallel world. “Good old Rose,” Martha says ruefully at yet another mention of the former companion. She later learns that Rose was blonde. “Naturally!” (Well, possibly not…)
Classic Who – The Doctor says that “not even the Time Lords” have come this far, i.e. to the end of time. The Doctor calling the human race “Indomitable!” is a callback to a very famous speech given by Tom Baker in the classic “The Ark in Space” (14.2). When Yana opens the fob watch, we briefly hear dialogue spoken by Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley, two of the actors who previously played the Master. And yes… the Master. We’ll deal with him in the next episode.
Internal Continuity – Martha references the events of “Boomtown” (1.11) which the Doctor characterizes as, “Bit o’ trouble with the Slitheen,” and notes “I was a different man back then.” (He was: Christopher Eccleston.) Jack was last seen in Who in the series 1 finale “Parting of the Ways,” but had also appeared in a whole season of Torchwood, which was broadcast in the UK before Who season 3. Jack shows Martha his Vortex Manipulator (see “Human Nature”). The Doctor noting that the rift has been active recently is a reference to Torchwood 1.13 “End of Days.”
Lost in Translation – John Simm is a very big star in the UK, his most recent project being the superb series Life on Mars (due for a U.S. remake soon). Apparently his casting in this key role was quite a coup for nuWho.
Final Answer – I was possibly the least happy person to learn that Russell T. Davies had expanded his usual “I write the finale” rule to include three episodes, but he does get at least part of it right. Despite being almost entirely composed of set-ups for the next two episodes, “Utopia” is still pretty cool and pretty entertaining. The Futurekind are hopelessly generic villains (as a friend of mine said, they’re so “1999 San Francisco”) that serve no function other than to make things explode, and the science is typically ludicrous (see above). But there are good points too, first and foremost being Derek Jacobi’s superb performance as Professor Yana. It’s always nice to have Barrowman back, a here there’s a very nice scene between Tennant and J.B. as they discuss Jack’s nature. The whole thing is pretty consistently watchable, and well-paced by director Graeme Harper, a veteran of the classic series. “Utopia” can’t stand alone in any circumstances, but it’s still better than roughly half the episodes this season.
In regards to the TARDIS never having to refuel before:
1) Prior to the Time War the TARDIS was fueled by a link to the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey. No Gallifrey, no Eye of Harmony. A TARDIS can also pull in Energy from the Universe as a source of power, especially from Rifts (I’m not talking out of my hat here, this is mentioned in several Doctor Who books).
2) We saw the TARDIS refuel on the Cardiff Rift in Boomtown. That’s why Jack’s been waiting for the Doctor in Cardiff.
As to why Jack didn’t make contact with the Doctor in the ‘70s, that would have created a paradox. Jack says in the episode that he had to wait for an incarnation of the Doctor that would correspond to his time frame.
Actually,
The Tardis needed feul in Twin Dilemma, the first full length Sixth Doctor story. He and Peri were going to be stranded inside the Tardis in deep space without a re-feul.