The Girl in the Fireplace

9️⃣🔼 = REMARKABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“HE’S NOT THE DOCTOR, HE’S CASANOVA!”

Returning after his success with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (2005), Steven Moffat crafts an inventive timey-wimey adventure, combining a character-driven period drama with pure and fun science fiction. The script fascinatingly shifts between the deserted spaceship and the Doctor visiting different points in Reinette's life, building up a mystery and a connection between the two. It's an early example of Moffat challenging the expectations of the viewers.

This is also a fascinatingly deep episode about the Doctor as a person.

David Tennant is lovely in this story, in one of his better performances. This episode is the one that cemented him as a great pick for the Doctor for me. Sophia Myles proves to be one of the most memorable and solid guest performers in the revived series. She puts in a soft but very engaging performance.

The Doctor is both funny and touching here, ready to help a woman he barely knows, even if it means he gets separated from his companions. The way he’s excited about space-age clockwork, snogging Madame de Pompadour, or befriending Arthur the Horse and getting drunk (and "dancing") at a party are things only Ten could pull off.

Mickey is now officially a part of the TARDIS team, but still a bit of a comic relief character. He's cowardly and not very useful, but luckily he has Rose by his side, as she is pretty good at getting out of trouble by now. The two companions are mostly abandoned by the Doctor throughout this, but they fare very well on their own, and Billie Piper isn't too annoying for a change. Granted, they don't have much of a role to play in the episode, but still.

The Clockwork Droids are a great concept, used pretty well but perhaps not as much as could have been possible. Their design and function are creepy, and they work effectively despite being so simple. What makes them scarier is the fact that they harvest human body parts to run their spaceship.

This is one of the better-produced stories in the early revived series. 18th-century France looks incredible, the droids look realistic, and the old, abandoned spaceship is also pretty nice. The CGI isn’t always up to par (I’m thinking of the “horse through the mirror” scene), but it’s not too bad. The sad music stands out the most.

This is a slower episode, but it's well-paced nonetheless, allowing the Doctor and Reinette to connect properly, which makes the ending feel properly satisfying. At the same time, the air sort of runs out of it after the clockwork stuff is sorted, because the sudden romance between Ten and Reinette feels very forced.

Once again, Moffat manages to craft an atmosphere that effectively combines authentic period drama with dark and creepy scenes, romance, heartbreak, and plenty of sharp humour. There are also slower moments and touching scenes in this story, particularly in the strange way the Doctor and Reinette connect. Granted, I could have done without the romance aspects of the episode, but they don’t drag it down noticeably.

This story strengthened Moffat's position as one of Nu Who's strongest and most inventive writers.

This is still one of the best stories of the revived era and one of the best Moffat has ever written. Watch it, and watch it again many times!

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

The Doctor has fought clockwork androids before, in The Android Invasion (1976) and The Androids of Tara (1979), for instance, and will do so again in Deep Breath (2014) and Robot of Sherwood (2014).

Combining history with sci-fi isn't a new idea for the show. It has been done previously in Carnival of Monsters (1973) and Enlightenment (1984).

We all have to make sacrifices sometimes. Ten allows Rose to keep Mickey, so she has to allow him to keep Arthur (he should’ve been a companion).

The drunken Doctor is one of the better Tenth Doctor moments, filled with quotable dialogue.

Madame de Pompadour is a historical figure I think I may have heard of in passing but really knew next to nothing about before this story aired.  Sophia Myles plays her beautifully and we are given enough snippets of information about her real life to gain enough background without feeling like we’re in the middle of a historical documentary.  The slightly more salacious aspects of her life (she was the King’s mistress after all) are subtly alluded to but not dwelt upon.  Her relationship with the Doctor is one of almost equals, highlighted by the mindreading scene.  It is disappointing that her relationship with King Louis XV is rather cursory on screen (not aided by a slightly wooden performance from Ben Turner) and the viewer gets the impression that, at least from when Reinette is grown up, her only romantic attachment is to the Doctor regardless of the years spent with her husband or her King.  This seems a little conceited of the series.

Also, I find the Doctor to be a little too ‘much’ in this story.  I like David Tennant’s Doctor but Series 2 was when the 10th Doctor and Rose began to become too cliquey and annoying when in each other’s company – they gang up on Mickey, they laugh at their own in-jokes.  At the time there was speculation it was set up for the spectacular fall that was coming for them at the end of the series and, to an extent, it is, but taken stories in isolation as I am, it can be a bit grating.  Rose, in this story, isn’t too bad mainly because she has Mickey to interact with more than the Doctor but the Doctor himself is quite arrogant for much of the tale.   I love the scene where he bursts through the mirror astride Arthur the Horse but the wink to Reinette, whilst funny the first time, begins to grate on repeated viewings.  Now I know that ‘repeated viewings’ isn’t really what the production team have on their minds when making the stories and its probably unfair to criticise an aspect of production which only begins to annoy after a third or fourth watch but there are plenty of stories which are a pleasure to watch time and again and if the central character’s behaviour is something which, on repeated viewings, is annoying, then surely that is a bit of a problem.

The Doctor’s stupidity at the end of the story is also irritating as it is merely a device to ensure that his and Reinette’s love story has a tragic end.  The Doctor knows full well that time moves differently on the 18th Century side of the windows than the 51st century side and yet he whizzes through for no real apparent reason and then comes back and finds that times has passed and Reinette is dead.  I just find this part frustrating as it seems to rely on the Doctor being foolish to maintain an emotional ending (and to ensure ‘real history’ is not derailed by having Reinette travel with the Doctor to a parallel Earth to fight the Cybermen).

This frustration was also felt when the whole adventure seemed to be avoiding explaining itself.  I have vivid memories of watching this on first airing and spending the last ten minutes or so becoming increasingly worried that we weren’t actually going to get a reason for why the Clockwork Robots were after Madame de Pompadour.  The final tiny reveal was one of the most satisfying endings Doctor Who has given me for a long while and something which I didn’t see coming.

Another satisfying aspect are the Clockwork Robots.  Whilst the 18th Century costuming is rather quickly brushed aside as some sort of ‘blending in’ protocol, it doesn’t detract from the fact they are a very creepy creation.  The clockwork inside is beautifully realised and contrasts nicely with the horrific masks covering it.

Rose and Mickey don’t get an awful lot to do but it’s quite a nice relationship on display between them (particularly as at the close of School Reunion, Rose seemed less than impressed that Mickey was stepping on board.  It’s a shame, in a way, that this is clearly scripted as Mickey’s first trip in the TARDIS as it would have made more sense for Rose’s sudden change in attitude to have happened during a couple of off-screen adventures).  I particularly like Rose’s ‘now you’re getting it’ comment when Mickey realises that a companion’s job is to ignore the Doctor’s instructions and her disdain for the apparently drunk Doctor (a scene which I’m not sure really works for Tennant, but does for Noel Clarke and Billie Piper).  In fact, bearing in mind she is sidelined in favour of Reinette, I think this is one of the better stories for Rose as a character, at least in the way she is presented and the dialogue she is given.

The rest of the guest cast is limited with only Ben Turner’s aforementioned lacklustre performance as King Louis and Angel Coulby (pre-Merlin) in a brief cameo as Reinette’s friend.  Oh, and Arthur the Horse of course (which does give Rose’s another good line about not keeping the horse).

Aside from the irritating Doctor aspect (which is probably more of RTD’s influence than Moffat), Moffat’s script it a good one and much better, I think, than The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances which, whilst everyone raved about during Series 1, I was a little underwhelmed by.  The Girl in the Fireplace, and latterly Blink, were the two scripts that meant I was excited when it became clear Moffat was in line to take over from RTD.

The Girl in the Fireplace is a fun story with good monsters, a good guest character and a good central conceit.  It’s only marred by an increasingly irritating and arrogant Doctor but is still a sumptuously realised production with well-chosen locations and excellent costumes.

A brilliant episode that really was yet another early script where Stephen Moffat showed a great deal of promise. It's a great story and I really like the core aspect of the Doctor being this presence throughout Madame De Popmpadour's life. I've often said Doctor Who really embodies that old definition of Romances and this episode is a great example of that. The only thing that really holds this episode back is Mickey, who feels a bit unnecessary and is kind of just there to stand beside Rose (who already has a light role here) and complain a bunch.

Also, the clockwork robots looked so cool. The whole story behind the ship cannibalizing its crew for parts was pretty creative and added a lot to the story, even with a clear effect on budget on the sets, this story does a lot with a little, which I consider quite impressive.

Steven Moffat knows how to write fairy tales, romance, sci-fi and comedy. He is such an all rounder. So when Russell's fully developed, living, breathing characters walk into Moffat's scripts they are an uncontainable force to be reckoned with. The star of this particular episode though is Madame de Pompadour who is written and acted with such passion and flare that she's guaranteed to have audiences crying at her untimely fate.

Moffat's regular exercise of making an ordinary relatable item scary in this episode turns to ticking clocks and monsters hiding under the bed. The imaginative results of clockwork droids are delightful and a huge step forward for Tennant's time as The Doctor.

The fairy tale-esque spin on time travel that passing through fireplaces and secret passageways on a spaceship into regency France is spectacular and allows for the rare visual combination of both spaceships and palaces, robots and frocks!

With his second script in a row Moffat has already cemented himself as one of the series all time best writers and given Rose and The Doctor their first much needed classic in what had up until that point been an uneven series.