Welcome to your summer vacation through space and time, all from the comfort of your couch and TV. We’re spending our COVID-19 summer winding our way through Doctor Who history, focusing on one episode from each Doctor’s tenure through to the Capaldi era. (Want to know what we’re watching? Here’s the schedule!)
After nine years (ten if you’re in the U.S.) Doctor Who finally returned as a weekly serial with the rugged, leather-clad Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston. His tenure was a short one (one year) but it did produce several memorable stories. The one we’ll look at today is “Father’s Day,” which first aired on May 14, 2005.
While it’s been 15 years, we give you the usual warning: Spoilers!
1. Fixed Points In Time
Anyone who travels through time knows the number one rule of time travel: don’t interfere with the past. So when Rose tells the Doctor she wants to go back to see her father Pete, who she never knew (he died in a hit and run accident when she was a baby), the Doctor agrees but with one reservation: be careful what you wish for.
She does get to see her parents get married (including a flub by her father during the vows, but as her mother Jackie says, “it was good enough for Lady Di”) but she also wants to see the day her father died, to be there for him so he doesn’t die alone. Except . . . he doesn’t die. Before the car can hit him, Rose pushes her father out of the way, ensuring he will live.
In the moment, Rose is relieved. But she doesn’t know about the butterfly effect: small actions have big impacts. And while her father sees the light of day (and can now go to the friend’s wedding that he was on his way to when he had died) something (later revealed to be bat-like alien creatures called Reapers, though that name is never mentioned on-screen) is plucking ordinary humans out of the world. It’s also getting very cold, people are getting strange phone calls, and the TARDIS is . . . just an ordinary police box. Time is definitely out of sorts.
This is one of the first stories in the revival era to deal with the consequences of time travel, as well as many other rules of time travel that we would see later in the series: how fixed points in time work, how to avoid a temporal paradox.
2. “Why Does Everyone Think We’re a Couple?”
Pete assumes The Doctor is Rose’s boyfriend, and while she protests that, she does have some remorse of the Doctor walking out on her. Later on in the series (in the first part of the David Tennant years) her romantic feelings towards the Doctor really surface. At this point in the series, it’s still somewhat taboo for companion and Doctor to have anything past friendship for each other (Eighth Doctor makeout sessions with Grace notwithstanding). The show still holds to that part of its past, but starts to tiptoe towards the contemporary future where a love story isn’t all that taboo with Pete’s assumptions.
3. A Big Ol’ Softie
Many times when we see the Ninth Doctor, he’s an angry, wounded, man, still traumatized by the Time War. And he does show that in his anger towards Rose for causing the situation, calling her “stupid.” This episode shows his softer and vulnerable side: his concession for Rose to visit her father (even though he knows the consequences), and his affection towards the couple that was due to get married the day all this mess went down. He shows genuine interest and love towards their story, and no judgment on the fact that the bride is pregnant. He also doesn’t have a plan to solve this problem, a rather frightening thought for the time traveler who can solve just about anything. There’s more humanity in this Doctor than past regenerations – – nuanced, emotionally driven humanity, not the goofy humanity we saw in the Eighth Doctor – – and that’s a good thing.
We only had Christopher Eccleston for one season, but what this episode shows is what might have been had we had more time with him.
Continued below4. Consequences of Choices
“Time’s been damaged, and they’ve come to sterilize the wound.”
And there is the butterfly effect on full display. Because Rose saved her father’s life, other people – – innocent people, from a woman in her garden to the father of the groom at the wedding Pete and Jackie were due to attend – – have to die. Rose realizes this (very early on) but she’s unsure of the solution.
There’s something else the Doctor – – and Pete – – also notice: the appearance, at random, of the car that was due to hit her father. It’s a sign that he has to die. And Pete realizes this is the only way to make things right, his way of being a good father: by ironically, not being there.
In the end, Pete does die at the hands of the drive that killed him initially, but Rose does get her chance to say goodbye.
5. Why “Father’s Day?”
When I was describing this project to my boyfriend, there were two episodes where I got a fair bit of grief from him for my choices. This was one of them. (You’ll find out the other one very soon.) I wasn’t surprised: his Doctor is Christopher Eccleston, so of course he’s going to have an opinion about what episodes I pick. But I also thought: well, everyone’s going to talk about “The Empty Child/”The Doctor Dances,” (which is also what he suggested) why not try something different?
(I found out later that this did receive a nomination for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.)
I’m glad I picked this episode. Sure, the trope of “change the past so it’s better” is one that’s been done before, and that does make the events rather predictable. You know Pete and Jackie will realize they’ve met their adult daughter, and you know Pete will eventually have to die. But it also lifts the curtain on Pete and Jackie Tyler’s marriage, which wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Seems Pete had a wandering eye (which makes Jackie’s accusation of the adult version of her daughter as one of her husband’s side relationships . . . rather awkward), and his entrepreneurial schemes left the family in less than comfortable financial straits. All this helps Rose to understand that while losing her father so young was so traumatic, it had to happen, in order for her mother to have the strength to raise her as a single parent. That strength (among others) is a trait she passed on to the adult Rose . . . that gave her the courage to travel with the Doctor.
And realizing this truth provides her with a sense of peace.
TARDIS Trivia (our Afterthoughts section)
- On the car radio as Rose and Pete drive to the wedding: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” At the time this aired, an appropriate choice for a story set in 1987. Today, all one can think of is: well, this episode just got rickrolled.
- Here’s something interesting: how could baby Rose and adult Rose be in the same place? Doesn’t that cause a time paradox? (The Doctor does warn her later not to touch her infant self, and when it does happen, it does lead to grave consequences for all in the church.)
- If you remember from last week, I wasn’t a fan of the more modern theme song: too orchestral, too miniseries with past-their-expiration-date actors. This one is much better. It still has that Delia Derbyshire electronic arrangement that is trademark Doctor Who, but has a contemporary orchestral bent. It’s much better. Honors the old, but makes it news.
- A very young Mickey, later Rose’s boyfriend, makes an appearance. He was on a playground when he saw the aliens looking to repair the time wound and runs back to the adults frightened by his discovery. One of them casually remarks about Mickey’s eventual romantic prospects, and when he does see the adult Rose, he does cling to her.
Next week, dust off your Converse for an adventure with David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor (well, sort of) with the episode “Blink.”
Classic Doctor Who episodes (First through the Seventh Doctors) are available on the streaming subscription service Britbox (available in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. at the time of this writing). If you’re in the U.S., Latin America, Puerto Rico, and Europe, you can also get your classic Who fix via the free streaming service Pluto TV, which has its own Doctor Who channel!
Revival episodes (Ninth through Twelfth Doctors) are available worldwide on Amazon Prime, and in the United States on HBO Max.
