Has Doctor Who finally morphed into The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? You might think so with the Titanic-in-space plot (reminiscent of a Douglas Adams video game) last week, and all the comic bits between David Tennant and Catherine Tate in this week’s official season premiere.
Since I’m always a sucker for slapstick, I kinda liked “Partners in Crime,” which introduces Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, the woman with the mile-a-minute mouth (who may eerily remind you of Carol Burnett). Tennant and Tate play off each other well; the scene in which Donna comes up with a solution to the Doctor’s dilemma with an alien computer played a lot better than it should have. Of course, Donna seems to have fallen for the Doctor, despite her protestations; that’s now a Who cliche. Please, this is a sci-fi action show; let’s not get too mushy.
The plot — about a diet pill with which “the fat just walks away,” literally and possibly dangerously — wasn’t much, but the emphasis on the characters kept the episode in working order. Still, there weren’t any bits as perfect as that one in last week’s belated Christmas episode in which the Doctor lands with Titanic sightseers to find that London now evacuates annually on Christmas, just in case there should be an alien invasion with a certain Time Lord involved. Both episodes were fun, but I’d like an exciting cliffhanger one of these days.
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It struck me that the entire episode had no right working as well as it did. A somewhat ham-handed main plot worked because of Tennant and Tate’s pitch-perfect comedic timing.
Yeah, I’m still not sure about this episode. Babies made entirely out of human fat, and ones that smile and wave at everyone? That was just a little too “goofy comedy” for my tastes. Yeah, I know rampant cheesiness is expected when you’re watching Dr. Who. But this episode was more more like “Dr. WTF?” than Dr. Who. The previews for next week’s volcano episode look pretty damn cool, though.
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