Dream A Little Dream Of Me

I really enjoyed Dreamland, for a lot of different reasons. First, it arrived with relatively little fanfare, but it made for such a nice bonus in this droughty year for Who; stacked up together, the six parts are basically one extra full-length episode, and while thirteen or fourteen per year are much of a muchness, I'll take six "specials" over five any time.

And then, of course, is the fact that it's so different from everything else we've been getting lately. Dreamland is a romp, one last bit of fun for Doctor number Ten. This is huge in a year which has all been doom and gloom, even in Torchwood (could Children of Earth have been any more of a downer?) and Sarah Jane Adventures (well, it was a bit miz when Sarah found and lost the human love of her life, anyway). Planet of the Dead would have qualified as fun... if they hadn't tacked all that "your song is ending soon" foreboding onto the end.

But Dreamland dispensed with all of that emo stuff; the Doctor didn't see fit to warn his temporary companions that hanging around with him could only result in misery and death, and by the way did he mention that he recently lost all the people he ever liked or love? And the adventure was much better for it. A potent reminder that, despite the maudlin tendencies of the RTD era, Doctor Who doesn't have to wallow in angst to work.

I loved the fact that, even though the individual episodes were about five minutes long, the script wasn't afraid to pile on the complication, with about half a dozen different factions running around: the Viperox, the robot MIBs, the US military, the Grays, the Skorpius flies, the Indians... At first I was a bit unimpressed that Jimmy's relatives were so uniformly strong, noble and generous - it's a bit of a predictable reading of American indigenous peoples, especially when you have a boo-hiss evil US military nearby for contrast, but it actually turned out to be appropriate.

And here's why: the real triumph of Dreamland was that, despite being a "throwaway" piece of animation, it didn't skimp on the sound moral principles that are the bedrock of the very greatest Doctor Who. The Indians were straightforwardly good guys, but then, suddenly, miraculously, everyone turned out to be good guys. General Stark, despite initially appearing to be a textbook Dr Strangelove nutter, was capable of seeing reason. Even the Viperox, and this is surreptitiously a real punch-the-air great Doctor Who moment, are spared from eradication because one day they'll evolve into something wonderful. I was complaining in my last post that Genesis of the Daleks wimps out after the amazing "Have I the right?" speech. Yes, decides the Doctor fifteen minutes later, he does have that right, and back he heads to murder some Dalek babies. In Dreamland the Doctor regains the moral high ground that he never should have lost at the end of Genesis.

I can't end this review without mentioning the amazing voice work of David Warner as Lord Azlok: the man has been an acting hero of mine since I was a small child and saw his portrayal of Evil in Time Bandits. His association with audio Who is quite extensive, I believe, and I only wish they'd put him back in the main show, age permitting: wouldn't he make the ideal next Master? He's younger than Derek Jacobi at the very least...

But I'll let the last word go to the best dialogue we've heard in Doctor Who since... ooh, I don't know when. "Always count your steps, Seruba Velak. You never know when you'll need to escape in a box." If that isn't some top-of-the-line, A-grade Doctor Who dialogue then I don't know what is. I've had my doubts about him from time to time, but: good work, Phil Ford. You did a fantastic job on this.