I absolutely love this episode! This is just the sort of story that could never be told in any other television show. Fact!
After arriving on a space ship in the 51st century, the Doctor, Rose and Micky are confused when they find an 18th century French fireplace. Even more shocking is that say in the other side of the fire is a young girl. So begins this bizarre love story between the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour.
Scattered throughout the ship are time windows into different parts of Madame de Pompadour's (I'm going to use her real name Reinette from now on, can't be bothered to type that everytime!) life. Having met the Doctor as a little girl (Reinette was a little girl I mean, not the Doctor, although the way regeneration is going you can't rule that out one day) he has had a profound impact on her life. Especially after he saves her from one of the sinister clockwork droids. These droids originate from the space ship and have created the time windows in order to extract the head of Reinette when she reaches a certain age. There is reason behind this madness believe me. The ship is in a bad way and the droids have been doing everything they can to repair it with the limited replacement parts. Unfortunately the parts were so limited that they decided to canalise the the crew. This leads us to some horrific moments of Rose and a Micky finding human body parts wired into bits of machinery.
Whilst telepathically reading Reinettes mind, she manages to access the Doctor's memories also and from here their bond becomes closer. Considering this story was written by Steven Moffat who also wrote the excellent Empty Child of the previous year I wonder if the dancing equals sex rule still applies. If it does then we can maybe read more into the scene when Reinette is begging the Doctor to dance with her. Even more when he declines because tonight is the night she "dances" with the king.
There are just so many good lines in this story. These include Reinette's quite profound thoughts of "it's the way its always been, the monster and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other"
Other great lines come near the end of the episode. With the droids defeated, now cut off from their ship the Doctor speaks quietly to their leader: "How many more ticks left in that clockwork heart? A day? A week? It's over! Accept that! I'm not winding you up..." Brilliant!
I could write an entire blog just about this one story! But this blog entry is way overdue so I must press on I'm afraid. But to summarise this is highly recommended!
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