Here’s Why Father’s Day is Your Most Underrated Series 1 Story

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Back in February, we asked you what your most underrated serial of Series 1 is – and it was a close call!

In third place, with 13.83% of the vote, was The Long Game, Russell T Davies’ tale of media manipulation, while Boom Town, a return of Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, claimed second place with 16.43%. But beating those stories to the title, with 18.73%, is Father’s Day.

And I, for one, really enjoyed this story. Being a fan of Sapphire and Steel, I love the concept of time itself being an integral part of the story more than just a vehicle for getting the protagonists into a spot of bother.

The story is an exploration of dealing with the unintended consequences of wish fulfillment, the pain that can bring and the sacrifices we make for the ones we love.

We start off with Rose (Billie Piper) and the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) having a somewhat cosy, intimate chat about where she wants to go in all of time and space… She chooses to go and see her long dead father, Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwall), and wants to be the one to comfort him in his final moments so he doesn’t have to die alone after a traffic accident.

Rose gets her wish to see her father, but panics and fails to run and comfort him in his final moments. She is so devastated by her failure that she begs the Doctor to let her try again, surely against the Doctor’s better judgment. After all, we are all aware of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect (see Day of the Daleks, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Mawdryn Undead!) which either prevents this sort of thing happening, or in extreme circumstances, causes massive energy discharges.

Anyway, persuaded by Rose’s tears and his obvious desire to please her overcoming his better sensibilities he takes her back to try again, and they spy on their original selves from behind with the intention of Rose going to her father after the other Rose runs off. This time, though, Rose is so overcome with the grief from seeing her father die the first time she rushes into the fray too early and causes a paradox by crossing the paths of their former selves and preventing her father from dying. Uh-oh! This paradox apparently causes a rip in time and we first see the Reapers as something more ephemeral, but they gain power and physical form as the paradoxes pile up through the story.

Of course, the question needs to be answered why we haven’t seen the Reapers before or since. If they turn up when someone lives or dies that shouldn’t have, then why don’t they pop up all over the place in the Doctor’s wake? The Doctor explains this in the context of the story as the absence of the Time Lords who would otherwise have policed this and prevented it from happening. This is fair enough, but I like to take it one step further – I think of it as an alternate timeline that shouldn’t exist. An offshoot of the canonical history of the universe as we know it that needs to be eradicated, the tree of time being pruned by a troop of Reaper tree surgeons, if you will!

The Reapers remind me very much of a Stephen King short story/TV mini series called The Langoliers – wherein these creatures come along to devour everything after an accident in time occurs… Sound familiar?

Naturally, throughout the story Jackie (Camille Coduri) gives Pete a hard time about pretty much everything, and this is not altogether undeserved as he seems to be a bit of a womaniser and also a failure at being an entrepreneur – not even rising to the lofty heights of success that Del-Boy Trotter managed. Jackie probably finds Pete to be a huge disappointment and is angry that he doesn’t change his ways to provide a stable home with a steady job to provide for her and the baby Rose. This constant putting down of Pete is at odds with the stories that the older Jackie tells a young Rose of an idyllic life that never was and the clever man that her father was with all his inventions. She has obviously been sugar-coating the truth. So the realisation that Pete isn’t anything like that comes as a bit of a shock to Rose.

Pete also gradually realises who Rose really is, showing his more sensitive side when the bull headed Jackie fails to see it (until right the very end of that timeline). Rose also falls to the temptations of sugar coating the truth when Pete asks her what he’s like as a dad – she lies to him to spare his feelings, much as Jackie did to her as a child.

The Doctor himself, falls victim to the Reapers after they gain access to the church when Pete hands the baby Rose to the grown-up Rose, making the paradox worse (probably fed by the potential time energy being shorted out when Blinovitch comes into play!). This is another part of the story that appeals to me – the Doctor tells everyone to get behind him as he is the oldest thing in the church and is therefore the greatest barrier to the Reapers. However, his protection doesn’t last long and he is actually devoured by the Reaper! I think this is probably the first time in the show’s history that we see the Doctor actually die. Please correct me if I’m wrong, though!

Even though he is somewhat of a failure as a husband and an entrepreneur, Pete realises what’s going on and that it is all his fault for living when he should have died, so steps up to the line and makes the ultimate sacrifice to save his daughter (and the universe in general, let’s not forget that part) by running into the path of the car that should have killed him earlier. This is a very brave act from an otherwise ordinary man, which is one of the main points of this story; that it is the acts of the “little people” that make the biggest differences. I’ve rewatched this story several times now as research for this article and this scene gets more powerful each time. Being a parent, a father myself to a single daughter who isn’t that much younger now than Rose, I can totally empathise with the ultimate sacrifice he makes so that his daughter will be safe. Powerful stuff when you dig down into it.

Eccleston is as good as ever, gurning away quite happily at the beginning, trying to impress his girlfrie– I mean “companion” by telling her he can do what he want and then proceeds to take her back to see her deceased father alive and well in the 1980s. La Belle Piper is on form as the less annoying version of Rose (see Series Two and also her terrible involvement in Series Four). Shaun Dingwall is great as the wannabe wideboy – putting in a great emotive performance towards the end. Camille Coduri continues to play the downtrodden but vocal Jackie Tyler to perfection. Great performances all round, actually.

I have to say, my favourite scene, has to be in the church with the Doctor baby-talking to the infant Rose and telling her not to bring about the destruction of the universe when she grows up! Love it!

So, to summarise, in scholarly fashion, we have a story with multiple instances of self sacrifice, mistakes being made in the name of love, the near destruction of the universe (or at least the local area), an exploration of paradoxes, and, ultimately, the redemption of Pete Tyler – a failed man, father, and husband, who comes good at the end. Rose’s intervention, through a rather circuitous universe shattering route, transforms Pete’s sad lonely death that made Jackie bitter into something slightly more positive in that he had someone with him holding his hand when he died and that the driver stopped and waited instead of fleeing the scene. Not much, but enough to soften the blow slightly.

There we have it! Go back and give this story another chance – it’s worth the effort. Love and redemption always is…

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