Doctor Who Rewatch: “Midnight” (S4:E10)

Isolation clouds our vision of others and ourselves

Doctor Who series 4 and the following specials end David Tennant’s run as the Tenth Doctor and Russel T. Davies time as the showrunner (at least until both return in their respective roles this fall). The major storylines involve Ten are all basically concluded before the Eleventh Doctor arrives.

Despite series 3 illustrating why it’s not good for Time Lords to be alone, the Doctor continues to assume he can do things on his own. Thankfully, he is reunited with Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble, who provides a needed break from the soap opera love stories that have dominated the earlier seasons. Instead of a doe-eyed companion falling for the Doctor, Donna serves as a snarky sister type. As Tate is a comedian, she obviously nails the comedy bits but she’s allowed to show tremendous acting range across the series.

The first trip she takes with the Doctor—to Pompeii one day before Mt. Vesuvius erupts—Donna successfully begs him to save one family from the devastation.¹ Through her time in the TARDIS, she often serves as not just his companion but as his conscience. He changed her for the better when they met on her wedding day, now she’s returning the favor.

During series 4, the Doctor will have a daughter,² he and Donna will uncover the mystery of Agatha Christie’s disappearance, and eventually bring back everyone, and I do mean everyone, for a universe-saving battle with the Daleks. Rose is reunited with the Doctor and is sent back to her universe with a cloned version of the Doctor.³ Unfortunately for the actual Doctor and Donna, her mind is wiped and she can never remember him or she’ll die (at least until she returns with Tennant and Davies this fall). The Doctor is left alone again.

In the five specials between series 4 and 5, the Doctor’s isolation continues to drive him to become more and more reckless. After he changes history in “The Waters of Mars,” a character tells him, “No one should have that much power.” He brusquely retorts. “Tough” and declares himself “The Time Lord Victorious” and speaks of saving little people who aren’t very important. In the two-part finale special, the Doctor recognizes his mistakes and sacrifices himself to save a seemingly unimportant person, which leads to his regeneration into Matt Smith’s Eleven.

Before that, however, we get a great final run with Tennant. The highlight of which may be a three-episode stretch that includes a two-part story “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead,” as well as the standalone “Midnight.”

River Song and the Doctor

I struggled to choose between these three episodes. The first two introduce River Song, a very important character moving forward, and explore the lore of Doctor Who, but the latter perfectly illustrates some of the issues we’ve been discussing about the Doctor. For that reason, I chose “Midnight,” though I rewatched them all.

“Midnight” is a classic bottle episode, where a small group of people are confined to one location. These often happen in TV seasons to cut costs but these financial restraints can produce interesting stories. While “Midnight” was intended to air prior to the two-part River Song story but was pushed back. That was a fortuitous scheduling move because this story of the Doctor in danger without his companion works better following the harrowing events in the library.

As much as the Doctor is not like us humans, he does resemble us in at least one respect—regardless of what he thinks, he needs other people with him. We see that, if not the monster, clearly in “Midnight.”

Previous rewatch episodes

• “Father’s Day” (S1:E8)

• “The Satan Pit” (S2:E9)

• “Blink” (S3:E10)

The Doctor Can’t See in “Midnight”

“We look upon this world through glass,” Professor Winfold Hobbes tells the other passengers on the Crusader Fifty, echoing the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church. “For now we see through a glass, darkly,”⁴ the missionary⁵ writes.

The professor strikes this tone of humility headed toward the Sapphire Waterfall at Cliffs of Oblivion on the planet Midnight, but he doesn’t really believe that about himself. He believes he has all the answers. Unfortunately, the Doctor, especially the Doctor without a companion, suffers from the same hubris.

Over the years, the Doctor has collected special tools that aid him on his journey, from the TARDIS itself, the sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, and others. But the most important is his companion.

It’s not merely that the Doctor doesn’t need to be alone, as we talked about with series 3. The Doctor doesn’t function without a companion. Without a traveling partner, he’s somehow both arrogant and ignorant. He assumes that he knows all that is necessary to do what is right in every situation, but he often lacks a basic understanding of how people who are not him operate.

Prior to the third series, Donna warns the Doctor of the danger he’s in when he’s alone. But when she chooses to stay behind at the pool at the Leisure Palace instead of joining the Doctor on the tour to the cliffs, she inadvertently sends him into deadly peril. “Taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight? What could possibly go wrong?” he asks. Of course, the answer is everything.