This is possibly a stretch, but for me it calls to mind Luke 15:7: And the Doctor is hunting for a specific person, a single sinner, we might say.
Dr.who gridlock full#
The opening of the motorway is a sort of harrowing of hell, in that it’s full of smoke and there are actual monsters at the bottom, and of course its denizens literally ascend to the heavens, into a paradisical and empty city. We have not one but two saviour figures: the Face of Boe, who sacrifices himself to save the people of the motorway, and the Doctor, whose presence in some undefined way facilitates this action. I don’t think I really noticed this until the very end, when the people of the motorway sing notorious weepie hymn “Abide With Me” as they fly up into the sunset, but once I did notice it helped me clarify my feelings about why this episode works so well for me. There’s something very Christian, too, about Gridlock. That time on the motorway is, finally, worth it, as the people of New New York come into their own again. When we travel, we are hoping, and it’s a hope that nothing earthly ever exactly fulfils.īut, in Gridlock, it is fulfilled. Home, or friends, or a place we find magical. I love how this image taps into something fundamental about the idea of a journey: we sit in traffic jams and endure overcrowded trains and comply with arcane and inconvenient rules about cabin baggage because we hope that there will be something wonderful at the end of it. Let’s not dwell on the dodgy plot logic here: the point is the image of thousands upon thousands of flying cars swooping up out of the shadows of the motorway, up, up into the sunset and a skyline full of glittering towers. The Face of Boe’s been keeping the motorway on for 23 years, all alone with his carer Novice Hame, but now the Doctor’s here he can finally let them all out. See, the secret of the motorway is that it’s been quarantined from a plague that killed everyone on New Earth in seven minutes.
Dr.who gridlock series#
There’s a sequence in which the Doctor drops through a series of cars and we get little insights into people’s lives: it’s a way of establishing the vastness of this world, the scale of the motorway, and the defiant individuality of those who are trapped in it.īut it’s the imagery that made me cry: the way the story works metaphorically. We have some great secondary characters: an Irishwoman married to a cat-person (they have kittens, it’s adorable) two little old ladies who’ve been driving since they got married 23 years ago the improbably good-looking pregnant couple who kidnapped Martha so they could get in the fast lane out to Brooklyn. Davies’ Who work, it’s the imagery of the story and the feel of the world that makes it memorable. There’s a plot going on somewhere about Martha getting kidnapped and the Doctor’s search for her, but that’s easily the least interesting thing about the episode. It takes twelve years to travel just five miles. Forget the M25 on a bank holiday the people of New Earth’s motorway have spent entire lifetimes in their floating cars.
True to form, instead of the dazzling cities full of glittering skyscrapers that the Doctor’s promised, they find the most almighty traffic jam in the universe. In the third episode of new Who‘s third series, the Doctor and Martha visit New Earth. If anything has convinced me that, no, it is not just nostalgia that makes me hate everything Stephen Moffat has ever written, it is this.
Gridlock‘s another new Whoepisode that made me weep when I rewatched it recently.
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