Doctor Who: The Bad Wolf Rises - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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Doctor Who: The Bad Wolf Rises

Christopher Morley charts the rising of the big bad wolf...


The Bad Wolf rises! For Jane Tranter & Julie Gardner, the women who backed Russell T Davies' plans to relaunch Doctor Who for a 21st century audience, have chosen the Bad Wolf moniker for their new film & television enterprise.

And just as it did when Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor first stepped from the new look (at least on the inside) TARDIS, Wales has its part to play. As Tranter told The Guardian while promoting the newest Bad Wolf enterprise,
“TV has changed beyond all recognition in the past decade. Huge international productions made on movie scale budgets have put British TV at the forefront of this revolution .We are delighted to be working with the Welsh government to grow this industry and continue to benefit the economy of Wales.” 
Looking back though, it was not just the Welsh economy which was changed by the big bad wolf. For first it spelt the end for the shortest-lived of the Doctor's incarnations, the seed planted across the thirteen episodes of his sole series.



Rose Tyler, the girl whose form the entity had taken during its first meeting with Gallifrey's greatest soldier of fortune as he bid to put an end to the Time War, got her first full trip in the blue box he'd fairly recently flown into battle against the Daleks prior to his implied recent change of face & indeed ears in The End Of The World.

As assembled alien dignitaries gather to watch Earth burn, the Moxx of Balhoon offers the first clue that a greater force is pulling the last of the Time Lords towards sacrifice for the greater good of the universe.
"Indubitably, this is the Bad Wolf scenario."
And it will continue to be so even as we move into what might be termed the closest he'll get to festive fare in The Unquiet Dead.



Servant girl Gwyneth's skill at clairvoyance enables her to see into Ms Tyler's mind. Lurking there is the bad wolf, again.
"You're from London. I've seen London in drawings, but never like that. All those people rushing about half naked, for shame. And the noise, and the metal boxes racing past, and the birds in the sky, no, they're metal as well. Metal birds with people in them. People are flying. And you, you've flown so far. Further than anyone. The things you've seen. The darkness, the big bad wolf. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, miss."
But it'll be a homecoming of sorts for the girl who would be wolf in Aliens Of London! The words that will lead to a kiss of life of sorts at great cost to the man doing the snogging are seen as graffiti daubed across the TARDIS. Never mind that some ugly green aliens with trapped wind have designs on Downing Street!



Putting all that in the shade is the first real glimpse at the devastation wreaked by the War which comes to define the Ninth Doctor's being. Not to mention the survival of at least one fellow soldier from the other side, which threatens to tip his already volatile psyche over the edge. The man mad enough to have acquired it for his collection is one Henry Van Statten, whose call sign is but the latest link in the chain at this point.
"Attention all personnel. Bad Wolf One descending. Bad Wolf One descending."
Both it & the Daleks are by now playing The Long Game, though perhaps endgame is more accurate given what will become of the Doctor at its culmination?


It's there in Fathers Day, once more as graffiti added to a nightclub poster. We would of course have to wait & see what it all meant, though.

A certain Bad Moff would take the opportunity to incorporate it into his The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, long before he took over the responsibility of running the show from Davies. What you may not have noticed as you were scared silly by that terrifying little one in the gas mask is the Schlecter Wolf inscription on the dirty great missile headed straight for the Chula ship!



From wartime to Wales for Boom Town, Cardiff's Blaidd Drwg power station at the heart of things. Nearly time for the Bad Wolf to show herself/itself! Aboard the Game Station, Bad Wolf TV is among the channels viewers can choose from thanks to the Daleks, who seem to have moved into media production. But this is about so much more than fifteen minutes of fame for Rose- who only now begins to realise that all this might have been pre-ordained.
ROSE: Colleen was clever. She banked all our money. Why'd you vote for her?
RODRICK: Because I want to keep you in. You're stupid! You don't even know the Princess Vossaheen's surname. When it comes to the final, I want to be up against you, so that you get disintegrated and I get a stack load of credits courtesy of the Bad Wolf Corporation.
ROSE: What do you mean? Who's Bad Wolf?
RODRICK: They're in charge. They run the Game Station.
ROSE: Why are they called Bad Wolf?
RODRICK: I don't know. It's just a name. It's like an Old Earth nursery rhyme sort of thing, what does it matter?
ROSE: I keep hearing those words everywhere we go. Bad Wolf.
Soon enough we'll know the reason why.


They'll be seen again as a message to her chalked into the gravel of the Powell Estate in The Parting Of The Ways - time to say goodbye, as Eccleston hung up the leather jacket & handed the TARDIS over to David Tennant.
ROSE: What happened?
DOCTOR: Don't you remember?
ROSE: It's like there was this singing.
DOCTOR: That's right. I sang a song and the Daleks ran away.
ROSE: I was at home. No, I wasn't, I was in the TARDIS, and there was this light. I can't remember anything else.
DOCTOR: Rose Tyler. I was going take you to so many places. Barcelona. Not the city Barcelona, the planet Barcelona. You'd love it. Fantastic place. They've got dogs with no noses. Imagine how many times a day you end up telling that joke, and it's still funny.
ROSE: Then, why can't we go?
DOCTOR: Maybe you will, and maybe I will. But not like this.
And just like that the game changed!

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