The lads over in Modern Recap-itulation have veered away from their heretofore mission of improving the range of caps in David Tennant’s first season to try one from Series 3. As a rule, for Tour purposes, Series 3 is where stories began to be ‘fully capped’ in terms of overall breadth of caps for any particular story, a tenet we are still using today. Of course, the problem then becomes that these stories were still made in standard definition, so while they are fully capped, there’s always a yearning for a better quality set of caps to present to the Tour faithful.
The story chosen for Modern Recap-itulation is, Tour Honchos feel, completely underrated by fans in a season which featured the comeback of the Master and Blink and Human Nature and The Family of Blood. But any story which moves even an old experienced fan should, it would seem, automatically make the list. The end of Gridlock did this in spades. Nice nods to Doctor Who history appeared from the Macra down to Gallifrey and the Time War.
After 50 for 50 was over we lamented the oversight of not including it at some point though from a capping point of view, the direction by Richard Clark was necessarily limited in scope because no matter how often the ‘cars’ were redressed, there were only so many angles to be had to tell the story from. But it’s the emotional core to the story which distinguishes Gridlock. There’s never been much singing in Doctor Who, and that includes ‘The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon’ from The Gunfighters. The daily hymn plunked right down in the middle of Gridlock was not just a great grace note but provided an emotional grounding for all of the trapped characters in the story. It’s surprisingly moving.
Modern Recap-itulation keeps moving as well … next time.