Partners in Crime (Doctor Who)

193 – "Partners in Crime"
Doctor Who episode
The Adipose, CGI aliens created using Massive FX, march through Central London towards Adipose Industries.
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Catherine Tate (Donna Noble)
Others Billie Piper – Rose Tyler Sarah Lancashire – Miss Foster Bernard Cribbins – Wilfred Mott Jacqueline King – Sylvia Noble Verona Joseph – Penny Carter Jessica Gunning – Stacey Harris Martin Ball – Roger Davey Rachid Sabitri – Craig Staniland Chandra Ruegg – Claire Pope Sue Kelvin – Suzette Chambers Jonathan Stratt - Taxi Driver
Production
Directed by	James Strong
Written by	Russell T. Davies
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	4.1
Series	Series 4
Running time	48 mins
First broadcast	5 April 2008
Chronology
← Preceded by "Voyage of the Damned" Followed by → "The Fires of Pompeii"

"Partners in Crime" is the first episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 5 April 2008 at 6:20pm.

Catherine Tate reprises her role as Donna Noble, who previously appeared in "Doomsday" and "The Runaway Bride". In the episode, Donna and the Doctor (David Tennant) meet while separately investigating Adipose Industries, a company creating a revolutionary diet pill. Together, they attempt to stop businesswoman Miss Foster (Sarah Lancashire) from killing thousands of people in London during the birth of the Adipose, short white aliens made from body fat.

The episode's alien creatures, the Adipose, were created using the software Massive FX, commonly used for crowd sequences in fantasy and science fiction films. The episode is stylistically different from other Doctor Who episodes; the episode is based on moral ambiguity, and the antagonists are in a different style to Doctor Who's regular "big and scary" monsters.

The episode also features the return of two other characters. Bernard Cribbins reprises his role as Wilfred Mott from "Voyage of the Damned". Cribbins was recalled to replace the character of Geoff Noble after actor Howard Attfield died. Billie Piper also briefly reprises her role as Rose Tyler for the first time since the second series' finale "Doomsday", in a scene that was withheld from the press.

Plot

The episode primarily focuses upon Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), who previously appeared in "The Runaway Bride". Since her last encounter with the Doctor (David Tennant), she has had a major change in personality. She became disenchanted with normal life, and began searching for the Doctor, regretting declining his invitation to travel in the TARDIS. She also starts believing conspiracy theories—apart from one about "the Titanic flying over Buckingham Palace on Christmas Day". She confides her regrets in her grandfather Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins), an amateur astronomer who met the Doctor shortly before the episode's events.

The episode's events concern Adipose Industries, who are marketing a diet pill to London's population with the slogan "the fat just walks away". Believing the treatment to be otherworldly, the Doctor and Donna investigate separately, and find that the slogan is literal—the pills use latent body fat to parthenogenetically create the Adipose, small white aliens. In an emergency, multiple Adipose can spawn by using all of the host's organic tissue. When the Doctor and Donna meet, they are confronted by Miss Foster (Sarah Lancashire), an alien who is exploiting Britain's overweight population to create the Adipose: she reveals herself to be Matron Cofelia, working for the Adiposian First family as a wet-nurse.

Foster, feeling threatened by the Doctor and his talk of the Shadow Proclamation (also mentioned in "Rose", "The Christmas Invasion" and "Fear Her"), accelerates her plans, knowing that it would kill people all over London. Throughout London, the Adipose begin to spawn, soon numbering several thousand, and make their way to Adipose Industries. The Doctor stops the process before it can become fatal. Her employers, the Adiposian First Family, arrive in their spaceship to collect the Adipose, using levitation beams to collect them en masse. The Doctor sees their transmission and tries to warn Miss Foster that they intend to kill her, as she is the only one aware that they have illegally used Earth as a breeding ground, but Miss Foster refuses to listen and is dropped to her death after being levitated many stories above the ground.

At the end of the episode, Donna accepts an offer to travel in the TARDIS. She makes a detour to leave her car keys for her mother Sylvia (Jacqueline King), and asks a blonde woman to help Sylvia find the keys. The woman turns towards the camera, revealing her to be Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), and fades away as she walks away from the area.

Production

Casting

"Partners in Crime" features several actors returning to parts in the series. Catherine Tate was offered to return to the role of Donna Noble during lunch with executive producer Julie Gardner. Tate, who expected Gardner would ask about appearing in a biopic, later admitted it was "the furthest thing from [her] mind". Howard Attfield, who appeared as Donna's father Geoff in "The Runaway Bride", filmed several scenes for this episode, but died filming the remainder of the season. The producers retired his character out of respect, and dedicated him in the closing credits for the episode. Producer Phil Collinson suggested transferring his traits to the originally unrelated character Wilfred Mott and rewriting his role as Donna's grandfather. Executive producers Russell T Davies and Gardner liked the idea and recalled Bernard Cribbins to the role to re-film Attfield's scenes.

Writing

I see her as a slightly warped Mary Poppins. She's quite austere. She's a strong woman. When I first read the script, I thought, oh, well, of course she's a baddie... but the more I read it, I thought, 'No, she's doing what she's doing for legitimate reasons.'

Sarah Lancashire

Davies took a different approach while writing the episode. David Tennant and Sarah Lancashire noted that the character Miss Foster had good intentions but was morally ambiguous. The premise of the Adipose pill was equally ambiguous with rare side-effects, but was a "win-win situation" for anyone involved. Davies based the character of Miss Foster on the "Supernanny" Jo Frost and Argentinian philanthropist and politician Eva Perón, and Lancashire compared her character to Mary Poppins. The Adipose are a different style to regular Doctor Who villains; antagonists such as Lazarus in "The Lazarus Experiment" or the werewolf in "Tooth and Claw" were singular monsters designed to scare the audience; the Adipose were written as "cute" to provide a "surreal experience".

Davies made some changes to Donna's character. The character was "rounded [...] out from being a shouting fishwife to someone who's quite vulnerable and emotional". She provides a change in the lead companion's attitude to the Doctor; Rose and Martha both fell in love with the Doctor, but Donna was written to provide a more "caustic" and "grown-up" attitude towards him. Tate considered Donna to be on a "level pegging" with the Doctor because her character did not romanticise him, allowing her to question his morality more easily.

Filming

The episode was filmed in October 2007 in the show's fourth production block of the season. Due to the episode taking place at night, most scenes were filmed in the early morning.

The scene where Donna and the Doctor investigate Adipose was a "nightmare to film". Tennant and Tate experienced problems avoiding each other on-screen, and the scene took thirty shots to film. The scene was filmed in a loan company's call centre in Cardiff's outskirts on an early Sunday morning, with the company's telephonists serving as extras.

Exterior shots of Adipose Industries were filmed at the Welsh Gas Board building in Cardiff's city centre. For health and safety reasons, Tennant was prohibited from performing his own stunts in the window cleaning platform. His only shot which required stunts was when he catches Miss Foster's sonic pen, a shot that took several takes to perfect.

Adipose

The Adipose were inspired by a stuffed toy Davies owned. The name comes from the scientific name for body fat, adipose tissue. Davies' brief outlined a "cute" child-friendly creature, shaped like a block of lard. Further consultation with post-production team The Mill resulted in the ears and the singular fang each Adipose possessed. Stephen Regelous, who won an Academy Award for his software Massive, then flew to London to supervise the creation of the crowd special effects. Regelous, a Doctor Who fan, was enthusiastic about helping The Mill with special effects, stating that "When I first found out that the Mill was working on Doctor Who, I was quietly hoping that Massive might be used to create hordes of Daleks or Cybermen and with series 4, I jumped at the opportunity to be involved." The Mill created two types of Adipose: extras with artificial intelligence and independent movement, and "hero" Adipose, which were hand-animated.

Broadcast and reception

Broadcast and ratings

The episode was broadcast at 6:20pm on 5 April 2008, the earliest time since the show's revival in 2005. Davies criticised the BBC's scheduling department and claimed that the show could lose 1.5 million viewers. Davies negotiated with the BBC for the schedule to be changed to gain higher ratings, and was able to have the latter half of the series aired in its regular slot at 7:00pm. Despite the scheduling concerns expressed by Davies, a respectable 8.4 million watched the show from the begining, with a peak audience of 8.7 million at 18:45 (overnight ratings), an increase over last two series' first episodes.

The preview version of the episode supplied to the press and aired at the press launch omitted the scene which contained Rose; before broadcast, only the production team, Tate, and Tennant had seen the scene. The scene contains Rose's departure motif, "Doomsday". Tennant commented "on the night of transmission... the Radio Times won't have told you it's coming, it'll come as a genuine ... prickle up the spine."