Partners in Crime

Doctor: I just want a mate.
Donna: You just want to mate?! Doctor: No! I want a mate. Donna: Well you're not mating with me!

Unquestionably, Donna is my favorite companion. In addition to her being funny, it is a nice breath of fresh air to not have a companion who is pining for the Doctor. Donna could be a bit harsh in The Runaway Bride, but her debut in Partners in Crime already shows the softer side that begins to come through in Series Four.

Plot Summary

The story opens with Donna (last seen in The Runaway Bride) posing as a Health and Safety inspector and investigating the Adipose weight loss company. Unknown to her, the Doctor is also investigating, although they keep missing each other. Each views the same presentation and each grabs a customer list from a call center employee.

The Doctor meets one customer who notes that in addition to the weight loss, he has also had his burglar alarm go off at the same time each night. The Doctor asks if he has a cat flap and he does, allowing the Doctor to guess at what is going on.

Donna heads to a different customer and ask her some questions. She is getting ready to leave but speaks highly of the weight loss pill. While waiting for her to finish getting ready, Donna idly twists the pendant that comes as a free gift with each Adipose trial. The twisting action causes an Adipose child to generate from the customer. This also sends an alert signal to the head of Adipose Industries, Ms. Foster. To eliminate discovery of the plan, Ms. Foster accelerates the generation and sends a collection team. The woman breaks apart into tens of Adipose children who are collected by a recovery team as they climb out the window. Donna breaks into the bathroom to find it empty save for her clothes and is dumbfounded on what might have happened.

Donna returns to her mother's house, her father having died in the period between stories. Tired of her mother's nagging, she climbs the local hill to talk with her grandfather, Wilfred Mott (last seen in Voyage of the Damned), who is stargazing. She confides in him that she is looking hard for a man she met once in a blue box, regretting her decision not to travel with the Doctor.

Donna and the Doctor both return to Adipose Industries the next day and wait out until the end of the day. Donna is about to leave her hiding spot in the bathroom when Ms. Foster and two guards enter. They knock down the stall doors until they discover a reporter who had also been doing some snooping. She is taken to Ms. Foster's office while Donna follows discreetly from a distance.

The Doctor also emerges from his hiding spot and descends to Ms. Foster's office using a window washing carriage. He listens in as Ms. Foster explains how the pills collect fat from a human host and then germinate into a fat based life form called Adipose. While listening on either side of the office, Donna and the Doctor catch sight of each other. Excited at seeing him, Donna mimes how she had been looking for him. They are interrupted in their catch up when they are noticed by Ms. Foster.

The Doctor lifts back to the roof while Donna runs up the stairs. The two get back in the window washer carriage and head down. Ms. Foster arrives on the roof armed with a sonic pen. She disables the carriage and cuts one of the lines, sending Donna dangling. The Doctor knocks the sonic pen out of Ms. Foster's hand and uses the two sonics to open a window, descend to the next level and pull Donna into the building.

Back inside, they confront Ms. Foster who informs them she is also alien, hired by the Adipose to breed a new generation after the disappearance of their nursery planet. The Doctor creates a distraction and he and Donna run to the basement while Ms. Foster returns to her office and activates the generation signal, causing multiple Adipose to generate from their hosts. The Doctor is able to block the signal initially, but Ms. Foster reinforces the signal, leaving him helpless until Donna gives him the pendant she took. This reinforces the block, ending the generation.

The boost in signal also called the child delivery ship and the thousands of Adipose children are beamed aboard. Ms. Foster is also prepared to be beamed up. The Doctor and Donna see her in mid-transport on the roof and call out to her warning her that the Adipose, aware of the illegality of their actions, are prepared to ensure deniability. Ms. Foster doesn't believe them but her beam then cuts out and she falls to her death.

Donna then heads to the TARDIS, prepared to travel with the Doctor. He is hesitant and awkwardly makes it known that he only wants a friend to travel with. Donna, misunderstanding him that he wants a relationship, gets offended and yells back at him. With their status settled, Donna drops the car keys off for her mom and lets a woman know where she can find them. The woman turns out to be Rose who then walks away and disappears.

Donna and the Doctor fly off, passing by Wilfred's hill where Donna waves to him from the TARDIS door. Wilf excitedly waves back, yelling for her to enjoy herself.

Analysis

Partners in Crime is an interesting story to start with. It is more or less a straight-forward adventure with some comedy thrown in. In fact, the comedy doesn't really kick in until the second half as the first half feels more like a detective drama. There are moments as the Doctor and Donna barely missing each other is played for laughs but the stronger comedic overtones kick into high gear when Donna and the Doctor are miming to each other across Ms. Foster's office.

Unlike The Romans where the story bounced between drama and comedy, this story begins in drama and evolves into comedy, which is more enjoyable. I could see how it would annoy some people but I rather enjoyed it and the flow was at least consistent. It did go a bridge too far with Ms. Foster's death though. When her beam deactivates, she hangs in space for a couple of seconds and has an eye bulge reaction, straight out of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon. It's a wonder to me that she didn't hold up an "Uh-Oh" sign as she fell. I enjoy comedy in Doctor Who, but indulging in cartoon physics is a bit much for me.

Outside of that indulgence, the only other thing that rubbed me wrong was the caliber of acting of some of the secondary cast. Ms. Foster was fine, but the woman Donna sees before disintegrating was not the best. Likewise, some of the other actors in the scene where the Adipose are generating were a little under par. That's somewhat understandable as the limitations in body type probably caused the team to pull actors they might not normally take. But it was only for a couple small scenes and didn't hurt the story much overall.

I rather enjoyed Ms. Foster as a villain. She had that domineering way that made her both attractive and yet also slightly scary. I also enjoyed how she was shown to be rather competent in her operation. The only two places where she was shown to be restricted was in her tying up of the reporter rather than simply killing her outright and the hesitation in trying to kill the Doctor, allowing him to put the two sonics together which allowed him and Donna to escape. Those points are rather forgivable when you compare her to other show villains, many proclaimed to be much smarter and more diabolical, who are shown to make even poorer decisions.

I'm of a mixed mind about Rose reappearing in this episode. If there was one thing about Series Four that bugged me, it was that Donna wasn't given as much of a chance to stand on her own as previous companions. Martha came back for three episodes in the middle and the whole series is peppered with shots of Rose until we get the ball rolling in earnest in Turn Left. However, in my initial watch, not fully knowing what was coming, it was nice to see Rose again and know that there was some greater mystery to be had. So again, not great but not bad either.

One other scene in this one that I was mixed over was the Donna and Wilf scene. It is a nice scene and well played between the two. But the music was off on it. It was too loud and should have been more underplayed in my opinion to emphasize the emotion of the scene. It didn't help that that scene was spliced and used in the Series Four Trailer so it's very hard to watch that scene in retrospect and not hear All the Strange, Strange Creatures playing in your head. But it is a nice scene and I liked the inclusion and expansion of Wilf's character by it.

Overall, this is an entertaining episode. It is not without it's flaws, but as a fun way to reincorporate Donna into the mix, it works very well. This was actually only the second time I'd watched this one but I was surprised at how much I remembered and enjoyed the second time around. Some times I watch an episode again and it feels a bit slower since I know what is coming, but this was just good fun the whole way through. Definitely my favorite companion introduction story of the RTD era.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5