The Lazarus Experiment

It doesn't usually take me that long reverse the polarity; I must be rusty.

The Lazarus Experiment represents the turning point for Series Three. The first half of the series was a little too hung up on Martha's attraction to the Doctor and the Doctor's moping due to Rose's departure. As such, it's got a lot of issues, even with good stories like Smith and Jones and Gridlock. However, the second half of the series put the Doctor and Martha more on friends footing and more into normal adventuring mode and that helped the mood a great deal. Better writing also aided the cause.

Plot Summary

The Doctor returns Martha to her apartment the morning after he picked her up. He prepares to say goodbye, although both seem a bit reluctant to do so. In the midst of that, Martha's mother calls and leaves a message that her sister is on TV. Martha turns it on to see her sister Tish behind an old man named Richard Lazarus giving an announcement of findings that will change the shape of humanity. The Doctor, intrigued by the announcement, decides to stay a bit longer to investigate.

Martha and the Doctor head to Lazarus' lab where he is hosting a gala and demonstrating his research. After a brief speech he climbs into a machine and orders the technicians to activate it. The machine activates but appears to be going out of control. The Doctor leaps to the controls and manages to stop the machine. However, it has done it's job as Lazarus steps out, now appearing to be in his early-thirties.

The Doctor is concerned about this experiment and the possible side effects and he and Martha slip into one of the labs to learn more. There they learn that Lazarus is splicing his DNA and mutating it to produce it's age reversal. However, the DNA is still mutating and unlocking dormant and unused genes.

Lazarus heads back to his office with his chief financier, Lady Thaw. He begins to mutate into a spider-like creature and absorbs her life-force before returning to his normal appearance. Unsatisfied with this energy drain, Lazarus goes in search of more. He finds Tish, who is his head of PR, and invites her up on the roof. Flattered by this attention, she follows.

The Doctor and Martha emerge from the lab and learn that Tish has gone off with Lazarus. Martha's mother, Francine, is increasingly suspicious of the Doctor and tries to dissuade Martha from going with him. Her fears are further stoked as an aide to Harold Saxon, candidate for Parliament, whispers in her ear about previous exploits of the Doctor.

The Doctor and Martha head to Lazarus' office where they discover Lady Thaw's body. The Doctor locates an energy trace and uses it to find Lazarus and Tish on the roof. Lazarus begins to transform and Martha and Tish run off. The Doctor distracts Lazarus while he orders Martha to get everyone out of the building. The Doctor does distract Lazarus for a bit but he emerges in the lobby, killing one guest and sending the rest of the building into a panic.

The Doctor pulls Lazarus away while Martha uses the sonic screwdriver to unlock the doors, letting everyone else escape. Her mother pleads with her to come with them but she goes back into the building to help the Doctor. They reunite in the lobby and the Doctor pulls her into the machine to avoid Lazarus, knowing that he won't destroy it. Lazarus instead activates the machine but the Doctor reverses the polarity of the machine, sending a pulse of energy outward that appears to kill Lazarus.

An ambulance arrives to take Lazarus away and check on everyone else. However, Lazarus is not quite dead and he absorbs the life of the EMTs before fleeing into a neighboring church. The Doctor, Martha and Tish follow him and find Lazarus succumbing to the mutation in the church. Knowing that the experiments were based on sonic energy, the Doctor whispers to Martha that they need to get him into the bell tower. As Lazarus transforms, Martha and Tish lure him away.

The two women manage to get him into the bell tower and the Doctor begins to play the organ with his sonic screwdriver amplifying the sonic energy. The sound waves disrupt the mutation, causing Lazarus to fall from the tower and break his neck.

With the adventure over, the Doctor invites Martha to continue traveling with him. She agrees and they disappear in the TARDIS as Francine leaves a message on Martha's machine telling her she knows things about the Doctor from Harold Saxon and that she is in danger.

Analysis

The Lazarus Experiment is both enjoyable, but also rather unmemorable. As noted above, it starts a turn in the storytelling where Martha acts like a real friend and companion rather than a moon-eyed girl. The Doctor also seems to finally stop moaning over his lot in life and just go an investigate. All of this is great. But at the same time, there isn't much in the story to reach out and grab you, making you want to pull the story off the shelf and watch it again.

All of the acting was quite good in this story. The Doctor was on point with even a bit of his humor back. Martha also was enjoyable, actually stepping up as a true assistant in the analysis of Lazarus' DNA that probably hadn't been seen since the days of Liz Shaw. Their relationship got over the "maybe he likes me" point and it was nice to see them working together as two scientifically oriented minds and friends, even if Martha still had to do her fair share of screaming.

I thought Lazarus worked well as a villain. He was quite believable as a man so scared and arrogant about death that he would do anything to avoid it. His condescension towards others once his youth had been restored was well done and did quite a bit of shorthand in defining him as an unsympathetic bad guy. I thought it also an interesting bit that when he was an old man, Tish was repulsed by Lazarus kissing her hand but when he had become young, she admitted that she was willing to make out with him on the roof. It was an amusing bit of contrast in the shallowness of appearance and was one of the few things that softened Lazarus as not a truly evil person, just misguided and destroyed by his own fear.

The mutant creature was an interesting concept and reminded me of the Star Trek: TNG episode Genesis in that there was nothing alien about Lazarus, only rejected mutations. The realization of this creature was not quite up to par though. It was a good effort but the production team opted to try and map Mark Gatiss' face on to the creature and the effect is about what you would expect for 2007. It's not as primitive as what you saw in something like the Goldeneye video game, but it still wasn't up to the point where you would believe it to be real. Not something to punish them severely for, but it is a moment that takes you out of the reality of the story.

Martha's family was ok. Tish and her brother are pretty non-descript and even when she tags along, there is nothing really developed with Tish. The primary focus is on her mother and she does a pretty good job in making you dislike her off the bat. It's probably a bit too effective because she just takes an instant dislike to the Doctor for no reason and it feels a bit like those moms who try and make their children perfect and control their lives to make up for their own crappy ones. I say that because at no point do you feel sympathy with Francine when she worries about her daughter. Instead it just feels like mom trying to control Martha's life from a different angle. If she had been shown as a bit more sympathetic when first interacting with the Doctor and Martha, her concern over Martha's involvement with the Doctor given the information of Harold Saxon would have garnered more of the concerned parent angle and given us more reason to feel for her being duped since we know that the Doctor is good, even if we don't know who Harold Saxon actually is yet.

As far as the overall story, it's a bit interesting because it's so short. The Doctor and Martha actually defeat Lazarus initially in the first thirty minutes of the story. They then give him the fake death bit to allow the Doctor and Martha take him out a second time. However, in both instances, there is not much to really say. The monster chases them with Martha or the Doctor being bait and then the Doctor figures a solution. The intellectual aspect is over once they discover the still mutating DNA. I think it is for that reason that this story is both enjoyable but also forgettable. A generic monster run around with no major witty moments or hard decisions is fun but it just sort of sits there and is easily replaced once the story is done.

I think you could actually accuse this story of having padding as well. The Doctor is shown setting a couple of traps for Lazarus during the first chase through the lab. We are also shown Martha and Tish being in extra danger because the Doctor is not fully prepared to hit Lazarus once he is in the bell tower. These add up to artificial tension as well as a way to increase the run time. They also seem to hit various tropes, with Tish grabbing Martha by the arm before she falls off the edge being the most common.

Again, there is nothing bad about this story and it will entertain you well enough for 42 minutes. But it also will slip out of your mind just as quickly. I would think of this story as a small bag of potato chips, tasty but junk food. Easy to pull out and watch if you've nothing better to do, but not one that will be on anyone's first choice list.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5