The Tenth Doctor was a real up and down case, due mostly to the whims of Russell T. Davies. He is probably the darkest of all the Doctors and one of the quickest to resort to lethal violence. More than that, he seems to relish the violence once he has been tipped into it. It can go to a further extreme when you also contrast it to the very bubbly and happy personality that he tries to keep on most of the time. All of which make for an interesting and complex character that draws you in to his world.
But you also have some of the dumbest and most self-aggrandizing stories at the same time. You have to deal with the Tenth Doctor-Rose relationship which not only is the most annoying in terms of the romance but also with their smugness. There is the pining of Martha to deal with, which undercuts some rather good story premises. It's really not until Donna that the Tenth Doctor settles in to just having adventures and even then there is the constant joke about them being a couple.
As annoying as the romance can get, the real problem with the Tenth Doctor is the Jesus moments. Before the era of the Tenth Doctor, the Doctor was just a guy bumbling around the universe, exploring and trying to help out. This ultimately became a quest to save everyone from every evil imaginable and his legend began to take on messianic tones. This is both contrived (the messiah metaphor is overused in many forms of media) and washes out the character of someone who just gets caught up in things.
But on the other hand, there is excellent writing with the Tenth Doctor. There is also genuine drama, apart from the series finales, in most episodes. RTD, in contrast to Steven Moffat, didn't seem to have a problem taking well liked characters that passed through the show and either killing them or giving them terrible resolutions. A viewer when then be invested in the peril of the character because there was a real chance that the bad thing would stay bad: Rose was left in the alternate dimension, alternate universe Jackie stayed dead after being converted, most of the likeable characters on the Titanic died in their escape attempt, etc. One of the great complaints against the various series enders and the end of the Tenth Doctor in general is that RTD went back and tried to undo some of his most dire consequences.
As far as overall feel goes, my watching of the Tenth Doctor era depends on my mood. For darker, more dramatic stories, definitely the Tenth Doctor era. Good adventure runarounds and the occasion psychological thriller, also good for the Tenth Doctor. Not great if you want something lighter and comedic and the era was not immune from shake your head silliness either. But overall, I like the Tenth Doctor and his era a lot. It's fun, engaging and a good balance between what the show is capable of, even if it does fall on it's face here and there.
Highest Rated Story: The Waters of Mars - 5.0
Lowest Rated Story: Last of the Time Lords - 0.5
Average overall rating: 3.26
The Christmas Invasion
New Earth
Tooth and Claw
School Reunion
The Girl in the Fireplace
Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel
The Idiot's Lantern
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Love & Monsters
Fear Her
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
The Runaway Bride
Smith and Jones
The Shakespeare Code
Gridlock
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Lazarus Experiment
42
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Blink
Utopia
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Voyage of the Damned
Partners in Crime
The Fires of Pompeii
Planet of the Ood
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
The Doctor's Daughter
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Midnight
Turn Left
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The Next Doctor
Planet of the Dead
The Waters of Mars
The End of Time
Showing posts with label 10th Doctor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 10th Doctor. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2018
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
I am a human-Dalek.
This is what putting off unpleasant things does to you. I had not intended to finish the Tenth Doctor with the Series Three two-parter involving the Daleks but here we are. These two episodes were very poorly received by the fans, enough so that they somewhat poisoned the well for the Sontaran two-parter in Series Four. When the writer, Helen Raynor, went back and read comments about both stories, she turned about face and never wrote for the show again. I don't recall enjoying this one that much but I also don't recall having the avowed hatred that some fans did.
Plot Summary
In 1930 New York, a man named Lazlo is wishing good luck to his girlfriend Tallulah as she heads on stage for a performance. He is distracted by a noise and follows it down to a store room where he is attacked by a humanoid pig.
The Doctor and Martha arrive on Liberty Island two weeks later where the Doctor is immediately keyed in to a series of disappearances in the Central Park shantytown called Hooverville. In the shantytown, they observe a man named Solomon breaking up a fight between two people. The Doctor notes his leadership and asks him about the disappearances. Solomon acknowledges them but they had been unable to do anything as they happen too fast and the authorities don't care about missing vagrants.
Meanwhile at the nearly completed Empire State Building, the lead engineer, Mr. Diagoras, is threatening the foreman to finish the spire of the building by that night. The foreman refuses and Diagoras tells him to take it up with the new bosses. A Dalek emerges from the elevator with two pig-men who seize the foreman and take him below. The Dalek then orders Diagoras to bring in additional labor.
Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville and offers money to clear a blockage in the sewer. Curious, the Doctor volunteers, joined by Martha, Solomon and a young man named Frank. The four journey into the sewers under the Empire State Building but find no blockage. Instead, they find a glowing sample of alien tissue. The Doctor is unsure of what it is and pockets it. They then see a pig-man sitting in one tunnel. The Doctor goes to examine him but is surprised by a larger group of pig-men who emerge from the shadows.
The mutants chase the group down the tunnels until they find a ladder. The Doctor unseals the manhole cover and he, Martha and Solomon climb to safety. Frank, who had lagged behind to fend off the pig-men, is grabbed off the ladder and dragged away. The Doctor prepares to plan to go after Frank when Tallulah emerges with a gun, demanding to know where Lazlo is.
After setting the workers to install the new panels on the spire, Diagoras is summoned to the lair of the Daleks in the basement. There he is confronted by Dalek Sec, leader of the Cult of Skaro, who escaped with three other members of the cult after their defeat at the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday). Sec sees potential in Diagoras and orders him dragged to a holding cell while the plan is carried out.
After admitting she is using a prop gun, Tallulah tells the Doctor of Lazlo's disappearance from the same theater she performs at. That theater has an entrance to the sewer in the prop storage room, which is where the Doctor, Martha and Solomon emerged from. Martha stays with Tallulah while the Doctor cannibalizes some equipment to examine the alien tissue. Solomon heads back to Hooverville to rally the men to a defense and possibly rescue Frank.
Tallulah goes on stage while Martha watches from the wings. On the other wing, she sees a deformed man watching from the shadows. She tries to sneak across stage but trips over a dancer. She points out the man who then runs off. Martha runs after him but is grabbed by a pig-man and dragged back into the sewers.
The Doctor discovers the tissue is artificially constructed with Skaro DNA. Realizing that the Daleks are involved, he goes to look for Martha but Tallulah tells him that she has disappeared. Suspecting that she was taken, he runs into the sewers with Tallulah insisting on following him. In the sewers, they are forced to hide as a Dalek roams around on patrol.
They discover the disfigured man hiding nearby. It is Lazlo who managed to escape before the transformation is complete. His mind still functions but his features are a blend of human and porcine. The send Tallulah back through the sewers for the safety of the theater but she gets lost on the way. The Doctor and Lazlo find Martha and Frank being herded by two Daleks to the laboratory for further experimentation. The Doctor slips in between them while Lazlo poses as a pig guard.
The group is brought into the lab where Dalek Sec has taken Diagoras into his casing. The Daleks announce their new evolution and from the casing emerges a bipedal creature, calling itself a human-Dalek. Sec orders the humans to be processed with the other Daleks but the Doctor shows himself, distracting the Daleks. He creates a noise through a radio that induces pain in the Daleks and the pig-men and he and the group of humans flee through the sewers.
The return to Hooverville and the Doctor urges everyone to flee New York. Most resist, with no where else to go, and the camp is attacked by pig-men. The humans beat the creatures back but two Daleks come after them and begin to destroy the camp. Solomon steps forward to try and negotiate but the Daleks kill him.
The Doctor, angry at Solomon's death, offers himself up but Sec orders the Doctor taken alive. As he is taken away, the Doctor gives Martha his psychic paper. He is then taken back to the lab where Sec explains how he intends to blend Dalek and human DNA in people who have become empty shells and lay in stasis. The power for this will come from a gamma ray infused lightning on the spire of the Empire State Building. Seeing a glimmers of emotion in Sec, the Doctor agrees to help.
In Hooverville, Martha realizes that the Daleks needed a workforce and would lure men with the promise of work. Frank tells her that most men were hired to work on the Empire State Building. She, Frank and Tallulah use the psychic paper to get into the building and up to the planning office near the top. They find a set of blueprints that had just been updated and comparing them with an older set, they realize that the Daleks have installed extra panels on spire of the building.
The Doctor and Sec finalize the serum to infuse the human shells with the hybrid DNA. However as it flows, an alarm goes off and they realize that it is pure Dalek DNA being pumped in. The other three Daleks have rebelled against Sec for threatening Dalek purity and order him and the Doctor seized. The Doctor is grabbed by Lazlo, who had also summoned the elevator. When it opens, the two dash into it and head up to the top floor.
At the top, Martha tells the Doctor where the Daleks have installed their panels. He orders Martha, Tallulah, Frank and Lazlo to fight off the pig-men pursuers while he removes the panels. Lazlo collapses, the mutation designed to end the life of the pig-men after a few weeks, leaving them a man down. Martha then realizes that with a lightning strike, she can electrify the elevator by channeling the bolt through sets of metal tubing. She and Frank work to set this up.
On the spire, the Doctor removes one panel but drops his screwdriver before he can finish removing the second and third panels. Unable to remove them, he wraps himself around the spire as the lightning hits. It electrifies him and passes through the building. The pig-men emerging from the elevator are electrocuted while the human shells injected with Dalek DNA come to life. The Daleks arms the humans and send them through the sewers to ambush sites throughout the city. Martha wakes the Doctor, having passed out after the lightning strike and they head back downstairs.
Needing a large space, the group breaks into Tallulah's theater and the Doctor alerts the Daleks to his presence with his sonic screwdriver. The Daleks dispatch a group of humans to destroy them along with two of the three Daleks, dragging Sec in tow. The Daleks move to kill the Doctor but Sec stands up and steps in the path of the beam, killing him. The Daleks order the humans to destroy the Doctor but they refuse to fire, questioning why. The Doctor tells the Daleks that he infused a small amount of Time Lord DNA into the mix, giving them the ability to question orders.
Angered, the Daleks start killing the infected humans who return fire. The Daleks kill several but the shots overwhelm their armor and both Daleks are destroyed. Seeing the humans rebel Dalek Caan, who had taken over the leadership role, activates a self destruct in the hybrids, killing all of them. The Doctor return to the lab, offering Caan compassion as the only Dalek left. Caan instead activates an emergency temporal shift and disappears.
Martha, Frank, Tallulah and Lazlo enter the lab and Lazlo collapses, nearing the end of his adjusted life cycle. The Doctor however grabs genetic equipment from the lab and develops a serum to counteract the shortened span. In the morning, they take Lazlo to Hooverville and Frank arranges for Lazlo to stay there. The Doctor and Martha then depart, the Doctor sure Dalek Caan will emerge once again.
Analysis
Because Doctor Who is a family oriented show, you expect plots and stories to come along that are rather silly. Many of these are made more palatable for adults with comedy, witty writing and good acting. The downfall of stories that are poorly regarded is a general deficiency in these areas. Unfortunately, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks falls into that category. The plot is generally silly but I can take that is certain doses. Where the story really falls flat is in the annoying nature or ambivalence generated towards the various characters.
This story puts the shoe on the other foot in terms of understanding how British people feel about Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins. The accents in this story are atrocious. To disguise their own British accents, the characters are all adopting extreme versions of the New York gangster accent that is usually associated with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson. But those accents have become a joke in and of themselves and to hear them taken a level further shifts it from just being tired to outright annoying. Frank has a southern accent but it is also done in an exaggerated fashion that feels fake.
The one exception on the accent front is Solomon. He is more understated in his American accent and that plays better. But he has other drawbacks. He is painted as the natural peacemaker who abhors violence but a number of his characteristics come across as tropes that have been done many times before. Even his death falls into the cliché. A true subversion of it would have been if the Dalek had shot him mid-sentence, cutting things off. Instead, he is allowed to finish his speech and deliver the full weight of his nobility to Sec.
As silly as the human-Dalek Sec was in his appearance and his initial delivery of lines, he did start to grow on me as Evolution of the Daleks progressed. His halting speech wasn't great, but I wonder if some of that was because the actor couldn't breathe under the mask. But in a similar fashion in Dalek, the infusion of humanity and the realization of the horror of their purified existence made the modified Dalek become more sympathetic. It's still not a particularly good adaptation but it at least it creates a certain level of interest and drama in an otherwise boring character.
As this story is in the first half of Series 3, it lingers quite a bit on the Martha pining for the Doctor plotline. This does generate a couple of amusing lines from Tallulah, suggesting that the Doctor is gay, but other than that, it is just as tedious as the other times where Martha complains about the Doctor not returning her affection instead of appreciating his friendship or the adventure they are currently on. I also didn't care for the leap of logic that she had to make to find the Doctor at the Empire State Building once he was taken. That whole scene just played out like writer's convenience, to say nothing of the silliness of hearing Martha and Tallulah saying "Dalekanium" every couple of minutes.
I did enjoy the Doctor's performance. It was probably one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed in this story. There is a certain level of gravitas that the Doctor brings that feel genuine no matter how silly the situation or the level of acting around him. He conveys deep emotion as well as intensity, which can go a little off the rails at times. He did get a tad over the top when swearing to save Lazlo but it was only a quick scene and easily overlooked.
Unlike The Angels Take Manhattan, this story didn't really use New York. It was fairly obvious that the whole thing was just a series of sets and that the skyline and backdrop pictures of New York were taken by a second-unit crew, sans actors. This didn't bother me but it did feel like they missed a trick as a quick shot of some of the characters in a real New York location would have been a nice touch. Still, the setting and overall layout was actually done fairly well and was one of the stronger parts of this story.
I've railed on the acting quite a bit but I can't dismiss the writing either. Its not bad, but its also not particularly good either. There is no real spark in the dialogue and the lofty talk of Solomon is built more on clichés and sincerity of the actor. I found some of the timing and set up with the Dalek's plan needlessly overdone. There was no need for the run around story about getting the Dalekanium pieces put on the spire at the last minute. That was just a device to give the Daleks a weakness in their plans as well as kill some time.
I think it's the time thing that gets me. This did not feel deserving of a two-parter. Fat could easily have been cut and if you combine a few scenes and reduce the amount of doubling back, this could have been a tight 42-minute story that would have really zipped along. It would have reduced the exposure of some of the lesser actors and let the Doctor and the Daleks go hard mono-y-mono. But with bloat comes drag and exposure of the lesser elements and that certainly happened here.
I think it's safe to say that this is the worst of the two-parters from the Tenth Doctor era. There are some ideas here but they mostly cover ground that's been gone over before and then a large amount of bad acting and silliness get tossed on top of it. I hate to end on a down note but I think I was right in wanting to avoid this story as its just not one that is worth revisiting on any kind of regular basis. Even if it does have an early Andrew Garfield sighting.
Overall personal score: Daleks in Manhattan - 1; Evolution of the Daleks - 1
This is what putting off unpleasant things does to you. I had not intended to finish the Tenth Doctor with the Series Three two-parter involving the Daleks but here we are. These two episodes were very poorly received by the fans, enough so that they somewhat poisoned the well for the Sontaran two-parter in Series Four. When the writer, Helen Raynor, went back and read comments about both stories, she turned about face and never wrote for the show again. I don't recall enjoying this one that much but I also don't recall having the avowed hatred that some fans did.
Plot Summary
In 1930 New York, a man named Lazlo is wishing good luck to his girlfriend Tallulah as she heads on stage for a performance. He is distracted by a noise and follows it down to a store room where he is attacked by a humanoid pig.
The Doctor and Martha arrive on Liberty Island two weeks later where the Doctor is immediately keyed in to a series of disappearances in the Central Park shantytown called Hooverville. In the shantytown, they observe a man named Solomon breaking up a fight between two people. The Doctor notes his leadership and asks him about the disappearances. Solomon acknowledges them but they had been unable to do anything as they happen too fast and the authorities don't care about missing vagrants.
Meanwhile at the nearly completed Empire State Building, the lead engineer, Mr. Diagoras, is threatening the foreman to finish the spire of the building by that night. The foreman refuses and Diagoras tells him to take it up with the new bosses. A Dalek emerges from the elevator with two pig-men who seize the foreman and take him below. The Dalek then orders Diagoras to bring in additional labor.
Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville and offers money to clear a blockage in the sewer. Curious, the Doctor volunteers, joined by Martha, Solomon and a young man named Frank. The four journey into the sewers under the Empire State Building but find no blockage. Instead, they find a glowing sample of alien tissue. The Doctor is unsure of what it is and pockets it. They then see a pig-man sitting in one tunnel. The Doctor goes to examine him but is surprised by a larger group of pig-men who emerge from the shadows.
The mutants chase the group down the tunnels until they find a ladder. The Doctor unseals the manhole cover and he, Martha and Solomon climb to safety. Frank, who had lagged behind to fend off the pig-men, is grabbed off the ladder and dragged away. The Doctor prepares to plan to go after Frank when Tallulah emerges with a gun, demanding to know where Lazlo is.
After setting the workers to install the new panels on the spire, Diagoras is summoned to the lair of the Daleks in the basement. There he is confronted by Dalek Sec, leader of the Cult of Skaro, who escaped with three other members of the cult after their defeat at the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday). Sec sees potential in Diagoras and orders him dragged to a holding cell while the plan is carried out.
After admitting she is using a prop gun, Tallulah tells the Doctor of Lazlo's disappearance from the same theater she performs at. That theater has an entrance to the sewer in the prop storage room, which is where the Doctor, Martha and Solomon emerged from. Martha stays with Tallulah while the Doctor cannibalizes some equipment to examine the alien tissue. Solomon heads back to Hooverville to rally the men to a defense and possibly rescue Frank.
Tallulah goes on stage while Martha watches from the wings. On the other wing, she sees a deformed man watching from the shadows. She tries to sneak across stage but trips over a dancer. She points out the man who then runs off. Martha runs after him but is grabbed by a pig-man and dragged back into the sewers.
The Doctor discovers the tissue is artificially constructed with Skaro DNA. Realizing that the Daleks are involved, he goes to look for Martha but Tallulah tells him that she has disappeared. Suspecting that she was taken, he runs into the sewers with Tallulah insisting on following him. In the sewers, they are forced to hide as a Dalek roams around on patrol.
They discover the disfigured man hiding nearby. It is Lazlo who managed to escape before the transformation is complete. His mind still functions but his features are a blend of human and porcine. The send Tallulah back through the sewers for the safety of the theater but she gets lost on the way. The Doctor and Lazlo find Martha and Frank being herded by two Daleks to the laboratory for further experimentation. The Doctor slips in between them while Lazlo poses as a pig guard.
The group is brought into the lab where Dalek Sec has taken Diagoras into his casing. The Daleks announce their new evolution and from the casing emerges a bipedal creature, calling itself a human-Dalek. Sec orders the humans to be processed with the other Daleks but the Doctor shows himself, distracting the Daleks. He creates a noise through a radio that induces pain in the Daleks and the pig-men and he and the group of humans flee through the sewers.
The return to Hooverville and the Doctor urges everyone to flee New York. Most resist, with no where else to go, and the camp is attacked by pig-men. The humans beat the creatures back but two Daleks come after them and begin to destroy the camp. Solomon steps forward to try and negotiate but the Daleks kill him.
The Doctor, angry at Solomon's death, offers himself up but Sec orders the Doctor taken alive. As he is taken away, the Doctor gives Martha his psychic paper. He is then taken back to the lab where Sec explains how he intends to blend Dalek and human DNA in people who have become empty shells and lay in stasis. The power for this will come from a gamma ray infused lightning on the spire of the Empire State Building. Seeing a glimmers of emotion in Sec, the Doctor agrees to help.
In Hooverville, Martha realizes that the Daleks needed a workforce and would lure men with the promise of work. Frank tells her that most men were hired to work on the Empire State Building. She, Frank and Tallulah use the psychic paper to get into the building and up to the planning office near the top. They find a set of blueprints that had just been updated and comparing them with an older set, they realize that the Daleks have installed extra panels on spire of the building.
The Doctor and Sec finalize the serum to infuse the human shells with the hybrid DNA. However as it flows, an alarm goes off and they realize that it is pure Dalek DNA being pumped in. The other three Daleks have rebelled against Sec for threatening Dalek purity and order him and the Doctor seized. The Doctor is grabbed by Lazlo, who had also summoned the elevator. When it opens, the two dash into it and head up to the top floor.
At the top, Martha tells the Doctor where the Daleks have installed their panels. He orders Martha, Tallulah, Frank and Lazlo to fight off the pig-men pursuers while he removes the panels. Lazlo collapses, the mutation designed to end the life of the pig-men after a few weeks, leaving them a man down. Martha then realizes that with a lightning strike, she can electrify the elevator by channeling the bolt through sets of metal tubing. She and Frank work to set this up.
On the spire, the Doctor removes one panel but drops his screwdriver before he can finish removing the second and third panels. Unable to remove them, he wraps himself around the spire as the lightning hits. It electrifies him and passes through the building. The pig-men emerging from the elevator are electrocuted while the human shells injected with Dalek DNA come to life. The Daleks arms the humans and send them through the sewers to ambush sites throughout the city. Martha wakes the Doctor, having passed out after the lightning strike and they head back downstairs.
Needing a large space, the group breaks into Tallulah's theater and the Doctor alerts the Daleks to his presence with his sonic screwdriver. The Daleks dispatch a group of humans to destroy them along with two of the three Daleks, dragging Sec in tow. The Daleks move to kill the Doctor but Sec stands up and steps in the path of the beam, killing him. The Daleks order the humans to destroy the Doctor but they refuse to fire, questioning why. The Doctor tells the Daleks that he infused a small amount of Time Lord DNA into the mix, giving them the ability to question orders.
Angered, the Daleks start killing the infected humans who return fire. The Daleks kill several but the shots overwhelm their armor and both Daleks are destroyed. Seeing the humans rebel Dalek Caan, who had taken over the leadership role, activates a self destruct in the hybrids, killing all of them. The Doctor return to the lab, offering Caan compassion as the only Dalek left. Caan instead activates an emergency temporal shift and disappears.
Martha, Frank, Tallulah and Lazlo enter the lab and Lazlo collapses, nearing the end of his adjusted life cycle. The Doctor however grabs genetic equipment from the lab and develops a serum to counteract the shortened span. In the morning, they take Lazlo to Hooverville and Frank arranges for Lazlo to stay there. The Doctor and Martha then depart, the Doctor sure Dalek Caan will emerge once again.
Analysis
Because Doctor Who is a family oriented show, you expect plots and stories to come along that are rather silly. Many of these are made more palatable for adults with comedy, witty writing and good acting. The downfall of stories that are poorly regarded is a general deficiency in these areas. Unfortunately, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks falls into that category. The plot is generally silly but I can take that is certain doses. Where the story really falls flat is in the annoying nature or ambivalence generated towards the various characters.
This story puts the shoe on the other foot in terms of understanding how British people feel about Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins. The accents in this story are atrocious. To disguise their own British accents, the characters are all adopting extreme versions of the New York gangster accent that is usually associated with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson. But those accents have become a joke in and of themselves and to hear them taken a level further shifts it from just being tired to outright annoying. Frank has a southern accent but it is also done in an exaggerated fashion that feels fake.
The one exception on the accent front is Solomon. He is more understated in his American accent and that plays better. But he has other drawbacks. He is painted as the natural peacemaker who abhors violence but a number of his characteristics come across as tropes that have been done many times before. Even his death falls into the cliché. A true subversion of it would have been if the Dalek had shot him mid-sentence, cutting things off. Instead, he is allowed to finish his speech and deliver the full weight of his nobility to Sec.
As silly as the human-Dalek Sec was in his appearance and his initial delivery of lines, he did start to grow on me as Evolution of the Daleks progressed. His halting speech wasn't great, but I wonder if some of that was because the actor couldn't breathe under the mask. But in a similar fashion in Dalek, the infusion of humanity and the realization of the horror of their purified existence made the modified Dalek become more sympathetic. It's still not a particularly good adaptation but it at least it creates a certain level of interest and drama in an otherwise boring character.
As this story is in the first half of Series 3, it lingers quite a bit on the Martha pining for the Doctor plotline. This does generate a couple of amusing lines from Tallulah, suggesting that the Doctor is gay, but other than that, it is just as tedious as the other times where Martha complains about the Doctor not returning her affection instead of appreciating his friendship or the adventure they are currently on. I also didn't care for the leap of logic that she had to make to find the Doctor at the Empire State Building once he was taken. That whole scene just played out like writer's convenience, to say nothing of the silliness of hearing Martha and Tallulah saying "Dalekanium" every couple of minutes.
I did enjoy the Doctor's performance. It was probably one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed in this story. There is a certain level of gravitas that the Doctor brings that feel genuine no matter how silly the situation or the level of acting around him. He conveys deep emotion as well as intensity, which can go a little off the rails at times. He did get a tad over the top when swearing to save Lazlo but it was only a quick scene and easily overlooked.
Unlike The Angels Take Manhattan, this story didn't really use New York. It was fairly obvious that the whole thing was just a series of sets and that the skyline and backdrop pictures of New York were taken by a second-unit crew, sans actors. This didn't bother me but it did feel like they missed a trick as a quick shot of some of the characters in a real New York location would have been a nice touch. Still, the setting and overall layout was actually done fairly well and was one of the stronger parts of this story.
I've railed on the acting quite a bit but I can't dismiss the writing either. Its not bad, but its also not particularly good either. There is no real spark in the dialogue and the lofty talk of Solomon is built more on clichés and sincerity of the actor. I found some of the timing and set up with the Dalek's plan needlessly overdone. There was no need for the run around story about getting the Dalekanium pieces put on the spire at the last minute. That was just a device to give the Daleks a weakness in their plans as well as kill some time.
I think it's the time thing that gets me. This did not feel deserving of a two-parter. Fat could easily have been cut and if you combine a few scenes and reduce the amount of doubling back, this could have been a tight 42-minute story that would have really zipped along. It would have reduced the exposure of some of the lesser actors and let the Doctor and the Daleks go hard mono-y-mono. But with bloat comes drag and exposure of the lesser elements and that certainly happened here.
I think it's safe to say that this is the worst of the two-parters from the Tenth Doctor era. There are some ideas here but they mostly cover ground that's been gone over before and then a large amount of bad acting and silliness get tossed on top of it. I hate to end on a down note but I think I was right in wanting to avoid this story as its just not one that is worth revisiting on any kind of regular basis. Even if it does have an early Andrew Garfield sighting.
Overall personal score: Daleks in Manhattan - 1; Evolution of the Daleks - 1
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
The Doctor's Daughter
Donna, I've been a father before.
The Doctor's Daughter closes the three part Martha interlude in Series Four. It is also one of the least regarded stories of the series. I don't remember it being terrible but with as provocative a title as that, it led a lot of fans to think one thing and what they ended up with was so far away that they grew resentful of the difference. That we're well removed, is it still worth all the disdain?
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is pulled through the time tunnel with the Doctor, Donna and Martha all clinging for any kind of support. They arrive in a tunnel scattered with debris and are immediately set upon by three human soldiers. The soldiers grab the Doctor and force his arm into a machine which extracts a tissue sample and uses it to create a new female soldier, genetically descended from the Doctor.
While trying to process this, the squad is attacked by a group of humanoid fish called the Hath. The two sides fire at each other while one sneaks around and grabs Martha. With two soldiers down, the squad leader detonates explosives in the tunnel, collapsing it and trapping Martha on the other side. He then takes the Doctor and Donna to see General Cobb.
On the other side of the tunnel, most of the squad was killed in the explosion. Martha tends to one with a dislocated shoulder. She pops it back into place as a second squad comes up. The Hath whom Martha tended to stops the others from killing her and together they take her back to their own headquarters. Because of her compassion in healing them, she is welcomed by the group.
At the human headquarters, General Cobb relates how the humans and Hath had come to the planet together, hoping to forge a new society. Things broke down and they have been fighting a war for generations, the origin of the war long since forgotten. The Doctor is shown a map of the complex and he is able to extract additional information, hoping to find Martha. Cobb however sees that the map is showing the lost temple where the Source is located. Believing that it will be the ultimate weapon to destroy the Hath, he decides to mount an expedition in the morning to recover it. He then orders the Doctor and Donna locked up because of their protests to the fighting. Not wanting to take chances, he also locks up the soldier extracted from the Doctor, now named Jenny, fearing her fighting spirit having been taken from pacifist stock.
Unbeknownst to any of them, at the same time, the Hath had been showing Martha the map, trying to explain where they were. They also saw the additions the Doctor extracted and form up to also head for the Source. Martha is left behind with the Hath she healed, who points out where they are going. He also rotates the map to 3-D and Martha realizes that it would be faster if they went outside. The Hath brings up the atmospheric conditions but Martha figures that she can survive the exposure for the journey and makes her way to the outer hatch.
In the prison, Donna talks the Doctor into accepting Jenny as his daughter, demonstrating that she has two hearts just as he does. The Doctor does accept her but relays his own genocidal past in trying to explain how killing the other side is simply wrong.
Jenny teases the guard and grabs his gun, allowing them to get out of the cell. They sneak into the outer tunnels and follow the Doctor's map, trying to reach the Source first. As they progress, Donna notes that each room they were in holds a serial number that is steadily going backwards.
They enter a new room just as Cobb discovers their escape and launches a raid after them. They are blocked by a series of lasers set up in a hallway. Jenny doubles back to cover them but the Doctor insists that fighting isn't the answer. Cobb calls out for Jenny to join them but she instead shoots a pipe creating a steam barrier. The Doctor temporarily shuts off the laser barrier allowing him and Donna to get through. Jenny, caught up in the euphoria of refusing to kill, hesitates allowing the lasers to cut off the path again. She however performs a series of acrobatics which allow her to get through the hallway, separating them from the Cobb's pursuit.
Martha and her Hath companion reach a hatch to the surface and open it. The Hath hesitates but follows Martha out the hatch to the surface. They make their way towards the spire of the central building. As they approach, Martha looses her footing and falls into a pit where a tar-like liquid has pooled. She is trapped and begins to sink. The Hath follows her down and tries to pull her out but can't reach her. He then jumps into the pool and pushes her out. This however causes him to sink and drown in the pool. Martha cries out for him but then crawls back to the top of the pit and continues towards the spire.
The Doctor, Donna and Jenny reach end of hallway just as they hear General Cobb break through the laser barrier. The Doctor finds a door and they enter the Temple, which is actually the control center of the ship that brought the settlers here. They find a log which details how the captain died and a power struggled formed between the human and Hath colonists. Donna also finds a clock and determines that the numbers etched into the various rooms are completion dates from when the robot excavators finished each section. From this they determine that although the war has lasted for generations, it has actually only been going on for a week of actual time.
They move further inward of the control room where they find Martha, having just entered from an exterior hatch. They also hear Cobb's men trying to break through and see the Hath cutting through another door. They also smell flowers and follow it to a center location where the Doctor discovers a terraforming globe, designed to rework the surface of the planet once the colony was established. Both armies converge on the site but the Doctor stops them, pointing out that their ancestors worked together before to create life and they can do it again. He then breaks the globe and the chemical compound moves out and begins to rework the planet.
Both sides lay down their arms but Cobb shoots at the Doctor. Jenny, seeing Cobb's movement, jumps in front of the bullet, killing her. Cobb's men disarm him and hold him down. The Doctor hopes for a minute that some of his regeneration energy passed through her but she remains dead. Angered, the Doctor picks up Cobb's gun and points it directly at his head, holding there for a few seconds before dropping the gun and pointing out that he never would and that should be the credo of their new civilization.
The humans and Hath join camps and lay Jenny out in a funeral ceremony. The Doctor, Donna and Martha then slip away in the TARDIS. They drop Martha off at her home before journeying on. However, back on the terraforming planet, a small burst of regeneration energy does trigger and Jenny leaps off the bier she was laying on. She takes a small ship and launches into space, determined to explore the galaxy.
Analysis
I don't think this story is as bad as it is often made out to be but it is a story of wasted potential. I happened to watch this one for the second time in two parts. By coincidence, it was just before the laser barrier scene and that is a bit of a key marker. Before that point, you could see the potential of the story: two races locked in a bitter war, people created just to be soldiers and perpetuate the war, the Doctor angry at the creation of an offspring that only reminds him of all that he lost. That all sounds really good. However, when the story picked back up, all the depth went out the window and the story became running, silliness and a slapped together, schmaltzy ending.
For the most part, I enjoyed the acting. The Doctor and Donna were the best both with the light teasing and the seriousness that developed when the Doctor opened up. Martha was pretty good, especially since she was interacting with a non-verbal group and had to carry most of that load herself. Most of the side characters, like Cobb, were also pretty good.
Jenny was a less good. When obeying orders and acting like a genuine soldier, she worked well. Her interaction with the Doctor was less so. I think she couldn't decide just how child-like she was supposed to be. Her enthusiasm for doing anything that pleased the Doctor seemed very much like a toddler that has just gotten praise from their parents. It made her sacrifice later seem unearned, though it did play in with the tumble through the lasers.
Let's just get it out of the way now, I hated the tumble through the lasers. It was ridiculously stupid especially as the Doctor had already cleared the path. Jenny could easily have come back after refusing to shoot just as the Doctor shut down the lasers. They beat a quick path through and just make it as the lasers come back. The worst offense of the scene though is the fact that it took what had been a somewhat thought provoking story and turned it into a cartoon. From that point on, everything they did seemed disingenuous as though they were trying to get back what they had lost. They didn't try that hard but that's a different point.
As noted above, it was after this point that the story took a different tone. Martha's little adventure was completely pointless. The story needed to have someone go to the Hath to show them where the temple was and set up the race. But Martha's overland journey and the death of her Hath companion did nothing. My impression was that they wanted to show the Hath as having similar values to the humans, including self sacrifice, but the Hath had already been established as that with their fair treatment and acceptance of Martha after healing one of their own. Martha could have been taken along with the patrol and reunited with the Doctor when the Hath showed up. It was going for an emotional punch but it just wasted time. If Martha had gone with the main group, she could have continued to show kindness and compassion with the Hath. As told, the main group could have easily assumed that Martha killed the Hath who was with her and then ran ahead to warn the Doctor to create a trap.
And that plays into the slapdash ending. I liked that the war had been going on for only a week but that the death of generations had destroyed that memory. It made for a nice twist. But I don't see how the Doctor pointing to a swirling green ball that's going to terraform the planet encourages both sides to lay down their arms. The Doctor could have dropped the ball releasing the gases and still had both sides start shooting at each other, determined to take control of the new world for themselves. Instead, they lay down because the show was nearly over.
Jenny's death was also hastily done. I think they were going for poignant sacrifice but her range of emotions had been all over the map so far that there wasn't much of a connection to her. It also felt like a very stagey death and I couldn't help but draw mental comparisons to Talia's death in The Dark Knight Rises in how silly it felt. Then what little emotion had been established, especially in the Doctor's threat of Cobb, it thrown completely out the window by Jenny's healing regeneration and liting out into space. That especially felt slapped on and out of place as it felt like she had been completely self aware of everything around her, knowing that the war had ended and that the Doctor had left. What little goodwill I could have had for the death scene was just washed away in that moment.
I hate to be so negative but there was a good amount of potential for this story in the first half and it all just fell apart in the second half. Now, I don't think it's the horrible thing and stinks up the series the way many fans do. It's an ok watch and if you're in the mood for something silly and light, it'll be fine. It's just a whiplash in terms of the tone. I will say that I think it's the worst of the series and if going through, I'd be eagerly looking forward to The Unicorn and the Wasp, which might explain some of the bad feeling on that one too.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
The Doctor's Daughter closes the three part Martha interlude in Series Four. It is also one of the least regarded stories of the series. I don't remember it being terrible but with as provocative a title as that, it led a lot of fans to think one thing and what they ended up with was so far away that they grew resentful of the difference. That we're well removed, is it still worth all the disdain?
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is pulled through the time tunnel with the Doctor, Donna and Martha all clinging for any kind of support. They arrive in a tunnel scattered with debris and are immediately set upon by three human soldiers. The soldiers grab the Doctor and force his arm into a machine which extracts a tissue sample and uses it to create a new female soldier, genetically descended from the Doctor.
While trying to process this, the squad is attacked by a group of humanoid fish called the Hath. The two sides fire at each other while one sneaks around and grabs Martha. With two soldiers down, the squad leader detonates explosives in the tunnel, collapsing it and trapping Martha on the other side. He then takes the Doctor and Donna to see General Cobb.
On the other side of the tunnel, most of the squad was killed in the explosion. Martha tends to one with a dislocated shoulder. She pops it back into place as a second squad comes up. The Hath whom Martha tended to stops the others from killing her and together they take her back to their own headquarters. Because of her compassion in healing them, she is welcomed by the group.
At the human headquarters, General Cobb relates how the humans and Hath had come to the planet together, hoping to forge a new society. Things broke down and they have been fighting a war for generations, the origin of the war long since forgotten. The Doctor is shown a map of the complex and he is able to extract additional information, hoping to find Martha. Cobb however sees that the map is showing the lost temple where the Source is located. Believing that it will be the ultimate weapon to destroy the Hath, he decides to mount an expedition in the morning to recover it. He then orders the Doctor and Donna locked up because of their protests to the fighting. Not wanting to take chances, he also locks up the soldier extracted from the Doctor, now named Jenny, fearing her fighting spirit having been taken from pacifist stock.
Unbeknownst to any of them, at the same time, the Hath had been showing Martha the map, trying to explain where they were. They also saw the additions the Doctor extracted and form up to also head for the Source. Martha is left behind with the Hath she healed, who points out where they are going. He also rotates the map to 3-D and Martha realizes that it would be faster if they went outside. The Hath brings up the atmospheric conditions but Martha figures that she can survive the exposure for the journey and makes her way to the outer hatch.
In the prison, Donna talks the Doctor into accepting Jenny as his daughter, demonstrating that she has two hearts just as he does. The Doctor does accept her but relays his own genocidal past in trying to explain how killing the other side is simply wrong.
Jenny teases the guard and grabs his gun, allowing them to get out of the cell. They sneak into the outer tunnels and follow the Doctor's map, trying to reach the Source first. As they progress, Donna notes that each room they were in holds a serial number that is steadily going backwards.
They enter a new room just as Cobb discovers their escape and launches a raid after them. They are blocked by a series of lasers set up in a hallway. Jenny doubles back to cover them but the Doctor insists that fighting isn't the answer. Cobb calls out for Jenny to join them but she instead shoots a pipe creating a steam barrier. The Doctor temporarily shuts off the laser barrier allowing him and Donna to get through. Jenny, caught up in the euphoria of refusing to kill, hesitates allowing the lasers to cut off the path again. She however performs a series of acrobatics which allow her to get through the hallway, separating them from the Cobb's pursuit.
Martha and her Hath companion reach a hatch to the surface and open it. The Hath hesitates but follows Martha out the hatch to the surface. They make their way towards the spire of the central building. As they approach, Martha looses her footing and falls into a pit where a tar-like liquid has pooled. She is trapped and begins to sink. The Hath follows her down and tries to pull her out but can't reach her. He then jumps into the pool and pushes her out. This however causes him to sink and drown in the pool. Martha cries out for him but then crawls back to the top of the pit and continues towards the spire.
The Doctor, Donna and Jenny reach end of hallway just as they hear General Cobb break through the laser barrier. The Doctor finds a door and they enter the Temple, which is actually the control center of the ship that brought the settlers here. They find a log which details how the captain died and a power struggled formed between the human and Hath colonists. Donna also finds a clock and determines that the numbers etched into the various rooms are completion dates from when the robot excavators finished each section. From this they determine that although the war has lasted for generations, it has actually only been going on for a week of actual time.
They move further inward of the control room where they find Martha, having just entered from an exterior hatch. They also hear Cobb's men trying to break through and see the Hath cutting through another door. They also smell flowers and follow it to a center location where the Doctor discovers a terraforming globe, designed to rework the surface of the planet once the colony was established. Both armies converge on the site but the Doctor stops them, pointing out that their ancestors worked together before to create life and they can do it again. He then breaks the globe and the chemical compound moves out and begins to rework the planet.
Both sides lay down their arms but Cobb shoots at the Doctor. Jenny, seeing Cobb's movement, jumps in front of the bullet, killing her. Cobb's men disarm him and hold him down. The Doctor hopes for a minute that some of his regeneration energy passed through her but she remains dead. Angered, the Doctor picks up Cobb's gun and points it directly at his head, holding there for a few seconds before dropping the gun and pointing out that he never would and that should be the credo of their new civilization.
The humans and Hath join camps and lay Jenny out in a funeral ceremony. The Doctor, Donna and Martha then slip away in the TARDIS. They drop Martha off at her home before journeying on. However, back on the terraforming planet, a small burst of regeneration energy does trigger and Jenny leaps off the bier she was laying on. She takes a small ship and launches into space, determined to explore the galaxy.
Analysis
I don't think this story is as bad as it is often made out to be but it is a story of wasted potential. I happened to watch this one for the second time in two parts. By coincidence, it was just before the laser barrier scene and that is a bit of a key marker. Before that point, you could see the potential of the story: two races locked in a bitter war, people created just to be soldiers and perpetuate the war, the Doctor angry at the creation of an offspring that only reminds him of all that he lost. That all sounds really good. However, when the story picked back up, all the depth went out the window and the story became running, silliness and a slapped together, schmaltzy ending.
For the most part, I enjoyed the acting. The Doctor and Donna were the best both with the light teasing and the seriousness that developed when the Doctor opened up. Martha was pretty good, especially since she was interacting with a non-verbal group and had to carry most of that load herself. Most of the side characters, like Cobb, were also pretty good.
Jenny was a less good. When obeying orders and acting like a genuine soldier, she worked well. Her interaction with the Doctor was less so. I think she couldn't decide just how child-like she was supposed to be. Her enthusiasm for doing anything that pleased the Doctor seemed very much like a toddler that has just gotten praise from their parents. It made her sacrifice later seem unearned, though it did play in with the tumble through the lasers.
Let's just get it out of the way now, I hated the tumble through the lasers. It was ridiculously stupid especially as the Doctor had already cleared the path. Jenny could easily have come back after refusing to shoot just as the Doctor shut down the lasers. They beat a quick path through and just make it as the lasers come back. The worst offense of the scene though is the fact that it took what had been a somewhat thought provoking story and turned it into a cartoon. From that point on, everything they did seemed disingenuous as though they were trying to get back what they had lost. They didn't try that hard but that's a different point.
As noted above, it was after this point that the story took a different tone. Martha's little adventure was completely pointless. The story needed to have someone go to the Hath to show them where the temple was and set up the race. But Martha's overland journey and the death of her Hath companion did nothing. My impression was that they wanted to show the Hath as having similar values to the humans, including self sacrifice, but the Hath had already been established as that with their fair treatment and acceptance of Martha after healing one of their own. Martha could have been taken along with the patrol and reunited with the Doctor when the Hath showed up. It was going for an emotional punch but it just wasted time. If Martha had gone with the main group, she could have continued to show kindness and compassion with the Hath. As told, the main group could have easily assumed that Martha killed the Hath who was with her and then ran ahead to warn the Doctor to create a trap.
And that plays into the slapdash ending. I liked that the war had been going on for only a week but that the death of generations had destroyed that memory. It made for a nice twist. But I don't see how the Doctor pointing to a swirling green ball that's going to terraform the planet encourages both sides to lay down their arms. The Doctor could have dropped the ball releasing the gases and still had both sides start shooting at each other, determined to take control of the new world for themselves. Instead, they lay down because the show was nearly over.
Jenny's death was also hastily done. I think they were going for poignant sacrifice but her range of emotions had been all over the map so far that there wasn't much of a connection to her. It also felt like a very stagey death and I couldn't help but draw mental comparisons to Talia's death in The Dark Knight Rises in how silly it felt. Then what little emotion had been established, especially in the Doctor's threat of Cobb, it thrown completely out the window by Jenny's healing regeneration and liting out into space. That especially felt slapped on and out of place as it felt like she had been completely self aware of everything around her, knowing that the war had ended and that the Doctor had left. What little goodwill I could have had for the death scene was just washed away in that moment.
I hate to be so negative but there was a good amount of potential for this story in the first half and it all just fell apart in the second half. Now, I don't think it's the horrible thing and stinks up the series the way many fans do. It's an ok watch and if you're in the mood for something silly and light, it'll be fine. It's just a whiplash in terms of the tone. I will say that I think it's the worst of the series and if going through, I'd be eagerly looking forward to The Unicorn and the Wasp, which might explain some of the bad feeling on that one too.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The Next Doctor
TARDIS. It stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed in Style.
The Next Doctor is a story that suffered from a bit too much hype when it first went out. David Tennant had announced that he would be leaving at the end of the following year, where the only episodes would be a set of specials. Then it was announced that David Morrissey would be playing "the other Doctor" and the rumor mill went wild with speculation about whether Morrissey was actually going to be the Eleventh Doctor, an iteration beyond that or some other explanation. All this led to high viewing figures but the resolution gave some fans a feeling of being cheated. So I think a fair evaluation of this story can only be done in a context far removed from all the hype of that particular Christmas.
Plot Summary
The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851. While wandering around, he hears a woman call for the Doctor. He rushes over but she continues to call. Another man in Victorian dress arrives and calls for the woman to give him his sonic screwdriver. Amazed, the Doctor steps in as the door bursts open to reveal a animal with a copper Cyberman faceplate.
The other man lassos the creature but it pulls him along as it climbs the building. The Doctor also grabs the rope but both men are pulled along up the side and into the building. The Cyber-shade pulls the two men and jumps out the window on the opposite side. The woman, named Rosita, cuts the rope with an axe just before they are pulled out with it.
The other man, calling himself the Doctor, sends Rosita back to his TARDIS and asks the Doctor about himself. The Doctor initially believes he might be a future version of himself but is wary given the man's memory loss, due to an incident with the Cybermen, and gives his name as John Smith. The other Doctor is aware that the Doctor is a different man given his lack of astonishment at the talk of Cybermen but runs off to check out a funeral. Curious, the Doctor follows at a distance.
The funeral is for a prominent reverend and as the carriage leaves, the other Doctor tries to break into the man's house. The Doctor opens the door from the inside, having gone in through the front. He notes that the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver is an actual screwdriver. As they look through the study, the other Doctor tells the Doctor that the reverend was murdered by the Cybermen and that he is investigating other murders and disappearances. He states that it began several weeks ago with the murder and disappearance of a teacher called Jackson Lake and has continued with the disappearance of a large number of children.
The Doctor unlocks the roll top desk and finds two info-stamps. The sight of the stamps cause the other Doctor to fall into a jumble of memories. He recalls their presence at his regeneration and that the Doctor was also there. The Doctor reassures him that he will help him but uncovers a Cyberman waiting in a closet. They run upstairs, pursued by two Cybermen. The Doctor tries to fend them off with a sword but they advance on them. The other Doctor releases the core of the stamp which overloads the brains of the two Cybermen and causes both their heads to explode. The other Doctor collapses, recalling he did something similar the first time. Curious, the Doctor pulls out a stethoscope and checks the other Doctor's heartbeat, promising that they will find what was lost.
At the gravesite for the murdered reverend, a woman, Miss Hartigan, matron of one of the workhouses, approaches, disrupting the service. She notes that killing the reverend was the only way to get so many men belonging to charitable organizations in one place. Cybermen appear out of the fog and attack the men, killing all but the four who run the largest children's homes in London. They are partially cybernized and sent to bring all their children to a central location.
The two Doctors meet Rosita at a stable nearby where the other Doctor has set up headquarters. He has held Jackson Lake's luggage which the Doctor takes a quick rustle through and finds another info stamp. He has the other Doctor show him the TARDIS, which it turns out is a hot air balloon. After that, the Doctor takes the other Doctor and Rosita, sits them down and explains what happened.
Pulling out the fob watch, the Doctor shows the other Doctor that he is in fact Jackson Lake. He was attacked by the Cybermen and defended himself with the info stamp. But that info stamp was the Cybermen's record of the Doctor and that information was downloaded into his head. The Doctor also tells Jackson that his brain accepted the information because he was retreating from trauma. Jackson Lake then remembers that his wife was killed by the Cybermen.
They are distracted by a mechanical beeping and the Doctor finds a belt of info stamps in Jackon's luggage. He also sees a group of children being escorted by a man with cyber plants in his ears. The Doctor tries to remove them but spots a Cyber-shade and opts to just watch. Rosita comes with the Doctor while Jackson tries to sort through his grief. They spot the children entering a building where the sewers connect but are confronted by Miss Hartigan and two Cybermen. The Cybermen take the info stamp and recognize the Doctor. They advance on him but Jackson surprises them with another info stamp and kills them. Rosita knocks Miss Hartigan down and the three escape.
Jackson shows the Doctor a deed to a property nearby which is the house he had bought. Realizing that the Cybermen attacked him in the basement of that house, they suspect there is an entrance from the house to the building where the Cybermen are preparing. Jackson also tells the Doctor that he is sure there was something else in the basement that was taken but he can't remember what. They head to the house, destroying one Cyberman guard. The Doctor finds a dimensional machine, explaining how the Cybermen escaped the void and a passage into the sewer.
Inside the main building, the Cybermen put the children to work at the machinery. Miss Hartigan kills the four cybernized men but she herself is taken by the Cyberleader and placed in the command chair of the Cyber-King. Rather than completely taking over her, her mind begins to rewrite the software of the Cyber-King, harnessing the emotions of hate and rage. She kills the Cyberleader when he attempts to disconnect her, taking command of all other Cybermen. She orders the killing of the children when the power has reached 100% capacity and prepares to launch the Cyber-King.
At the other end of the sewer tunnel, the Doctor, Jackson and Rosita find the children working. They also discover the power rise and see Miss Hartigan overwriting the programing. The three storm into the factory using the info stamp to kill the Cybermen guards. The Doctor orders all the children to flee with Rosita leading them to safety. Jackson hesitates and remembers that his son was stolen when he was attacked. He sees his son trapped on a platform above. The Doctor rescues the boy and both of them flee the area as it destroys itself.
They emerge outside to see a large robot, the Cyber-King - a dreadnaught with internal Cyber factory - rising from the Thames. The Doctor orders Jackson to take his son and find cover while the Doctor runs to the TARDIS balloon. He launches it after having grabbed another belt of info stamps and the dimensional control from the machine that brought the Cybermen to London. He launches the balloon and offers Miss Hartigan a chance to surrender where he will take them to an empty world to live on.
Miss Hartigan scoffs and orders an attack. He then fires a group of info stamps, disrupting her connection to the Cyber-King. The disruption allows her emotions of horror and fear to manifest. They create a feedback loop as the Cyber-King program tries to reestablish itself and both she and the Cybermen are destroyed. The Cyber-King prepares to fall but the Doctor uses the dimensional control to teleport it back into the void. From the ground, Jackson sees the Doctor and proclaims cheers of thanks from the crowd.
Afterward, Jackson offers the Doctor a chance to come to Christmas dinner but he declines. The Doctor in turn offers Jackson a chance to see the TARDIS, to which he accepts. He is overwhelmed and scampers out. However, he also notes that the Doctor is alone, despite all the memories of companions. Jackson insists that the Doctor come to dinner as a memory of those whom he has said goodbye to and the Doctor accepts.
Analysis
The Next Doctor is probably a story best described as a tale of two halves. The first half of the story where the mystery of the other Doctor is engaging with a lot of run around and also some nice back and forth between the Doctor and Jackson Lake. The second half though, once Jackson Lake remembers who he is, loses steam and descends a bit too much into the hero worship of the Tenth Doctor that marked the year of the specials. The second half isn't bad but it just doesn't hold the interest in the same way the first half does.
The Doctor is fun in this story. It's amusing to see his vanity stroked a bit when he thinks Jackson is a future version of him. But you can see the wheels turning swiftly and as he goes into investigative mode, the cracks and interaction with Jackson become even more interesting. Once the mystery is solved, it's back to action Doctor and that is still entertaining, even if it something we're overly used to by now.
Jackson Lake is also interesting in his two halves. He doesn't actually change his performance much between when he thinks he's the Doctor and when he's back in his right mind but I think that's a bit to his detriment. Impulsiveness and brashness work well with the Doctor as it usually is done for comedic effect. Having two Doctor personalities bounce and interact with each other makes for a great deal of fun. But once Jackson gets his memory back, his brashness seems oddly forced and makes him less likable. It also doesn't help that he oscillates between this brash action-hero type and someone frozen by fear and indecision. I especially didn't like the leading the crowd in praise of the Doctor after defeating the Cyber-King as it crossed the line into just too much schmaltz for my taste. But I did like his reaction to the TARDIS and his actual convincing of the Doctor to stay for dinner. So he's just a mixed bag all around.
There's not much to say on Rosita except that she was at least consistent through the whole story. I liked her given that nice mix of sass, adventurousness and caring. I actually wish she could have gotten a bit more screen time, although I'm sure that would have detracted from the time between the Doctor and Jackson. I also wished Jackson had not been so quick to talk about her being a governess and not add anything after the Doctor gave him a bit of a look. I'm sure the line was probably more written as a class joke but with her being black it took a slightly different tone with me. Probably not how it was intended but still it did hit that note.
Up until the launch of the Cyber-King, I rather enjoyed the Cybermen in this story. They were quite menacing and their attack on the funeral through the fog was a nice touch on top of their normal menace. I also liked the fact that the Cyberleader, despite all other intentions, still seemed to have traces of emotion and wit. His manipulation of Miss Hartigan was rather amusing in that dry way.
Miss Hartigan herself wasn't too bad except for the total lack of development she gets. She has that scene by the graveside and her moment of bossing the four cybernized men around but almost nothing else prior to her conversion. Obviously she harbors great hatred for those who have overlooked her and dismissed her powerful mind and wants revenge on society, but how she came to be in league with the Cybermen, understood them and convinced herself that she would not be cybernized is left in the dark. It makes her feel mostly like wasted potential.
Then there is the Cyber-King. That is the point where you knew this story crossed over from being a regular Doctor Who and officially became a Christmas special because it had to have something overly silly as the climax of the story. The Doctor tries to pass it off as an actual ship with a conversion factory in the belly but you can't deny that it's a giant metal robot wandering around 19th century London like Steampunk anime. There is also that fact that it is another example of Cybermen technology being overpowered by emotion; twice in this case. You have Miss Hartigan's mind and the combination of hatred and pleasure at the power she has been grated take over a rewrite the Cyber-King's software and then the whole thing is defeated when the Doctor overrides the fear suppression, allowing that emotion to override everything and destroy both herself and the Cybermen. It is both simplistic and a bit too pat for my taste.
My personal preference would have been for the Cyber-King to just be a conventional Cyber warship that was damaged and that the children were being collected for conversion. This is similar to other plots and I'm sure RTD wanted to avoid something that would have been seen as too close to Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, but something grounded in a bit more reality would have been nice. A Cyberman version of Godzilla is just a bit too much for me to swallow.
I also think it very strange for the Cybermen to expend so much effort on getting all the children only to work for just enough time to get the Cyber-King powered to maximum. Why not use Cybermen or even the Cyber-shades for that? What's more, why talk of killing the children if you have a conversion factory in the belly of the beast? They went through all that effort to get all those children, why not convert them and suddenly there are hundreds of Cybermen and not just the six to ten that seem to be in the facility. It's one of those plot points that just seem a bit too poorly thought out for my taste.
So I guess it comes down to your tolerance for silliness. If you're in the mood for a fun romp with slightly dark undertones, this will do. But with the dark and slightly comic set up in the first thirty to forty minutes, I felt that the ending was just too sharp of a turn for my taste. The set up was good, the acting also pretty good (save perhaps Jackson's son who looked dead inside) and even the direction was pretty nice. But the tone of the writing just took too much of a hard turn for my taste. Enjoyable, especially at Christmas, but nothing to give much overall thought to.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
The Next Doctor is a story that suffered from a bit too much hype when it first went out. David Tennant had announced that he would be leaving at the end of the following year, where the only episodes would be a set of specials. Then it was announced that David Morrissey would be playing "the other Doctor" and the rumor mill went wild with speculation about whether Morrissey was actually going to be the Eleventh Doctor, an iteration beyond that or some other explanation. All this led to high viewing figures but the resolution gave some fans a feeling of being cheated. So I think a fair evaluation of this story can only be done in a context far removed from all the hype of that particular Christmas.
Plot Summary
The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851. While wandering around, he hears a woman call for the Doctor. He rushes over but she continues to call. Another man in Victorian dress arrives and calls for the woman to give him his sonic screwdriver. Amazed, the Doctor steps in as the door bursts open to reveal a animal with a copper Cyberman faceplate.
The other man lassos the creature but it pulls him along as it climbs the building. The Doctor also grabs the rope but both men are pulled along up the side and into the building. The Cyber-shade pulls the two men and jumps out the window on the opposite side. The woman, named Rosita, cuts the rope with an axe just before they are pulled out with it.
The other man, calling himself the Doctor, sends Rosita back to his TARDIS and asks the Doctor about himself. The Doctor initially believes he might be a future version of himself but is wary given the man's memory loss, due to an incident with the Cybermen, and gives his name as John Smith. The other Doctor is aware that the Doctor is a different man given his lack of astonishment at the talk of Cybermen but runs off to check out a funeral. Curious, the Doctor follows at a distance.
The funeral is for a prominent reverend and as the carriage leaves, the other Doctor tries to break into the man's house. The Doctor opens the door from the inside, having gone in through the front. He notes that the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver is an actual screwdriver. As they look through the study, the other Doctor tells the Doctor that the reverend was murdered by the Cybermen and that he is investigating other murders and disappearances. He states that it began several weeks ago with the murder and disappearance of a teacher called Jackson Lake and has continued with the disappearance of a large number of children.
The Doctor unlocks the roll top desk and finds two info-stamps. The sight of the stamps cause the other Doctor to fall into a jumble of memories. He recalls their presence at his regeneration and that the Doctor was also there. The Doctor reassures him that he will help him but uncovers a Cyberman waiting in a closet. They run upstairs, pursued by two Cybermen. The Doctor tries to fend them off with a sword but they advance on them. The other Doctor releases the core of the stamp which overloads the brains of the two Cybermen and causes both their heads to explode. The other Doctor collapses, recalling he did something similar the first time. Curious, the Doctor pulls out a stethoscope and checks the other Doctor's heartbeat, promising that they will find what was lost.
At the gravesite for the murdered reverend, a woman, Miss Hartigan, matron of one of the workhouses, approaches, disrupting the service. She notes that killing the reverend was the only way to get so many men belonging to charitable organizations in one place. Cybermen appear out of the fog and attack the men, killing all but the four who run the largest children's homes in London. They are partially cybernized and sent to bring all their children to a central location.
The two Doctors meet Rosita at a stable nearby where the other Doctor has set up headquarters. He has held Jackson Lake's luggage which the Doctor takes a quick rustle through and finds another info stamp. He has the other Doctor show him the TARDIS, which it turns out is a hot air balloon. After that, the Doctor takes the other Doctor and Rosita, sits them down and explains what happened.
Pulling out the fob watch, the Doctor shows the other Doctor that he is in fact Jackson Lake. He was attacked by the Cybermen and defended himself with the info stamp. But that info stamp was the Cybermen's record of the Doctor and that information was downloaded into his head. The Doctor also tells Jackson that his brain accepted the information because he was retreating from trauma. Jackson Lake then remembers that his wife was killed by the Cybermen.
They are distracted by a mechanical beeping and the Doctor finds a belt of info stamps in Jackon's luggage. He also sees a group of children being escorted by a man with cyber plants in his ears. The Doctor tries to remove them but spots a Cyber-shade and opts to just watch. Rosita comes with the Doctor while Jackson tries to sort through his grief. They spot the children entering a building where the sewers connect but are confronted by Miss Hartigan and two Cybermen. The Cybermen take the info stamp and recognize the Doctor. They advance on him but Jackson surprises them with another info stamp and kills them. Rosita knocks Miss Hartigan down and the three escape.
Jackson shows the Doctor a deed to a property nearby which is the house he had bought. Realizing that the Cybermen attacked him in the basement of that house, they suspect there is an entrance from the house to the building where the Cybermen are preparing. Jackson also tells the Doctor that he is sure there was something else in the basement that was taken but he can't remember what. They head to the house, destroying one Cyberman guard. The Doctor finds a dimensional machine, explaining how the Cybermen escaped the void and a passage into the sewer.
Inside the main building, the Cybermen put the children to work at the machinery. Miss Hartigan kills the four cybernized men but she herself is taken by the Cyberleader and placed in the command chair of the Cyber-King. Rather than completely taking over her, her mind begins to rewrite the software of the Cyber-King, harnessing the emotions of hate and rage. She kills the Cyberleader when he attempts to disconnect her, taking command of all other Cybermen. She orders the killing of the children when the power has reached 100% capacity and prepares to launch the Cyber-King.
At the other end of the sewer tunnel, the Doctor, Jackson and Rosita find the children working. They also discover the power rise and see Miss Hartigan overwriting the programing. The three storm into the factory using the info stamp to kill the Cybermen guards. The Doctor orders all the children to flee with Rosita leading them to safety. Jackson hesitates and remembers that his son was stolen when he was attacked. He sees his son trapped on a platform above. The Doctor rescues the boy and both of them flee the area as it destroys itself.
They emerge outside to see a large robot, the Cyber-King - a dreadnaught with internal Cyber factory - rising from the Thames. The Doctor orders Jackson to take his son and find cover while the Doctor runs to the TARDIS balloon. He launches it after having grabbed another belt of info stamps and the dimensional control from the machine that brought the Cybermen to London. He launches the balloon and offers Miss Hartigan a chance to surrender where he will take them to an empty world to live on.
Miss Hartigan scoffs and orders an attack. He then fires a group of info stamps, disrupting her connection to the Cyber-King. The disruption allows her emotions of horror and fear to manifest. They create a feedback loop as the Cyber-King program tries to reestablish itself and both she and the Cybermen are destroyed. The Cyber-King prepares to fall but the Doctor uses the dimensional control to teleport it back into the void. From the ground, Jackson sees the Doctor and proclaims cheers of thanks from the crowd.
Afterward, Jackson offers the Doctor a chance to come to Christmas dinner but he declines. The Doctor in turn offers Jackson a chance to see the TARDIS, to which he accepts. He is overwhelmed and scampers out. However, he also notes that the Doctor is alone, despite all the memories of companions. Jackson insists that the Doctor come to dinner as a memory of those whom he has said goodbye to and the Doctor accepts.
Analysis
The Next Doctor is probably a story best described as a tale of two halves. The first half of the story where the mystery of the other Doctor is engaging with a lot of run around and also some nice back and forth between the Doctor and Jackson Lake. The second half though, once Jackson Lake remembers who he is, loses steam and descends a bit too much into the hero worship of the Tenth Doctor that marked the year of the specials. The second half isn't bad but it just doesn't hold the interest in the same way the first half does.
The Doctor is fun in this story. It's amusing to see his vanity stroked a bit when he thinks Jackson is a future version of him. But you can see the wheels turning swiftly and as he goes into investigative mode, the cracks and interaction with Jackson become even more interesting. Once the mystery is solved, it's back to action Doctor and that is still entertaining, even if it something we're overly used to by now.
Jackson Lake is also interesting in his two halves. He doesn't actually change his performance much between when he thinks he's the Doctor and when he's back in his right mind but I think that's a bit to his detriment. Impulsiveness and brashness work well with the Doctor as it usually is done for comedic effect. Having two Doctor personalities bounce and interact with each other makes for a great deal of fun. But once Jackson gets his memory back, his brashness seems oddly forced and makes him less likable. It also doesn't help that he oscillates between this brash action-hero type and someone frozen by fear and indecision. I especially didn't like the leading the crowd in praise of the Doctor after defeating the Cyber-King as it crossed the line into just too much schmaltz for my taste. But I did like his reaction to the TARDIS and his actual convincing of the Doctor to stay for dinner. So he's just a mixed bag all around.
There's not much to say on Rosita except that she was at least consistent through the whole story. I liked her given that nice mix of sass, adventurousness and caring. I actually wish she could have gotten a bit more screen time, although I'm sure that would have detracted from the time between the Doctor and Jackson. I also wished Jackson had not been so quick to talk about her being a governess and not add anything after the Doctor gave him a bit of a look. I'm sure the line was probably more written as a class joke but with her being black it took a slightly different tone with me. Probably not how it was intended but still it did hit that note.
Up until the launch of the Cyber-King, I rather enjoyed the Cybermen in this story. They were quite menacing and their attack on the funeral through the fog was a nice touch on top of their normal menace. I also liked the fact that the Cyberleader, despite all other intentions, still seemed to have traces of emotion and wit. His manipulation of Miss Hartigan was rather amusing in that dry way.
Miss Hartigan herself wasn't too bad except for the total lack of development she gets. She has that scene by the graveside and her moment of bossing the four cybernized men around but almost nothing else prior to her conversion. Obviously she harbors great hatred for those who have overlooked her and dismissed her powerful mind and wants revenge on society, but how she came to be in league with the Cybermen, understood them and convinced herself that she would not be cybernized is left in the dark. It makes her feel mostly like wasted potential.
Then there is the Cyber-King. That is the point where you knew this story crossed over from being a regular Doctor Who and officially became a Christmas special because it had to have something overly silly as the climax of the story. The Doctor tries to pass it off as an actual ship with a conversion factory in the belly but you can't deny that it's a giant metal robot wandering around 19th century London like Steampunk anime. There is also that fact that it is another example of Cybermen technology being overpowered by emotion; twice in this case. You have Miss Hartigan's mind and the combination of hatred and pleasure at the power she has been grated take over a rewrite the Cyber-King's software and then the whole thing is defeated when the Doctor overrides the fear suppression, allowing that emotion to override everything and destroy both herself and the Cybermen. It is both simplistic and a bit too pat for my taste.
My personal preference would have been for the Cyber-King to just be a conventional Cyber warship that was damaged and that the children were being collected for conversion. This is similar to other plots and I'm sure RTD wanted to avoid something that would have been seen as too close to Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, but something grounded in a bit more reality would have been nice. A Cyberman version of Godzilla is just a bit too much for me to swallow.
I also think it very strange for the Cybermen to expend so much effort on getting all the children only to work for just enough time to get the Cyber-King powered to maximum. Why not use Cybermen or even the Cyber-shades for that? What's more, why talk of killing the children if you have a conversion factory in the belly of the beast? They went through all that effort to get all those children, why not convert them and suddenly there are hundreds of Cybermen and not just the six to ten that seem to be in the facility. It's one of those plot points that just seem a bit too poorly thought out for my taste.
So I guess it comes down to your tolerance for silliness. If you're in the mood for a fun romp with slightly dark undertones, this will do. But with the dark and slightly comic set up in the first thirty to forty minutes, I felt that the ending was just too sharp of a turn for my taste. The set up was good, the acting also pretty good (save perhaps Jackson's son who looked dead inside) and even the direction was pretty nice. But the tone of the writing just took too much of a hard turn for my taste. Enjoyable, especially at Christmas, but nothing to give much overall thought to.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
New Earth
I'm a Chav!
The true kick-off story for the Tenth Doctor and Rose as the Doctor was out for so much of The Christmas Invasion. I recall this one not sitting well with me and I think it was more than just my general distaste for Rose in her early adventures with the Tenth Doctor. But when I went back and rewatched Tooth and Claw, it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered so maybe this one won't be as bad either.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose land on New Earth, a colony planet established after Earth is destroyed. The Doctor has received a note via his psychic paper requesting his presence at a nearby hospital. As they walk there, they are spotted by a probe operated by Cassandra, the woman who was seemingly killed after the destruction of the original Earth. She orders her cloned servant Chip to bring Rose to her.
When they arrive at the hospital, Rose and the Doctor are split into separate elevators. The Doctor is taken up to the ward where he finds the Face of Bo who is dying. Rose on the other hand is taken under the hospital where she is lured into Cassandra's hideout by Chip. Rose is trapped and Cassandra transfers her mind into Rose's body, destroying her own body in the process. Summoned by the Doctor, she heads up to the ward.
As Cassandra arrives, the Doctor is confused by the fact that the sisterhood who runs the hospital has been able to supply cures to diseases that shouldn't be cured for centuries. Cassandra had observed the same thing and works with the Doctor to uncover a secret storage facility where thousands of cloned humans are infected with all known diseases to work out cures. The Doctor is outraged and confronts Novice Hame who had followed them while looking after the Face of Bo. Hame runs off to alert her superiors and Cassandra knocks the Doctor out when he notes that he knows that she is not Rose.
Cassandra places the Doctor in a spare cell, intending him to be infected by the various diseases pumped in to the cells. She is interrupted by Matron Casp and Sister Jatt. Cassandra attempts to blackmail them to keep their secret but when they refuse, she opens the cell doors on that block, allowing the people out. This inadvertently lets the Doctor out as well. One of the freed humans short circuits a control mechanism, killing himself but opening all the doors, freeing everyone. The Doctor, Cassandra and Chip all flee as the horde, begging for help, overrun and infect Sister Jatt, killing her.
The trio runs and hides in Cassandra's lair, although Chip is separated and forced to barricade himself in one of the cells. Most of the horde burst into the hospital, infecting visitors and patients alike. Matron Casp does manage to initiate quarantine, sealing the hospital. In the lair, the Doctor orders Cassandra out of Rose, which she does by taking over his mind.
They find a ladder leading up the elevator shaft and begin to climb it. They are pursued both by the horde and by Matron Casp. Casp catches up to them but she is caught by the horde and infected. She loses her grip on the ladder and plunges to her death. Cassandra and Rose reach the top of the shaft and Rose orders Cassandra to leave the Doctor so he can get them out using the sonic screwdriver. Cassandra jumps into Rose but the Doctor refuses to open the door as long as Cassandra is in Rose. She jumps back to the Doctor but is in the same predicament. With no other choice, Cassandra jumps into the lead infected person. The Doctor then opens the door and he and Rose hop through it. He closes it behind them but not before Cassandra jumps back into Rose.
Cassandra is momentarily overwhelmed by the loneliness she experienced in the infected woman's body, but the Doctor drags her into the main ward, which is where the high priority patients are. The Doctor has everyone grab the IV cocktails used to cure them while he rigs a repelling device. Gathering all the cocktails on his body, the Doctor reopens the elevator shaft. Convincing Cassandra to help him, they slide down to the stalled elevator on the ground floor.
The Doctor pours all the IVs into the decontamination bath tank on the roof of the elevator and orders Cassandra to hold elevator lever to keep it in place. He then jumps into the elevator and invites the infected horde in with him. As they enter, he activates the decontamination system and the horde in bathed in the curing cocktail. They begin to heal from their diseases and walk out of the elevator. The Doctor orders them to touch the others, passing the cure on to others. Deprived of human contact in their cells, the cured people eagerly hug and touch the others, spreading the cure throughout the hospital.
The quarantine is lifted and the authorities come and arrest most of the staff. The cured are gathered up to be integrated into society while the Doctor heads back up to see the Face of Bo. The Face of Bo tells the Doctor that he has a message for him but will wait until their third and final meeting to impart it. He then teleports elsewhere.
The Doctor then orders Cassandra to exit Rose's body for either trial by the authorities or death. Cassandra balks but goes into Chip's body when he is revealed to have survived. However, Chip, as a half clone is already dying. But Cassandra decides to accept death in exchange for one favor. The Doctor and Rose take her into the TARDIS and transport her back to a party she mentioned earlier. Cassandra comes up to herself, cloaked to hide the clone markers, and tells herself how beautiful she is. The past Cassandra is touched and calls for help as the future Cassandra collapses and dies. The Doctor and Rose quietly slip away in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I can see why I didn't care for this one the first time around, yet my memory was cheating on me a bit as again, it was not as bad as I remembered. There are a number of flaws in this story and if you are not quite into zombie stories, the action will not excite you. But to say that it is actively bad would be an exaggeration.
First, let's hit some of the positives. Most of the acting was pretty good in this. It is rather funny to watch this story with the whole rest of his run to see how many of the Tenth Doctor tropes formulated in this story. His "I'm so, so sorry" line, the exuberance at the mundane, the fundamental pleasure of seeing people delivered from certain death scenarios and the almost instantaneous rage at enforced suffering. If you want the Tenth Doctor in a nearly pure form, you will get it here. Of course, that includes some of his more annoying traits as well but we'll get to those.
Probably more than any other story in her regular run, this was the story that Billie Piper got to show herself as a decent actress. The distance between Rose and Cassandra was probably not that big but there was a change in how the characters carried themselves and I could appreciate the effort there. It probably speaks more to my opinion of Rose that I preferred the Cassandra personification more than the Rose. Of course, I'm a sucker for a good sarcastic wit as well as a bit of rogue demeanor so I thought she simply sparked more when she was Cassandra rather than Rose.
You wouldn't have thought that Cassandra would be a repeat villain but she is and she makes for a rather decent one. In The End of the World, she is just the annoying socialite who happens to be the dinner guest that ends up being the murderer (very Agatha Christie). Here she has a bit more depth and personality. She also gets to add nuances that come from being in different bodies and given a different spin by the actors. Though her motivation is still just money and youth, there is a brief moment where you get caught up in her helping the Doctor with his investigations and rather enjoying her extra take on things.
The sets and direction were also nice. You could tell that the budget was a concern due both to the tightness of a number of shots as well as the fact that only three of the cat nurses showed their faces. All others wore full veils, eliminating the need for the expensive and time consuming makeup. But for what it was, I thought it was a decent job in trying to convey a sense of largeness while also trying to get that sense of intimacy.
Now on to the less than stellar bits. I mentioned the good things and the tropes of the Tenth Doctor that cropped up. But that also includes some over-the-top moments. His celebration at having cured the people was a bit much. I can understand joy at the situation but there was an excessiveness that seemed unbecoming of the Doctor. I thought his instantaneous anger at the cat nurses was also a bit much. There should have been a slightly slower build to his rage. It wasn't bad but I thought it was too quick a turn into making the nurses the villains of the story.
Staying with the solution, I thought the fix for this was a bit too pat. Yes the cat nurses had developed cures to various diseases using these people as lab rats but if a cure had been developed, why keep the rat that still has that disease? Were they keeping them for synthesis purposes? Also, didn't some of these people have diseases for which a cure had not yet been developed? Those would have been unaffected by the cocktail and they still would have infectious. Also, if the cures were delivered intravenously, why does mixing them in a steam bath produce a cure and how is that cure able to be transmitted simply by surface contact? It is a very slap dash solution and it seems hokey even while watching.
Another small problem with this story is that the special effects look a bit cheap. Of course we're not expecting absolute magic, but usually there's a bit better work done rather than just a straight CGI effect that cannot possibly compete with Hollywood effects. But in this case, there were several shots where the camera just trained on the person and CGI was expected to tell the tale. It just had the unfortunate effect of making the story look cheap.
So overall, there is a bit to like in this story but it does fail on a number of levels as well. Yet the parts that don't work aren't so bad to cause the story to completely fall apart and they never detract from the fun ride. It feels more like what it is: an early story where kinks are being worked out. It can be fun and if you don't think about it too hard, it is serviceable enough. Decidedly middling seems about right.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
The true kick-off story for the Tenth Doctor and Rose as the Doctor was out for so much of The Christmas Invasion. I recall this one not sitting well with me and I think it was more than just my general distaste for Rose in her early adventures with the Tenth Doctor. But when I went back and rewatched Tooth and Claw, it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered so maybe this one won't be as bad either.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Rose land on New Earth, a colony planet established after Earth is destroyed. The Doctor has received a note via his psychic paper requesting his presence at a nearby hospital. As they walk there, they are spotted by a probe operated by Cassandra, the woman who was seemingly killed after the destruction of the original Earth. She orders her cloned servant Chip to bring Rose to her.
When they arrive at the hospital, Rose and the Doctor are split into separate elevators. The Doctor is taken up to the ward where he finds the Face of Bo who is dying. Rose on the other hand is taken under the hospital where she is lured into Cassandra's hideout by Chip. Rose is trapped and Cassandra transfers her mind into Rose's body, destroying her own body in the process. Summoned by the Doctor, she heads up to the ward.
As Cassandra arrives, the Doctor is confused by the fact that the sisterhood who runs the hospital has been able to supply cures to diseases that shouldn't be cured for centuries. Cassandra had observed the same thing and works with the Doctor to uncover a secret storage facility where thousands of cloned humans are infected with all known diseases to work out cures. The Doctor is outraged and confronts Novice Hame who had followed them while looking after the Face of Bo. Hame runs off to alert her superiors and Cassandra knocks the Doctor out when he notes that he knows that she is not Rose.
Cassandra places the Doctor in a spare cell, intending him to be infected by the various diseases pumped in to the cells. She is interrupted by Matron Casp and Sister Jatt. Cassandra attempts to blackmail them to keep their secret but when they refuse, she opens the cell doors on that block, allowing the people out. This inadvertently lets the Doctor out as well. One of the freed humans short circuits a control mechanism, killing himself but opening all the doors, freeing everyone. The Doctor, Cassandra and Chip all flee as the horde, begging for help, overrun and infect Sister Jatt, killing her.
The trio runs and hides in Cassandra's lair, although Chip is separated and forced to barricade himself in one of the cells. Most of the horde burst into the hospital, infecting visitors and patients alike. Matron Casp does manage to initiate quarantine, sealing the hospital. In the lair, the Doctor orders Cassandra out of Rose, which she does by taking over his mind.
They find a ladder leading up the elevator shaft and begin to climb it. They are pursued both by the horde and by Matron Casp. Casp catches up to them but she is caught by the horde and infected. She loses her grip on the ladder and plunges to her death. Cassandra and Rose reach the top of the shaft and Rose orders Cassandra to leave the Doctor so he can get them out using the sonic screwdriver. Cassandra jumps into Rose but the Doctor refuses to open the door as long as Cassandra is in Rose. She jumps back to the Doctor but is in the same predicament. With no other choice, Cassandra jumps into the lead infected person. The Doctor then opens the door and he and Rose hop through it. He closes it behind them but not before Cassandra jumps back into Rose.
Cassandra is momentarily overwhelmed by the loneliness she experienced in the infected woman's body, but the Doctor drags her into the main ward, which is where the high priority patients are. The Doctor has everyone grab the IV cocktails used to cure them while he rigs a repelling device. Gathering all the cocktails on his body, the Doctor reopens the elevator shaft. Convincing Cassandra to help him, they slide down to the stalled elevator on the ground floor.
The Doctor pours all the IVs into the decontamination bath tank on the roof of the elevator and orders Cassandra to hold elevator lever to keep it in place. He then jumps into the elevator and invites the infected horde in with him. As they enter, he activates the decontamination system and the horde in bathed in the curing cocktail. They begin to heal from their diseases and walk out of the elevator. The Doctor orders them to touch the others, passing the cure on to others. Deprived of human contact in their cells, the cured people eagerly hug and touch the others, spreading the cure throughout the hospital.
The quarantine is lifted and the authorities come and arrest most of the staff. The cured are gathered up to be integrated into society while the Doctor heads back up to see the Face of Bo. The Face of Bo tells the Doctor that he has a message for him but will wait until their third and final meeting to impart it. He then teleports elsewhere.
The Doctor then orders Cassandra to exit Rose's body for either trial by the authorities or death. Cassandra balks but goes into Chip's body when he is revealed to have survived. However, Chip, as a half clone is already dying. But Cassandra decides to accept death in exchange for one favor. The Doctor and Rose take her into the TARDIS and transport her back to a party she mentioned earlier. Cassandra comes up to herself, cloaked to hide the clone markers, and tells herself how beautiful she is. The past Cassandra is touched and calls for help as the future Cassandra collapses and dies. The Doctor and Rose quietly slip away in the TARDIS.
Analysis
I can see why I didn't care for this one the first time around, yet my memory was cheating on me a bit as again, it was not as bad as I remembered. There are a number of flaws in this story and if you are not quite into zombie stories, the action will not excite you. But to say that it is actively bad would be an exaggeration.
First, let's hit some of the positives. Most of the acting was pretty good in this. It is rather funny to watch this story with the whole rest of his run to see how many of the Tenth Doctor tropes formulated in this story. His "I'm so, so sorry" line, the exuberance at the mundane, the fundamental pleasure of seeing people delivered from certain death scenarios and the almost instantaneous rage at enforced suffering. If you want the Tenth Doctor in a nearly pure form, you will get it here. Of course, that includes some of his more annoying traits as well but we'll get to those.
Probably more than any other story in her regular run, this was the story that Billie Piper got to show herself as a decent actress. The distance between Rose and Cassandra was probably not that big but there was a change in how the characters carried themselves and I could appreciate the effort there. It probably speaks more to my opinion of Rose that I preferred the Cassandra personification more than the Rose. Of course, I'm a sucker for a good sarcastic wit as well as a bit of rogue demeanor so I thought she simply sparked more when she was Cassandra rather than Rose.
You wouldn't have thought that Cassandra would be a repeat villain but she is and she makes for a rather decent one. In The End of the World, she is just the annoying socialite who happens to be the dinner guest that ends up being the murderer (very Agatha Christie). Here she has a bit more depth and personality. She also gets to add nuances that come from being in different bodies and given a different spin by the actors. Though her motivation is still just money and youth, there is a brief moment where you get caught up in her helping the Doctor with his investigations and rather enjoying her extra take on things.
The sets and direction were also nice. You could tell that the budget was a concern due both to the tightness of a number of shots as well as the fact that only three of the cat nurses showed their faces. All others wore full veils, eliminating the need for the expensive and time consuming makeup. But for what it was, I thought it was a decent job in trying to convey a sense of largeness while also trying to get that sense of intimacy.
Now on to the less than stellar bits. I mentioned the good things and the tropes of the Tenth Doctor that cropped up. But that also includes some over-the-top moments. His celebration at having cured the people was a bit much. I can understand joy at the situation but there was an excessiveness that seemed unbecoming of the Doctor. I thought his instantaneous anger at the cat nurses was also a bit much. There should have been a slightly slower build to his rage. It wasn't bad but I thought it was too quick a turn into making the nurses the villains of the story.
Staying with the solution, I thought the fix for this was a bit too pat. Yes the cat nurses had developed cures to various diseases using these people as lab rats but if a cure had been developed, why keep the rat that still has that disease? Were they keeping them for synthesis purposes? Also, didn't some of these people have diseases for which a cure had not yet been developed? Those would have been unaffected by the cocktail and they still would have infectious. Also, if the cures were delivered intravenously, why does mixing them in a steam bath produce a cure and how is that cure able to be transmitted simply by surface contact? It is a very slap dash solution and it seems hokey even while watching.
Another small problem with this story is that the special effects look a bit cheap. Of course we're not expecting absolute magic, but usually there's a bit better work done rather than just a straight CGI effect that cannot possibly compete with Hollywood effects. But in this case, there were several shots where the camera just trained on the person and CGI was expected to tell the tale. It just had the unfortunate effect of making the story look cheap.
So overall, there is a bit to like in this story but it does fail on a number of levels as well. Yet the parts that don't work aren't so bad to cause the story to completely fall apart and they never detract from the fun ride. It feels more like what it is: an early story where kinks are being worked out. It can be fun and if you don't think about it too hard, it is serviceable enough. Decidedly middling seems about right.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Friday, May 19, 2017
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Here come the drums! Here come the drums!
With the leaked spoiler of the return of the John Simm Master in Series 10, I thought it only fitting to rewatch his moments of triumph in the Series 3 two-part finale. Most fans that I've heard from generally enjoy the Simm Master but his episodes have a rather negative reputation. The End of Time speaks for itself and I've already gone over that story. The Sound of Drums seems to be the most well liked of the four episodes that he stars in with things taking a bit of a dive in Last of the Time Lords. Are these reputations justified? Let's refresh the memory and see.
Plot Summary
Following the newly regenerated Master's theft of the Doctor's TARDIS at the end of Utopia, the Doctor repairs Jack's vortex manipulator and the three of them transport back to Earth. They land a couple of days after the election and find that the Master has been elected Prime Minister of Britain under the name of Harold Saxon.
In Downing Street, the Master kills his new cabinet with poison gas. At the same time, his wife, Lucy, gets a visit from a reporter who is also working as a Torchwood agent. She tells Lucy that Harold Saxon only appeared 18 months ago and has forged his past. Lucy acknowledges this as she already knew and the Master enters the room. The Master summons three alien spheres who attack and kill the reporter.
The Doctor, Jack and Martha head back to Martha's apartment where they work on trying to figure how the Master had taken over. The Doctor informs them that before the Master disappeared in the TARDIS, he locked the controls so that it only could operate between it's last two points of departure: 100 trillion years in the future and that day, give or take about 18 months. Observing Martha talking about Saxon, he realizes that the Master has set up some sort of hypnotic field but doesn't know how.
They are interrupted by a broadcast from Saxon that the UK has made initial contact with a new alien species called the Toclafane. They will be making a formal landing the following morning and Saxon intends to have it broadcast. As he explains, he states a key word and it triggers the timer on a bomb on the back of Martha's television. The trio rushes out before the bomb goes off and destroys Martha's apartment.
Panicked about the Master's knowledge of her, Martha calls her mom. Her mom urges her to come over even stating that her dad is over. Her father speaks as well but when Martha gets suspicious, he warns her and Saxon's men arrest him and Francine. The trio hop in a car and race to Francine's apartment. The agent in charge informs the Master of what has happened and he orders the arrest of Martha's sister Trish as well as she had been working as secretary to Lucy Saxon.
The trio arrives just as Martha's parents are placed in a police van. They open fire on Martha and they are forced to drive away. They ditch the car and walk away. Martha calls her brother who is in Brighton. She warns him to hide but their call in interrupted by the Master listening in. The Doctor takes the phone and he and the Master talk, the Master telling the Doctor of how he ran away from the Time War after being resurrected by the Time Lords. The Doctor in turn tells him that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War. The Master places their pictures on the television and has them proclaimed public enemies.
The trio runs and hides in an old warehouse. Jack and Martha gather both food and information. They learn that the Master set up a satellite system for phones now used by everyone called Archangel. The Doctor realizes that is how the Master is controlling people. To further help them, he takes the TARDIS key and splits it so they can each wear one. It is treated with a low level perception filter that causes people to look away, rendering them nondescript to ordinary people.
They leave the warehouse and head to an airport where the Master is meeting the new US President. Annoyed at Saxon's breach of UN agreements, he steps in and takes over the meeting with the Toclafane, which will take place on the Valiant, a UNIT airship. The Master is unperturbed and has his personal jet prepared to join the meeting. He also loads Martha's parents and sister aboard the jet to join him.
Knowing they need to follow, the Doctor uses Jack's vortex manipulator as a transport and takes the three of them to the Valiant. Searching inside, they find the TARDIS. Inside however, they discover that the Master has cannibalized it and created a paradox machine. They sneak up to the flight deck where President Winters is preparing to greet the Toclafane.
The Toclafane are not pleased to see the President and insist on meeting the Master. The Master stands up and vaporizes the President. He then pins the Doctor down and kills Jack with a laser screwdriver. Martha rushes to Jack as he revives and Jack gives her his vortex manipulator. The Master changes the setting on his screwdriver and ages the Doctor over 100 years, making him an old man. The Master activates the paradox machine and billions of Toclafane pass through the vortex and invade Earth where the Master suggests they kill ten percent of humanity.
The Doctor whispers something to Martha and she steps back and teleports off the ship. As the Toclafane destroy cities, she promises to return. She does a year later after wandering through the world. She meets a young man named Thomas. She asks Thomas to take her to see a rogue scientists named Professor Docherty. As they walk, Martha tells Thomas of her journeys and the sights of the ships and weapons the Master is building to take over the universe.
On the Valiant, the Doctor, the Jones family and Jack attempt to take down the Master but are thwarted by him. He has Jack killed and relocked up and locks the Jones family in a cell for a while as they had been working as servants. He places the Doctor back in his chair for later punishment.
Martha and Thomas find Professor Docherty just as the Master is making a broadcast announcing that the conquest will start tomorrow. He also sends a message to Martha as he zaps the Doctor once more with his screwdriver, adding all the Doctor's years to this single regeneration. The Doctor ages 900 years and shrinks to a tiny size as the Master cuts the broadcast.
Martha is unphased and asks the professor and Thomas to help catch a Toclafane using a electrical pulse. They do so and when they unseal the sphere, they find a human head. Martha realizes that the Toclafane are the remnants of humanity that fled looking for Utopia. Upon finding nothing, they built insulating containers for themselves and regressed into a child-like manner. When the captured Toclafane notes that they kill because it's fun, Thomas shoots it.
Thomas takes Martha to London after showing Professor Docherty a gun that uses four chemicals and can kill a Time Lord. Docherty signals the Master of this, who has her son as a hostage. When Martha reaches London, they hide with other refugees and Martha tells of her travels and the Doctor. As she does, the Master arrives and orders Martha to surrender or he will kill everyone on that street. Unwilling to allow that, she surrenders. The Master destroys the bag containing her gun and then kills Thomas as he rushes to attack him. The Master however decides to take Martha back to the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.
In the control room, as the Master prepares to kill Martha, he also starts a countdown for the launch of ships and missiles to start the war. Martha begins to laugh and tells the Master the she did not have a weapon against him. She had spent the year traveling to tell people about the Doctor and how they should think of him when the Master's countdown goes to zero. As it does, the Doctor is energized by the collective psychic power of humanity connected through the Archangel network. He undoes the Master's aging of him, knocks away his laser screwdriver and frees humanity of their fear of him. He also cradles the Master and tells him that he forgives him.
The Toclafane head towards the Valiant to defend the paradox machine. Jack and two soldiers run down to destroy it. Jack, through several deaths, gets past three Toclafane and destroy the paradox machine within the TARDIS. This causes time to reverse to when it was first activated. The Master's work is undone and the Toclafane are sucked back to the year 100 Trillion. Only those at the center of events on the Valiant have any memory of the lost year as time resets to just after the Master killed the President.
The Master tries to escape but is arrested by several guards. The Doctor decides to keep the Master as a prisoner in the TARDIS but before he can, Lucy shoots the Master, having become resentful of his harmful treatment of her. The Master refuses to regenerate and dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor later burns the Master's body, though a mysterious woman steals his ring from the ashes.
The Doctor then prepares to leave in the TARDIS as Martha enters but she tells him that she is not coming back. She is tired and knows how fruitless it is to pursue the Doctor when he sees her only as a friend. She does give him her cell phone so that she can call him in an emergency. The Doctor then takes off but his flight is interrupted as the prow of an ocean liner crashes through the TARDIS wall. He is even further bothered when seeing that the ship is the Titanic.
Analysis
The expression, Deus Ex Machina is one that should be pretty familiar to Doctor Who fans as a form of it is used fairly often in this show. However, I don't even think that some of the wildest uses of it have ever gone so far as to turn the Doctor into a literal embodiment of God. It's actually mildly amusing to think of RTD, who is a fairly staunch atheist, going so deep into a Christ metaphor and then going even the extra mile and having the Master comment on it.
Like nearly all the RTD season ending two-parters, this is a tale of two halves. The Sound of Drums is largely the Master's tale with the Doctor, Martha and Jack restricted to a more passive role. Last of the Time Lords, despite it's title, is essentially Martha's tale with the Doctor providing the solution at the end. Right off the bat, without any other considerations, you can immediately see the potential problems. The Master is an outsized personality, easily able to carry a story and even more so in his almost Joker-like iteration of the John Simm Master. Martha on the other hand, has spent the series playing second fiddle to the Doctor both as companion and unrequited love interest. At almost no point in the series has she been given agency to be the central focus of the story. Even in the Family two-parter (arguably her best story) her story line comes after the mystery of what will happen to the Doctor. To expect her to be able to fully carry the story here is a tall order.
As mentioned before, the John Simm Master is almost like a British version of the Joker. He is wild and unpredictable. You get a very Joker-like scene near the beginning of the first episode where he gasses his entire cabinet and gives a thumbs up when they accuse him of being crazy. About all that was missing was for the ministers to have the smiles and then a bad joke by the Master and it would have been almost indistinguishable. It's interesting that for once the Master doesn't have a particularly convoluted plan and as a result, it actually works. He is aware of the Doctor but allows him in to see his triumph and to gloat over him.
We also see the effects of what a Master's win would look like in that Earth is only the first stage and he will now try to take over the universe once more. That is a little less interesting as it comes across as a bit more hackneyed with the plan to launch powerful missiles everywhere and then demand everyone's surrender. That's more of a harken back to the Ainley Master and his more zany schemes.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the Master's death. Not the fact that his wife shot him, that worked for me. But the scene before we had the Doctor call the Master's bluff in that his survival mattered more than defeating the Doctor, so he didn't create a black hole that destroys Earth. However, once shot, the Master refuses to regenerate just to triumph over the Doctor in death. That makes no sense. The threat of prison with the Doctor cannot be so bad as to overcome the Master's inherent desire to survive at all costs. It is a clichéd and terrible premise. It would have worked so much better if the Master had been taken prisoner. He could have easily been ignored to allow Donna free reign in Series Four and his escape from the Doctor's prison (whether the TARDIS or some other location) would have been far more interesting than the potions resurrection we got in The End of Time.
Speaking of the Doctor, he's a real non-entity in this story. He gives the backstory about Gallifrey and gives Martha and Jack their pseudo-cloaking devices, but aside from that, he doesn't do much. He is the god who restores everything at the end but it's Martha's story that spreads the word and almost nothing that he does. He even goes into full Jesus mode by forgiving the Master despite having killed millions of people. I guess it's akin to the Third Doctor laughing off the deaths in Terror of the Autons but stating that they'll be seeing the Master again, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.
Martha is okay in this but her focus on her family does make her sound rather whiney through a good portion of The Sound of Drums and I just don't care about any of them. Heck, the series has spent a better part of it's time making me dislike her mom so I don't know why I should care for her now, even if she is duped by the Master. Martha does improve some during her journey as she gains a measure of confidence and seems to do well to strike out on her own, but she's still not overly engaging from a personality standpoint. She's a bit too relaxed and confident in everything and it takes away some of the tension that the scenes are trying to build.
To top off Martha, we finally have the culmination of the unrequited love and it is boring. I don't care for Martha when she's in that mode in the first half of the series and the great gain of the second half is that she puts her feelings aside and just goes for the adventure. To bring it back and turn down the Doctor's offer of further travel because she needs to not pine after him dredges up that early unpleasantness. We actually get a double dose of it as Martha has a goodbye, walks out of the TARDIS and then goes back in to explain herself further. It's just painful to watch and just makes the Doctor look like a jerk for not even acknowledging her. Of course, he also had to pine over Rose in the first half of the series and that was also painful.
Jack was Jack and he was fine for the most part. He actually injected a bit of humor here and there, having gotten used to the dying and resurrecting bit. But Jack's leaving scene was also painfully written. I don't mind the fact that Jack might have been the Face of Boe as that would actually make for an interesting twist on a minor character. But the way it was written was painful. It wasn't even Exposition 101 it was set up so badly. It was a real shame that Jack's final scene of the arc was that badly written.
So let's get to the crux of the matter on the whole thing: the transfiguration of the Doctor into Christ. I will admit that I didn't care for the 1,000 year old "Dobby Doctor" as he's sometimes called, but I could get past it as a minor point. But no matter how much scientific babble you try to put on to it, the solution of the story comes from the people of the world effectively praying to the Doctor and the Doctor using that to resurrect himself. What's more, he has even more power as we see him lose the glow, the floating and the ability to Force push things away within a few minutes. I honestly can't see how anyone thought this was a good idea. Even the pseudo-science that the show uses would call this crap and it's the worst kind of get-out-of-jail free card I've seen. It undercuts the dire set up started in Utopia and amplified in The Sound of Drums. I think even if you found the Martha quest story interesting, this offering just knocks the story down to tolerable levels at best.
It is so unfortunate that this story ends on such a sour note. Utopia is an excellent lead in and The Sound of Drums is quite entertaining. It's not perfect as I find the Master a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but he is at least entertaining. There is also the fun of seeing him succeed for once at one of his plans. Even the first half of Last of the Time Lords isn't that bad. I'm not that big on Martha but her quest has some narrative value and the tension is appropriately spiked in various locations. But the last 15 minutes are just so bad. We have the Doctor becoming God, a total character flip that allows the Master to die but not actually destroy Earth and Martha's uncomfortable goodbye scene where she spills her heart out. I had been avoiding rewatching this one for a while and the second time around validated my avoidance of the story. Here's hoping that whatever the episode the John Simm Master pops up in next, he's given better material to work with than here.
Overall personal score: The Sound of Drums - 4 out of 5; Last of the Time Lords - 0.5 out of 5
With the leaked spoiler of the return of the John Simm Master in Series 10, I thought it only fitting to rewatch his moments of triumph in the Series 3 two-part finale. Most fans that I've heard from generally enjoy the Simm Master but his episodes have a rather negative reputation. The End of Time speaks for itself and I've already gone over that story. The Sound of Drums seems to be the most well liked of the four episodes that he stars in with things taking a bit of a dive in Last of the Time Lords. Are these reputations justified? Let's refresh the memory and see.
Plot Summary
Following the newly regenerated Master's theft of the Doctor's TARDIS at the end of Utopia, the Doctor repairs Jack's vortex manipulator and the three of them transport back to Earth. They land a couple of days after the election and find that the Master has been elected Prime Minister of Britain under the name of Harold Saxon.
In Downing Street, the Master kills his new cabinet with poison gas. At the same time, his wife, Lucy, gets a visit from a reporter who is also working as a Torchwood agent. She tells Lucy that Harold Saxon only appeared 18 months ago and has forged his past. Lucy acknowledges this as she already knew and the Master enters the room. The Master summons three alien spheres who attack and kill the reporter.
The Doctor, Jack and Martha head back to Martha's apartment where they work on trying to figure how the Master had taken over. The Doctor informs them that before the Master disappeared in the TARDIS, he locked the controls so that it only could operate between it's last two points of departure: 100 trillion years in the future and that day, give or take about 18 months. Observing Martha talking about Saxon, he realizes that the Master has set up some sort of hypnotic field but doesn't know how.
They are interrupted by a broadcast from Saxon that the UK has made initial contact with a new alien species called the Toclafane. They will be making a formal landing the following morning and Saxon intends to have it broadcast. As he explains, he states a key word and it triggers the timer on a bomb on the back of Martha's television. The trio rushes out before the bomb goes off and destroys Martha's apartment.
Panicked about the Master's knowledge of her, Martha calls her mom. Her mom urges her to come over even stating that her dad is over. Her father speaks as well but when Martha gets suspicious, he warns her and Saxon's men arrest him and Francine. The trio hop in a car and race to Francine's apartment. The agent in charge informs the Master of what has happened and he orders the arrest of Martha's sister Trish as well as she had been working as secretary to Lucy Saxon.
The trio arrives just as Martha's parents are placed in a police van. They open fire on Martha and they are forced to drive away. They ditch the car and walk away. Martha calls her brother who is in Brighton. She warns him to hide but their call in interrupted by the Master listening in. The Doctor takes the phone and he and the Master talk, the Master telling the Doctor of how he ran away from the Time War after being resurrected by the Time Lords. The Doctor in turn tells him that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War. The Master places their pictures on the television and has them proclaimed public enemies.
The trio runs and hides in an old warehouse. Jack and Martha gather both food and information. They learn that the Master set up a satellite system for phones now used by everyone called Archangel. The Doctor realizes that is how the Master is controlling people. To further help them, he takes the TARDIS key and splits it so they can each wear one. It is treated with a low level perception filter that causes people to look away, rendering them nondescript to ordinary people.
They leave the warehouse and head to an airport where the Master is meeting the new US President. Annoyed at Saxon's breach of UN agreements, he steps in and takes over the meeting with the Toclafane, which will take place on the Valiant, a UNIT airship. The Master is unperturbed and has his personal jet prepared to join the meeting. He also loads Martha's parents and sister aboard the jet to join him.
Knowing they need to follow, the Doctor uses Jack's vortex manipulator as a transport and takes the three of them to the Valiant. Searching inside, they find the TARDIS. Inside however, they discover that the Master has cannibalized it and created a paradox machine. They sneak up to the flight deck where President Winters is preparing to greet the Toclafane.
The Toclafane are not pleased to see the President and insist on meeting the Master. The Master stands up and vaporizes the President. He then pins the Doctor down and kills Jack with a laser screwdriver. Martha rushes to Jack as he revives and Jack gives her his vortex manipulator. The Master changes the setting on his screwdriver and ages the Doctor over 100 years, making him an old man. The Master activates the paradox machine and billions of Toclafane pass through the vortex and invade Earth where the Master suggests they kill ten percent of humanity.
The Doctor whispers something to Martha and she steps back and teleports off the ship. As the Toclafane destroy cities, she promises to return. She does a year later after wandering through the world. She meets a young man named Thomas. She asks Thomas to take her to see a rogue scientists named Professor Docherty. As they walk, Martha tells Thomas of her journeys and the sights of the ships and weapons the Master is building to take over the universe.
On the Valiant, the Doctor, the Jones family and Jack attempt to take down the Master but are thwarted by him. He has Jack killed and relocked up and locks the Jones family in a cell for a while as they had been working as servants. He places the Doctor back in his chair for later punishment.
Martha and Thomas find Professor Docherty just as the Master is making a broadcast announcing that the conquest will start tomorrow. He also sends a message to Martha as he zaps the Doctor once more with his screwdriver, adding all the Doctor's years to this single regeneration. The Doctor ages 900 years and shrinks to a tiny size as the Master cuts the broadcast.
Martha is unphased and asks the professor and Thomas to help catch a Toclafane using a electrical pulse. They do so and when they unseal the sphere, they find a human head. Martha realizes that the Toclafane are the remnants of humanity that fled looking for Utopia. Upon finding nothing, they built insulating containers for themselves and regressed into a child-like manner. When the captured Toclafane notes that they kill because it's fun, Thomas shoots it.
Thomas takes Martha to London after showing Professor Docherty a gun that uses four chemicals and can kill a Time Lord. Docherty signals the Master of this, who has her son as a hostage. When Martha reaches London, they hide with other refugees and Martha tells of her travels and the Doctor. As she does, the Master arrives and orders Martha to surrender or he will kill everyone on that street. Unwilling to allow that, she surrenders. The Master destroys the bag containing her gun and then kills Thomas as he rushes to attack him. The Master however decides to take Martha back to the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.
In the control room, as the Master prepares to kill Martha, he also starts a countdown for the launch of ships and missiles to start the war. Martha begins to laugh and tells the Master the she did not have a weapon against him. She had spent the year traveling to tell people about the Doctor and how they should think of him when the Master's countdown goes to zero. As it does, the Doctor is energized by the collective psychic power of humanity connected through the Archangel network. He undoes the Master's aging of him, knocks away his laser screwdriver and frees humanity of their fear of him. He also cradles the Master and tells him that he forgives him.
The Toclafane head towards the Valiant to defend the paradox machine. Jack and two soldiers run down to destroy it. Jack, through several deaths, gets past three Toclafane and destroy the paradox machine within the TARDIS. This causes time to reverse to when it was first activated. The Master's work is undone and the Toclafane are sucked back to the year 100 Trillion. Only those at the center of events on the Valiant have any memory of the lost year as time resets to just after the Master killed the President.
The Master tries to escape but is arrested by several guards. The Doctor decides to keep the Master as a prisoner in the TARDIS but before he can, Lucy shoots the Master, having become resentful of his harmful treatment of her. The Master refuses to regenerate and dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor later burns the Master's body, though a mysterious woman steals his ring from the ashes.
The Doctor then prepares to leave in the TARDIS as Martha enters but she tells him that she is not coming back. She is tired and knows how fruitless it is to pursue the Doctor when he sees her only as a friend. She does give him her cell phone so that she can call him in an emergency. The Doctor then takes off but his flight is interrupted as the prow of an ocean liner crashes through the TARDIS wall. He is even further bothered when seeing that the ship is the Titanic.
Analysis
The expression, Deus Ex Machina is one that should be pretty familiar to Doctor Who fans as a form of it is used fairly often in this show. However, I don't even think that some of the wildest uses of it have ever gone so far as to turn the Doctor into a literal embodiment of God. It's actually mildly amusing to think of RTD, who is a fairly staunch atheist, going so deep into a Christ metaphor and then going even the extra mile and having the Master comment on it.
Like nearly all the RTD season ending two-parters, this is a tale of two halves. The Sound of Drums is largely the Master's tale with the Doctor, Martha and Jack restricted to a more passive role. Last of the Time Lords, despite it's title, is essentially Martha's tale with the Doctor providing the solution at the end. Right off the bat, without any other considerations, you can immediately see the potential problems. The Master is an outsized personality, easily able to carry a story and even more so in his almost Joker-like iteration of the John Simm Master. Martha on the other hand, has spent the series playing second fiddle to the Doctor both as companion and unrequited love interest. At almost no point in the series has she been given agency to be the central focus of the story. Even in the Family two-parter (arguably her best story) her story line comes after the mystery of what will happen to the Doctor. To expect her to be able to fully carry the story here is a tall order.
As mentioned before, the John Simm Master is almost like a British version of the Joker. He is wild and unpredictable. You get a very Joker-like scene near the beginning of the first episode where he gasses his entire cabinet and gives a thumbs up when they accuse him of being crazy. About all that was missing was for the ministers to have the smiles and then a bad joke by the Master and it would have been almost indistinguishable. It's interesting that for once the Master doesn't have a particularly convoluted plan and as a result, it actually works. He is aware of the Doctor but allows him in to see his triumph and to gloat over him.
We also see the effects of what a Master's win would look like in that Earth is only the first stage and he will now try to take over the universe once more. That is a little less interesting as it comes across as a bit more hackneyed with the plan to launch powerful missiles everywhere and then demand everyone's surrender. That's more of a harken back to the Ainley Master and his more zany schemes.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the Master's death. Not the fact that his wife shot him, that worked for me. But the scene before we had the Doctor call the Master's bluff in that his survival mattered more than defeating the Doctor, so he didn't create a black hole that destroys Earth. However, once shot, the Master refuses to regenerate just to triumph over the Doctor in death. That makes no sense. The threat of prison with the Doctor cannot be so bad as to overcome the Master's inherent desire to survive at all costs. It is a clichéd and terrible premise. It would have worked so much better if the Master had been taken prisoner. He could have easily been ignored to allow Donna free reign in Series Four and his escape from the Doctor's prison (whether the TARDIS or some other location) would have been far more interesting than the potions resurrection we got in The End of Time.
Speaking of the Doctor, he's a real non-entity in this story. He gives the backstory about Gallifrey and gives Martha and Jack their pseudo-cloaking devices, but aside from that, he doesn't do much. He is the god who restores everything at the end but it's Martha's story that spreads the word and almost nothing that he does. He even goes into full Jesus mode by forgiving the Master despite having killed millions of people. I guess it's akin to the Third Doctor laughing off the deaths in Terror of the Autons but stating that they'll be seeing the Master again, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.
Martha is okay in this but her focus on her family does make her sound rather whiney through a good portion of The Sound of Drums and I just don't care about any of them. Heck, the series has spent a better part of it's time making me dislike her mom so I don't know why I should care for her now, even if she is duped by the Master. Martha does improve some during her journey as she gains a measure of confidence and seems to do well to strike out on her own, but she's still not overly engaging from a personality standpoint. She's a bit too relaxed and confident in everything and it takes away some of the tension that the scenes are trying to build.
To top off Martha, we finally have the culmination of the unrequited love and it is boring. I don't care for Martha when she's in that mode in the first half of the series and the great gain of the second half is that she puts her feelings aside and just goes for the adventure. To bring it back and turn down the Doctor's offer of further travel because she needs to not pine after him dredges up that early unpleasantness. We actually get a double dose of it as Martha has a goodbye, walks out of the TARDIS and then goes back in to explain herself further. It's just painful to watch and just makes the Doctor look like a jerk for not even acknowledging her. Of course, he also had to pine over Rose in the first half of the series and that was also painful.
Jack was Jack and he was fine for the most part. He actually injected a bit of humor here and there, having gotten used to the dying and resurrecting bit. But Jack's leaving scene was also painfully written. I don't mind the fact that Jack might have been the Face of Boe as that would actually make for an interesting twist on a minor character. But the way it was written was painful. It wasn't even Exposition 101 it was set up so badly. It was a real shame that Jack's final scene of the arc was that badly written.
So let's get to the crux of the matter on the whole thing: the transfiguration of the Doctor into Christ. I will admit that I didn't care for the 1,000 year old "Dobby Doctor" as he's sometimes called, but I could get past it as a minor point. But no matter how much scientific babble you try to put on to it, the solution of the story comes from the people of the world effectively praying to the Doctor and the Doctor using that to resurrect himself. What's more, he has even more power as we see him lose the glow, the floating and the ability to Force push things away within a few minutes. I honestly can't see how anyone thought this was a good idea. Even the pseudo-science that the show uses would call this crap and it's the worst kind of get-out-of-jail free card I've seen. It undercuts the dire set up started in Utopia and amplified in The Sound of Drums. I think even if you found the Martha quest story interesting, this offering just knocks the story down to tolerable levels at best.
It is so unfortunate that this story ends on such a sour note. Utopia is an excellent lead in and The Sound of Drums is quite entertaining. It's not perfect as I find the Master a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but he is at least entertaining. There is also the fun of seeing him succeed for once at one of his plans. Even the first half of Last of the Time Lords isn't that bad. I'm not that big on Martha but her quest has some narrative value and the tension is appropriately spiked in various locations. But the last 15 minutes are just so bad. We have the Doctor becoming God, a total character flip that allows the Master to die but not actually destroy Earth and Martha's uncomfortable goodbye scene where she spills her heart out. I had been avoiding rewatching this one for a while and the second time around validated my avoidance of the story. Here's hoping that whatever the episode the John Simm Master pops up in next, he's given better material to work with than here.
Overall personal score: The Sound of Drums - 4 out of 5; Last of the Time Lords - 0.5 out of 5
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Planet of the Dead
He will knock four times.
Planet of the Dead was not that well received when first broadcast, mostly due to fans being a bit put out in getting what is a bit of a romp after a four month hiatus and looking into a further six month wait until The Waters of Mars. RTD later went back and explained that given the dark nature of The Waters of Mars and the end of the Tenth Doctor in The End of Time, he wanted to keep this story fairly light. Watched in isolation and removed from the wait, it is better than original fan reaction, though not without it's flaws.
Plot Summary
A thief, Lady Christina de Souza, breaks into a museum and steals a thousand year old gold cup. The alarms go off as she nears the exit of the building and the police arrive, cutting off her planned escape. She then gets on a bus to hide. Just before the bus leaves, the Doctor gets on, tracking an anomaly in space. The bus drives along and Christina is spotted by the detective who leads a pursuit of the bus. He also has the police set a blockade at the other end of the tunnel the bus has just driven in. As it nears the exit, the bus suddenly vanishes, disappearing through a wormhole.
The bus emerges on the other side, beaten up but intact, and lodges itself in the middle of a desert. The Doctor points out the wormhole they just passed through and before he can stop him, the driver tries to go back. He emerges on the other side, all his flesh having been boiled off. Stunned, the police call in UNIT to take over. On the planet, Lady Christina organizes the other passengers and sets the Doctor to getting them back home.
The Doctor figures the bus protected them like a Faraday cage and that if they can get it moving, they can go back. The passengers are set at various tasks, digging out the wheels, laying them on flats and cleaning the sand out of the engine. As the Doctor and Christina look around, they notice a sand storm approaching, but that contains glints of metal. One of the passengers, a woman named Carmen, has a level of psychic perception that is amplified by the planet, she senses death approaching from the cloud.
The Doctor makes contact with UNIT via a modified cell phone, talking first with the UNIT commander, Captain Magambo, and then with the team scientist, Dr. Malcolm Taylor. The Doctor sets Malcolm on measuring the wormhole and then figuring a way to close it. The Doctor and Lady Christina return to the top of the dune to chart the storm when they are approached by a fly-like alien called a Tritovore. It takes them back to its ship to see the captain.
The captain believes the Doctor and the passengers on the bus are responsible for the attack on his ship, which crashed while attempting to set up a trade between planets. The Doctor convinces the captain that they are not responsible and fellow crash victims. He then helps restore power enough to launch a probe to study the storm. The Doctor learns that the planet they are on was inhabited by 100 billion people and showed no sign of distress only a year ago. Now, the Tritovore ship is crashed in the middle of what was once the capital city. As the probe reaches the storm, they learn that it is not a sand storm, but billions of metallic stingray-like creatures. He reasons they stripped the planet clean and are now flying in formation around the planet, creating a wormhole to fly to the next planet for them to feed.
The Doctor receives a call from the bus passengers informing him that the bus is out of gas, leaving it without power. He decides to extract the main power source of the Tritovore ship to help them. Lady Christina sets up her repelling rig and descends into the shaft before the Doctor can stop her. He then guides her through until she reaches the bottom. She manages to extract the crystal and it's mounting plate but discovers one of the stingray creatures in the shaft, dormant due to the cold, but waking due to her body heat. Once the extraction is done, the Doctor pulls her out and she resets the security field, trapping the creature in the shaft. However, several other creatures were in the hull when it crashed and they are also waking up. The Doctor urges the Tritovore captain to abandon the ship but he refuses. One of the creatures emerges from the hull and eats him. The other Tritovore shoots repeatedly at the creature but it has no effect and he is also eaten. The Doctor and Lady Christina flee the ship, only a short way ahead of the swarm.
Upon reaching the bus, the Doctor tosses the power crystal and attaches the anti-gravity clamps to the bus wheels. He attaches the interface to the bus wheel but find that they won't integrate. Realizing he needs gold to make the interface work, he asks Christina for the cup she stole, having seen it and figuring her for a thief during her descent into the power shaft. She reluctantly agrees and he smashes it apart to make the interface. The Doctor also calls Malcolm to have him be ready to close the wormhole just after they emerge. Captain Magambo overhears this and threatens to shoot Malcolm if he does not close it immediately.
With the interface complete, the Doctor engages the anti-gravity and then flies the bus back through the wormhole. Malcolm refuses to close the wormhole until hearing of the Doctor's pass through. One through, he tries to close it but his machine malfunctions. The Doctor calls him and walks him through the process and the wormhole closes with only three stingrays having gotten through. Those three are killed by the UNIT soldiers waiting on the other side.
Upon landing, the passengers are escorted away, though Lady Christina breaks off to join the Doctor. She asks to come with him, having had the TARDIS delivered to him by UNIT, but he refuses, feeling that it's too dangerous for anyone to travel with him at the moment. Lady Christina is then arrested by the detective who had been waiting around with UNIT during the crisis.
Seeing the passengers off, Carmen gives a warning to the Doctor that his song is ending, that he is returning and that he will knock four times. The Doctor acknowledges the warning and then quietly frees Christina from her handcuffs. She slips out of the police car, steals the bus and flies off into the night as the Doctor disappears in the TARDIS.
Analysis
Planet of the Dead is a mostly fun rompy story but it does have a few flaws. The two most prominent are a couple of the acting portrayals and the occasional hard shifts in tone reflected in the two different styles of the writers: Russell T. Davies and Gareth Roberts. Nonetheless, it is far better than it is generally given credit for.
This is pretty much the last we see of the light side of the Tenth Doctor and he revels in it. He is in full command and very enjoyable. There are glimmers of darkness, such as when he recalls Donna (although not by name) and when he says no to Lady Christina to traveling with him. But even there, he beats back the darkness and indulges in the fun. It's at times silly, but never over-the-top or badly done.
Lady Christina is a fun pseudo-companion. She matches well with the Tenth Doctor, matching him with wit and resource, but also having enough respect for him that she defers to his knowledge when appropriate. Her cockiness would probably have been her undoing had she continued and I think I can see shades of Clara in her, both in the good and the bad. But in this one story, she does well, although I was disappointed in the indulgence of the trope at the beginning where she removed her mask before leaving the museum. No proper thief would ever do something that stupid. She also should have ducked down in the bus, obscuring her face rather than looking directly at the detective. But the plot needed to start in some way.
The folks on the bus are pretty non-descript as they are more rescue objects than actual characters. There is some minor development with a couple and they also provide a touch of comedy here and there but you could have left the bus empty and it wouldn't have changed the story much.
The exception is Carmen and I do not like her. I think the acting was sub-par and the attitude of the character was a distraction whenever it shifted to her. The psychic stuff had no bearing on what happened and if anything it defused the tension rather than accelerating it because it put the Doctor on his guard rather than being totally surprised at the nature of the swarm. The prophecy at the end was far too heavy handed and poorly delivered as well. I would have actually thought it better if as the people walked away, Ood Sigma was left standing (so only the Doctor could see) and stated the line about him knocking four times. It still would have been heavy handed but it would have played in to previous uses of the Ood and their psychic abilities and provided continuity to the use of Ood Sigma in The Waters of Mars and The End of Time.
UNIT was fairly non-descript in this story. Captain Magambo was fine as a stand-in for the Brigadier but I didn't care for the false tension of her threatening Malcolm before the Doctor emerged. It just seemed a bit much and you can see how a character like this was morphed into Kate Stewart in the Eleventh Doctor era. Malcolm was a light bit of humor but also not overly memorable. His main point is to provide the quick Deus Ex Machina fix at the end with the closing of the wormhole. Not bad, but not standout either.
Both aliens were good in this. I like the idea of the somewhat mindless swarm of stingrays that fly from planet to planet like a swarm of locusts. Not evil, just hungry. I also liked the feint with the Tritovores, given our natural disgust towards flies, and having them be victims just as much as the bus folk. I was a little disappointed that they were gotten rid of so quickly as having at least one of them make it back to the bus and interact with the passengers would have provided an interesting little dynamic at the end.
The overall story was pretty good if relatively thin. There is a darker tone that permeates most of the story but with lighter bits here and there. However the end gets a bit too silly for my taste. The sting rays are essentially on top of them and they have time to banter and wave about in the air before going through the wormhole. Likewise there are the soaring aerial shots of London which look very nice, but in that time, much more than three stingrays should have gotten through and been terrorizing UNIT. Christina's escape at the end was also rather farcical as if overly attempting to compensate for the darkness of predicting the Doctor's death. This was rather unnecessary as everyone knew that David Tenant was leaving at the end of the gap year so there wasn't really a need to lighten the tone in such a huge way.
I don't know that much can be said about the effects or direction. The stingrays are dated CGI but it's fairly easy to ignore them as they are not dwelt on for very long. Similarly, I know that parts of this were shot in Dubai but it's rather difficult to tell and I was told that all of it was shot on a sound stage, I would have easily believed it. It has the standard Doctor Who level of engagingness but also cheapness that we expect from British television. The ultimate point is that they don't distract from the overall story which is about as good as you can ask for in any effects heavy story.
Overall, given time and the ability to see this story as it's own thing rather than an island in the midst of a sea of waiting, it is fairly entertaining. Most everyone is either at the top of their game or at least in a position of high entertainment with the prominent exception I noted earlier. If you wanted to treat someone to a decent bit of stand-alone Doctor Who, this would not be a bad choice. It's fun and if you don't expect too much of it, you won't be disappointed.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Planet of the Dead was not that well received when first broadcast, mostly due to fans being a bit put out in getting what is a bit of a romp after a four month hiatus and looking into a further six month wait until The Waters of Mars. RTD later went back and explained that given the dark nature of The Waters of Mars and the end of the Tenth Doctor in The End of Time, he wanted to keep this story fairly light. Watched in isolation and removed from the wait, it is better than original fan reaction, though not without it's flaws.
Plot Summary
A thief, Lady Christina de Souza, breaks into a museum and steals a thousand year old gold cup. The alarms go off as she nears the exit of the building and the police arrive, cutting off her planned escape. She then gets on a bus to hide. Just before the bus leaves, the Doctor gets on, tracking an anomaly in space. The bus drives along and Christina is spotted by the detective who leads a pursuit of the bus. He also has the police set a blockade at the other end of the tunnel the bus has just driven in. As it nears the exit, the bus suddenly vanishes, disappearing through a wormhole.
The bus emerges on the other side, beaten up but intact, and lodges itself in the middle of a desert. The Doctor points out the wormhole they just passed through and before he can stop him, the driver tries to go back. He emerges on the other side, all his flesh having been boiled off. Stunned, the police call in UNIT to take over. On the planet, Lady Christina organizes the other passengers and sets the Doctor to getting them back home.
The Doctor figures the bus protected them like a Faraday cage and that if they can get it moving, they can go back. The passengers are set at various tasks, digging out the wheels, laying them on flats and cleaning the sand out of the engine. As the Doctor and Christina look around, they notice a sand storm approaching, but that contains glints of metal. One of the passengers, a woman named Carmen, has a level of psychic perception that is amplified by the planet, she senses death approaching from the cloud.
The Doctor makes contact with UNIT via a modified cell phone, talking first with the UNIT commander, Captain Magambo, and then with the team scientist, Dr. Malcolm Taylor. The Doctor sets Malcolm on measuring the wormhole and then figuring a way to close it. The Doctor and Lady Christina return to the top of the dune to chart the storm when they are approached by a fly-like alien called a Tritovore. It takes them back to its ship to see the captain.
The captain believes the Doctor and the passengers on the bus are responsible for the attack on his ship, which crashed while attempting to set up a trade between planets. The Doctor convinces the captain that they are not responsible and fellow crash victims. He then helps restore power enough to launch a probe to study the storm. The Doctor learns that the planet they are on was inhabited by 100 billion people and showed no sign of distress only a year ago. Now, the Tritovore ship is crashed in the middle of what was once the capital city. As the probe reaches the storm, they learn that it is not a sand storm, but billions of metallic stingray-like creatures. He reasons they stripped the planet clean and are now flying in formation around the planet, creating a wormhole to fly to the next planet for them to feed.
The Doctor receives a call from the bus passengers informing him that the bus is out of gas, leaving it without power. He decides to extract the main power source of the Tritovore ship to help them. Lady Christina sets up her repelling rig and descends into the shaft before the Doctor can stop her. He then guides her through until she reaches the bottom. She manages to extract the crystal and it's mounting plate but discovers one of the stingray creatures in the shaft, dormant due to the cold, but waking due to her body heat. Once the extraction is done, the Doctor pulls her out and she resets the security field, trapping the creature in the shaft. However, several other creatures were in the hull when it crashed and they are also waking up. The Doctor urges the Tritovore captain to abandon the ship but he refuses. One of the creatures emerges from the hull and eats him. The other Tritovore shoots repeatedly at the creature but it has no effect and he is also eaten. The Doctor and Lady Christina flee the ship, only a short way ahead of the swarm.
Upon reaching the bus, the Doctor tosses the power crystal and attaches the anti-gravity clamps to the bus wheels. He attaches the interface to the bus wheel but find that they won't integrate. Realizing he needs gold to make the interface work, he asks Christina for the cup she stole, having seen it and figuring her for a thief during her descent into the power shaft. She reluctantly agrees and he smashes it apart to make the interface. The Doctor also calls Malcolm to have him be ready to close the wormhole just after they emerge. Captain Magambo overhears this and threatens to shoot Malcolm if he does not close it immediately.
With the interface complete, the Doctor engages the anti-gravity and then flies the bus back through the wormhole. Malcolm refuses to close the wormhole until hearing of the Doctor's pass through. One through, he tries to close it but his machine malfunctions. The Doctor calls him and walks him through the process and the wormhole closes with only three stingrays having gotten through. Those three are killed by the UNIT soldiers waiting on the other side.
Upon landing, the passengers are escorted away, though Lady Christina breaks off to join the Doctor. She asks to come with him, having had the TARDIS delivered to him by UNIT, but he refuses, feeling that it's too dangerous for anyone to travel with him at the moment. Lady Christina is then arrested by the detective who had been waiting around with UNIT during the crisis.
Seeing the passengers off, Carmen gives a warning to the Doctor that his song is ending, that he is returning and that he will knock four times. The Doctor acknowledges the warning and then quietly frees Christina from her handcuffs. She slips out of the police car, steals the bus and flies off into the night as the Doctor disappears in the TARDIS.
Analysis
Planet of the Dead is a mostly fun rompy story but it does have a few flaws. The two most prominent are a couple of the acting portrayals and the occasional hard shifts in tone reflected in the two different styles of the writers: Russell T. Davies and Gareth Roberts. Nonetheless, it is far better than it is generally given credit for.
This is pretty much the last we see of the light side of the Tenth Doctor and he revels in it. He is in full command and very enjoyable. There are glimmers of darkness, such as when he recalls Donna (although not by name) and when he says no to Lady Christina to traveling with him. But even there, he beats back the darkness and indulges in the fun. It's at times silly, but never over-the-top or badly done.
Lady Christina is a fun pseudo-companion. She matches well with the Tenth Doctor, matching him with wit and resource, but also having enough respect for him that she defers to his knowledge when appropriate. Her cockiness would probably have been her undoing had she continued and I think I can see shades of Clara in her, both in the good and the bad. But in this one story, she does well, although I was disappointed in the indulgence of the trope at the beginning where she removed her mask before leaving the museum. No proper thief would ever do something that stupid. She also should have ducked down in the bus, obscuring her face rather than looking directly at the detective. But the plot needed to start in some way.
The folks on the bus are pretty non-descript as they are more rescue objects than actual characters. There is some minor development with a couple and they also provide a touch of comedy here and there but you could have left the bus empty and it wouldn't have changed the story much.
The exception is Carmen and I do not like her. I think the acting was sub-par and the attitude of the character was a distraction whenever it shifted to her. The psychic stuff had no bearing on what happened and if anything it defused the tension rather than accelerating it because it put the Doctor on his guard rather than being totally surprised at the nature of the swarm. The prophecy at the end was far too heavy handed and poorly delivered as well. I would have actually thought it better if as the people walked away, Ood Sigma was left standing (so only the Doctor could see) and stated the line about him knocking four times. It still would have been heavy handed but it would have played in to previous uses of the Ood and their psychic abilities and provided continuity to the use of Ood Sigma in The Waters of Mars and The End of Time.
UNIT was fairly non-descript in this story. Captain Magambo was fine as a stand-in for the Brigadier but I didn't care for the false tension of her threatening Malcolm before the Doctor emerged. It just seemed a bit much and you can see how a character like this was morphed into Kate Stewart in the Eleventh Doctor era. Malcolm was a light bit of humor but also not overly memorable. His main point is to provide the quick Deus Ex Machina fix at the end with the closing of the wormhole. Not bad, but not standout either.
Both aliens were good in this. I like the idea of the somewhat mindless swarm of stingrays that fly from planet to planet like a swarm of locusts. Not evil, just hungry. I also liked the feint with the Tritovores, given our natural disgust towards flies, and having them be victims just as much as the bus folk. I was a little disappointed that they were gotten rid of so quickly as having at least one of them make it back to the bus and interact with the passengers would have provided an interesting little dynamic at the end.
The overall story was pretty good if relatively thin. There is a darker tone that permeates most of the story but with lighter bits here and there. However the end gets a bit too silly for my taste. The sting rays are essentially on top of them and they have time to banter and wave about in the air before going through the wormhole. Likewise there are the soaring aerial shots of London which look very nice, but in that time, much more than three stingrays should have gotten through and been terrorizing UNIT. Christina's escape at the end was also rather farcical as if overly attempting to compensate for the darkness of predicting the Doctor's death. This was rather unnecessary as everyone knew that David Tenant was leaving at the end of the gap year so there wasn't really a need to lighten the tone in such a huge way.
I don't know that much can be said about the effects or direction. The stingrays are dated CGI but it's fairly easy to ignore them as they are not dwelt on for very long. Similarly, I know that parts of this were shot in Dubai but it's rather difficult to tell and I was told that all of it was shot on a sound stage, I would have easily believed it. It has the standard Doctor Who level of engagingness but also cheapness that we expect from British television. The ultimate point is that they don't distract from the overall story which is about as good as you can ask for in any effects heavy story.
Overall, given time and the ability to see this story as it's own thing rather than an island in the midst of a sea of waiting, it is fairly entertaining. Most everyone is either at the top of their game or at least in a position of high entertainment with the prominent exception I noted earlier. If you wanted to treat someone to a decent bit of stand-alone Doctor Who, this would not be a bad choice. It's fun and if you don't expect too much of it, you won't be disappointed.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Friday, February 10, 2017
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth Doctor, you take ordinary people and fashion them into weapons.
As has been stated by many others besides me, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End were the real goodbye stories for Russell T. Davies. Yes he stuck around for another year but he tried to replicate these in a way with The End of Time and it didn't really work. These were much more of a natural end with the old sitcom style of bringing back cast that had left the show and having a big send off at the end. But even in that, it is not without it's flaws.
Plot Summary
Having been warned of trouble at the end of Turn Left, the Doctor and Donna arrive back on Earth but find everything seemingly normal. However, upon going back in the TARDIS, the Earth is instantaneously transported away and the TARDIS is left in space. Around the world, reactions are observed by Martha with UNIT in Manhattan, Jack Harkness and his fellow Torchwood team Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper in Cardiff, Sarah Jane with her son Luke and supercomputer, Mr. Smith, in London and Wilfred and Sylvia also in London. As people notice the change in sky, Rose teleports in, just outside Wilfred and Sylvia's home.
Unable to figure out what happened, the Doctor and Donna travel to the Shadow Proclamation where they learn of twenty four other planets disappearing. While going over the list, Donna recalls that the hatchery planet of the Adipose and the planet of the Pyroviles was also missing. The Doctor adds those to the list along with the lost moon of Poosh and they are projected outward and reform themselves into a perfect engine alignment.
Above Earth, the Daleks prepare an invasion force and move towards Earth, attacking the various armed installations and rounding up humans for transport back to the Dalek command ship, the Crucible. Martha' command post is Manhattan is overrun and the commanding general fits her with a experimental teleport based off Sontaran technology. He also gives her a command disk called the Osterhagen Key. She then teleports to her mother's place in London. With the defenses down, Earth surrenders.
The Doctor and Donna try to figure out how to trace the missing planets and Donna mentions the stories of the missing bees. This triggers an idea as a certain alien insect interbreeds with Earth bees and may have warned them. They scan for signals and trace the alien signature to just outside the Medusa Cascade. The Shadow Proclamation tries to requisition the Doctor but he and Donna leave in the TARDIS before they can take control. They reappear outside the Medusa Cascade but find nothing and the end of the signal trail.
Wilfred and Sylvia step out to fight the Daleks but are rescued by Rose, looking for the Doctor. They head back to their home where Rose detects a signal from Wilfred's computer. It doesn't have a webcamera so she can only receive and not transmit. She observes as Harriet Jones, former PM, sends a signal over the subwave network and contacts Torchwood, Sarah Jane and Martha. She networks with Mr. Smith and the Cardiff rift power source to boost the phone signal to call the Doctor, which succeeds but also alerts the Daleks to Harriet Jones' location. She transfers control to Captain Jack at Torchwood just before the Daleks break into her home and kill her.
The Doctor receives the signal and contacts with Jack, Martha and Sara Jane. Wilfred and Sylvia are relieved to see Donna just behind the Doctor. As they talk, the signal is overridden by The Crucible and the Doctor sees Davros, who was rescued from death in the Time War by Dalek Caan, after escaping the events of Evolution of the Daleks. The Doctor deactivates and lands on Earth in London. The Daleks also send an attack force to the new subwave control center at Torchwood.
After landing, the Doctor and Donna exit and spot Rose who left Wilfred and Sylvia's house. The Doctor runs towards her but is shot down by a passing Dalek. The Dalek is destroyed by Jack who teleports in to help. He and Rose drag the Doctor into the TARDIS where he begins to regenerate. However, after healing the wound, the Doctor transfers the regeneration energy into the severed hand cut off by the Sycorax and recovered from the Master following Last of the Time Lords. The Daleks meanwhile move and surround the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane leaves her house to go help the Doctor but runs into a Dalek patrol. They mean to kill her but are destroyed by Mickey and Jackie Tyler who teleport in from the parallel dimension. They approach the TARDIS and see it placed in a temporal lock which drains it's power. It is then taken up to The Crucible. Knowing it's the only way to get on to the ship, Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie surrender to the Daleks and are put with a group of human prisoners for transport.
On The Crucible, the Daleks deactivate the defenses of the TARDIS and order the people out. The Doctor, Rose and Jack all come but Donna is distracted by a heartbeat and the TARDIS door shuts before she can follow. Suspecting treachery, the Supreme Dalek drops the TARDIS into the core of The Crucible where the TARDIS will be destroyed. As the TARDIS begins to burn, Donna touches the hand filled with regeneration energy. It explodes out of it's case and a clone of the Doctor materializes. The clone brings up the TARDIS' power and dematerializes, making it look like the TARDIS was destroyed.
Jack attacks the Supreme Dalek but is gunned down. The Doctor observes him quietly coming back to life but plays along, though Rose is unaware of Jack's ability and thinks him really dead. The Doctor and Rose are taken to Davros' lair while Jack's body is dumped in the incinerator. He escapes and crawls through the ducts while the Doctor and Rose are placed in isolation cells.
As the humans arrive on The Crucible, a woman falls over, distracting the Daleks. Sarah Jane and Mickey make a dash and hide behind a door but Jackie is left in the crowd. The Supreme Dalek orders a test and Davros informs the Doctor of the new weapon, the reality bomb, which destroys the electrical connection between atoms, reducing all matter in it's field to subatomic particles. As it prepares to fire on the crowd, the thirty minute recharge on Jackie's teleport ends and she is able to teleport to Mickey and Sarah Jane while the rest of the humans are disintegrated. Jack pops out of a duct and Sarah Jane gives him a warp star that had been presented to her in the past and Jack hooks it up, preparing to destroy the ship.
On Earth, Martha teleports to Germany where she enters and activates one of the Osterhagen key stations. She radios out to the other stations and two other stations respond: one in China and the other in Africa. They ready their stations, which will trigger twenty-five nuclear warheads buried in the crust, cracking it and destroying the Earth.
At nearly the same time, Martha and Jack radio The Crucible and threaten to activate their weapons if the Daleks do not release the Doctor and return their planets. The Daleks however lock on to the signaling locations and teleport Martha, Jack, Sarah Jane and Mickey to Davros' lair. All four are placed in isolation cells similar to the Doctor and Rose. The Supreme Dalek then orders the powering of the reality bomb to full power to destroy the universe while the Daleks fall back to the protection of The Crucible.
With the failure of other options, the clone Doctor builds a small weapon and rematerializes the TARDIS in Davros' lair. He bursts out but Davros stuns him with a burst of electricity. Donna runs out to grab the weapon and Davros electrocutes her as well. Unbeknownst to him though, the electrical burst energizes the regeneration energy she absorbed from the Doctor's hand, giving her and infusion of the Doctor's mind.
Donna, with the Doctor's mind, access the control panel and deactivates the reality bomb. She then neutralizes Davros' and the Dalek's weaponry. She frees the prisoners who push the Daleks out of the way and she, the Doctor and the clone Doctor return the planets to their proper locations. Davros manages to destroy part of the control panel before they can return the Earth but he is neutralized once again. The Supreme Dalek comes down to attack but it is destroyed by a shot from Mickey.
The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and contacts Torchwood, who had been caught in a time bubble to protect them from the Dalek attack, and Luke and Mr. Smith. Together they plan to create a reinforced energy line between the Earth and the TARDIS, allowing the TARDIS to pull the Earth across space. To access the TARDIS mainframe, Sarah Jane activates K-9, who feeds the TARDIS information to Mr. Smith. As the Doctor does this, Donna and the clone Doctor realize that the Daleks will still come after them and are highly dangerous. The clone Doctor activates a feedback loop which destroys the Dalek fleet and sets The Crucible on fire.
The Doctor hurries everyone into the TARDIS and appeals to Davros to come with them. Davros curses him and refuses. Dalek Caan, who had arranged everything to ensure the destruction of his own race, shouts a warning that one of his companions still must die. The TARDIS leaves The Crucible as it explodes and pulls the Earth across space and places it back in it's proper orbit.
The Doctor lands on Earth and drops of Martha, Jack, and Sarah Jane. Mickey also comes with them as his grandmother has passed away in the parallel dimension and he feels he has no place there. The Doctor then lands the TARDIS in the parallel dimension in Bad Wolf Bay to return Rose and Jackie, informing them that access between the dimensions will be sealed once more. He also sends the clone Doctor, who, being half human, will age and not regenerate. Rose accepts him as a substitute for the Doctor and the three are left as the TARDIS takes off again.
On the TARDIS, Donna's mind begins to become overwhelmed as the Doctor's mind is too great for her human brain. Knowing that she will die if he doesn't, though she begs him not to, he purges her mind of her knowledge of him, leaving her as she was before being transported to the TARDIS at the beginning of The Runaway Bride. He returns her to Wilfred and Sylvia's and tells them that they must never reveal what happened to her.
Donna wakes and assumes that she missed things once again. She dismisses the Doctor with a bare glance and he leaves the house. Wilfred however sees him off, saluting him as he goes. The Doctor then dematerializes in the TARDIS, alone once more.
Analysis
It's a bit cliché to talk again about how RTD starts off a story like a house on fire but always peters out. But the cliché does apply to this story as it has in previous ones. However, I would note that I don't think the fall off here was as bad as some fans make it. It is still a good story and still fundamentally entertaining even if there are some sour notes in the second half.
I'll just go ahead and cut to the chase, the problem in Journey's End is the tone shift. The Stolen Earth and the first 30 minutes or so of Journey's End played like a solid sci-fi adventure story. There was a small cheese factor but the overall tone was mostly dark and serious with some real weight behind the various moments such as the Doctor getting shot by a stray Dalek, the Daleks destroying a house with a family inside it and the death of Harriet Jones.
That tone continued until the arrival of Doctor-Donna. While I love Donna, the flippancy that suddenly took over regarding the situation and her own cavalier attitude towards the situation was just so jarring. Millions of people had died and they are laughing and pushing the Daleks and Davros around like the props they actually are. I don't even mind the usual complaint people have about the shut down being a single button on a panel in Davros' lair. For me, it is all about the flippancy of the moment.
The silliness gets compounded with the TARDIS towing the Earth across space. That just seems a bridge too far and how do you reconcile that silly, cartoony tone with the idea of Daleks mowing people down or even what happens to Donna later? The story was dark and brooding, then it got silly, then pukingly saccharine, then dark and depressing again. It's just so inconsistent in what it thinks the audience should feel about it that it becomes aggravating.
So let's jump to the saccharine moment: leaving Rose on Bad Wolf bay a second time. I'm fairly open about not liking Rose very much but I appreciated the emotion of that scene in Doomsday. There was raw feeling and even if you didn't like Rose, you could appreciate the loss she was feeling with regard to the Doctor. Fast forward two years later and while Rose is dropped off again, she now gets the clone Doctor to grow old with while keeping her parents and little brother. Not only did this throw all the emotion of the first scene into the garbage, it wasn't done particularly well because it was noticeable dubbed with studio recordings (presumably due to the wind issues). It was just the show bending over backwards once more to give the spoiled brat that is Rose whatever she wants.
I say spoiled brat because while Rose was improved in most of her appearances in Series Four, the scene where she is listening to the discussion between Harriet Jones and the others, she can't help but talk about how she was important as well. Her resentment about the status of Martha as a companion of the Doctor who has gone on to better things shows that petulant side of Rose that I couldn't stand when she was a regular companion.
A third point where Rose bothered me was when the Doctor was preparing to regenerate. Of the three of them, Rose should have been the least bothered by his regeneration. She was close to the Ninth Doctor, who selected her in the first place. Her mourning over the potential loss of the Tenth Doctor spoke to her shallowness regarding the Tenth Doctor. She knew that the Doctor would still be the Doctor, but it was the physical appearance and nuances of the Tenth Doctor's personality that she really liked. She mourned over the potential death of the Tenth Doctor because it was that form and not the Doctor himself that she desired. Again, it was just a reinforcement of the shallowness of Rose.
As for the Doctor himself, I quite liked him in this. He got dark and brooding and I always appreciate him in those situations. I also liked that, unlike Rose, he balanced out praise for everyone. He lavishes praise twice on Donna for her contributions when the try to figure things out at the Shadow Proclamation. He praises Martha and all the other contributors in their fight against the Daleks, showing no favoritism and working together. I would have liked to see him offer a bit more of a contribution in the final equation but it all works fairly well in the end.
All of the rest of the companions do well. I remember watching this story for the first time and actually thinking about watching Torchwood because I enjoyed Ianto and Gwen in this story. Other information I heard about Torchwood dissuaded me but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. I liked Jack a bit more than Martha but both were still good. Jackie and Mickey didn't do much except for rescue Sarah Jane at the beginning of Journey's End so they were a bit wasted but that's not the actor's fault. Donna also was pushed into the background a bit after leaving the Shadow Proclamation but with so many others pulling focus, that a bit understandable. I did enjoy the scene between her and the clone Doctor as he mimics her outrage and speech patterns. That was an amusing little scene.
The clone Doctor was fine. I don't really understand why people get bent out of shape about him. Obviously they had to avoid the proper regeneration of the Tenth Doctor and funneling the regeneration energy into a clone seemed perfectly fine. I also appreciated that he did what the regular Doctor could not and that was to destroy the Daleks properly. The Doctor is outraged at what the clone has done, but he raises a good point in that there are millions of Daleks, just as dangerous as before and now no Time Lords to oppose them. Genocide may be a sin in the eyes of the damaged Tenth Doctor, but how many lives would have been lost if the Daleks been permitted to continue? I side with the clone in this case. That he gets stuck with Rose is not his fault.
This story also saw the return of Davros and he had both excellent and silly moments. In a way, he was a microcosm of the whole story. Some of my favorite moments are Davros quietly taunting the Doctor, exposing him to his true nature. But then he goes and dials it up to eleven and goes way over-the-top. I compare it to not being able to fully decide whether to channel the Davros from Genesis of the Daleks or to give over to the ranting Davros of Revelation of the Daleks. I'm also not sure why he suddenly got Emperor Palpatine power in the form of projected lightening. That seemed a bit odd. Overall good, but not without flawed moments.
The overall story as I said worked well aside from the tone shifts. I felt bad for Donna but understood why they had to write her out the way she was. Whether you liked the Doctor Donna or not, Donna was fully prepared to keep travelling with the Doctor in either capacity. Only her outright death or other great tragedy would have stopped her. I suspect that her outright death was debated but that would have vindicated Sylvia and crushed Wilfred so I can understand keeping her alive. Those final moments between the Doctor and Wilf were very good and the clear impetus in making Wilf a proper companion in The End of Time. That everyone agrees that those moments between him and the Doctor were the best parts of The End of Time justifies that decision.
So overall, I'd say that the story is fun but the first part outpaces the second. As much as I dislike Rose and as much as I dislike the hokey tone the story takes for those few minutes, the majority of both parts work very well. I would also say that Journey's End does well in that it ends on a true and somber note and that does quite a bit to mitigate the overt silliness of the previous fifteen minutes.
This is the proper RTD farewell and he does a good job with that send off. Obviously there are better Tenth Doctor stories but it handles the epic scope fairly well and will give you a pretty good ride, even if there are a few bumps in the road here and there.
Overall personal score: The Stolen Earth - 4.5 out of 5; Journey's End - 3 out of 5
As has been stated by many others besides me, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End were the real goodbye stories for Russell T. Davies. Yes he stuck around for another year but he tried to replicate these in a way with The End of Time and it didn't really work. These were much more of a natural end with the old sitcom style of bringing back cast that had left the show and having a big send off at the end. But even in that, it is not without it's flaws.
Plot Summary
Having been warned of trouble at the end of Turn Left, the Doctor and Donna arrive back on Earth but find everything seemingly normal. However, upon going back in the TARDIS, the Earth is instantaneously transported away and the TARDIS is left in space. Around the world, reactions are observed by Martha with UNIT in Manhattan, Jack Harkness and his fellow Torchwood team Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper in Cardiff, Sarah Jane with her son Luke and supercomputer, Mr. Smith, in London and Wilfred and Sylvia also in London. As people notice the change in sky, Rose teleports in, just outside Wilfred and Sylvia's home.
Unable to figure out what happened, the Doctor and Donna travel to the Shadow Proclamation where they learn of twenty four other planets disappearing. While going over the list, Donna recalls that the hatchery planet of the Adipose and the planet of the Pyroviles was also missing. The Doctor adds those to the list along with the lost moon of Poosh and they are projected outward and reform themselves into a perfect engine alignment.
Above Earth, the Daleks prepare an invasion force and move towards Earth, attacking the various armed installations and rounding up humans for transport back to the Dalek command ship, the Crucible. Martha' command post is Manhattan is overrun and the commanding general fits her with a experimental teleport based off Sontaran technology. He also gives her a command disk called the Osterhagen Key. She then teleports to her mother's place in London. With the defenses down, Earth surrenders.
The Doctor and Donna try to figure out how to trace the missing planets and Donna mentions the stories of the missing bees. This triggers an idea as a certain alien insect interbreeds with Earth bees and may have warned them. They scan for signals and trace the alien signature to just outside the Medusa Cascade. The Shadow Proclamation tries to requisition the Doctor but he and Donna leave in the TARDIS before they can take control. They reappear outside the Medusa Cascade but find nothing and the end of the signal trail.
Wilfred and Sylvia step out to fight the Daleks but are rescued by Rose, looking for the Doctor. They head back to their home where Rose detects a signal from Wilfred's computer. It doesn't have a webcamera so she can only receive and not transmit. She observes as Harriet Jones, former PM, sends a signal over the subwave network and contacts Torchwood, Sarah Jane and Martha. She networks with Mr. Smith and the Cardiff rift power source to boost the phone signal to call the Doctor, which succeeds but also alerts the Daleks to Harriet Jones' location. She transfers control to Captain Jack at Torchwood just before the Daleks break into her home and kill her.
The Doctor receives the signal and contacts with Jack, Martha and Sara Jane. Wilfred and Sylvia are relieved to see Donna just behind the Doctor. As they talk, the signal is overridden by The Crucible and the Doctor sees Davros, who was rescued from death in the Time War by Dalek Caan, after escaping the events of Evolution of the Daleks. The Doctor deactivates and lands on Earth in London. The Daleks also send an attack force to the new subwave control center at Torchwood.
After landing, the Doctor and Donna exit and spot Rose who left Wilfred and Sylvia's house. The Doctor runs towards her but is shot down by a passing Dalek. The Dalek is destroyed by Jack who teleports in to help. He and Rose drag the Doctor into the TARDIS where he begins to regenerate. However, after healing the wound, the Doctor transfers the regeneration energy into the severed hand cut off by the Sycorax and recovered from the Master following Last of the Time Lords. The Daleks meanwhile move and surround the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane leaves her house to go help the Doctor but runs into a Dalek patrol. They mean to kill her but are destroyed by Mickey and Jackie Tyler who teleport in from the parallel dimension. They approach the TARDIS and see it placed in a temporal lock which drains it's power. It is then taken up to The Crucible. Knowing it's the only way to get on to the ship, Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie surrender to the Daleks and are put with a group of human prisoners for transport.
On The Crucible, the Daleks deactivate the defenses of the TARDIS and order the people out. The Doctor, Rose and Jack all come but Donna is distracted by a heartbeat and the TARDIS door shuts before she can follow. Suspecting treachery, the Supreme Dalek drops the TARDIS into the core of The Crucible where the TARDIS will be destroyed. As the TARDIS begins to burn, Donna touches the hand filled with regeneration energy. It explodes out of it's case and a clone of the Doctor materializes. The clone brings up the TARDIS' power and dematerializes, making it look like the TARDIS was destroyed.
Jack attacks the Supreme Dalek but is gunned down. The Doctor observes him quietly coming back to life but plays along, though Rose is unaware of Jack's ability and thinks him really dead. The Doctor and Rose are taken to Davros' lair while Jack's body is dumped in the incinerator. He escapes and crawls through the ducts while the Doctor and Rose are placed in isolation cells.
As the humans arrive on The Crucible, a woman falls over, distracting the Daleks. Sarah Jane and Mickey make a dash and hide behind a door but Jackie is left in the crowd. The Supreme Dalek orders a test and Davros informs the Doctor of the new weapon, the reality bomb, which destroys the electrical connection between atoms, reducing all matter in it's field to subatomic particles. As it prepares to fire on the crowd, the thirty minute recharge on Jackie's teleport ends and she is able to teleport to Mickey and Sarah Jane while the rest of the humans are disintegrated. Jack pops out of a duct and Sarah Jane gives him a warp star that had been presented to her in the past and Jack hooks it up, preparing to destroy the ship.
On Earth, Martha teleports to Germany where she enters and activates one of the Osterhagen key stations. She radios out to the other stations and two other stations respond: one in China and the other in Africa. They ready their stations, which will trigger twenty-five nuclear warheads buried in the crust, cracking it and destroying the Earth.
At nearly the same time, Martha and Jack radio The Crucible and threaten to activate their weapons if the Daleks do not release the Doctor and return their planets. The Daleks however lock on to the signaling locations and teleport Martha, Jack, Sarah Jane and Mickey to Davros' lair. All four are placed in isolation cells similar to the Doctor and Rose. The Supreme Dalek then orders the powering of the reality bomb to full power to destroy the universe while the Daleks fall back to the protection of The Crucible.
With the failure of other options, the clone Doctor builds a small weapon and rematerializes the TARDIS in Davros' lair. He bursts out but Davros stuns him with a burst of electricity. Donna runs out to grab the weapon and Davros electrocutes her as well. Unbeknownst to him though, the electrical burst energizes the regeneration energy she absorbed from the Doctor's hand, giving her and infusion of the Doctor's mind.
Donna, with the Doctor's mind, access the control panel and deactivates the reality bomb. She then neutralizes Davros' and the Dalek's weaponry. She frees the prisoners who push the Daleks out of the way and she, the Doctor and the clone Doctor return the planets to their proper locations. Davros manages to destroy part of the control panel before they can return the Earth but he is neutralized once again. The Supreme Dalek comes down to attack but it is destroyed by a shot from Mickey.
The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and contacts Torchwood, who had been caught in a time bubble to protect them from the Dalek attack, and Luke and Mr. Smith. Together they plan to create a reinforced energy line between the Earth and the TARDIS, allowing the TARDIS to pull the Earth across space. To access the TARDIS mainframe, Sarah Jane activates K-9, who feeds the TARDIS information to Mr. Smith. As the Doctor does this, Donna and the clone Doctor realize that the Daleks will still come after them and are highly dangerous. The clone Doctor activates a feedback loop which destroys the Dalek fleet and sets The Crucible on fire.
The Doctor hurries everyone into the TARDIS and appeals to Davros to come with them. Davros curses him and refuses. Dalek Caan, who had arranged everything to ensure the destruction of his own race, shouts a warning that one of his companions still must die. The TARDIS leaves The Crucible as it explodes and pulls the Earth across space and places it back in it's proper orbit.
The Doctor lands on Earth and drops of Martha, Jack, and Sarah Jane. Mickey also comes with them as his grandmother has passed away in the parallel dimension and he feels he has no place there. The Doctor then lands the TARDIS in the parallel dimension in Bad Wolf Bay to return Rose and Jackie, informing them that access between the dimensions will be sealed once more. He also sends the clone Doctor, who, being half human, will age and not regenerate. Rose accepts him as a substitute for the Doctor and the three are left as the TARDIS takes off again.
On the TARDIS, Donna's mind begins to become overwhelmed as the Doctor's mind is too great for her human brain. Knowing that she will die if he doesn't, though she begs him not to, he purges her mind of her knowledge of him, leaving her as she was before being transported to the TARDIS at the beginning of The Runaway Bride. He returns her to Wilfred and Sylvia's and tells them that they must never reveal what happened to her.
Donna wakes and assumes that she missed things once again. She dismisses the Doctor with a bare glance and he leaves the house. Wilfred however sees him off, saluting him as he goes. The Doctor then dematerializes in the TARDIS, alone once more.
Analysis
It's a bit cliché to talk again about how RTD starts off a story like a house on fire but always peters out. But the cliché does apply to this story as it has in previous ones. However, I would note that I don't think the fall off here was as bad as some fans make it. It is still a good story and still fundamentally entertaining even if there are some sour notes in the second half.
I'll just go ahead and cut to the chase, the problem in Journey's End is the tone shift. The Stolen Earth and the first 30 minutes or so of Journey's End played like a solid sci-fi adventure story. There was a small cheese factor but the overall tone was mostly dark and serious with some real weight behind the various moments such as the Doctor getting shot by a stray Dalek, the Daleks destroying a house with a family inside it and the death of Harriet Jones.
That tone continued until the arrival of Doctor-Donna. While I love Donna, the flippancy that suddenly took over regarding the situation and her own cavalier attitude towards the situation was just so jarring. Millions of people had died and they are laughing and pushing the Daleks and Davros around like the props they actually are. I don't even mind the usual complaint people have about the shut down being a single button on a panel in Davros' lair. For me, it is all about the flippancy of the moment.
The silliness gets compounded with the TARDIS towing the Earth across space. That just seems a bridge too far and how do you reconcile that silly, cartoony tone with the idea of Daleks mowing people down or even what happens to Donna later? The story was dark and brooding, then it got silly, then pukingly saccharine, then dark and depressing again. It's just so inconsistent in what it thinks the audience should feel about it that it becomes aggravating.
So let's jump to the saccharine moment: leaving Rose on Bad Wolf bay a second time. I'm fairly open about not liking Rose very much but I appreciated the emotion of that scene in Doomsday. There was raw feeling and even if you didn't like Rose, you could appreciate the loss she was feeling with regard to the Doctor. Fast forward two years later and while Rose is dropped off again, she now gets the clone Doctor to grow old with while keeping her parents and little brother. Not only did this throw all the emotion of the first scene into the garbage, it wasn't done particularly well because it was noticeable dubbed with studio recordings (presumably due to the wind issues). It was just the show bending over backwards once more to give the spoiled brat that is Rose whatever she wants.
I say spoiled brat because while Rose was improved in most of her appearances in Series Four, the scene where she is listening to the discussion between Harriet Jones and the others, she can't help but talk about how she was important as well. Her resentment about the status of Martha as a companion of the Doctor who has gone on to better things shows that petulant side of Rose that I couldn't stand when she was a regular companion.
A third point where Rose bothered me was when the Doctor was preparing to regenerate. Of the three of them, Rose should have been the least bothered by his regeneration. She was close to the Ninth Doctor, who selected her in the first place. Her mourning over the potential loss of the Tenth Doctor spoke to her shallowness regarding the Tenth Doctor. She knew that the Doctor would still be the Doctor, but it was the physical appearance and nuances of the Tenth Doctor's personality that she really liked. She mourned over the potential death of the Tenth Doctor because it was that form and not the Doctor himself that she desired. Again, it was just a reinforcement of the shallowness of Rose.
As for the Doctor himself, I quite liked him in this. He got dark and brooding and I always appreciate him in those situations. I also liked that, unlike Rose, he balanced out praise for everyone. He lavishes praise twice on Donna for her contributions when the try to figure things out at the Shadow Proclamation. He praises Martha and all the other contributors in their fight against the Daleks, showing no favoritism and working together. I would have liked to see him offer a bit more of a contribution in the final equation but it all works fairly well in the end.
All of the rest of the companions do well. I remember watching this story for the first time and actually thinking about watching Torchwood because I enjoyed Ianto and Gwen in this story. Other information I heard about Torchwood dissuaded me but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. I liked Jack a bit more than Martha but both were still good. Jackie and Mickey didn't do much except for rescue Sarah Jane at the beginning of Journey's End so they were a bit wasted but that's not the actor's fault. Donna also was pushed into the background a bit after leaving the Shadow Proclamation but with so many others pulling focus, that a bit understandable. I did enjoy the scene between her and the clone Doctor as he mimics her outrage and speech patterns. That was an amusing little scene.
The clone Doctor was fine. I don't really understand why people get bent out of shape about him. Obviously they had to avoid the proper regeneration of the Tenth Doctor and funneling the regeneration energy into a clone seemed perfectly fine. I also appreciated that he did what the regular Doctor could not and that was to destroy the Daleks properly. The Doctor is outraged at what the clone has done, but he raises a good point in that there are millions of Daleks, just as dangerous as before and now no Time Lords to oppose them. Genocide may be a sin in the eyes of the damaged Tenth Doctor, but how many lives would have been lost if the Daleks been permitted to continue? I side with the clone in this case. That he gets stuck with Rose is not his fault.
This story also saw the return of Davros and he had both excellent and silly moments. In a way, he was a microcosm of the whole story. Some of my favorite moments are Davros quietly taunting the Doctor, exposing him to his true nature. But then he goes and dials it up to eleven and goes way over-the-top. I compare it to not being able to fully decide whether to channel the Davros from Genesis of the Daleks or to give over to the ranting Davros of Revelation of the Daleks. I'm also not sure why he suddenly got Emperor Palpatine power in the form of projected lightening. That seemed a bit odd. Overall good, but not without flawed moments.
The overall story as I said worked well aside from the tone shifts. I felt bad for Donna but understood why they had to write her out the way she was. Whether you liked the Doctor Donna or not, Donna was fully prepared to keep travelling with the Doctor in either capacity. Only her outright death or other great tragedy would have stopped her. I suspect that her outright death was debated but that would have vindicated Sylvia and crushed Wilfred so I can understand keeping her alive. Those final moments between the Doctor and Wilf were very good and the clear impetus in making Wilf a proper companion in The End of Time. That everyone agrees that those moments between him and the Doctor were the best parts of The End of Time justifies that decision.
So overall, I'd say that the story is fun but the first part outpaces the second. As much as I dislike Rose and as much as I dislike the hokey tone the story takes for those few minutes, the majority of both parts work very well. I would also say that Journey's End does well in that it ends on a true and somber note and that does quite a bit to mitigate the overt silliness of the previous fifteen minutes.
This is the proper RTD farewell and he does a good job with that send off. Obviously there are better Tenth Doctor stories but it handles the epic scope fairly well and will give you a pretty good ride, even if there are a few bumps in the road here and there.
Overall personal score: The Stolen Earth - 4.5 out of 5; Journey's End - 3 out of 5
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