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
Showing posts with label Donna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donna. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
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
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
The Runaway Bride
They had the reception without me!
The Runaway Bride is a good example of why it's good to not rely on your memory of a story from several years ago and instead go back and rewatch the story. My memory focused a great deal on the campier parts and I totally forgot some of the better elements of the story. It also benefits from being watched with Series Four in the back of your mind as many elements of the Doctor-Donna relationship form here.
Plot Summary
Donna Noble begins to walk down the aisle at her wedding when she disappears in a mist of particles. She reappears on the TARDIS, just as the Doctor has said goodbye to Rose. After settling Donna down, the Doctor attempts to take her back to the church but lands in the wrong part of town when the TARDIS begins to act up.
After a few moments of trying to figure out what to do, Donna manages to borrow some money off a shopper and catch a cab. The Doctor, distracted by getting money from an ATM, notices that the cab is being driven by a robotic Santa, similar to those seen in The Christmas Invasion. He pursues her in the TARDIS as she realizes that she is being kidnapped by a robot. The Doctor manages to sabotage the driver and has Donna leap from the cab to the TARDIS.
The Doctor is forced to let the TARDIS rest on the top of building for a couple of hours, allowing him to get to know Donna a bit and try to solve the mystery of how she ended up in the TARDIS. He learns the backstory of her relationship but nothing that clicks immediately as to how she ended up there.
With the TARDIS finished recovering, the Doctor takes her to the reception, which is in full swing. A little nonplussed, Donna joins the party and begins to go back to her normal self. Borrowing a cell phone, the Doctor does a quick search and learns that Donna's company is owned by Torchwood, furthering his confusion. The Doctor hangs around a bit, trying not to think of Rose when he notices a cameraman. He reviews the tape of the wedding where Donna disappears and recognizes the energy pattern as huon energy, a type not used in billions of years.
Spying more robots preparing to attack, the Doctor realizes that they are using the energy to track Donna. He warns everyone to get down and the Christmas trees release shock grenades, trying to stun the guests. Upon entering, the Doctor hooks his sonic screwdriver into the sound system and disables the robots. He then grabs Donna and her fiancé Lance and head off to their company.
In the building, the Doctor discovers an entrance to a Torchwood lab under the Thames. In this lab he finds Huon energy suspended in liquid form. They are then confronted by the Empress of the Racnoss, a giant humanoid spider from the ancient days, who still uses huon energy. She has had a tunnel dug to the center of the Earth and is preparing to release her children from sleep through a body saturated in huon energy. This plan was carried out by Lance who is working for the Empress as he slipped the liquid huon energy in Donna's morning coffee.
The Empress prepares to have her robots kill the Doctor and Donna but the Doctor uses the huon energy in Donna to summon the TARDIS and spirit them away. Going back 4.6 billion years, they observe the Earth being formed around the Racnoss egg ship. They are then ripped back to the present as the Empress, having lost Donna, has saturated Lance's body with huon energy.
The Doctor is able to materialize back in the tunnels but Donna is captured by the robots and held prisoner with Lance. The Empress then kills Lance by dropping him in to the tunnel to feed her offspring. The Doctor arrives in disguise but is easily spotted by the Empress. He gives her one warning, offering to take her and her children to a new planet to thrive. She declines, thinking she has the upper hand.
The Doctor then deactivates the robots and frees Donna. He also releases all the valves within the base, draining water from the Thames, which floods into the hole, drowning the Racnoss young. Donna recalls the Doctor back to his senses and the two flee the flooding lab. The Empress also transports herself back to her ship, which had been attacking the populace in preparation for feasting by her brood. Having used her huon energy to transport and lacking a fresh supply, her ship is defenseless as British tanks fire upon it. It is quickly destroyed, killing the Empress.
The Doctor then flies Donna back to her parents home. He invites her to come with him but she declines, overwhelmed by what he has shown her. She in turn invites him in for dinner but he also declines, although mostly by attempting to run away after telling her yes. They say their goodbyes and the Doctor takes off into the night.
Analysis
The Runaway Bride is not perfect by any stretch of means, but if you like the interaction between the Tenth Doctor and Donna, you will enjoy this episode. This episode is Donna at her most abrasive and shrill but even in the beginning it still plays well with the Doctor. In fact, it is rather funny to see him get pushed around for a change. It is also a nice contrast to see a woman who forcefully expresses her mind to the Doctor rather than go passive-aggressive and bitchy when she has something go against her.
Even though Donna starts out a bit bitchy, she improves as the reality of the situation hits her. By the time she and the Doctor have the rooftop scene, she has calmed down and all her further interactions are much nicer, even if she does have stroppy moments. There are even a few good moments of belittling Lance before knowing that he is working against them that are quite funny.
This is also the one story where it makes sense that he is moping about Rose. He has sad moments immediately after in the TARDIS and then at the reception where he envisions her dancing. But aside from that, he doesn't let it get to him. The use of Rose as appropriate memory or plot point her makes sense and given the immediate preceding nature of her departure, a little melancholy makes sense as classic era stories would often have a bit of reflection either at the end of the story or the beginning of the next story regarding the companion's departure.
The pacing and adventurous nature of the story makes sense given it's place as a Christmas episode. It flows fairly well with a bit of mystery as to the true villain since it is made fairly obvious that the robots are just servants. There does seems to be a little bit of faffing about after the Empress is revealed but I do like that she doesn't monologue much. She gets to the point of trying to kill the Doctor fairly quickly and only keeps Donna alive for as long as she does because she needs her alive.
So that brings us to my memory dislike of the story and that is the Empress herself. As impressive as her costume is, there is something I don't like about it. It just seems to come across as fake looking. I think the problem is three-fold. First is her constant gaping mouth. I don't know if the director told her it made her look more menacing, but it just makes her look silly to me. Second is her eyes. They added six additional eyes on the crown and even managed to get them to blink. However, those eyes are all bulbous with no pupil, exactly as a spider's eye should be. Try as they might, they can't disguise the white of the actress' central eye which diminishes the believability of the other eyes. Third is her arms. They are her forelegs which she is using in arm fashion, but given the way the other six look, they just look like tapered tubes coming off her arms that she raises up at various points and it doesn't quite look right. I don't usually mark down a story for production value but there was something about the Empress. I think it had to do with the fact that everything else about her and all other surroundings looked very good that it just made the limitations of her costume jump out that much more. Still, I'm pleased that they relied on real costuming rather than attempting to use less than stellar CGI to realize her.
Also affecting my memory is the performance of the Empress herself. She is over the top, but not as bad as I remembered her. You wouldn't expect subtlety from a giant spider but there are moments where she gets a little off the rails. I think the worst of it is when she goes into hissing mode, trying to maintain an animalistic performance. I think she operates better when she is quieter, more sinister and she does have the moments. It also helps that she lets Lance go on the exposition rant, giving her those moments of just looking sinister and creepy and that really helps. She loses it at the end with the death of her children and her ranting about destroying the Earth just before she is blown out of the sky, but taken as a whole, it is better than I expected.
The only other moments I didn't care for involved children. In the TARDIS chase sequence, Donna is encouraged and cheered for silently by two kids watching from the back of the car in front. It was a little too much "I want the audience to react this way" for me and didn't care for the cutaways. The other was when the Empress' ship attacks. A little girl does a freeze and scream as a bolt of energy approaches her. She is all alone, despite being shown with her parents in the previous shot. It also has that "I'm looking at something approaching me and I could avoid it by moving but won't for dramatic reasons" look to it as she is scooped out of the way just before impact. It's a cheap effect and it shows.
Still, altogether, it is a well put together story. It flows well and the characters are entertaining, especially if you're already used to Donna in Series Four. It has it's silly moments, but the good well outweighs the bad in my opinion.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The Runaway Bride is a good example of why it's good to not rely on your memory of a story from several years ago and instead go back and rewatch the story. My memory focused a great deal on the campier parts and I totally forgot some of the better elements of the story. It also benefits from being watched with Series Four in the back of your mind as many elements of the Doctor-Donna relationship form here.
Plot Summary
Donna Noble begins to walk down the aisle at her wedding when she disappears in a mist of particles. She reappears on the TARDIS, just as the Doctor has said goodbye to Rose. After settling Donna down, the Doctor attempts to take her back to the church but lands in the wrong part of town when the TARDIS begins to act up.
After a few moments of trying to figure out what to do, Donna manages to borrow some money off a shopper and catch a cab. The Doctor, distracted by getting money from an ATM, notices that the cab is being driven by a robotic Santa, similar to those seen in The Christmas Invasion. He pursues her in the TARDIS as she realizes that she is being kidnapped by a robot. The Doctor manages to sabotage the driver and has Donna leap from the cab to the TARDIS.
The Doctor is forced to let the TARDIS rest on the top of building for a couple of hours, allowing him to get to know Donna a bit and try to solve the mystery of how she ended up in the TARDIS. He learns the backstory of her relationship but nothing that clicks immediately as to how she ended up there.
With the TARDIS finished recovering, the Doctor takes her to the reception, which is in full swing. A little nonplussed, Donna joins the party and begins to go back to her normal self. Borrowing a cell phone, the Doctor does a quick search and learns that Donna's company is owned by Torchwood, furthering his confusion. The Doctor hangs around a bit, trying not to think of Rose when he notices a cameraman. He reviews the tape of the wedding where Donna disappears and recognizes the energy pattern as huon energy, a type not used in billions of years.
Spying more robots preparing to attack, the Doctor realizes that they are using the energy to track Donna. He warns everyone to get down and the Christmas trees release shock grenades, trying to stun the guests. Upon entering, the Doctor hooks his sonic screwdriver into the sound system and disables the robots. He then grabs Donna and her fiancé Lance and head off to their company.
In the building, the Doctor discovers an entrance to a Torchwood lab under the Thames. In this lab he finds Huon energy suspended in liquid form. They are then confronted by the Empress of the Racnoss, a giant humanoid spider from the ancient days, who still uses huon energy. She has had a tunnel dug to the center of the Earth and is preparing to release her children from sleep through a body saturated in huon energy. This plan was carried out by Lance who is working for the Empress as he slipped the liquid huon energy in Donna's morning coffee.
The Empress prepares to have her robots kill the Doctor and Donna but the Doctor uses the huon energy in Donna to summon the TARDIS and spirit them away. Going back 4.6 billion years, they observe the Earth being formed around the Racnoss egg ship. They are then ripped back to the present as the Empress, having lost Donna, has saturated Lance's body with huon energy.
The Doctor is able to materialize back in the tunnels but Donna is captured by the robots and held prisoner with Lance. The Empress then kills Lance by dropping him in to the tunnel to feed her offspring. The Doctor arrives in disguise but is easily spotted by the Empress. He gives her one warning, offering to take her and her children to a new planet to thrive. She declines, thinking she has the upper hand.
The Doctor then deactivates the robots and frees Donna. He also releases all the valves within the base, draining water from the Thames, which floods into the hole, drowning the Racnoss young. Donna recalls the Doctor back to his senses and the two flee the flooding lab. The Empress also transports herself back to her ship, which had been attacking the populace in preparation for feasting by her brood. Having used her huon energy to transport and lacking a fresh supply, her ship is defenseless as British tanks fire upon it. It is quickly destroyed, killing the Empress.
The Doctor then flies Donna back to her parents home. He invites her to come with him but she declines, overwhelmed by what he has shown her. She in turn invites him in for dinner but he also declines, although mostly by attempting to run away after telling her yes. They say their goodbyes and the Doctor takes off into the night.
Analysis
The Runaway Bride is not perfect by any stretch of means, but if you like the interaction between the Tenth Doctor and Donna, you will enjoy this episode. This episode is Donna at her most abrasive and shrill but even in the beginning it still plays well with the Doctor. In fact, it is rather funny to see him get pushed around for a change. It is also a nice contrast to see a woman who forcefully expresses her mind to the Doctor rather than go passive-aggressive and bitchy when she has something go against her.
Even though Donna starts out a bit bitchy, she improves as the reality of the situation hits her. By the time she and the Doctor have the rooftop scene, she has calmed down and all her further interactions are much nicer, even if she does have stroppy moments. There are even a few good moments of belittling Lance before knowing that he is working against them that are quite funny.
This is also the one story where it makes sense that he is moping about Rose. He has sad moments immediately after in the TARDIS and then at the reception where he envisions her dancing. But aside from that, he doesn't let it get to him. The use of Rose as appropriate memory or plot point her makes sense and given the immediate preceding nature of her departure, a little melancholy makes sense as classic era stories would often have a bit of reflection either at the end of the story or the beginning of the next story regarding the companion's departure.
The pacing and adventurous nature of the story makes sense given it's place as a Christmas episode. It flows fairly well with a bit of mystery as to the true villain since it is made fairly obvious that the robots are just servants. There does seems to be a little bit of faffing about after the Empress is revealed but I do like that she doesn't monologue much. She gets to the point of trying to kill the Doctor fairly quickly and only keeps Donna alive for as long as she does because she needs her alive.
So that brings us to my memory dislike of the story and that is the Empress herself. As impressive as her costume is, there is something I don't like about it. It just seems to come across as fake looking. I think the problem is three-fold. First is her constant gaping mouth. I don't know if the director told her it made her look more menacing, but it just makes her look silly to me. Second is her eyes. They added six additional eyes on the crown and even managed to get them to blink. However, those eyes are all bulbous with no pupil, exactly as a spider's eye should be. Try as they might, they can't disguise the white of the actress' central eye which diminishes the believability of the other eyes. Third is her arms. They are her forelegs which she is using in arm fashion, but given the way the other six look, they just look like tapered tubes coming off her arms that she raises up at various points and it doesn't quite look right. I don't usually mark down a story for production value but there was something about the Empress. I think it had to do with the fact that everything else about her and all other surroundings looked very good that it just made the limitations of her costume jump out that much more. Still, I'm pleased that they relied on real costuming rather than attempting to use less than stellar CGI to realize her.
Also affecting my memory is the performance of the Empress herself. She is over the top, but not as bad as I remembered her. You wouldn't expect subtlety from a giant spider but there are moments where she gets a little off the rails. I think the worst of it is when she goes into hissing mode, trying to maintain an animalistic performance. I think she operates better when she is quieter, more sinister and she does have the moments. It also helps that she lets Lance go on the exposition rant, giving her those moments of just looking sinister and creepy and that really helps. She loses it at the end with the death of her children and her ranting about destroying the Earth just before she is blown out of the sky, but taken as a whole, it is better than I expected.
The only other moments I didn't care for involved children. In the TARDIS chase sequence, Donna is encouraged and cheered for silently by two kids watching from the back of the car in front. It was a little too much "I want the audience to react this way" for me and didn't care for the cutaways. The other was when the Empress' ship attacks. A little girl does a freeze and scream as a bolt of energy approaches her. She is all alone, despite being shown with her parents in the previous shot. It also has that "I'm looking at something approaching me and I could avoid it by moving but won't for dramatic reasons" look to it as she is scooped out of the way just before impact. It's a cheap effect and it shows.
Still, altogether, it is a well put together story. It flows well and the characters are entertaining, especially if you're already used to Donna in Series Four. It has it's silly moments, but the good well outweighs the bad in my opinion.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Turn Left
There is something on your back.
Doctor-lite stories have evolved nicely since the misfire that was Love and Monsters. It is not often that Doctor Who plays with the "what if" card but when it does it usually does it well. Turn Left is an interesting exploration of how things would have evolved had Donna never met the Doctor and he died in the aftermath of the sans Donna The Runaway Bride.
Plot Summary
Donna and the Doctor are visiting a planet and they split up to do some sampling. Donna enters a fortune teller's house who prompts her to recall the point in her life where she made a decision that resulted in her meeting the Doctor. She focuses on the moment when she ignored her mother and turned left at an intersection, leading her to get the job in which she eventually met the Doctor. The fortune teller tells her to focus on turning right as something sneaks behind her and latches on to her back.
Six months after turning right, Donna is celebrating Christmas with some coworkers, having just gotten a promotion in her job. One of the women is fixated as she keeps thinking that she sees something on Donna's back. Suddenly, London is attacked by the webbed star ship of the Racnoss. The army manages to destroy it and Donna rushes towards the action while everyone else runs away. There she sees the army taking away the body of the Doctor, although she doesn't know who the Doctor is at this point. He was drowned in the flooding and failed to regenerate.
As Donna turns away, she sees a blonde woman run up and asking about the Doctor. Donna tells her that the Doctor is dead. Rose turns away but notes Donna's name. Donna asks hers but she disappears before saying anything.
Several months later, Donna is being laid off. Everyone is distracted as a hospital has disappeared. It reappears several hours later with only a sole survivor. That survivor notes how a colleague named Martha saved his life and how a woman named Sarah Jane Smith had stopped another woman from using an MRI to destroy the hospital. He also reports of the search by "space rhinos," triggering Wilfred's interest. Rose also reappears to Donna, telling her to use the raffle ticket she still has and use her winnings to take the family out of London for Christmas.
At Christmas, Donna, her mother and grandfather head to an inn north of London. A maid enters and is immediately unnerved by something on Donna's back. They are distracted though as the television reports a replica of the Titanic is crashing into London. The feed is suddenly lost, but the whole family sees a mushroom cloud appear where London once was.
With most of southern England irradiated, the family is relocated to Leeds where they share a house with several other families, including a large Italian one headed by the jovial Rocco Colasanto. Wilfred is buoyed by the thought that the Americans have promised aid to help Britain. However, this is dashed a few days later when over sixty million Americans are killed in the birth and collection of the Adipose children.
A couple of months later, Rose appears again as army soldiers are seen trying to disable toxic gas coming from the cars. Rose leads Donna away and informs her of the Torchwood team's demise as they destroy the ATMOS system and the Sontaran ship. Rose also tells Donna that she is the special key and in three weeks will agree to come with her to stop all this, although Donna must die.
Three weeks later, the Colasanto family is relocated to an internment camp with Wilfred noting that this was how the Nazis started. He and Donna try to find solace in looking through his telescope but they observe the stars disappearing. Donna then acquiesces and goes with Rose when she reappears.
Rose and UNIT take Donna to a facility with the dark TARDIS. They have used technology scoured from it to create a time machine. They first show Donna the time beetle on her back. Freaked out, she begs them to turn the machine off. Rose then tells her that the only way to get rid of it is to fix the universe by having her go back in time and forcing herself to turn left at that intersection. Donna agrees although Rose again alludes that she will have to die.
The time machine sends Donna back to four minutes before she makes the turn but also deposits her half a mile away from the intersection. She runs as hard as she can but realizes that she won't make it to stop herself. Remembering what Rose said, she steps in front of an oncoming truck. The truck crashes into her and cars begin to back up towards the intersection. Seeing the traffic, the intersection Donna turns left. As the original Donna dies, Rose reappears and whispers two words into her ear. Donna reawakens in the fortune teller's shop, the failure to change having killed the beetle and the teller flees in terror.
The Doctor enters and Donna tells him what happened. He notes the beetle is part of the Trickster's Brigade (a Sarah Jane Adventures villain) and how is usually just creates a blip in time that that universe compensates for to feed. Donna however generated a parallel universe. Talking about that triggers Donna's memory and she recalls Rose. As Donna talks of her the Doctor becomes concerned, demanding to know her name. Donna recalls she said "Bad Wolf." As she does so, the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS with warning signs flashing everywhere. Confused, Donna asks what is wrong and the Doctor states that it's the end of the universe.
Analysis
Turn Left has it's ups and downs but it's the type of story that every companion should have: a character study that allows them to breathe and develop, especially in a way that is independent of the Doctor. Not that being with the Doctor is bad, but it is nice to see a companion act in a way that is not influenced by the Doctor now and again. This story is probably also the most Doctor-lite of all the Doctor-lites as he is only in the first thirty seconds at the beginning and the last two minutes at the end. Any shots of the Doctor during the rest of the episode are taken from previous episodes (mostly The Runaway Bride).
It was also a nice way to bring Rose back without offering disrespect to the drama of the goodbye moment in Doomsday (as would be done at the end of the season in Journey's End). It makes sense that in a parallel universe created around Donna, it would offer a thinner veil that Rose could break through and act as the Doctor surrogate. In the end, she gets left out again as the veil is returned to it's original strength (at least until Stolen Earth).
Donna has another one of her nice moments in this episode as well. She starts more like her stroppier self as she is unchanged by the Doctor, but there is emotional growth as the world comes crashing down. This culminates when she is shown the time beetle on her back and her reaction of fear and horror mixed with the refusal to believe that she is special is quite good. Yet it is also still mixed with Donna's humor which gives much needed levity.
On that note, this is a bleak episode to watch. It more or less has to be since it needs to highlight how important the Doctor is but there are moments that are just down right horrifying. The nuclear blast in London is pretty bad, but I think the moment that just hits you hardest is when the Colasanto family is taken away. Nearly everyone in the story had been pretty dour but Rocco expressed happiness in the face of dark times. Then he is taken away and he still stays happy for Donna. It is not until he salutes Wilf that that moment even breaks him. The tragedy of that scene just oozes out without being melodramatic. In a way, it reminded me of the scene near the end of Life is Beautiful where Guido maintains the illusion to his son that he is just playing a game with the soldiers as he is being led off to be shot. The episode doesn't get in to whether the Italians are actively being disposed of or just being held, but it is not hard to imagine that it might come to that point in that timeline.
There are only two points in this story that bother me. The first is the unconvincing way that Donna changes her mind to turn right. That might be down to direction but Donna starts the conversation so feisty and Sylvia isn't any worse than she normally is but Donna just rolls over and concedes. Now obviously in the real timeline, she blew her mother off so it shouldn't be too different, but it just feels wrong to have Donna concede so easily.
My second is one that others have mentioned and that is the Doctor's death. I don't recall the situation in The Runaway Bride being so dire as to that the Doctor would have died without Donna. I can think of more obvious situations where the Doctor would have died when he was with Martha but this was supposed to be about Donna so I can leave that point. It is also hard to imagine that things would have been so bad as to prevent him from regenerating. The half-hearted aside of it happening too fast seems like garbage to me as well. The only point that makes sense to me would be that if the chamber flooded, drowning the Doctor, his regeneration wouldn't have mattered as there still wouldn't have been air to breathe. We've seen enough instances where the Doctor is vulnerable during regeneration (with The Impossible Astronaut providing a direct example of total death in the midst of regeneration) so drowning in a sealed chamber could be seen as a way to kill the Doctor properly. But it still seemed a bit off to me. At the very least, it could have been explained better by the UNIT soldiers. Any story where I have to fill in a better explanation than the one provided is falling a bit short.
Despite the shortcomings and other small bits, this is a pretty good episode. It makes for a good intro into the finale, even if the finale didn't quite live up to all the expectations. It is not an episode to watch for a first timer as there is too much dependence on knowing the Tenth Doctor era to understand the story. But once you've been through, it is a perfectly good story to pull down and enjoy from time to time.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Doctor-lite stories have evolved nicely since the misfire that was Love and Monsters. It is not often that Doctor Who plays with the "what if" card but when it does it usually does it well. Turn Left is an interesting exploration of how things would have evolved had Donna never met the Doctor and he died in the aftermath of the sans Donna The Runaway Bride.
Plot Summary
Donna and the Doctor are visiting a planet and they split up to do some sampling. Donna enters a fortune teller's house who prompts her to recall the point in her life where she made a decision that resulted in her meeting the Doctor. She focuses on the moment when she ignored her mother and turned left at an intersection, leading her to get the job in which she eventually met the Doctor. The fortune teller tells her to focus on turning right as something sneaks behind her and latches on to her back.
Six months after turning right, Donna is celebrating Christmas with some coworkers, having just gotten a promotion in her job. One of the women is fixated as she keeps thinking that she sees something on Donna's back. Suddenly, London is attacked by the webbed star ship of the Racnoss. The army manages to destroy it and Donna rushes towards the action while everyone else runs away. There she sees the army taking away the body of the Doctor, although she doesn't know who the Doctor is at this point. He was drowned in the flooding and failed to regenerate.
As Donna turns away, she sees a blonde woman run up and asking about the Doctor. Donna tells her that the Doctor is dead. Rose turns away but notes Donna's name. Donna asks hers but she disappears before saying anything.
Several months later, Donna is being laid off. Everyone is distracted as a hospital has disappeared. It reappears several hours later with only a sole survivor. That survivor notes how a colleague named Martha saved his life and how a woman named Sarah Jane Smith had stopped another woman from using an MRI to destroy the hospital. He also reports of the search by "space rhinos," triggering Wilfred's interest. Rose also reappears to Donna, telling her to use the raffle ticket she still has and use her winnings to take the family out of London for Christmas.
At Christmas, Donna, her mother and grandfather head to an inn north of London. A maid enters and is immediately unnerved by something on Donna's back. They are distracted though as the television reports a replica of the Titanic is crashing into London. The feed is suddenly lost, but the whole family sees a mushroom cloud appear where London once was.
With most of southern England irradiated, the family is relocated to Leeds where they share a house with several other families, including a large Italian one headed by the jovial Rocco Colasanto. Wilfred is buoyed by the thought that the Americans have promised aid to help Britain. However, this is dashed a few days later when over sixty million Americans are killed in the birth and collection of the Adipose children.
A couple of months later, Rose appears again as army soldiers are seen trying to disable toxic gas coming from the cars. Rose leads Donna away and informs her of the Torchwood team's demise as they destroy the ATMOS system and the Sontaran ship. Rose also tells Donna that she is the special key and in three weeks will agree to come with her to stop all this, although Donna must die.
Three weeks later, the Colasanto family is relocated to an internment camp with Wilfred noting that this was how the Nazis started. He and Donna try to find solace in looking through his telescope but they observe the stars disappearing. Donna then acquiesces and goes with Rose when she reappears.
Rose and UNIT take Donna to a facility with the dark TARDIS. They have used technology scoured from it to create a time machine. They first show Donna the time beetle on her back. Freaked out, she begs them to turn the machine off. Rose then tells her that the only way to get rid of it is to fix the universe by having her go back in time and forcing herself to turn left at that intersection. Donna agrees although Rose again alludes that she will have to die.
The time machine sends Donna back to four minutes before she makes the turn but also deposits her half a mile away from the intersection. She runs as hard as she can but realizes that she won't make it to stop herself. Remembering what Rose said, she steps in front of an oncoming truck. The truck crashes into her and cars begin to back up towards the intersection. Seeing the traffic, the intersection Donna turns left. As the original Donna dies, Rose reappears and whispers two words into her ear. Donna reawakens in the fortune teller's shop, the failure to change having killed the beetle and the teller flees in terror.
The Doctor enters and Donna tells him what happened. He notes the beetle is part of the Trickster's Brigade (a Sarah Jane Adventures villain) and how is usually just creates a blip in time that that universe compensates for to feed. Donna however generated a parallel universe. Talking about that triggers Donna's memory and she recalls Rose. As Donna talks of her the Doctor becomes concerned, demanding to know her name. Donna recalls she said "Bad Wolf." As she does so, the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS with warning signs flashing everywhere. Confused, Donna asks what is wrong and the Doctor states that it's the end of the universe.
Analysis
Turn Left has it's ups and downs but it's the type of story that every companion should have: a character study that allows them to breathe and develop, especially in a way that is independent of the Doctor. Not that being with the Doctor is bad, but it is nice to see a companion act in a way that is not influenced by the Doctor now and again. This story is probably also the most Doctor-lite of all the Doctor-lites as he is only in the first thirty seconds at the beginning and the last two minutes at the end. Any shots of the Doctor during the rest of the episode are taken from previous episodes (mostly The Runaway Bride).
It was also a nice way to bring Rose back without offering disrespect to the drama of the goodbye moment in Doomsday (as would be done at the end of the season in Journey's End). It makes sense that in a parallel universe created around Donna, it would offer a thinner veil that Rose could break through and act as the Doctor surrogate. In the end, she gets left out again as the veil is returned to it's original strength (at least until Stolen Earth).
Donna has another one of her nice moments in this episode as well. She starts more like her stroppier self as she is unchanged by the Doctor, but there is emotional growth as the world comes crashing down. This culminates when she is shown the time beetle on her back and her reaction of fear and horror mixed with the refusal to believe that she is special is quite good. Yet it is also still mixed with Donna's humor which gives much needed levity.
On that note, this is a bleak episode to watch. It more or less has to be since it needs to highlight how important the Doctor is but there are moments that are just down right horrifying. The nuclear blast in London is pretty bad, but I think the moment that just hits you hardest is when the Colasanto family is taken away. Nearly everyone in the story had been pretty dour but Rocco expressed happiness in the face of dark times. Then he is taken away and he still stays happy for Donna. It is not until he salutes Wilf that that moment even breaks him. The tragedy of that scene just oozes out without being melodramatic. In a way, it reminded me of the scene near the end of Life is Beautiful where Guido maintains the illusion to his son that he is just playing a game with the soldiers as he is being led off to be shot. The episode doesn't get in to whether the Italians are actively being disposed of or just being held, but it is not hard to imagine that it might come to that point in that timeline.
There are only two points in this story that bother me. The first is the unconvincing way that Donna changes her mind to turn right. That might be down to direction but Donna starts the conversation so feisty and Sylvia isn't any worse than she normally is but Donna just rolls over and concedes. Now obviously in the real timeline, she blew her mother off so it shouldn't be too different, but it just feels wrong to have Donna concede so easily.
My second is one that others have mentioned and that is the Doctor's death. I don't recall the situation in The Runaway Bride being so dire as to that the Doctor would have died without Donna. I can think of more obvious situations where the Doctor would have died when he was with Martha but this was supposed to be about Donna so I can leave that point. It is also hard to imagine that things would have been so bad as to prevent him from regenerating. The half-hearted aside of it happening too fast seems like garbage to me as well. The only point that makes sense to me would be that if the chamber flooded, drowning the Doctor, his regeneration wouldn't have mattered as there still wouldn't have been air to breathe. We've seen enough instances where the Doctor is vulnerable during regeneration (with The Impossible Astronaut providing a direct example of total death in the midst of regeneration) so drowning in a sealed chamber could be seen as a way to kill the Doctor properly. But it still seemed a bit off to me. At the very least, it could have been explained better by the UNIT soldiers. Any story where I have to fill in a better explanation than the one provided is falling a bit short.
Despite the shortcomings and other small bits, this is a pretty good episode. It makes for a good intro into the finale, even if the finale didn't quite live up to all the expectations. It is not an episode to watch for a first timer as there is too much dependence on knowing the Tenth Doctor era to understand the story. But once you've been through, it is a perfectly good story to pull down and enjoy from time to time.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Planet of the Ood
The circle must be broken
Planet of the Ood sees the return of the Ood, first introduced in The Impossible Planet. The story takes on an aspect that was hinted at in the first tale, but abandoned in the face of other story elements: the state of a simple race being exploited at slaves.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna arrive on the home planet of the Ood. They find an Ood in the snow who had been shot after he killed one of the senior management and ran off. Before dying, he urges them that "the circle must be broken," with his eyes going red. The Doctor is immediately concerned given the events of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.
The two sneak into the Ood processing facility, posing as the owners of a company. Inside they observe the selling of Ood as servants, equipped with "upgrades" to meet a customer's need. They also hear an alarm go off, although they can't see for what. The alarm is due to another Ood breaking out and attacking other guards. He is taken with his eyes red and foaming at the mouth. The people running the facility have noted several Ood related deaths and are convinced that "red eye," as they call it, is a disease infecting the Ood.
Donna and the Doctor sneak away from the group and investigate the facility themselves. They observe the Ood being herded to storage containers for transport throughout the Human Empire. Donna likens it to slavery and the two of them head to the warehouse. The Ood do not attempt to escape upon the opening of one container, but they do repeat the mantra that "the circle must be broken" when asked.
They are discovered by the guards. They quickly capture Donna and toss her in a container with some of the Ood while the captain of the guards tries to crush the Doctor with the container crane. He is stopped however by the PR woman who tells him that the director wants them alive. Upon gathering them, all the Ood being prepared for shipment develop red eyes and move upon the guards. The guards drive them back with their guns but in the fracas, the Doctor and Donna escape.
The two flee to another building where Ood development is done. Inside, they find unprocessed Ood who are telepathically singing a song of captivity. The Doctor briefly shares this with Donna who is overwhelmed with the sorrow and asks the Doctor to take it away. The unprocessed Ood have a secondary brain which they hold in their hands and connects them in a telepathic hive mind. To process the Ood, this brain is surgically removed and replaced with the communication ball.
The guards arrive and rearrest the Doctor and Donna and take them to see the director. The director orders all the red eyed Ood in the warehouse to be gassed and a countdown timer is set up to do so. At the same time, the unprocessed Ood send out a signal and there is a mass rebellion by the Ood. The other clientele as well as many of the staff are killed and the guards are driven outside into small knots against the Ood. The director and head scientist abandon the Doctor and Donna and head to a special warehouse containing the source of the Ood hive mind.
The Ood outbreak frees the Ood trapped and scheduled to be gassed, brining more soldiers to the fray. The captain is instead trapped in and dies from the releasing gas. A group approach the Doctor and Donna, but the unprocessed Ood, remembering their kindness, send a signal to stop that group. The Doctor and Donna are freed by Ood Sigma, the director's personal Ood who he released when he left the building. Ood Sigma takes the Doctor and Donna to the same warehouse.
In the warehouse, the director has set up mines to destroy the hive brain which is surrounded by a telepathic inhibitor field (the circle). Confronted by the Doctor, the director learns that the head scientist is actually a member of the "Friend of the Ood" movement and had lowered the field to allow the Ood to begin communicating again. The director kills him by knocking him over and into the brain. The director prepares to shoot the Doctor, but is suddenly overcome. Ood Sigma, under the guise of hair tonic, had been feeding the director an Ood essence and it comes to fruition in the presence of the more active hive mind. The director transforms into an Ood, loosing his malevolence. The Doctor disarms the mines and then deactivates the inhibitor field. With the field down, the Ood stop their attack and gather together to sing. The few remaining guards also hear the song and lay down their weapons, retreating to the rocket which will take them away.
With the call sent out across the empire, the Ood prepare for their brothers to return and say goodbye to the Doctor. Ood Sigma, the nominal spokesperson, invites the Doctor to say for a bit but he declines. Ood Sigma also warns the Doctor that his song will be ending soon. The Doctor shrugs it off an leaves with Donna.
Analysis
When dealing with a story that involves clear lines of morality like slavery, it is easy to get overly melodramatic. It takes a deft hand to steer away from this and this story does not have that deft hand. It is not bad, but both the Doctor and Donna get rather morally righteous which also paints the villains in a strictly black hat, one-note light. Combined, story suffers a bit due to this lack of nuance which also allows the acting to get a bit histrionic as well.
Overall this isn't a bad story, but it very heavy handed. The closest you get to restraint is when the Doctor starts to go off and Donna slaps him down, reminding him that she never owned slaves. But other than that, it's very white hat/black hat. I don't mind a story like that, especially in settings like Westerns where they are fighting over law and order or land ownership and the like. When you introduce something that allows a moral high ground, like slavery, then it no longer becomes just two sides fighting, it becomes right vs. wrong and the right can get very prissy. Likewise, the wrong tend to lose any touches of grey and quirks that they might have had to make them more enjoyable also tend to fade into the background.
Director Halpen is a good example. He enters the story as a harassed CEO, struggling against the elements to keep the company profitable. You know he is going to be the titular bad guy but he is mildly sympathetic in the beginning and the quirk of constantly drinking hair tonic to deal with hair loss provides an amusing aside. By the end though, he loses all nuance and just becomes another megalomaniac preparing to kill anyone in his way. The loss of nuance in his character makes what should be a dramatic final confrontation scene somewhat boring.
Another example is Commander Kess, leader of the guards. He is your stereotypical sadistic overseer. He has no good in him and clearly takes pleasure in dealing out suffering. His attempts to crush the Doctor with the crane and his relish at gassing the Ood left no doubt that there was no nuance there. Granted, his malevolence made his death by the aforementioned gas more satisfying, but he was a standard trope in a story that was already pretty trope-y. Not bad, but not anything to keep you engaged either.
The graphics team was a bit overmatched in this story as well. Some things work, but other things just look off. Worst among the offenders is the giant Ood brain. Obviously something like that was going to be CGI, but it was rather poorly rendered CGI and at no point does it ever look believable that something is actually there. If they had put a matte painting of the brain, it would have probably looked just as believable. Normally I don't slag on the show for less than perfect graphics, but there was something particularly off about this one. I think the attempt to make it an action-adventure story at the end also caused a bit of a problem as obvious action cheats were exposed. It just made the story look cheap.
Now, those put aside, there are some good moments, mostly from Donna. Donna is a bit less stroppy in this episode and her evolution of mild disgust and fear at the Ood to openly sympathetic and advocating for them. Her emotional turn at listening to the song of captivity expresses more than just about any other moment in the episode.
It was also amusing to see the indulgence of a bit of fan service as well. Obviously there was going to be a call back to The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit but another one was slipped in as well. Apparently after those two went out, some comments were made about how the Ood design reminded fans of the Sensorites from that story. The writer indulged this idea by placing the Oodsphere in the same system and the Doctor made a comment about it, going so far as to even mention the Sensesphere in his muttering. It's a throw away line, but it is also entertaining that another bit of continuity string was thrown between the classic and new series.
Overall, I won't say this is a bad story, but I will say that I think the negative outweighs the positive here. People with a less demanding nature will probably not be bothered by the easy moral high ground the Doctor takes, nor by the easy slip into white and black hats. It can certainly be enjoyed and there are enough elements to be enjoyed over the course of the whole story, but it just didn't jive with me. I'd watch it again with someone but I doubt I would pick this one out for personal entertainment.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Planet of the Ood sees the return of the Ood, first introduced in The Impossible Planet. The story takes on an aspect that was hinted at in the first tale, but abandoned in the face of other story elements: the state of a simple race being exploited at slaves.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna arrive on the home planet of the Ood. They find an Ood in the snow who had been shot after he killed one of the senior management and ran off. Before dying, he urges them that "the circle must be broken," with his eyes going red. The Doctor is immediately concerned given the events of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.
The two sneak into the Ood processing facility, posing as the owners of a company. Inside they observe the selling of Ood as servants, equipped with "upgrades" to meet a customer's need. They also hear an alarm go off, although they can't see for what. The alarm is due to another Ood breaking out and attacking other guards. He is taken with his eyes red and foaming at the mouth. The people running the facility have noted several Ood related deaths and are convinced that "red eye," as they call it, is a disease infecting the Ood.
Donna and the Doctor sneak away from the group and investigate the facility themselves. They observe the Ood being herded to storage containers for transport throughout the Human Empire. Donna likens it to slavery and the two of them head to the warehouse. The Ood do not attempt to escape upon the opening of one container, but they do repeat the mantra that "the circle must be broken" when asked.
They are discovered by the guards. They quickly capture Donna and toss her in a container with some of the Ood while the captain of the guards tries to crush the Doctor with the container crane. He is stopped however by the PR woman who tells him that the director wants them alive. Upon gathering them, all the Ood being prepared for shipment develop red eyes and move upon the guards. The guards drive them back with their guns but in the fracas, the Doctor and Donna escape.
The two flee to another building where Ood development is done. Inside, they find unprocessed Ood who are telepathically singing a song of captivity. The Doctor briefly shares this with Donna who is overwhelmed with the sorrow and asks the Doctor to take it away. The unprocessed Ood have a secondary brain which they hold in their hands and connects them in a telepathic hive mind. To process the Ood, this brain is surgically removed and replaced with the communication ball.
The guards arrive and rearrest the Doctor and Donna and take them to see the director. The director orders all the red eyed Ood in the warehouse to be gassed and a countdown timer is set up to do so. At the same time, the unprocessed Ood send out a signal and there is a mass rebellion by the Ood. The other clientele as well as many of the staff are killed and the guards are driven outside into small knots against the Ood. The director and head scientist abandon the Doctor and Donna and head to a special warehouse containing the source of the Ood hive mind.
The Ood outbreak frees the Ood trapped and scheduled to be gassed, brining more soldiers to the fray. The captain is instead trapped in and dies from the releasing gas. A group approach the Doctor and Donna, but the unprocessed Ood, remembering their kindness, send a signal to stop that group. The Doctor and Donna are freed by Ood Sigma, the director's personal Ood who he released when he left the building. Ood Sigma takes the Doctor and Donna to the same warehouse.
In the warehouse, the director has set up mines to destroy the hive brain which is surrounded by a telepathic inhibitor field (the circle). Confronted by the Doctor, the director learns that the head scientist is actually a member of the "Friend of the Ood" movement and had lowered the field to allow the Ood to begin communicating again. The director kills him by knocking him over and into the brain. The director prepares to shoot the Doctor, but is suddenly overcome. Ood Sigma, under the guise of hair tonic, had been feeding the director an Ood essence and it comes to fruition in the presence of the more active hive mind. The director transforms into an Ood, loosing his malevolence. The Doctor disarms the mines and then deactivates the inhibitor field. With the field down, the Ood stop their attack and gather together to sing. The few remaining guards also hear the song and lay down their weapons, retreating to the rocket which will take them away.
With the call sent out across the empire, the Ood prepare for their brothers to return and say goodbye to the Doctor. Ood Sigma, the nominal spokesperson, invites the Doctor to say for a bit but he declines. Ood Sigma also warns the Doctor that his song will be ending soon. The Doctor shrugs it off an leaves with Donna.
Analysis
When dealing with a story that involves clear lines of morality like slavery, it is easy to get overly melodramatic. It takes a deft hand to steer away from this and this story does not have that deft hand. It is not bad, but both the Doctor and Donna get rather morally righteous which also paints the villains in a strictly black hat, one-note light. Combined, story suffers a bit due to this lack of nuance which also allows the acting to get a bit histrionic as well.
Overall this isn't a bad story, but it very heavy handed. The closest you get to restraint is when the Doctor starts to go off and Donna slaps him down, reminding him that she never owned slaves. But other than that, it's very white hat/black hat. I don't mind a story like that, especially in settings like Westerns where they are fighting over law and order or land ownership and the like. When you introduce something that allows a moral high ground, like slavery, then it no longer becomes just two sides fighting, it becomes right vs. wrong and the right can get very prissy. Likewise, the wrong tend to lose any touches of grey and quirks that they might have had to make them more enjoyable also tend to fade into the background.
Director Halpen is a good example. He enters the story as a harassed CEO, struggling against the elements to keep the company profitable. You know he is going to be the titular bad guy but he is mildly sympathetic in the beginning and the quirk of constantly drinking hair tonic to deal with hair loss provides an amusing aside. By the end though, he loses all nuance and just becomes another megalomaniac preparing to kill anyone in his way. The loss of nuance in his character makes what should be a dramatic final confrontation scene somewhat boring.
Another example is Commander Kess, leader of the guards. He is your stereotypical sadistic overseer. He has no good in him and clearly takes pleasure in dealing out suffering. His attempts to crush the Doctor with the crane and his relish at gassing the Ood left no doubt that there was no nuance there. Granted, his malevolence made his death by the aforementioned gas more satisfying, but he was a standard trope in a story that was already pretty trope-y. Not bad, but not anything to keep you engaged either.
The graphics team was a bit overmatched in this story as well. Some things work, but other things just look off. Worst among the offenders is the giant Ood brain. Obviously something like that was going to be CGI, but it was rather poorly rendered CGI and at no point does it ever look believable that something is actually there. If they had put a matte painting of the brain, it would have probably looked just as believable. Normally I don't slag on the show for less than perfect graphics, but there was something particularly off about this one. I think the attempt to make it an action-adventure story at the end also caused a bit of a problem as obvious action cheats were exposed. It just made the story look cheap.
Now, those put aside, there are some good moments, mostly from Donna. Donna is a bit less stroppy in this episode and her evolution of mild disgust and fear at the Ood to openly sympathetic and advocating for them. Her emotional turn at listening to the song of captivity expresses more than just about any other moment in the episode.
It was also amusing to see the indulgence of a bit of fan service as well. Obviously there was going to be a call back to The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit but another one was slipped in as well. Apparently after those two went out, some comments were made about how the Ood design reminded fans of the Sensorites from that story. The writer indulged this idea by placing the Oodsphere in the same system and the Doctor made a comment about it, going so far as to even mention the Sensesphere in his muttering. It's a throw away line, but it is also entertaining that another bit of continuity string was thrown between the classic and new series.
Overall, I won't say this is a bad story, but I will say that I think the negative outweighs the positive here. People with a less demanding nature will probably not be bothered by the easy moral high ground the Doctor takes, nor by the easy slip into white and black hats. It can certainly be enjoyed and there are enough elements to be enjoyed over the course of the whole story, but it just didn't jive with me. I'd watch it again with someone but I doubt I would pick this one out for personal entertainment.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Partners in Crime
Doctor: I just want a mate.
Donna: You just want to mate?! Doctor: No! I want a mate. Donna: Well you're not mating with me!
Unquestionably, Donna is my favorite companion. In addition to her being funny, it is a nice breath of fresh air to not have a companion who is pining for the Doctor. Donna could be a bit harsh in The Runaway Bride, but her debut in Partners in Crime already shows the softer side that begins to come through in Series Four.
Plot Summary
The story opens with Donna (last seen in The Runaway Bride) posing as a Health and Safety inspector and investigating the Adipose weight loss company. Unknown to her, the Doctor is also investigating, although they keep missing each other. Each views the same presentation and each grabs a customer list from a call center employee.
The Doctor meets one customer who notes that in addition to the weight loss, he has also had his burglar alarm go off at the same time each night. The Doctor asks if he has a cat flap and he does, allowing the Doctor to guess at what is going on.
Donna heads to a different customer and ask her some questions. She is getting ready to leave but speaks highly of the weight loss pill. While waiting for her to finish getting ready, Donna idly twists the pendant that comes as a free gift with each Adipose trial. The twisting action causes an Adipose child to generate from the customer. This also sends an alert signal to the head of Adipose Industries, Ms. Foster. To eliminate discovery of the plan, Ms. Foster accelerates the generation and sends a collection team. The woman breaks apart into tens of Adipose children who are collected by a recovery team as they climb out the window. Donna breaks into the bathroom to find it empty save for her clothes and is dumbfounded on what might have happened.
Donna returns to her mother's house, her father having died in the period between stories. Tired of her mother's nagging, she climbs the local hill to talk with her grandfather, Wilfred Mott (last seen in Voyage of the Damned), who is stargazing. She confides in him that she is looking hard for a man she met once in a blue box, regretting her decision not to travel with the Doctor.
Donna and the Doctor both return to Adipose Industries the next day and wait out until the end of the day. Donna is about to leave her hiding spot in the bathroom when Ms. Foster and two guards enter. They knock down the stall doors until they discover a reporter who had also been doing some snooping. She is taken to Ms. Foster's office while Donna follows discreetly from a distance.
The Doctor also emerges from his hiding spot and descends to Ms. Foster's office using a window washing carriage. He listens in as Ms. Foster explains how the pills collect fat from a human host and then germinate into a fat based life form called Adipose. While listening on either side of the office, Donna and the Doctor catch sight of each other. Excited at seeing him, Donna mimes how she had been looking for him. They are interrupted in their catch up when they are noticed by Ms. Foster.
The Doctor lifts back to the roof while Donna runs up the stairs. The two get back in the window washer carriage and head down. Ms. Foster arrives on the roof armed with a sonic pen. She disables the carriage and cuts one of the lines, sending Donna dangling. The Doctor knocks the sonic pen out of Ms. Foster's hand and uses the two sonics to open a window, descend to the next level and pull Donna into the building.
Back inside, they confront Ms. Foster who informs them she is also alien, hired by the Adipose to breed a new generation after the disappearance of their nursery planet. The Doctor creates a distraction and he and Donna run to the basement while Ms. Foster returns to her office and activates the generation signal, causing multiple Adipose to generate from their hosts. The Doctor is able to block the signal initially, but Ms. Foster reinforces the signal, leaving him helpless until Donna gives him the pendant she took. This reinforces the block, ending the generation.
The boost in signal also called the child delivery ship and the thousands of Adipose children are beamed aboard. Ms. Foster is also prepared to be beamed up. The Doctor and Donna see her in mid-transport on the roof and call out to her warning her that the Adipose, aware of the illegality of their actions, are prepared to ensure deniability. Ms. Foster doesn't believe them but her beam then cuts out and she falls to her death.
Donna then heads to the TARDIS, prepared to travel with the Doctor. He is hesitant and awkwardly makes it known that he only wants a friend to travel with. Donna, misunderstanding him that he wants a relationship, gets offended and yells back at him. With their status settled, Donna drops the car keys off for her mom and lets a woman know where she can find them. The woman turns out to be Rose who then walks away and disappears.
Donna and the Doctor fly off, passing by Wilfred's hill where Donna waves to him from the TARDIS door. Wilf excitedly waves back, yelling for her to enjoy herself.
Analysis
Partners in Crime is an interesting story to start with. It is more or less a straight-forward adventure with some comedy thrown in. In fact, the comedy doesn't really kick in until the second half as the first half feels more like a detective drama. There are moments as the Doctor and Donna barely missing each other is played for laughs but the stronger comedic overtones kick into high gear when Donna and the Doctor are miming to each other across Ms. Foster's office.
Unlike The Romans where the story bounced between drama and comedy, this story begins in drama and evolves into comedy, which is more enjoyable. I could see how it would annoy some people but I rather enjoyed it and the flow was at least consistent. It did go a bridge too far with Ms. Foster's death though. When her beam deactivates, she hangs in space for a couple of seconds and has an eye bulge reaction, straight out of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon. It's a wonder to me that she didn't hold up an "Uh-Oh" sign as she fell. I enjoy comedy in Doctor Who, but indulging in cartoon physics is a bit much for me.
Outside of that indulgence, the only other thing that rubbed me wrong was the caliber of acting of some of the secondary cast. Ms. Foster was fine, but the woman Donna sees before disintegrating was not the best. Likewise, some of the other actors in the scene where the Adipose are generating were a little under par. That's somewhat understandable as the limitations in body type probably caused the team to pull actors they might not normally take. But it was only for a couple small scenes and didn't hurt the story much overall.
I rather enjoyed Ms. Foster as a villain. She had that domineering way that made her both attractive and yet also slightly scary. I also enjoyed how she was shown to be rather competent in her operation. The only two places where she was shown to be restricted was in her tying up of the reporter rather than simply killing her outright and the hesitation in trying to kill the Doctor, allowing him to put the two sonics together which allowed him and Donna to escape. Those points are rather forgivable when you compare her to other show villains, many proclaimed to be much smarter and more diabolical, who are shown to make even poorer decisions.
I'm of a mixed mind about Rose reappearing in this episode. If there was one thing about Series Four that bugged me, it was that Donna wasn't given as much of a chance to stand on her own as previous companions. Martha came back for three episodes in the middle and the whole series is peppered with shots of Rose until we get the ball rolling in earnest in Turn Left. However, in my initial watch, not fully knowing what was coming, it was nice to see Rose again and know that there was some greater mystery to be had. So again, not great but not bad either.
One other scene in this one that I was mixed over was the Donna and Wilf scene. It is a nice scene and well played between the two. But the music was off on it. It was too loud and should have been more underplayed in my opinion to emphasize the emotion of the scene. It didn't help that that scene was spliced and used in the Series Four Trailer so it's very hard to watch that scene in retrospect and not hear All the Strange, Strange Creatures playing in your head. But it is a nice scene and I liked the inclusion and expansion of Wilf's character by it.
Overall, this is an entertaining episode. It is not without it's flaws, but as a fun way to reincorporate Donna into the mix, it works very well. This was actually only the second time I'd watched this one but I was surprised at how much I remembered and enjoyed the second time around. Some times I watch an episode again and it feels a bit slower since I know what is coming, but this was just good fun the whole way through. Definitely my favorite companion introduction story of the RTD era.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Donna: You just want to mate?! Doctor: No! I want a mate. Donna: Well you're not mating with me!
Unquestionably, Donna is my favorite companion. In addition to her being funny, it is a nice breath of fresh air to not have a companion who is pining for the Doctor. Donna could be a bit harsh in The Runaway Bride, but her debut in Partners in Crime already shows the softer side that begins to come through in Series Four.
Plot Summary
The story opens with Donna (last seen in The Runaway Bride) posing as a Health and Safety inspector and investigating the Adipose weight loss company. Unknown to her, the Doctor is also investigating, although they keep missing each other. Each views the same presentation and each grabs a customer list from a call center employee.
The Doctor meets one customer who notes that in addition to the weight loss, he has also had his burglar alarm go off at the same time each night. The Doctor asks if he has a cat flap and he does, allowing the Doctor to guess at what is going on.
Donna heads to a different customer and ask her some questions. She is getting ready to leave but speaks highly of the weight loss pill. While waiting for her to finish getting ready, Donna idly twists the pendant that comes as a free gift with each Adipose trial. The twisting action causes an Adipose child to generate from the customer. This also sends an alert signal to the head of Adipose Industries, Ms. Foster. To eliminate discovery of the plan, Ms. Foster accelerates the generation and sends a collection team. The woman breaks apart into tens of Adipose children who are collected by a recovery team as they climb out the window. Donna breaks into the bathroom to find it empty save for her clothes and is dumbfounded on what might have happened.
Donna returns to her mother's house, her father having died in the period between stories. Tired of her mother's nagging, she climbs the local hill to talk with her grandfather, Wilfred Mott (last seen in Voyage of the Damned), who is stargazing. She confides in him that she is looking hard for a man she met once in a blue box, regretting her decision not to travel with the Doctor.
Donna and the Doctor both return to Adipose Industries the next day and wait out until the end of the day. Donna is about to leave her hiding spot in the bathroom when Ms. Foster and two guards enter. They knock down the stall doors until they discover a reporter who had also been doing some snooping. She is taken to Ms. Foster's office while Donna follows discreetly from a distance.
The Doctor also emerges from his hiding spot and descends to Ms. Foster's office using a window washing carriage. He listens in as Ms. Foster explains how the pills collect fat from a human host and then germinate into a fat based life form called Adipose. While listening on either side of the office, Donna and the Doctor catch sight of each other. Excited at seeing him, Donna mimes how she had been looking for him. They are interrupted in their catch up when they are noticed by Ms. Foster.
The Doctor lifts back to the roof while Donna runs up the stairs. The two get back in the window washer carriage and head down. Ms. Foster arrives on the roof armed with a sonic pen. She disables the carriage and cuts one of the lines, sending Donna dangling. The Doctor knocks the sonic pen out of Ms. Foster's hand and uses the two sonics to open a window, descend to the next level and pull Donna into the building.
Back inside, they confront Ms. Foster who informs them she is also alien, hired by the Adipose to breed a new generation after the disappearance of their nursery planet. The Doctor creates a distraction and he and Donna run to the basement while Ms. Foster returns to her office and activates the generation signal, causing multiple Adipose to generate from their hosts. The Doctor is able to block the signal initially, but Ms. Foster reinforces the signal, leaving him helpless until Donna gives him the pendant she took. This reinforces the block, ending the generation.
The boost in signal also called the child delivery ship and the thousands of Adipose children are beamed aboard. Ms. Foster is also prepared to be beamed up. The Doctor and Donna see her in mid-transport on the roof and call out to her warning her that the Adipose, aware of the illegality of their actions, are prepared to ensure deniability. Ms. Foster doesn't believe them but her beam then cuts out and she falls to her death.
Donna then heads to the TARDIS, prepared to travel with the Doctor. He is hesitant and awkwardly makes it known that he only wants a friend to travel with. Donna, misunderstanding him that he wants a relationship, gets offended and yells back at him. With their status settled, Donna drops the car keys off for her mom and lets a woman know where she can find them. The woman turns out to be Rose who then walks away and disappears.
Donna and the Doctor fly off, passing by Wilfred's hill where Donna waves to him from the TARDIS door. Wilf excitedly waves back, yelling for her to enjoy herself.
Analysis
Partners in Crime is an interesting story to start with. It is more or less a straight-forward adventure with some comedy thrown in. In fact, the comedy doesn't really kick in until the second half as the first half feels more like a detective drama. There are moments as the Doctor and Donna barely missing each other is played for laughs but the stronger comedic overtones kick into high gear when Donna and the Doctor are miming to each other across Ms. Foster's office.
Unlike The Romans where the story bounced between drama and comedy, this story begins in drama and evolves into comedy, which is more enjoyable. I could see how it would annoy some people but I rather enjoyed it and the flow was at least consistent. It did go a bridge too far with Ms. Foster's death though. When her beam deactivates, she hangs in space for a couple of seconds and has an eye bulge reaction, straight out of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon. It's a wonder to me that she didn't hold up an "Uh-Oh" sign as she fell. I enjoy comedy in Doctor Who, but indulging in cartoon physics is a bit much for me.
Outside of that indulgence, the only other thing that rubbed me wrong was the caliber of acting of some of the secondary cast. Ms. Foster was fine, but the woman Donna sees before disintegrating was not the best. Likewise, some of the other actors in the scene where the Adipose are generating were a little under par. That's somewhat understandable as the limitations in body type probably caused the team to pull actors they might not normally take. But it was only for a couple small scenes and didn't hurt the story much overall.
I rather enjoyed Ms. Foster as a villain. She had that domineering way that made her both attractive and yet also slightly scary. I also enjoyed how she was shown to be rather competent in her operation. The only two places where she was shown to be restricted was in her tying up of the reporter rather than simply killing her outright and the hesitation in trying to kill the Doctor, allowing him to put the two sonics together which allowed him and Donna to escape. Those points are rather forgivable when you compare her to other show villains, many proclaimed to be much smarter and more diabolical, who are shown to make even poorer decisions.
I'm of a mixed mind about Rose reappearing in this episode. If there was one thing about Series Four that bugged me, it was that Donna wasn't given as much of a chance to stand on her own as previous companions. Martha came back for three episodes in the middle and the whole series is peppered with shots of Rose until we get the ball rolling in earnest in Turn Left. However, in my initial watch, not fully knowing what was coming, it was nice to see Rose again and know that there was some greater mystery to be had. So again, not great but not bad either.
One other scene in this one that I was mixed over was the Donna and Wilf scene. It is a nice scene and well played between the two. But the music was off on it. It was too loud and should have been more underplayed in my opinion to emphasize the emotion of the scene. It didn't help that that scene was spliced and used in the Series Four Trailer so it's very hard to watch that scene in retrospect and not hear All the Strange, Strange Creatures playing in your head. But it is a nice scene and I liked the inclusion and expansion of Wilf's character by it.
Overall, this is an entertaining episode. It is not without it's flaws, but as a fun way to reincorporate Donna into the mix, it works very well. This was actually only the second time I'd watched this one but I was surprised at how much I remembered and enjoyed the second time around. Some times I watch an episode again and it feels a bit slower since I know what is coming, but this was just good fun the whole way through. Definitely my favorite companion introduction story of the RTD era.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
This isn't war. It's sport.
The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky are not bad episodes, despite fan indifference towards them. But they are a bit underwhelming, especially in the flow of The Poison Sky compared to the set up The Sontaran Stratagem.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna are summoned back to Earth by Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT. They are investigating a company that makes ATMOS, a car emissions control device and GPS system which is suspected of being behind several mysterious deaths. UNIT moves in on the factory under the guise of an immigration raid and discovers further irregularities. During the raid, two UNIT soldiers are brought under hypnotic control of the Sontarans. The two soldiers kidnap Martha and use a Sontaran clone tank to make a clone of her to use as an agent.
Donna leaves temporarily to warn her mother and grandfather of the potential danger while the Doctor heads to Rattigan Academy, a select school run by a wunderkind who developed ATMOS. There the Doctor discovers alien technology and discovers the Sontarans behind the devices. He flees both the Sontaran ship and Rattigan Academy, evading several Sontaran attempts to kill him. He heads to Donna's mother's place and discovers a secondary purpose to ATMOS in the form of a gas release. The early release alerts the Sontarans who activate all gas release systems on the planet.
With gas emerging from all over the world, the Doctor and Donna return to UNIT which has been driven back from the ATMOS factory by a squadron of Sontaran soldiers. The Doctor tells Donna to monitor things from the TARDIS as he plans to fly up to the Sontaran ship and stop things and the air is clean in the TARDIS. However, after Donna is inside, the Sontarans transport it into the their ship and move it into the hold. The Doctor realizes this and sends a message to Donna to wait for his phone call.
UNIT attempts to launch nuclear missiles at the Sontaran ship but clone Martha deactivates the system, which is what the Doctor actually wants. Using information the Doctor has given them to adapt their weapons, UNIT storms the ATMOS factory, driving the Sontarans back. The Doctor calls Donna and walks her through the means to reactive the transport system. He then takes clone Martha into the factory where he finds the real Martha hooked up to a machine that feeds the clone memories. The Doctor frees Martha from the machine, which kills clone Martha. However, before she dies, the real Martha convinces her to tell them the Sontaran plan, which is to turn Earth into a clone planet, providing the Sontarans with billions of extra soldiers. With the teleport reactivated, the Doctor pulls Donna and the TARDIS back to Earth. The three then transport over to Rattigan Academy.
Luke Rattigan had intended to bring his academy students back to the Sontaran ship and start a new colony planet. However, the students abandoned him as insane. When he informed the Sontarans of this, they informed him that they had no intention of following on that deal and would have simply killed them when they boarded. They attempted to kill Luke, but he transported back to Earth and is hiding at the Academy. When the Doctor, Donna and Martha arrive, he watches as the Doctor builds an atmospheric pulse weapon and then fires it into Earth's sky. The clone gas ignites and burns off the toxin choking the Earth. The plan having failed, the Sontarans move to invade Earth using conventional tactics. The Doctor then transports up to the Sontaran ship and prepares to ignite the Sontaran ship's atmosphere. Before he can, Luke rigs the teleport so that he switches places with the Doctor and Luke sets off the pulse, destroying the Sontaran ship.
Everything back to normal, Martha says goodbye in the TARDIS. The Doctor offers to let her ride along again, but she refuses. However, before she can leave, the TARDIS takes off on its own and the party hurdles through time and space without knowing where they are going.
Analysis
The set up for this episode is pretty good. The Sontarans are brought back and in contrast to their current portrayal, are actually menacing with just a pinch of unintentional levity. The mystery surrounding their plan and the deviousness employed pulls you in and invests you in the plot. Seeing Martha put in peril with the cloning also draws you in.
Where things seem to fall apart is in the second part. Although there is no point where it is obvious, The Poison Sky feels like padding. It's like the Doctor is deliberately being obtuse to the problem. He says after finding Martha that he knew she was a clone the whole time, but there were points where he could have taken her out and gotten the information he needed sooner. I'm not sure if it is the writing or the direction, but there was something, especially in the second episode that just felt flat. It was like there was no snap and it made the events which should have been engaging, feel a bit dull.
One other problem with the episode was the ending. It was another case of someone else stepping in and dying so that the Doctor might live. It's a bit of a trope but even that wasn't the worst part. The worst was actually when the Doctor first got on the Sontaran ship. He spent nearly twenty seconds yelling at the Sontarans to surrender or he would kill them. However, General Staal put it correctly that the threat was meaningless since the Sontarans gloried in death. The fact that the Doctor kept hesitating until Luke beamed him out made him look weak and afraid of death, like he wasn't going to follow on the threat. Worse, General Staal lined up troops and told them to prepare to fire. Why did they wait? Good soldiers may face death with honor, but if the enemy hesitates, they should have seized the initiative and shot him down, preserving their victory. There was too much talking to try and get an emotional response and to give Luke time to swap places. It just felt hollow.
I have to admit that Martha felt superfluous as well. I've heard that she was only brought back because Catherine Tate refused to be covered in the cloning tank goop. I don't know if that's true or not, but her whole detour to her mom and grandad's place didn't offer much except a little backstory on Donna and a way to flesh out previously introduced characters. But it was not necessary. Donna could have served as the clone and in doing so, the clone might have been discovered earlier since Donna still served a valuable purpose on the Sontaran ship. It would also have given Donna a better reason to be in the TARDIS. Imagine that the Doctor discovers Donna is a clone and frees her. He takes her back to the TARDIS to recover while he assists UNIT. The Sontarans discover their clone has been compromised and steal the TARDIS, not knowing they have also beamed aboard an operative. This allows the Doctor to deal with UNIT openly without the need for subterfuge for the clone's benefit. It might have made the story zip along quicker. The addition of Martha also felt like the story didn't quite trust Donna with heavy lifting and wanted an experienced companion to balance her out. I may be reading into that, but it was a thought that struck me.
Despite my giving it a bit of a rip, the Sontaran two-parter is better than average, just not much better. It'll keep you entertained while watching it, but it is lacking that little something that will make you want to pull it off the shelf and rewatch it. If you watch both episodes back to back, you might also find yourself checking your watch a little bit during the second episode as it drifts a bit.
Overall personal score: The Sontaran Stratagem - 3.5 out of 5; The Poison Sky - 3 out of 5
The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky are not bad episodes, despite fan indifference towards them. But they are a bit underwhelming, especially in the flow of The Poison Sky compared to the set up The Sontaran Stratagem.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna are summoned back to Earth by Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT. They are investigating a company that makes ATMOS, a car emissions control device and GPS system which is suspected of being behind several mysterious deaths. UNIT moves in on the factory under the guise of an immigration raid and discovers further irregularities. During the raid, two UNIT soldiers are brought under hypnotic control of the Sontarans. The two soldiers kidnap Martha and use a Sontaran clone tank to make a clone of her to use as an agent.
Donna leaves temporarily to warn her mother and grandfather of the potential danger while the Doctor heads to Rattigan Academy, a select school run by a wunderkind who developed ATMOS. There the Doctor discovers alien technology and discovers the Sontarans behind the devices. He flees both the Sontaran ship and Rattigan Academy, evading several Sontaran attempts to kill him. He heads to Donna's mother's place and discovers a secondary purpose to ATMOS in the form of a gas release. The early release alerts the Sontarans who activate all gas release systems on the planet.
With gas emerging from all over the world, the Doctor and Donna return to UNIT which has been driven back from the ATMOS factory by a squadron of Sontaran soldiers. The Doctor tells Donna to monitor things from the TARDIS as he plans to fly up to the Sontaran ship and stop things and the air is clean in the TARDIS. However, after Donna is inside, the Sontarans transport it into the their ship and move it into the hold. The Doctor realizes this and sends a message to Donna to wait for his phone call.
UNIT attempts to launch nuclear missiles at the Sontaran ship but clone Martha deactivates the system, which is what the Doctor actually wants. Using information the Doctor has given them to adapt their weapons, UNIT storms the ATMOS factory, driving the Sontarans back. The Doctor calls Donna and walks her through the means to reactive the transport system. He then takes clone Martha into the factory where he finds the real Martha hooked up to a machine that feeds the clone memories. The Doctor frees Martha from the machine, which kills clone Martha. However, before she dies, the real Martha convinces her to tell them the Sontaran plan, which is to turn Earth into a clone planet, providing the Sontarans with billions of extra soldiers. With the teleport reactivated, the Doctor pulls Donna and the TARDIS back to Earth. The three then transport over to Rattigan Academy.
Luke Rattigan had intended to bring his academy students back to the Sontaran ship and start a new colony planet. However, the students abandoned him as insane. When he informed the Sontarans of this, they informed him that they had no intention of following on that deal and would have simply killed them when they boarded. They attempted to kill Luke, but he transported back to Earth and is hiding at the Academy. When the Doctor, Donna and Martha arrive, he watches as the Doctor builds an atmospheric pulse weapon and then fires it into Earth's sky. The clone gas ignites and burns off the toxin choking the Earth. The plan having failed, the Sontarans move to invade Earth using conventional tactics. The Doctor then transports up to the Sontaran ship and prepares to ignite the Sontaran ship's atmosphere. Before he can, Luke rigs the teleport so that he switches places with the Doctor and Luke sets off the pulse, destroying the Sontaran ship.
Everything back to normal, Martha says goodbye in the TARDIS. The Doctor offers to let her ride along again, but she refuses. However, before she can leave, the TARDIS takes off on its own and the party hurdles through time and space without knowing where they are going.
Analysis
The set up for this episode is pretty good. The Sontarans are brought back and in contrast to their current portrayal, are actually menacing with just a pinch of unintentional levity. The mystery surrounding their plan and the deviousness employed pulls you in and invests you in the plot. Seeing Martha put in peril with the cloning also draws you in.
Where things seem to fall apart is in the second part. Although there is no point where it is obvious, The Poison Sky feels like padding. It's like the Doctor is deliberately being obtuse to the problem. He says after finding Martha that he knew she was a clone the whole time, but there were points where he could have taken her out and gotten the information he needed sooner. I'm not sure if it is the writing or the direction, but there was something, especially in the second episode that just felt flat. It was like there was no snap and it made the events which should have been engaging, feel a bit dull.
One other problem with the episode was the ending. It was another case of someone else stepping in and dying so that the Doctor might live. It's a bit of a trope but even that wasn't the worst part. The worst was actually when the Doctor first got on the Sontaran ship. He spent nearly twenty seconds yelling at the Sontarans to surrender or he would kill them. However, General Staal put it correctly that the threat was meaningless since the Sontarans gloried in death. The fact that the Doctor kept hesitating until Luke beamed him out made him look weak and afraid of death, like he wasn't going to follow on the threat. Worse, General Staal lined up troops and told them to prepare to fire. Why did they wait? Good soldiers may face death with honor, but if the enemy hesitates, they should have seized the initiative and shot him down, preserving their victory. There was too much talking to try and get an emotional response and to give Luke time to swap places. It just felt hollow.
I have to admit that Martha felt superfluous as well. I've heard that she was only brought back because Catherine Tate refused to be covered in the cloning tank goop. I don't know if that's true or not, but her whole detour to her mom and grandad's place didn't offer much except a little backstory on Donna and a way to flesh out previously introduced characters. But it was not necessary. Donna could have served as the clone and in doing so, the clone might have been discovered earlier since Donna still served a valuable purpose on the Sontaran ship. It would also have given Donna a better reason to be in the TARDIS. Imagine that the Doctor discovers Donna is a clone and frees her. He takes her back to the TARDIS to recover while he assists UNIT. The Sontarans discover their clone has been compromised and steal the TARDIS, not knowing they have also beamed aboard an operative. This allows the Doctor to deal with UNIT openly without the need for subterfuge for the clone's benefit. It might have made the story zip along quicker. The addition of Martha also felt like the story didn't quite trust Donna with heavy lifting and wanted an experienced companion to balance her out. I may be reading into that, but it was a thought that struck me.
Despite my giving it a bit of a rip, the Sontaran two-parter is better than average, just not much better. It'll keep you entertained while watching it, but it is lacking that little something that will make you want to pull it off the shelf and rewatch it. If you watch both episodes back to back, you might also find yourself checking your watch a little bit during the second episode as it drifts a bit.
Overall personal score: The Sontaran Stratagem - 3.5 out of 5; The Poison Sky - 3 out of 5
Monday, January 11, 2016
Midnight
I guess we'll just have to talk to each other.
Midnight is pretty good especially in that it's not really like a traditional Doctor Who story. It is far closer to something that you would see in The Twilight Zone.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna are visiting a spa on an alien planet. Donna stays behind while the Doctor goes on shuttle to a tourist part of the planet. The Doctor disables the entertainment and the tourists spend several hours chatting. While on a slight detour from the normal route, the shuttle suddenly stops. Whilst investigating, the mechanic notices a shadow moving outside. Shortly afterwards, there is a knocking on the outside of the shuttle. The knocking continues and responds to anyone knocking back. One woman named Sky panics, thinking the thing is coming for her. The shuttle is suddenly knocked about and the power goes off.
The passengers soon find that the cockpit has been destroyed and that Sky is now in a trance. The Doctor informs the passengers that a distress signal had been sent and that a rescue shuttle should be there in an hour. Sky begins to repeat what they are saying that begins to unnerve the passengers even more. She progresses and starts repeating what they are saying as they are saying it. At this point the passengers begin to discuss throwing her out of the shuttle to be killed by the overpowered sun. The Doctor protests, trying to talk them out of it and the passengers begin to talk about throwing him out as well. Sky then stops repeating all of them and only repeats the Doctor. The passengers relax a little but then Sky takes command of the Doctor, talking with him repeating her words while his body stops moving. Sky convinces most of the passengers that the entity has passed from her to the Doctor and they must throw him out before it can move to each of them. They grab the Doctor and begin to drag him to the door but when Sky starts using phrases only the Doctor had used earlier, the hostess realizes that the entity is still in Sky and has merely taken over the Doctor's mind. She grabs Sky and propels both of them out the door. The Doctor instantly is released and the passengers back away from each other. The rescue ship arrives soon afterward and they are taken back to the resort.
Analysis
This episode was quite good. It is off the beaten path in style and it is an interesting experiment in how quickly people will turn into animals when trapped in a stressful environment. The act of simply repeating what someone says is very unnerving when done without stopping and it is also easy to feel that increased sense of panic when someone else starts going off the rails. This was well enhanced by the fact that the first 10-15 minutes of the episode is devoted to friendly interaction between the passengers which not only introduces each of them, but shows each of them in a fairly friendly and sympathetic light. The contrast formed when they turn like viscous dogs amplifies the tension all the more.
One of the best moments is the debate on whether to throw Sky out of the shuttle. The Doctor is protesting and the episode looks like it will follow the typical Doctor Who formula of the Doctor being the voice of reason and calming everyone down. But after every short appeal speech the Doctor makes, someone, usually the hostess, states the opposite of what you expect and the argument starts over again, the stakes now elevated as the passengers are both increasing in rabidity as well as animosity against the Doctor. In the absence of a companion, we feel the Doctor's panic as he is moving to a point of having no allies on the shuttle. It is also interesting that the passengers are ultimately proven right in that throwing out Sky was the only way to stop the creature.
There are a few nits to pick in this story though. Constrained by the episode time, some of the panic happens a little quickly. In fact, a number of the emotional turns happen just a little too much on a dime and that shift is a bit jarring. It undercuts the tension at times.
The other thing that bothered me was the resolution. In the debate I mentioned above, it is usually the hostess driving the argument of throwing out Sky. The only person who comes close to being on the Doctor's side is the Professor's assistant Dee Dee. It therefore seems odd that it is the hostess who retains her head and realizes that Sky is still possessed and moves to throw her out. Granted, it needed to be the hostess because she was the one who had overheard the Doctor using foreign phrases and that is what trips the light bulb as to what is going on. I just think that the hostess should not have been the one leading the argument to throwing Sky out as it made her sudden support of the Doctor look odd. Either that or it should have been Dee Dee to throw Sky out.
The other niggle I had was in Sky getting thrown out. As the Doctor is being dragged, the hostess grabs Sky and opens the door, holding her for six seconds until the pressure bubble collapses and they are both sucked out. The problem was that it didn't look like Sky was struggling that much so I didn't see a reason why the hostess needed to hold her there until they were both sucked out rather than simply try to push her out. Perhaps there was a risk of not getting her out but the way it was shot made it look like the sacrifice was rather unnecessary.
Despite these, it is a very good episode and any time that the Doctor is completely powerless in the face of an enemy is always a bit unsettling and packs an extra punch. This might be even more true for the Tenth Doctor who is always so brash with villains like the Daleks and Cybermen. Seeing him in real fear and peril gives the episode that little bit of extra oomph that is so good.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Midnight is pretty good especially in that it's not really like a traditional Doctor Who story. It is far closer to something that you would see in The Twilight Zone.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Donna are visiting a spa on an alien planet. Donna stays behind while the Doctor goes on shuttle to a tourist part of the planet. The Doctor disables the entertainment and the tourists spend several hours chatting. While on a slight detour from the normal route, the shuttle suddenly stops. Whilst investigating, the mechanic notices a shadow moving outside. Shortly afterwards, there is a knocking on the outside of the shuttle. The knocking continues and responds to anyone knocking back. One woman named Sky panics, thinking the thing is coming for her. The shuttle is suddenly knocked about and the power goes off.
The passengers soon find that the cockpit has been destroyed and that Sky is now in a trance. The Doctor informs the passengers that a distress signal had been sent and that a rescue shuttle should be there in an hour. Sky begins to repeat what they are saying that begins to unnerve the passengers even more. She progresses and starts repeating what they are saying as they are saying it. At this point the passengers begin to discuss throwing her out of the shuttle to be killed by the overpowered sun. The Doctor protests, trying to talk them out of it and the passengers begin to talk about throwing him out as well. Sky then stops repeating all of them and only repeats the Doctor. The passengers relax a little but then Sky takes command of the Doctor, talking with him repeating her words while his body stops moving. Sky convinces most of the passengers that the entity has passed from her to the Doctor and they must throw him out before it can move to each of them. They grab the Doctor and begin to drag him to the door but when Sky starts using phrases only the Doctor had used earlier, the hostess realizes that the entity is still in Sky and has merely taken over the Doctor's mind. She grabs Sky and propels both of them out the door. The Doctor instantly is released and the passengers back away from each other. The rescue ship arrives soon afterward and they are taken back to the resort.
Analysis
This episode was quite good. It is off the beaten path in style and it is an interesting experiment in how quickly people will turn into animals when trapped in a stressful environment. The act of simply repeating what someone says is very unnerving when done without stopping and it is also easy to feel that increased sense of panic when someone else starts going off the rails. This was well enhanced by the fact that the first 10-15 minutes of the episode is devoted to friendly interaction between the passengers which not only introduces each of them, but shows each of them in a fairly friendly and sympathetic light. The contrast formed when they turn like viscous dogs amplifies the tension all the more.
One of the best moments is the debate on whether to throw Sky out of the shuttle. The Doctor is protesting and the episode looks like it will follow the typical Doctor Who formula of the Doctor being the voice of reason and calming everyone down. But after every short appeal speech the Doctor makes, someone, usually the hostess, states the opposite of what you expect and the argument starts over again, the stakes now elevated as the passengers are both increasing in rabidity as well as animosity against the Doctor. In the absence of a companion, we feel the Doctor's panic as he is moving to a point of having no allies on the shuttle. It is also interesting that the passengers are ultimately proven right in that throwing out Sky was the only way to stop the creature.
There are a few nits to pick in this story though. Constrained by the episode time, some of the panic happens a little quickly. In fact, a number of the emotional turns happen just a little too much on a dime and that shift is a bit jarring. It undercuts the tension at times.
The other thing that bothered me was the resolution. In the debate I mentioned above, it is usually the hostess driving the argument of throwing out Sky. The only person who comes close to being on the Doctor's side is the Professor's assistant Dee Dee. It therefore seems odd that it is the hostess who retains her head and realizes that Sky is still possessed and moves to throw her out. Granted, it needed to be the hostess because she was the one who had overheard the Doctor using foreign phrases and that is what trips the light bulb as to what is going on. I just think that the hostess should not have been the one leading the argument to throwing Sky out as it made her sudden support of the Doctor look odd. Either that or it should have been Dee Dee to throw Sky out.
The other niggle I had was in Sky getting thrown out. As the Doctor is being dragged, the hostess grabs Sky and opens the door, holding her for six seconds until the pressure bubble collapses and they are both sucked out. The problem was that it didn't look like Sky was struggling that much so I didn't see a reason why the hostess needed to hold her there until they were both sucked out rather than simply try to push her out. Perhaps there was a risk of not getting her out but the way it was shot made it look like the sacrifice was rather unnecessary.
Despite these, it is a very good episode and any time that the Doctor is completely powerless in the face of an enemy is always a bit unsettling and packs an extra punch. This might be even more true for the Tenth Doctor who is always so brash with villains like the Daleks and Cybermen. Seeing him in real fear and peril gives the episode that little bit of extra oomph that is so good.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
The Fires of Pompeii
Just someone. Please. Not the whole town. Just save someone!
If A Town Called Mercy took the easy way out of a no-win scenario, The Fires of Pompeii embraced the full darkness of it and it is so much better because of it.
There is a great deal to like in this episode, not the least is the fact that there is a future companion actress (Karen Gillian) and a future Doctor (Peter Capaldi). The Tenth Doctor and Donna land in Pompeii and fall in with a local Roman household. They investigate strange happenings where the daughter of the household is being turned to stone and uncover a plot by a volcanic alien race to burn the Earth and turn it into their new homeworld. The Doctor's only choice to stop them is to shut down their machinery, overloading the system and triggering the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The Doctor and Donna flee as the town is overcome by the explosion, but Donna pleads with the Doctor to save someone. They go back and rescue Caecilius and his family, who had housed and helped them while investigating. They are taken to a far point from Pompeii where they then relate the news back to Rome.
If you are going to do a no-win scenario drama, this is how you do it. In many ways, this episode starts as a bit of a comedy romp. Caecilius is a bit of a good-hearted fool. He is interested in social climbing but genuinely thinks it will bring better things for his family. He is optimistic and good-natured. A bit like a slightly smarter Roman Homer Simpson. The Sibylline Sisterhood is threatening but not in an overly grim way. Even when Donna is captured and threatened with sacrifice, she is making witty remarks and generally keeping the tone of the episode up. Even the Doctor running around threatening people with a squirt gun, although a legitimate threat when dealing with fire and hot stone, is still rather comical in appearance.
The episode would have been successful if it had stayed a comedy romp, but probably would have dimmed as somewhat forgettable. But then comes the Kobayashi Maru. The Pyroviles can only be stopped if their machinery is destroyed. If their machinery is destroyed, the energy stored will be released and Vesuvius will erupt, destroying Pompeii. No alternative presents itself. No other being steps forward to sacrifice itself so that others can live. In the end, the Doctor decides that the lives of the planet do outweigh the lives of a single city. But it is the scene after that really sells the episode. The Doctor has gone back mentally to the Time War and can only run, hating himself for what he feels he can't do. Donna pleads with him to go back. He can't save everyone but to at least save someone; to make that small difference that is in his power. That moment delivers on emotion and reinforces that even when there is the unwinnable scenario, the ability to have some good come out of it is of paramount importance.
There are a few small knocks to the episode too. Most of them come in the form of the acting. Because the majority of it is presented as a comedy romp, many of the characters go a bit over-the-top in their silliness. The performance of the villains can be a bit hammy and the Doctor has his "overly dramatic peril" face on few times in the episode. I also think the director lingered on a few shots too long. When the Doctor is leaving Caecilius and his family behind despite their pleas for help and Donna is just standing there incredulous, there scene plays a bit too slowly. I understand that there was an attempt to play up their fear and the darkness of the Doctor leaving them behind to die, but the length of lingering just made the actors look uncomfortable. The length of the shot also makes me wonder why the family just stayed huddled there when the Doctor ran in to the TARDIS. If the man you just asked for help ran into his box, why would you not run up to either the blue box or to Donna (who was still outside) and cling to them for help. Being paralyzed by fear is probably the explanation there, but the long shot just gives it that overly long feel.
Definitely a good episode and one that I would happily watch again. A good punch at the end to make it stick as well.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
If A Town Called Mercy took the easy way out of a no-win scenario, The Fires of Pompeii embraced the full darkness of it and it is so much better because of it.
There is a great deal to like in this episode, not the least is the fact that there is a future companion actress (Karen Gillian) and a future Doctor (Peter Capaldi). The Tenth Doctor and Donna land in Pompeii and fall in with a local Roman household. They investigate strange happenings where the daughter of the household is being turned to stone and uncover a plot by a volcanic alien race to burn the Earth and turn it into their new homeworld. The Doctor's only choice to stop them is to shut down their machinery, overloading the system and triggering the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The Doctor and Donna flee as the town is overcome by the explosion, but Donna pleads with the Doctor to save someone. They go back and rescue Caecilius and his family, who had housed and helped them while investigating. They are taken to a far point from Pompeii where they then relate the news back to Rome.
If you are going to do a no-win scenario drama, this is how you do it. In many ways, this episode starts as a bit of a comedy romp. Caecilius is a bit of a good-hearted fool. He is interested in social climbing but genuinely thinks it will bring better things for his family. He is optimistic and good-natured. A bit like a slightly smarter Roman Homer Simpson. The Sibylline Sisterhood is threatening but not in an overly grim way. Even when Donna is captured and threatened with sacrifice, she is making witty remarks and generally keeping the tone of the episode up. Even the Doctor running around threatening people with a squirt gun, although a legitimate threat when dealing with fire and hot stone, is still rather comical in appearance.
The episode would have been successful if it had stayed a comedy romp, but probably would have dimmed as somewhat forgettable. But then comes the Kobayashi Maru. The Pyroviles can only be stopped if their machinery is destroyed. If their machinery is destroyed, the energy stored will be released and Vesuvius will erupt, destroying Pompeii. No alternative presents itself. No other being steps forward to sacrifice itself so that others can live. In the end, the Doctor decides that the lives of the planet do outweigh the lives of a single city. But it is the scene after that really sells the episode. The Doctor has gone back mentally to the Time War and can only run, hating himself for what he feels he can't do. Donna pleads with him to go back. He can't save everyone but to at least save someone; to make that small difference that is in his power. That moment delivers on emotion and reinforces that even when there is the unwinnable scenario, the ability to have some good come out of it is of paramount importance.
There are a few small knocks to the episode too. Most of them come in the form of the acting. Because the majority of it is presented as a comedy romp, many of the characters go a bit over-the-top in their silliness. The performance of the villains can be a bit hammy and the Doctor has his "overly dramatic peril" face on few times in the episode. I also think the director lingered on a few shots too long. When the Doctor is leaving Caecilius and his family behind despite their pleas for help and Donna is just standing there incredulous, there scene plays a bit too slowly. I understand that there was an attempt to play up their fear and the darkness of the Doctor leaving them behind to die, but the length of lingering just made the actors look uncomfortable. The length of the shot also makes me wonder why the family just stayed huddled there when the Doctor ran in to the TARDIS. If the man you just asked for help ran into his box, why would you not run up to either the blue box or to Donna (who was still outside) and cling to them for help. Being paralyzed by fear is probably the explanation there, but the long shot just gives it that overly long feel.
Definitely a good episode and one that I would happily watch again. A good punch at the end to make it stick as well.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Monday, November 23, 2015
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Donna, stay out of the shadows.
Given all the history between River Song and the Eleventh Doctor, her introduction with the Tenth Doctor can feel a bit out of place on rewatch. But, taken as a story in and of itself, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead are excellent.
Donna and the Tenth Doctor are summoned via psychic paper to the largest library in the universe by River, except that she sends the message too early the Doctor hasn't met her yet. While there, the team of archaeologists are attacked by the Vashta Nerada, tiny creatures in the air that act like piranhas when in swarms. Most of the team is consumed and Donna is trapped within the computer memory. The Doctor strikes a bargain with the Vashta Nerada to release the trapped people within the core memory, which will also restabilize the computer. River, however, stops the Doctor from hooking himself to the computer and does it instead to save his life. He, in turn, is able to preserve her mind and those of her fallen comrades within the computer memory.
Silence in the Library is a wonderfully scary set up. The Vashta Nerada are a well imagined menace. The bit play with River is witty and unlike many of her subsequent appearances, she gives in to her fear with only traces of the brashness she will sometimes show. The interplay with Donna is also good as Donna had been somewhat sidelined in the Sontarian two-parter and The Doctor's Daughter and then played only for comedy in The Unicorn and the Wasp. Here she was allowed to do drama again and does it very well. Even the mystery with CAL has an interesting hook as you can't quite figure who this girl is that is observing and controlling the library.
The Forest of the Dead fell a little short of the bar set by Silence in the Library. It is still good and the drama, especially with Donna in the computer, is good and tragic. However, the Doctor gets a little cocksure and it feels like a little bit of a let down to have a more or less mindless monster negotiate a cease-fire based solely on the Doctor's reputation. That feels like a cheap trick of the writer to show the Doctor getting out of a situation that they can't actually think of any other way to escape.
Still, it does deliver on the scariness still and the tension stays high. The final scene with the Doctor and River is also touching and it is something that improves once you've seen River's arc through the time of the Eleventh Doctor.
I would be always up to rewatch these two and have already watched them more than once. They make for an excellent story and entertaining television.
Overall personal score: Silence in the Library - 5 out of 5; Forest of the Dead - 4.5 out of 5
Given all the history between River Song and the Eleventh Doctor, her introduction with the Tenth Doctor can feel a bit out of place on rewatch. But, taken as a story in and of itself, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead are excellent.
Donna and the Tenth Doctor are summoned via psychic paper to the largest library in the universe by River, except that she sends the message too early the Doctor hasn't met her yet. While there, the team of archaeologists are attacked by the Vashta Nerada, tiny creatures in the air that act like piranhas when in swarms. Most of the team is consumed and Donna is trapped within the computer memory. The Doctor strikes a bargain with the Vashta Nerada to release the trapped people within the core memory, which will also restabilize the computer. River, however, stops the Doctor from hooking himself to the computer and does it instead to save his life. He, in turn, is able to preserve her mind and those of her fallen comrades within the computer memory.
Silence in the Library is a wonderfully scary set up. The Vashta Nerada are a well imagined menace. The bit play with River is witty and unlike many of her subsequent appearances, she gives in to her fear with only traces of the brashness she will sometimes show. The interplay with Donna is also good as Donna had been somewhat sidelined in the Sontarian two-parter and The Doctor's Daughter and then played only for comedy in The Unicorn and the Wasp. Here she was allowed to do drama again and does it very well. Even the mystery with CAL has an interesting hook as you can't quite figure who this girl is that is observing and controlling the library.
The Forest of the Dead fell a little short of the bar set by Silence in the Library. It is still good and the drama, especially with Donna in the computer, is good and tragic. However, the Doctor gets a little cocksure and it feels like a little bit of a let down to have a more or less mindless monster negotiate a cease-fire based solely on the Doctor's reputation. That feels like a cheap trick of the writer to show the Doctor getting out of a situation that they can't actually think of any other way to escape.
Still, it does deliver on the scariness still and the tension stays high. The final scene with the Doctor and River is also touching and it is something that improves once you've seen River's arc through the time of the Eleventh Doctor.
I would be always up to rewatch these two and have already watched them more than once. They make for an excellent story and entertaining television.
Overall personal score: Silence in the Library - 5 out of 5; Forest of the Dead - 4.5 out of 5
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
The Unicorn and the Wasp
-Oh, Harvey Wallbanger?
-HARVEY WALLBANGER?!
The Unicorn and the Wasp is a story where I diverge from fandom. Nearly every opinion I've heard or read concerning the story is negative while mine is positive. The principle problem seems to be that the story is not quite full comedy and not quite full drama.
The story itself is fairly straightforward as they are mimicking an Agatha Christie murder mystery with Christie herself being caught up in the events. Then, because it's Doctor Who, they throw in a little alien twist as well. It also incorporates a real incident with Ms. Christie where she disappeared for several days and then later turned claiming to have no memory of what happened. Of course this is a perfect opportunity for a hop in the TARDIS and a little twist on reality.
So, why do people not like it and I do? The main thrust of complaints against it seem to be that if it's a comedy, it should go more into comedy and not bother with elements of drama. If it's supposed to be a drama, it should not be so light-hearted about other things. I can see those arguments. I did watch it again recently and found that it was not as funny as I remembered it the first time I watched and if the jokes didn't land, it became a bit of a dud moment.
Still, I did still enjoy it the second time around. For me, this is a very obvious send up not of just Agatha Christie's novels, but of the film adaptations as well. I think the strongest vibe I got was of Evil Under the Sun but I could also see a touch of And Then There Were None (1945 version). In both cases, the novels are fairly serious, straight forward mysteries. Their film versions add a strong dash of farcical comedy for levity. The Unicorn and the Wasp follows this trend which will either work for you or not. For me it works.
The other complaint is usually leveled at Christie herself. She is played well, but becomes depressed and mopey whenever hit by a small setback. I can understand how that would be annoying, but it is also important to remember that this is a woman who is overcoming a nasty shock and scandal involving her husband. It would be out of character for her to remain upbeat the whole time. Of course, reality can get in the way of a good story so I'm willing to understand those who would find Christie's mood swings an annoying diversion.
But for me, having grown up watching murder mysteries with my mother and Agatha Christie mysteries especially (Mom loves the David Suchet Poirot), this one is still fun for me. I admit that I also greatly enjoy the over-the-top banter between the Doctor and Donna. The poisoning scene is very farcical but it just strikes me as funny given their relationship.
So, overall, not the best, but I like it more than the average fan.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5.
-HARVEY WALLBANGER?!
The Unicorn and the Wasp is a story where I diverge from fandom. Nearly every opinion I've heard or read concerning the story is negative while mine is positive. The principle problem seems to be that the story is not quite full comedy and not quite full drama.
The story itself is fairly straightforward as they are mimicking an Agatha Christie murder mystery with Christie herself being caught up in the events. Then, because it's Doctor Who, they throw in a little alien twist as well. It also incorporates a real incident with Ms. Christie where she disappeared for several days and then later turned claiming to have no memory of what happened. Of course this is a perfect opportunity for a hop in the TARDIS and a little twist on reality.
So, why do people not like it and I do? The main thrust of complaints against it seem to be that if it's a comedy, it should go more into comedy and not bother with elements of drama. If it's supposed to be a drama, it should not be so light-hearted about other things. I can see those arguments. I did watch it again recently and found that it was not as funny as I remembered it the first time I watched and if the jokes didn't land, it became a bit of a dud moment.
Still, I did still enjoy it the second time around. For me, this is a very obvious send up not of just Agatha Christie's novels, but of the film adaptations as well. I think the strongest vibe I got was of Evil Under the Sun but I could also see a touch of And Then There Were None (1945 version). In both cases, the novels are fairly serious, straight forward mysteries. Their film versions add a strong dash of farcical comedy for levity. The Unicorn and the Wasp follows this trend which will either work for you or not. For me it works.
The other complaint is usually leveled at Christie herself. She is played well, but becomes depressed and mopey whenever hit by a small setback. I can understand how that would be annoying, but it is also important to remember that this is a woman who is overcoming a nasty shock and scandal involving her husband. It would be out of character for her to remain upbeat the whole time. Of course, reality can get in the way of a good story so I'm willing to understand those who would find Christie's mood swings an annoying diversion.
But for me, having grown up watching murder mysteries with my mother and Agatha Christie mysteries especially (Mom loves the David Suchet Poirot), this one is still fun for me. I admit that I also greatly enjoy the over-the-top banter between the Doctor and Donna. The poisoning scene is very farcical but it just strikes me as funny given their relationship.
So, overall, not the best, but I like it more than the average fan.
Overall personal score: 3 out of 5.
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