I am a human-Dalek.
This is what putting off unpleasant things does to you. I had not intended to finish the Tenth Doctor with the Series Three two-parter involving the Daleks but here we are. These two episodes were very poorly received by the fans, enough so that they somewhat poisoned the well for the Sontaran two-parter in Series Four. When the writer, Helen Raynor, went back and read comments about both stories, she turned about face and never wrote for the show again. I don't recall enjoying this one that much but I also don't recall having the avowed hatred that some fans did.
Plot Summary
In 1930 New York, a man named Lazlo is wishing good luck to his girlfriend Tallulah as she heads on stage for a performance. He is distracted by a noise and follows it down to a store room where he is attacked by a humanoid pig.
The Doctor and Martha arrive on Liberty Island two weeks later where the Doctor is immediately keyed in to a series of disappearances in the Central Park shantytown called Hooverville. In the shantytown, they observe a man named Solomon breaking up a fight between two people. The Doctor notes his leadership and asks him about the disappearances. Solomon acknowledges them but they had been unable to do anything as they happen too fast and the authorities don't care about missing vagrants.
Meanwhile at the nearly completed Empire State Building, the lead engineer, Mr. Diagoras, is threatening the foreman to finish the spire of the building by that night. The foreman refuses and Diagoras tells him to take it up with the new bosses. A Dalek emerges from the elevator with two pig-men who seize the foreman and take him below. The Dalek then orders Diagoras to bring in additional labor.
Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville and offers money to clear a blockage in the sewer. Curious, the Doctor volunteers, joined by Martha, Solomon and a young man named Frank. The four journey into the sewers under the Empire State Building but find no blockage. Instead, they find a glowing sample of alien tissue. The Doctor is unsure of what it is and pockets it. They then see a pig-man sitting in one tunnel. The Doctor goes to examine him but is surprised by a larger group of pig-men who emerge from the shadows.
The mutants chase the group down the tunnels until they find a ladder. The Doctor unseals the manhole cover and he, Martha and Solomon climb to safety. Frank, who had lagged behind to fend off the pig-men, is grabbed off the ladder and dragged away. The Doctor prepares to plan to go after Frank when Tallulah emerges with a gun, demanding to know where Lazlo is.
After setting the workers to install the new panels on the spire, Diagoras is summoned to the lair of the Daleks in the basement. There he is confronted by Dalek Sec, leader of the Cult of Skaro, who escaped with three other members of the cult after their defeat at the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday). Sec sees potential in Diagoras and orders him dragged to a holding cell while the plan is carried out.
After admitting she is using a prop gun, Tallulah tells the Doctor of Lazlo's disappearance from the same theater she performs at. That theater has an entrance to the sewer in the prop storage room, which is where the Doctor, Martha and Solomon emerged from. Martha stays with Tallulah while the Doctor cannibalizes some equipment to examine the alien tissue. Solomon heads back to Hooverville to rally the men to a defense and possibly rescue Frank.
Tallulah goes on stage while Martha watches from the wings. On the other wing, she sees a deformed man watching from the shadows. She tries to sneak across stage but trips over a dancer. She points out the man who then runs off. Martha runs after him but is grabbed by a pig-man and dragged back into the sewers.
The Doctor discovers the tissue is artificially constructed with Skaro DNA. Realizing that the Daleks are involved, he goes to look for Martha but Tallulah tells him that she has disappeared. Suspecting that she was taken, he runs into the sewers with Tallulah insisting on following him. In the sewers, they are forced to hide as a Dalek roams around on patrol.
They discover the disfigured man hiding nearby. It is Lazlo who managed to escape before the transformation is complete. His mind still functions but his features are a blend of human and porcine. The send Tallulah back through the sewers for the safety of the theater but she gets lost on the way. The Doctor and Lazlo find Martha and Frank being herded by two Daleks to the laboratory for further experimentation. The Doctor slips in between them while Lazlo poses as a pig guard.
The group is brought into the lab where Dalek Sec has taken Diagoras into his casing. The Daleks announce their new evolution and from the casing emerges a bipedal creature, calling itself a human-Dalek. Sec orders the humans to be processed with the other Daleks but the Doctor shows himself, distracting the Daleks. He creates a noise through a radio that induces pain in the Daleks and the pig-men and he and the group of humans flee through the sewers.
The return to Hooverville and the Doctor urges everyone to flee New York. Most resist, with no where else to go, and the camp is attacked by pig-men. The humans beat the creatures back but two Daleks come after them and begin to destroy the camp. Solomon steps forward to try and negotiate but the Daleks kill him.
The Doctor, angry at Solomon's death, offers himself up but Sec orders the Doctor taken alive. As he is taken away, the Doctor gives Martha his psychic paper. He is then taken back to the lab where Sec explains how he intends to blend Dalek and human DNA in people who have become empty shells and lay in stasis. The power for this will come from a gamma ray infused lightning on the spire of the Empire State Building. Seeing a glimmers of emotion in Sec, the Doctor agrees to help.
In Hooverville, Martha realizes that the Daleks needed a workforce and would lure men with the promise of work. Frank tells her that most men were hired to work on the Empire State Building. She, Frank and Tallulah use the psychic paper to get into the building and up to the planning office near the top. They find a set of blueprints that had just been updated and comparing them with an older set, they realize that the Daleks have installed extra panels on spire of the building.
The Doctor and Sec finalize the serum to infuse the human shells with the hybrid DNA. However as it flows, an alarm goes off and they realize that it is pure Dalek DNA being pumped in. The other three Daleks have rebelled against Sec for threatening Dalek purity and order him and the Doctor seized. The Doctor is grabbed by Lazlo, who had also summoned the elevator. When it opens, the two dash into it and head up to the top floor.
At the top, Martha tells the Doctor where the Daleks have installed their panels. He orders Martha, Tallulah, Frank and Lazlo to fight off the pig-men pursuers while he removes the panels. Lazlo collapses, the mutation designed to end the life of the pig-men after a few weeks, leaving them a man down. Martha then realizes that with a lightning strike, she can electrify the elevator by channeling the bolt through sets of metal tubing. She and Frank work to set this up.
On the spire, the Doctor removes one panel but drops his screwdriver before he can finish removing the second and third panels. Unable to remove them, he wraps himself around the spire as the lightning hits. It electrifies him and passes through the building. The pig-men emerging from the elevator are electrocuted while the human shells injected with Dalek DNA come to life. The Daleks arms the humans and send them through the sewers to ambush sites throughout the city. Martha wakes the Doctor, having passed out after the lightning strike and they head back downstairs.
Needing a large space, the group breaks into Tallulah's theater and the Doctor alerts the Daleks to his presence with his sonic screwdriver. The Daleks dispatch a group of humans to destroy them along with two of the three Daleks, dragging Sec in tow. The Daleks move to kill the Doctor but Sec stands up and steps in the path of the beam, killing him. The Daleks order the humans to destroy the Doctor but they refuse to fire, questioning why. The Doctor tells the Daleks that he infused a small amount of Time Lord DNA into the mix, giving them the ability to question orders.
Angered, the Daleks start killing the infected humans who return fire. The Daleks kill several but the shots overwhelm their armor and both Daleks are destroyed. Seeing the humans rebel Dalek Caan, who had taken over the leadership role, activates a self destruct in the hybrids, killing all of them. The Doctor return to the lab, offering Caan compassion as the only Dalek left. Caan instead activates an emergency temporal shift and disappears.
Martha, Frank, Tallulah and Lazlo enter the lab and Lazlo collapses, nearing the end of his adjusted life cycle. The Doctor however grabs genetic equipment from the lab and develops a serum to counteract the shortened span. In the morning, they take Lazlo to Hooverville and Frank arranges for Lazlo to stay there. The Doctor and Martha then depart, the Doctor sure Dalek Caan will emerge once again.
Analysis
Because Doctor Who is a family oriented show, you expect plots and stories to come along that are rather silly. Many of these are made more palatable for adults with comedy, witty writing and good acting. The downfall of stories that are poorly regarded is a general deficiency in these areas. Unfortunately, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks falls into that category. The plot is generally silly but I can take that is certain doses. Where the story really falls flat is in the annoying nature or ambivalence generated towards the various characters.
This story puts the shoe on the other foot in terms of understanding how British people feel about Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins. The accents in this story are atrocious. To disguise their own British accents, the characters are all adopting extreme versions of the New York gangster accent that is usually associated with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson. But those accents have become a joke in and of themselves and to hear them taken a level further shifts it from just being tired to outright annoying. Frank has a southern accent but it is also done in an exaggerated fashion that feels fake.
The one exception on the accent front is Solomon. He is more understated in his American accent and that plays better. But he has other drawbacks. He is painted as the natural peacemaker who abhors violence but a number of his characteristics come across as tropes that have been done many times before. Even his death falls into the cliché. A true subversion of it would have been if the Dalek had shot him mid-sentence, cutting things off. Instead, he is allowed to finish his speech and deliver the full weight of his nobility to Sec.
As silly as the human-Dalek Sec was in his appearance and his initial delivery of lines, he did start to grow on me as Evolution of the Daleks progressed. His halting speech wasn't great, but I wonder if some of that was because the actor couldn't breathe under the mask. But in a similar fashion in Dalek, the infusion of humanity and the realization of the horror of their purified existence made the modified Dalek become more sympathetic. It's still not a particularly good adaptation but it at least it creates a certain level of interest and drama in an otherwise boring character.
As this story is in the first half of Series 3, it lingers quite a bit on the Martha pining for the Doctor plotline. This does generate a couple of amusing lines from Tallulah, suggesting that the Doctor is gay, but other than that, it is just as tedious as the other times where Martha complains about the Doctor not returning her affection instead of appreciating his friendship or the adventure they are currently on. I also didn't care for the leap of logic that she had to make to find the Doctor at the Empire State Building once he was taken. That whole scene just played out like writer's convenience, to say nothing of the silliness of hearing Martha and Tallulah saying "Dalekanium" every couple of minutes.
I did enjoy the Doctor's performance. It was probably one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed in this story. There is a certain level of gravitas that the Doctor brings that feel genuine no matter how silly the situation or the level of acting around him. He conveys deep emotion as well as intensity, which can go a little off the rails at times. He did get a tad over the top when swearing to save Lazlo but it was only a quick scene and easily overlooked.
Unlike The Angels Take Manhattan, this story didn't really use New York. It was fairly obvious that the whole thing was just a series of sets and that the skyline and backdrop pictures of New York were taken by a second-unit crew, sans actors. This didn't bother me but it did feel like they missed a trick as a quick shot of some of the characters in a real New York location would have been a nice touch. Still, the setting and overall layout was actually done fairly well and was one of the stronger parts of this story.
I've railed on the acting quite a bit but I can't dismiss the writing either. Its not bad, but its also not particularly good either. There is no real spark in the dialogue and the lofty talk of Solomon is built more on clichés and sincerity of the actor. I found some of the timing and set up with the Dalek's plan needlessly overdone. There was no need for the run around story about getting the Dalekanium pieces put on the spire at the last minute. That was just a device to give the Daleks a weakness in their plans as well as kill some time.
I think it's the time thing that gets me. This did not feel deserving of a two-parter. Fat could easily have been cut and if you combine a few scenes and reduce the amount of doubling back, this could have been a tight 42-minute story that would have really zipped along. It would have reduced the exposure of some of the lesser actors and let the Doctor and the Daleks go hard mono-y-mono. But with bloat comes drag and exposure of the lesser elements and that certainly happened here.
I think it's safe to say that this is the worst of the two-parters from the Tenth Doctor era. There are some ideas here but they mostly cover ground that's been gone over before and then a large amount of bad acting and silliness get tossed on top of it. I hate to end on a down note but I think I was right in wanting to avoid this story as its just not one that is worth revisiting on any kind of regular basis. Even if it does have an early Andrew Garfield sighting.
Overall personal score: Daleks in Manhattan - 1; Evolution of the Daleks - 1
Showing posts with label Martha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martha. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2018
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
The Doctor's Daughter
Donna, I've been a father before.
The Doctor's Daughter closes the three part Martha interlude in Series Four. It is also one of the least regarded stories of the series. I don't remember it being terrible but with as provocative a title as that, it led a lot of fans to think one thing and what they ended up with was so far away that they grew resentful of the difference. That we're well removed, is it still worth all the disdain?
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is pulled through the time tunnel with the Doctor, Donna and Martha all clinging for any kind of support. They arrive in a tunnel scattered with debris and are immediately set upon by three human soldiers. The soldiers grab the Doctor and force his arm into a machine which extracts a tissue sample and uses it to create a new female soldier, genetically descended from the Doctor.
While trying to process this, the squad is attacked by a group of humanoid fish called the Hath. The two sides fire at each other while one sneaks around and grabs Martha. With two soldiers down, the squad leader detonates explosives in the tunnel, collapsing it and trapping Martha on the other side. He then takes the Doctor and Donna to see General Cobb.
On the other side of the tunnel, most of the squad was killed in the explosion. Martha tends to one with a dislocated shoulder. She pops it back into place as a second squad comes up. The Hath whom Martha tended to stops the others from killing her and together they take her back to their own headquarters. Because of her compassion in healing them, she is welcomed by the group.
At the human headquarters, General Cobb relates how the humans and Hath had come to the planet together, hoping to forge a new society. Things broke down and they have been fighting a war for generations, the origin of the war long since forgotten. The Doctor is shown a map of the complex and he is able to extract additional information, hoping to find Martha. Cobb however sees that the map is showing the lost temple where the Source is located. Believing that it will be the ultimate weapon to destroy the Hath, he decides to mount an expedition in the morning to recover it. He then orders the Doctor and Donna locked up because of their protests to the fighting. Not wanting to take chances, he also locks up the soldier extracted from the Doctor, now named Jenny, fearing her fighting spirit having been taken from pacifist stock.
Unbeknownst to any of them, at the same time, the Hath had been showing Martha the map, trying to explain where they were. They also saw the additions the Doctor extracted and form up to also head for the Source. Martha is left behind with the Hath she healed, who points out where they are going. He also rotates the map to 3-D and Martha realizes that it would be faster if they went outside. The Hath brings up the atmospheric conditions but Martha figures that she can survive the exposure for the journey and makes her way to the outer hatch.
In the prison, Donna talks the Doctor into accepting Jenny as his daughter, demonstrating that she has two hearts just as he does. The Doctor does accept her but relays his own genocidal past in trying to explain how killing the other side is simply wrong.
Jenny teases the guard and grabs his gun, allowing them to get out of the cell. They sneak into the outer tunnels and follow the Doctor's map, trying to reach the Source first. As they progress, Donna notes that each room they were in holds a serial number that is steadily going backwards.
They enter a new room just as Cobb discovers their escape and launches a raid after them. They are blocked by a series of lasers set up in a hallway. Jenny doubles back to cover them but the Doctor insists that fighting isn't the answer. Cobb calls out for Jenny to join them but she instead shoots a pipe creating a steam barrier. The Doctor temporarily shuts off the laser barrier allowing him and Donna to get through. Jenny, caught up in the euphoria of refusing to kill, hesitates allowing the lasers to cut off the path again. She however performs a series of acrobatics which allow her to get through the hallway, separating them from the Cobb's pursuit.
Martha and her Hath companion reach a hatch to the surface and open it. The Hath hesitates but follows Martha out the hatch to the surface. They make their way towards the spire of the central building. As they approach, Martha looses her footing and falls into a pit where a tar-like liquid has pooled. She is trapped and begins to sink. The Hath follows her down and tries to pull her out but can't reach her. He then jumps into the pool and pushes her out. This however causes him to sink and drown in the pool. Martha cries out for him but then crawls back to the top of the pit and continues towards the spire.
The Doctor, Donna and Jenny reach end of hallway just as they hear General Cobb break through the laser barrier. The Doctor finds a door and they enter the Temple, which is actually the control center of the ship that brought the settlers here. They find a log which details how the captain died and a power struggled formed between the human and Hath colonists. Donna also finds a clock and determines that the numbers etched into the various rooms are completion dates from when the robot excavators finished each section. From this they determine that although the war has lasted for generations, it has actually only been going on for a week of actual time.
They move further inward of the control room where they find Martha, having just entered from an exterior hatch. They also hear Cobb's men trying to break through and see the Hath cutting through another door. They also smell flowers and follow it to a center location where the Doctor discovers a terraforming globe, designed to rework the surface of the planet once the colony was established. Both armies converge on the site but the Doctor stops them, pointing out that their ancestors worked together before to create life and they can do it again. He then breaks the globe and the chemical compound moves out and begins to rework the planet.
Both sides lay down their arms but Cobb shoots at the Doctor. Jenny, seeing Cobb's movement, jumps in front of the bullet, killing her. Cobb's men disarm him and hold him down. The Doctor hopes for a minute that some of his regeneration energy passed through her but she remains dead. Angered, the Doctor picks up Cobb's gun and points it directly at his head, holding there for a few seconds before dropping the gun and pointing out that he never would and that should be the credo of their new civilization.
The humans and Hath join camps and lay Jenny out in a funeral ceremony. The Doctor, Donna and Martha then slip away in the TARDIS. They drop Martha off at her home before journeying on. However, back on the terraforming planet, a small burst of regeneration energy does trigger and Jenny leaps off the bier she was laying on. She takes a small ship and launches into space, determined to explore the galaxy.
Analysis
I don't think this story is as bad as it is often made out to be but it is a story of wasted potential. I happened to watch this one for the second time in two parts. By coincidence, it was just before the laser barrier scene and that is a bit of a key marker. Before that point, you could see the potential of the story: two races locked in a bitter war, people created just to be soldiers and perpetuate the war, the Doctor angry at the creation of an offspring that only reminds him of all that he lost. That all sounds really good. However, when the story picked back up, all the depth went out the window and the story became running, silliness and a slapped together, schmaltzy ending.
For the most part, I enjoyed the acting. The Doctor and Donna were the best both with the light teasing and the seriousness that developed when the Doctor opened up. Martha was pretty good, especially since she was interacting with a non-verbal group and had to carry most of that load herself. Most of the side characters, like Cobb, were also pretty good.
Jenny was a less good. When obeying orders and acting like a genuine soldier, she worked well. Her interaction with the Doctor was less so. I think she couldn't decide just how child-like she was supposed to be. Her enthusiasm for doing anything that pleased the Doctor seemed very much like a toddler that has just gotten praise from their parents. It made her sacrifice later seem unearned, though it did play in with the tumble through the lasers.
Let's just get it out of the way now, I hated the tumble through the lasers. It was ridiculously stupid especially as the Doctor had already cleared the path. Jenny could easily have come back after refusing to shoot just as the Doctor shut down the lasers. They beat a quick path through and just make it as the lasers come back. The worst offense of the scene though is the fact that it took what had been a somewhat thought provoking story and turned it into a cartoon. From that point on, everything they did seemed disingenuous as though they were trying to get back what they had lost. They didn't try that hard but that's a different point.
As noted above, it was after this point that the story took a different tone. Martha's little adventure was completely pointless. The story needed to have someone go to the Hath to show them where the temple was and set up the race. But Martha's overland journey and the death of her Hath companion did nothing. My impression was that they wanted to show the Hath as having similar values to the humans, including self sacrifice, but the Hath had already been established as that with their fair treatment and acceptance of Martha after healing one of their own. Martha could have been taken along with the patrol and reunited with the Doctor when the Hath showed up. It was going for an emotional punch but it just wasted time. If Martha had gone with the main group, she could have continued to show kindness and compassion with the Hath. As told, the main group could have easily assumed that Martha killed the Hath who was with her and then ran ahead to warn the Doctor to create a trap.
And that plays into the slapdash ending. I liked that the war had been going on for only a week but that the death of generations had destroyed that memory. It made for a nice twist. But I don't see how the Doctor pointing to a swirling green ball that's going to terraform the planet encourages both sides to lay down their arms. The Doctor could have dropped the ball releasing the gases and still had both sides start shooting at each other, determined to take control of the new world for themselves. Instead, they lay down because the show was nearly over.
Jenny's death was also hastily done. I think they were going for poignant sacrifice but her range of emotions had been all over the map so far that there wasn't much of a connection to her. It also felt like a very stagey death and I couldn't help but draw mental comparisons to Talia's death in The Dark Knight Rises in how silly it felt. Then what little emotion had been established, especially in the Doctor's threat of Cobb, it thrown completely out the window by Jenny's healing regeneration and liting out into space. That especially felt slapped on and out of place as it felt like she had been completely self aware of everything around her, knowing that the war had ended and that the Doctor had left. What little goodwill I could have had for the death scene was just washed away in that moment.
I hate to be so negative but there was a good amount of potential for this story in the first half and it all just fell apart in the second half. Now, I don't think it's the horrible thing and stinks up the series the way many fans do. It's an ok watch and if you're in the mood for something silly and light, it'll be fine. It's just a whiplash in terms of the tone. I will say that I think it's the worst of the series and if going through, I'd be eagerly looking forward to The Unicorn and the Wasp, which might explain some of the bad feeling on that one too.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
The Doctor's Daughter closes the three part Martha interlude in Series Four. It is also one of the least regarded stories of the series. I don't remember it being terrible but with as provocative a title as that, it led a lot of fans to think one thing and what they ended up with was so far away that they grew resentful of the difference. That we're well removed, is it still worth all the disdain?
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is pulled through the time tunnel with the Doctor, Donna and Martha all clinging for any kind of support. They arrive in a tunnel scattered with debris and are immediately set upon by three human soldiers. The soldiers grab the Doctor and force his arm into a machine which extracts a tissue sample and uses it to create a new female soldier, genetically descended from the Doctor.
While trying to process this, the squad is attacked by a group of humanoid fish called the Hath. The two sides fire at each other while one sneaks around and grabs Martha. With two soldiers down, the squad leader detonates explosives in the tunnel, collapsing it and trapping Martha on the other side. He then takes the Doctor and Donna to see General Cobb.
On the other side of the tunnel, most of the squad was killed in the explosion. Martha tends to one with a dislocated shoulder. She pops it back into place as a second squad comes up. The Hath whom Martha tended to stops the others from killing her and together they take her back to their own headquarters. Because of her compassion in healing them, she is welcomed by the group.
At the human headquarters, General Cobb relates how the humans and Hath had come to the planet together, hoping to forge a new society. Things broke down and they have been fighting a war for generations, the origin of the war long since forgotten. The Doctor is shown a map of the complex and he is able to extract additional information, hoping to find Martha. Cobb however sees that the map is showing the lost temple where the Source is located. Believing that it will be the ultimate weapon to destroy the Hath, he decides to mount an expedition in the morning to recover it. He then orders the Doctor and Donna locked up because of their protests to the fighting. Not wanting to take chances, he also locks up the soldier extracted from the Doctor, now named Jenny, fearing her fighting spirit having been taken from pacifist stock.
Unbeknownst to any of them, at the same time, the Hath had been showing Martha the map, trying to explain where they were. They also saw the additions the Doctor extracted and form up to also head for the Source. Martha is left behind with the Hath she healed, who points out where they are going. He also rotates the map to 3-D and Martha realizes that it would be faster if they went outside. The Hath brings up the atmospheric conditions but Martha figures that she can survive the exposure for the journey and makes her way to the outer hatch.
In the prison, Donna talks the Doctor into accepting Jenny as his daughter, demonstrating that she has two hearts just as he does. The Doctor does accept her but relays his own genocidal past in trying to explain how killing the other side is simply wrong.
Jenny teases the guard and grabs his gun, allowing them to get out of the cell. They sneak into the outer tunnels and follow the Doctor's map, trying to reach the Source first. As they progress, Donna notes that each room they were in holds a serial number that is steadily going backwards.
They enter a new room just as Cobb discovers their escape and launches a raid after them. They are blocked by a series of lasers set up in a hallway. Jenny doubles back to cover them but the Doctor insists that fighting isn't the answer. Cobb calls out for Jenny to join them but she instead shoots a pipe creating a steam barrier. The Doctor temporarily shuts off the laser barrier allowing him and Donna to get through. Jenny, caught up in the euphoria of refusing to kill, hesitates allowing the lasers to cut off the path again. She however performs a series of acrobatics which allow her to get through the hallway, separating them from the Cobb's pursuit.
Martha and her Hath companion reach a hatch to the surface and open it. The Hath hesitates but follows Martha out the hatch to the surface. They make their way towards the spire of the central building. As they approach, Martha looses her footing and falls into a pit where a tar-like liquid has pooled. She is trapped and begins to sink. The Hath follows her down and tries to pull her out but can't reach her. He then jumps into the pool and pushes her out. This however causes him to sink and drown in the pool. Martha cries out for him but then crawls back to the top of the pit and continues towards the spire.
The Doctor, Donna and Jenny reach end of hallway just as they hear General Cobb break through the laser barrier. The Doctor finds a door and they enter the Temple, which is actually the control center of the ship that brought the settlers here. They find a log which details how the captain died and a power struggled formed between the human and Hath colonists. Donna also finds a clock and determines that the numbers etched into the various rooms are completion dates from when the robot excavators finished each section. From this they determine that although the war has lasted for generations, it has actually only been going on for a week of actual time.
They move further inward of the control room where they find Martha, having just entered from an exterior hatch. They also hear Cobb's men trying to break through and see the Hath cutting through another door. They also smell flowers and follow it to a center location where the Doctor discovers a terraforming globe, designed to rework the surface of the planet once the colony was established. Both armies converge on the site but the Doctor stops them, pointing out that their ancestors worked together before to create life and they can do it again. He then breaks the globe and the chemical compound moves out and begins to rework the planet.
Both sides lay down their arms but Cobb shoots at the Doctor. Jenny, seeing Cobb's movement, jumps in front of the bullet, killing her. Cobb's men disarm him and hold him down. The Doctor hopes for a minute that some of his regeneration energy passed through her but she remains dead. Angered, the Doctor picks up Cobb's gun and points it directly at his head, holding there for a few seconds before dropping the gun and pointing out that he never would and that should be the credo of their new civilization.
The humans and Hath join camps and lay Jenny out in a funeral ceremony. The Doctor, Donna and Martha then slip away in the TARDIS. They drop Martha off at her home before journeying on. However, back on the terraforming planet, a small burst of regeneration energy does trigger and Jenny leaps off the bier she was laying on. She takes a small ship and launches into space, determined to explore the galaxy.
Analysis
I don't think this story is as bad as it is often made out to be but it is a story of wasted potential. I happened to watch this one for the second time in two parts. By coincidence, it was just before the laser barrier scene and that is a bit of a key marker. Before that point, you could see the potential of the story: two races locked in a bitter war, people created just to be soldiers and perpetuate the war, the Doctor angry at the creation of an offspring that only reminds him of all that he lost. That all sounds really good. However, when the story picked back up, all the depth went out the window and the story became running, silliness and a slapped together, schmaltzy ending.
For the most part, I enjoyed the acting. The Doctor and Donna were the best both with the light teasing and the seriousness that developed when the Doctor opened up. Martha was pretty good, especially since she was interacting with a non-verbal group and had to carry most of that load herself. Most of the side characters, like Cobb, were also pretty good.
Jenny was a less good. When obeying orders and acting like a genuine soldier, she worked well. Her interaction with the Doctor was less so. I think she couldn't decide just how child-like she was supposed to be. Her enthusiasm for doing anything that pleased the Doctor seemed very much like a toddler that has just gotten praise from their parents. It made her sacrifice later seem unearned, though it did play in with the tumble through the lasers.
Let's just get it out of the way now, I hated the tumble through the lasers. It was ridiculously stupid especially as the Doctor had already cleared the path. Jenny could easily have come back after refusing to shoot just as the Doctor shut down the lasers. They beat a quick path through and just make it as the lasers come back. The worst offense of the scene though is the fact that it took what had been a somewhat thought provoking story and turned it into a cartoon. From that point on, everything they did seemed disingenuous as though they were trying to get back what they had lost. They didn't try that hard but that's a different point.
As noted above, it was after this point that the story took a different tone. Martha's little adventure was completely pointless. The story needed to have someone go to the Hath to show them where the temple was and set up the race. But Martha's overland journey and the death of her Hath companion did nothing. My impression was that they wanted to show the Hath as having similar values to the humans, including self sacrifice, but the Hath had already been established as that with their fair treatment and acceptance of Martha after healing one of their own. Martha could have been taken along with the patrol and reunited with the Doctor when the Hath showed up. It was going for an emotional punch but it just wasted time. If Martha had gone with the main group, she could have continued to show kindness and compassion with the Hath. As told, the main group could have easily assumed that Martha killed the Hath who was with her and then ran ahead to warn the Doctor to create a trap.
And that plays into the slapdash ending. I liked that the war had been going on for only a week but that the death of generations had destroyed that memory. It made for a nice twist. But I don't see how the Doctor pointing to a swirling green ball that's going to terraform the planet encourages both sides to lay down their arms. The Doctor could have dropped the ball releasing the gases and still had both sides start shooting at each other, determined to take control of the new world for themselves. Instead, they lay down because the show was nearly over.
Jenny's death was also hastily done. I think they were going for poignant sacrifice but her range of emotions had been all over the map so far that there wasn't much of a connection to her. It also felt like a very stagey death and I couldn't help but draw mental comparisons to Talia's death in The Dark Knight Rises in how silly it felt. Then what little emotion had been established, especially in the Doctor's threat of Cobb, it thrown completely out the window by Jenny's healing regeneration and liting out into space. That especially felt slapped on and out of place as it felt like she had been completely self aware of everything around her, knowing that the war had ended and that the Doctor had left. What little goodwill I could have had for the death scene was just washed away in that moment.
I hate to be so negative but there was a good amount of potential for this story in the first half and it all just fell apart in the second half. Now, I don't think it's the horrible thing and stinks up the series the way many fans do. It's an ok watch and if you're in the mood for something silly and light, it'll be fine. It's just a whiplash in terms of the tone. I will say that I think it's the worst of the series and if going through, I'd be eagerly looking forward to The Unicorn and the Wasp, which might explain some of the bad feeling on that one too.
Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5
Friday, May 19, 2017
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Here come the drums! Here come the drums!
With the leaked spoiler of the return of the John Simm Master in Series 10, I thought it only fitting to rewatch his moments of triumph in the Series 3 two-part finale. Most fans that I've heard from generally enjoy the Simm Master but his episodes have a rather negative reputation. The End of Time speaks for itself and I've already gone over that story. The Sound of Drums seems to be the most well liked of the four episodes that he stars in with things taking a bit of a dive in Last of the Time Lords. Are these reputations justified? Let's refresh the memory and see.
Plot Summary
Following the newly regenerated Master's theft of the Doctor's TARDIS at the end of Utopia, the Doctor repairs Jack's vortex manipulator and the three of them transport back to Earth. They land a couple of days after the election and find that the Master has been elected Prime Minister of Britain under the name of Harold Saxon.
In Downing Street, the Master kills his new cabinet with poison gas. At the same time, his wife, Lucy, gets a visit from a reporter who is also working as a Torchwood agent. She tells Lucy that Harold Saxon only appeared 18 months ago and has forged his past. Lucy acknowledges this as she already knew and the Master enters the room. The Master summons three alien spheres who attack and kill the reporter.
The Doctor, Jack and Martha head back to Martha's apartment where they work on trying to figure how the Master had taken over. The Doctor informs them that before the Master disappeared in the TARDIS, he locked the controls so that it only could operate between it's last two points of departure: 100 trillion years in the future and that day, give or take about 18 months. Observing Martha talking about Saxon, he realizes that the Master has set up some sort of hypnotic field but doesn't know how.
They are interrupted by a broadcast from Saxon that the UK has made initial contact with a new alien species called the Toclafane. They will be making a formal landing the following morning and Saxon intends to have it broadcast. As he explains, he states a key word and it triggers the timer on a bomb on the back of Martha's television. The trio rushes out before the bomb goes off and destroys Martha's apartment.
Panicked about the Master's knowledge of her, Martha calls her mom. Her mom urges her to come over even stating that her dad is over. Her father speaks as well but when Martha gets suspicious, he warns her and Saxon's men arrest him and Francine. The trio hop in a car and race to Francine's apartment. The agent in charge informs the Master of what has happened and he orders the arrest of Martha's sister Trish as well as she had been working as secretary to Lucy Saxon.
The trio arrives just as Martha's parents are placed in a police van. They open fire on Martha and they are forced to drive away. They ditch the car and walk away. Martha calls her brother who is in Brighton. She warns him to hide but their call in interrupted by the Master listening in. The Doctor takes the phone and he and the Master talk, the Master telling the Doctor of how he ran away from the Time War after being resurrected by the Time Lords. The Doctor in turn tells him that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War. The Master places their pictures on the television and has them proclaimed public enemies.
The trio runs and hides in an old warehouse. Jack and Martha gather both food and information. They learn that the Master set up a satellite system for phones now used by everyone called Archangel. The Doctor realizes that is how the Master is controlling people. To further help them, he takes the TARDIS key and splits it so they can each wear one. It is treated with a low level perception filter that causes people to look away, rendering them nondescript to ordinary people.
They leave the warehouse and head to an airport where the Master is meeting the new US President. Annoyed at Saxon's breach of UN agreements, he steps in and takes over the meeting with the Toclafane, which will take place on the Valiant, a UNIT airship. The Master is unperturbed and has his personal jet prepared to join the meeting. He also loads Martha's parents and sister aboard the jet to join him.
Knowing they need to follow, the Doctor uses Jack's vortex manipulator as a transport and takes the three of them to the Valiant. Searching inside, they find the TARDIS. Inside however, they discover that the Master has cannibalized it and created a paradox machine. They sneak up to the flight deck where President Winters is preparing to greet the Toclafane.
The Toclafane are not pleased to see the President and insist on meeting the Master. The Master stands up and vaporizes the President. He then pins the Doctor down and kills Jack with a laser screwdriver. Martha rushes to Jack as he revives and Jack gives her his vortex manipulator. The Master changes the setting on his screwdriver and ages the Doctor over 100 years, making him an old man. The Master activates the paradox machine and billions of Toclafane pass through the vortex and invade Earth where the Master suggests they kill ten percent of humanity.
The Doctor whispers something to Martha and she steps back and teleports off the ship. As the Toclafane destroy cities, she promises to return. She does a year later after wandering through the world. She meets a young man named Thomas. She asks Thomas to take her to see a rogue scientists named Professor Docherty. As they walk, Martha tells Thomas of her journeys and the sights of the ships and weapons the Master is building to take over the universe.
On the Valiant, the Doctor, the Jones family and Jack attempt to take down the Master but are thwarted by him. He has Jack killed and relocked up and locks the Jones family in a cell for a while as they had been working as servants. He places the Doctor back in his chair for later punishment.
Martha and Thomas find Professor Docherty just as the Master is making a broadcast announcing that the conquest will start tomorrow. He also sends a message to Martha as he zaps the Doctor once more with his screwdriver, adding all the Doctor's years to this single regeneration. The Doctor ages 900 years and shrinks to a tiny size as the Master cuts the broadcast.
Martha is unphased and asks the professor and Thomas to help catch a Toclafane using a electrical pulse. They do so and when they unseal the sphere, they find a human head. Martha realizes that the Toclafane are the remnants of humanity that fled looking for Utopia. Upon finding nothing, they built insulating containers for themselves and regressed into a child-like manner. When the captured Toclafane notes that they kill because it's fun, Thomas shoots it.
Thomas takes Martha to London after showing Professor Docherty a gun that uses four chemicals and can kill a Time Lord. Docherty signals the Master of this, who has her son as a hostage. When Martha reaches London, they hide with other refugees and Martha tells of her travels and the Doctor. As she does, the Master arrives and orders Martha to surrender or he will kill everyone on that street. Unwilling to allow that, she surrenders. The Master destroys the bag containing her gun and then kills Thomas as he rushes to attack him. The Master however decides to take Martha back to the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.
In the control room, as the Master prepares to kill Martha, he also starts a countdown for the launch of ships and missiles to start the war. Martha begins to laugh and tells the Master the she did not have a weapon against him. She had spent the year traveling to tell people about the Doctor and how they should think of him when the Master's countdown goes to zero. As it does, the Doctor is energized by the collective psychic power of humanity connected through the Archangel network. He undoes the Master's aging of him, knocks away his laser screwdriver and frees humanity of their fear of him. He also cradles the Master and tells him that he forgives him.
The Toclafane head towards the Valiant to defend the paradox machine. Jack and two soldiers run down to destroy it. Jack, through several deaths, gets past three Toclafane and destroy the paradox machine within the TARDIS. This causes time to reverse to when it was first activated. The Master's work is undone and the Toclafane are sucked back to the year 100 Trillion. Only those at the center of events on the Valiant have any memory of the lost year as time resets to just after the Master killed the President.
The Master tries to escape but is arrested by several guards. The Doctor decides to keep the Master as a prisoner in the TARDIS but before he can, Lucy shoots the Master, having become resentful of his harmful treatment of her. The Master refuses to regenerate and dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor later burns the Master's body, though a mysterious woman steals his ring from the ashes.
The Doctor then prepares to leave in the TARDIS as Martha enters but she tells him that she is not coming back. She is tired and knows how fruitless it is to pursue the Doctor when he sees her only as a friend. She does give him her cell phone so that she can call him in an emergency. The Doctor then takes off but his flight is interrupted as the prow of an ocean liner crashes through the TARDIS wall. He is even further bothered when seeing that the ship is the Titanic.
Analysis
The expression, Deus Ex Machina is one that should be pretty familiar to Doctor Who fans as a form of it is used fairly often in this show. However, I don't even think that some of the wildest uses of it have ever gone so far as to turn the Doctor into a literal embodiment of God. It's actually mildly amusing to think of RTD, who is a fairly staunch atheist, going so deep into a Christ metaphor and then going even the extra mile and having the Master comment on it.
Like nearly all the RTD season ending two-parters, this is a tale of two halves. The Sound of Drums is largely the Master's tale with the Doctor, Martha and Jack restricted to a more passive role. Last of the Time Lords, despite it's title, is essentially Martha's tale with the Doctor providing the solution at the end. Right off the bat, without any other considerations, you can immediately see the potential problems. The Master is an outsized personality, easily able to carry a story and even more so in his almost Joker-like iteration of the John Simm Master. Martha on the other hand, has spent the series playing second fiddle to the Doctor both as companion and unrequited love interest. At almost no point in the series has she been given agency to be the central focus of the story. Even in the Family two-parter (arguably her best story) her story line comes after the mystery of what will happen to the Doctor. To expect her to be able to fully carry the story here is a tall order.
As mentioned before, the John Simm Master is almost like a British version of the Joker. He is wild and unpredictable. You get a very Joker-like scene near the beginning of the first episode where he gasses his entire cabinet and gives a thumbs up when they accuse him of being crazy. About all that was missing was for the ministers to have the smiles and then a bad joke by the Master and it would have been almost indistinguishable. It's interesting that for once the Master doesn't have a particularly convoluted plan and as a result, it actually works. He is aware of the Doctor but allows him in to see his triumph and to gloat over him.
We also see the effects of what a Master's win would look like in that Earth is only the first stage and he will now try to take over the universe once more. That is a little less interesting as it comes across as a bit more hackneyed with the plan to launch powerful missiles everywhere and then demand everyone's surrender. That's more of a harken back to the Ainley Master and his more zany schemes.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the Master's death. Not the fact that his wife shot him, that worked for me. But the scene before we had the Doctor call the Master's bluff in that his survival mattered more than defeating the Doctor, so he didn't create a black hole that destroys Earth. However, once shot, the Master refuses to regenerate just to triumph over the Doctor in death. That makes no sense. The threat of prison with the Doctor cannot be so bad as to overcome the Master's inherent desire to survive at all costs. It is a clichéd and terrible premise. It would have worked so much better if the Master had been taken prisoner. He could have easily been ignored to allow Donna free reign in Series Four and his escape from the Doctor's prison (whether the TARDIS or some other location) would have been far more interesting than the potions resurrection we got in The End of Time.
Speaking of the Doctor, he's a real non-entity in this story. He gives the backstory about Gallifrey and gives Martha and Jack their pseudo-cloaking devices, but aside from that, he doesn't do much. He is the god who restores everything at the end but it's Martha's story that spreads the word and almost nothing that he does. He even goes into full Jesus mode by forgiving the Master despite having killed millions of people. I guess it's akin to the Third Doctor laughing off the deaths in Terror of the Autons but stating that they'll be seeing the Master again, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.
Martha is okay in this but her focus on her family does make her sound rather whiney through a good portion of The Sound of Drums and I just don't care about any of them. Heck, the series has spent a better part of it's time making me dislike her mom so I don't know why I should care for her now, even if she is duped by the Master. Martha does improve some during her journey as she gains a measure of confidence and seems to do well to strike out on her own, but she's still not overly engaging from a personality standpoint. She's a bit too relaxed and confident in everything and it takes away some of the tension that the scenes are trying to build.
To top off Martha, we finally have the culmination of the unrequited love and it is boring. I don't care for Martha when she's in that mode in the first half of the series and the great gain of the second half is that she puts her feelings aside and just goes for the adventure. To bring it back and turn down the Doctor's offer of further travel because she needs to not pine after him dredges up that early unpleasantness. We actually get a double dose of it as Martha has a goodbye, walks out of the TARDIS and then goes back in to explain herself further. It's just painful to watch and just makes the Doctor look like a jerk for not even acknowledging her. Of course, he also had to pine over Rose in the first half of the series and that was also painful.
Jack was Jack and he was fine for the most part. He actually injected a bit of humor here and there, having gotten used to the dying and resurrecting bit. But Jack's leaving scene was also painfully written. I don't mind the fact that Jack might have been the Face of Boe as that would actually make for an interesting twist on a minor character. But the way it was written was painful. It wasn't even Exposition 101 it was set up so badly. It was a real shame that Jack's final scene of the arc was that badly written.
So let's get to the crux of the matter on the whole thing: the transfiguration of the Doctor into Christ. I will admit that I didn't care for the 1,000 year old "Dobby Doctor" as he's sometimes called, but I could get past it as a minor point. But no matter how much scientific babble you try to put on to it, the solution of the story comes from the people of the world effectively praying to the Doctor and the Doctor using that to resurrect himself. What's more, he has even more power as we see him lose the glow, the floating and the ability to Force push things away within a few minutes. I honestly can't see how anyone thought this was a good idea. Even the pseudo-science that the show uses would call this crap and it's the worst kind of get-out-of-jail free card I've seen. It undercuts the dire set up started in Utopia and amplified in The Sound of Drums. I think even if you found the Martha quest story interesting, this offering just knocks the story down to tolerable levels at best.
It is so unfortunate that this story ends on such a sour note. Utopia is an excellent lead in and The Sound of Drums is quite entertaining. It's not perfect as I find the Master a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but he is at least entertaining. There is also the fun of seeing him succeed for once at one of his plans. Even the first half of Last of the Time Lords isn't that bad. I'm not that big on Martha but her quest has some narrative value and the tension is appropriately spiked in various locations. But the last 15 minutes are just so bad. We have the Doctor becoming God, a total character flip that allows the Master to die but not actually destroy Earth and Martha's uncomfortable goodbye scene where she spills her heart out. I had been avoiding rewatching this one for a while and the second time around validated my avoidance of the story. Here's hoping that whatever the episode the John Simm Master pops up in next, he's given better material to work with than here.
Overall personal score: The Sound of Drums - 4 out of 5; Last of the Time Lords - 0.5 out of 5
With the leaked spoiler of the return of the John Simm Master in Series 10, I thought it only fitting to rewatch his moments of triumph in the Series 3 two-part finale. Most fans that I've heard from generally enjoy the Simm Master but his episodes have a rather negative reputation. The End of Time speaks for itself and I've already gone over that story. The Sound of Drums seems to be the most well liked of the four episodes that he stars in with things taking a bit of a dive in Last of the Time Lords. Are these reputations justified? Let's refresh the memory and see.
Plot Summary
Following the newly regenerated Master's theft of the Doctor's TARDIS at the end of Utopia, the Doctor repairs Jack's vortex manipulator and the three of them transport back to Earth. They land a couple of days after the election and find that the Master has been elected Prime Minister of Britain under the name of Harold Saxon.
In Downing Street, the Master kills his new cabinet with poison gas. At the same time, his wife, Lucy, gets a visit from a reporter who is also working as a Torchwood agent. She tells Lucy that Harold Saxon only appeared 18 months ago and has forged his past. Lucy acknowledges this as she already knew and the Master enters the room. The Master summons three alien spheres who attack and kill the reporter.
The Doctor, Jack and Martha head back to Martha's apartment where they work on trying to figure how the Master had taken over. The Doctor informs them that before the Master disappeared in the TARDIS, he locked the controls so that it only could operate between it's last two points of departure: 100 trillion years in the future and that day, give or take about 18 months. Observing Martha talking about Saxon, he realizes that the Master has set up some sort of hypnotic field but doesn't know how.
They are interrupted by a broadcast from Saxon that the UK has made initial contact with a new alien species called the Toclafane. They will be making a formal landing the following morning and Saxon intends to have it broadcast. As he explains, he states a key word and it triggers the timer on a bomb on the back of Martha's television. The trio rushes out before the bomb goes off and destroys Martha's apartment.
Panicked about the Master's knowledge of her, Martha calls her mom. Her mom urges her to come over even stating that her dad is over. Her father speaks as well but when Martha gets suspicious, he warns her and Saxon's men arrest him and Francine. The trio hop in a car and race to Francine's apartment. The agent in charge informs the Master of what has happened and he orders the arrest of Martha's sister Trish as well as she had been working as secretary to Lucy Saxon.
The trio arrives just as Martha's parents are placed in a police van. They open fire on Martha and they are forced to drive away. They ditch the car and walk away. Martha calls her brother who is in Brighton. She warns him to hide but their call in interrupted by the Master listening in. The Doctor takes the phone and he and the Master talk, the Master telling the Doctor of how he ran away from the Time War after being resurrected by the Time Lords. The Doctor in turn tells him that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War. The Master places their pictures on the television and has them proclaimed public enemies.
The trio runs and hides in an old warehouse. Jack and Martha gather both food and information. They learn that the Master set up a satellite system for phones now used by everyone called Archangel. The Doctor realizes that is how the Master is controlling people. To further help them, he takes the TARDIS key and splits it so they can each wear one. It is treated with a low level perception filter that causes people to look away, rendering them nondescript to ordinary people.
They leave the warehouse and head to an airport where the Master is meeting the new US President. Annoyed at Saxon's breach of UN agreements, he steps in and takes over the meeting with the Toclafane, which will take place on the Valiant, a UNIT airship. The Master is unperturbed and has his personal jet prepared to join the meeting. He also loads Martha's parents and sister aboard the jet to join him.
Knowing they need to follow, the Doctor uses Jack's vortex manipulator as a transport and takes the three of them to the Valiant. Searching inside, they find the TARDIS. Inside however, they discover that the Master has cannibalized it and created a paradox machine. They sneak up to the flight deck where President Winters is preparing to greet the Toclafane.
The Toclafane are not pleased to see the President and insist on meeting the Master. The Master stands up and vaporizes the President. He then pins the Doctor down and kills Jack with a laser screwdriver. Martha rushes to Jack as he revives and Jack gives her his vortex manipulator. The Master changes the setting on his screwdriver and ages the Doctor over 100 years, making him an old man. The Master activates the paradox machine and billions of Toclafane pass through the vortex and invade Earth where the Master suggests they kill ten percent of humanity.
The Doctor whispers something to Martha and she steps back and teleports off the ship. As the Toclafane destroy cities, she promises to return. She does a year later after wandering through the world. She meets a young man named Thomas. She asks Thomas to take her to see a rogue scientists named Professor Docherty. As they walk, Martha tells Thomas of her journeys and the sights of the ships and weapons the Master is building to take over the universe.
On the Valiant, the Doctor, the Jones family and Jack attempt to take down the Master but are thwarted by him. He has Jack killed and relocked up and locks the Jones family in a cell for a while as they had been working as servants. He places the Doctor back in his chair for later punishment.
Martha and Thomas find Professor Docherty just as the Master is making a broadcast announcing that the conquest will start tomorrow. He also sends a message to Martha as he zaps the Doctor once more with his screwdriver, adding all the Doctor's years to this single regeneration. The Doctor ages 900 years and shrinks to a tiny size as the Master cuts the broadcast.
Martha is unphased and asks the professor and Thomas to help catch a Toclafane using a electrical pulse. They do so and when they unseal the sphere, they find a human head. Martha realizes that the Toclafane are the remnants of humanity that fled looking for Utopia. Upon finding nothing, they built insulating containers for themselves and regressed into a child-like manner. When the captured Toclafane notes that they kill because it's fun, Thomas shoots it.
Thomas takes Martha to London after showing Professor Docherty a gun that uses four chemicals and can kill a Time Lord. Docherty signals the Master of this, who has her son as a hostage. When Martha reaches London, they hide with other refugees and Martha tells of her travels and the Doctor. As she does, the Master arrives and orders Martha to surrender or he will kill everyone on that street. Unwilling to allow that, she surrenders. The Master destroys the bag containing her gun and then kills Thomas as he rushes to attack him. The Master however decides to take Martha back to the Valiant to kill her in front of the Doctor.
In the control room, as the Master prepares to kill Martha, he also starts a countdown for the launch of ships and missiles to start the war. Martha begins to laugh and tells the Master the she did not have a weapon against him. She had spent the year traveling to tell people about the Doctor and how they should think of him when the Master's countdown goes to zero. As it does, the Doctor is energized by the collective psychic power of humanity connected through the Archangel network. He undoes the Master's aging of him, knocks away his laser screwdriver and frees humanity of their fear of him. He also cradles the Master and tells him that he forgives him.
The Toclafane head towards the Valiant to defend the paradox machine. Jack and two soldiers run down to destroy it. Jack, through several deaths, gets past three Toclafane and destroy the paradox machine within the TARDIS. This causes time to reverse to when it was first activated. The Master's work is undone and the Toclafane are sucked back to the year 100 Trillion. Only those at the center of events on the Valiant have any memory of the lost year as time resets to just after the Master killed the President.
The Master tries to escape but is arrested by several guards. The Doctor decides to keep the Master as a prisoner in the TARDIS but before he can, Lucy shoots the Master, having become resentful of his harmful treatment of her. The Master refuses to regenerate and dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor later burns the Master's body, though a mysterious woman steals his ring from the ashes.
The Doctor then prepares to leave in the TARDIS as Martha enters but she tells him that she is not coming back. She is tired and knows how fruitless it is to pursue the Doctor when he sees her only as a friend. She does give him her cell phone so that she can call him in an emergency. The Doctor then takes off but his flight is interrupted as the prow of an ocean liner crashes through the TARDIS wall. He is even further bothered when seeing that the ship is the Titanic.
Analysis
The expression, Deus Ex Machina is one that should be pretty familiar to Doctor Who fans as a form of it is used fairly often in this show. However, I don't even think that some of the wildest uses of it have ever gone so far as to turn the Doctor into a literal embodiment of God. It's actually mildly amusing to think of RTD, who is a fairly staunch atheist, going so deep into a Christ metaphor and then going even the extra mile and having the Master comment on it.
Like nearly all the RTD season ending two-parters, this is a tale of two halves. The Sound of Drums is largely the Master's tale with the Doctor, Martha and Jack restricted to a more passive role. Last of the Time Lords, despite it's title, is essentially Martha's tale with the Doctor providing the solution at the end. Right off the bat, without any other considerations, you can immediately see the potential problems. The Master is an outsized personality, easily able to carry a story and even more so in his almost Joker-like iteration of the John Simm Master. Martha on the other hand, has spent the series playing second fiddle to the Doctor both as companion and unrequited love interest. At almost no point in the series has she been given agency to be the central focus of the story. Even in the Family two-parter (arguably her best story) her story line comes after the mystery of what will happen to the Doctor. To expect her to be able to fully carry the story here is a tall order.
As mentioned before, the John Simm Master is almost like a British version of the Joker. He is wild and unpredictable. You get a very Joker-like scene near the beginning of the first episode where he gasses his entire cabinet and gives a thumbs up when they accuse him of being crazy. About all that was missing was for the ministers to have the smiles and then a bad joke by the Master and it would have been almost indistinguishable. It's interesting that for once the Master doesn't have a particularly convoluted plan and as a result, it actually works. He is aware of the Doctor but allows him in to see his triumph and to gloat over him.
We also see the effects of what a Master's win would look like in that Earth is only the first stage and he will now try to take over the universe once more. That is a little less interesting as it comes across as a bit more hackneyed with the plan to launch powerful missiles everywhere and then demand everyone's surrender. That's more of a harken back to the Ainley Master and his more zany schemes.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the Master's death. Not the fact that his wife shot him, that worked for me. But the scene before we had the Doctor call the Master's bluff in that his survival mattered more than defeating the Doctor, so he didn't create a black hole that destroys Earth. However, once shot, the Master refuses to regenerate just to triumph over the Doctor in death. That makes no sense. The threat of prison with the Doctor cannot be so bad as to overcome the Master's inherent desire to survive at all costs. It is a clichéd and terrible premise. It would have worked so much better if the Master had been taken prisoner. He could have easily been ignored to allow Donna free reign in Series Four and his escape from the Doctor's prison (whether the TARDIS or some other location) would have been far more interesting than the potions resurrection we got in The End of Time.
Speaking of the Doctor, he's a real non-entity in this story. He gives the backstory about Gallifrey and gives Martha and Jack their pseudo-cloaking devices, but aside from that, he doesn't do much. He is the god who restores everything at the end but it's Martha's story that spreads the word and almost nothing that he does. He even goes into full Jesus mode by forgiving the Master despite having killed millions of people. I guess it's akin to the Third Doctor laughing off the deaths in Terror of the Autons but stating that they'll be seeing the Master again, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.
Martha is okay in this but her focus on her family does make her sound rather whiney through a good portion of The Sound of Drums and I just don't care about any of them. Heck, the series has spent a better part of it's time making me dislike her mom so I don't know why I should care for her now, even if she is duped by the Master. Martha does improve some during her journey as she gains a measure of confidence and seems to do well to strike out on her own, but she's still not overly engaging from a personality standpoint. She's a bit too relaxed and confident in everything and it takes away some of the tension that the scenes are trying to build.
To top off Martha, we finally have the culmination of the unrequited love and it is boring. I don't care for Martha when she's in that mode in the first half of the series and the great gain of the second half is that she puts her feelings aside and just goes for the adventure. To bring it back and turn down the Doctor's offer of further travel because she needs to not pine after him dredges up that early unpleasantness. We actually get a double dose of it as Martha has a goodbye, walks out of the TARDIS and then goes back in to explain herself further. It's just painful to watch and just makes the Doctor look like a jerk for not even acknowledging her. Of course, he also had to pine over Rose in the first half of the series and that was also painful.
Jack was Jack and he was fine for the most part. He actually injected a bit of humor here and there, having gotten used to the dying and resurrecting bit. But Jack's leaving scene was also painfully written. I don't mind the fact that Jack might have been the Face of Boe as that would actually make for an interesting twist on a minor character. But the way it was written was painful. It wasn't even Exposition 101 it was set up so badly. It was a real shame that Jack's final scene of the arc was that badly written.
So let's get to the crux of the matter on the whole thing: the transfiguration of the Doctor into Christ. I will admit that I didn't care for the 1,000 year old "Dobby Doctor" as he's sometimes called, but I could get past it as a minor point. But no matter how much scientific babble you try to put on to it, the solution of the story comes from the people of the world effectively praying to the Doctor and the Doctor using that to resurrect himself. What's more, he has even more power as we see him lose the glow, the floating and the ability to Force push things away within a few minutes. I honestly can't see how anyone thought this was a good idea. Even the pseudo-science that the show uses would call this crap and it's the worst kind of get-out-of-jail free card I've seen. It undercuts the dire set up started in Utopia and amplified in The Sound of Drums. I think even if you found the Martha quest story interesting, this offering just knocks the story down to tolerable levels at best.
It is so unfortunate that this story ends on such a sour note. Utopia is an excellent lead in and The Sound of Drums is quite entertaining. It's not perfect as I find the Master a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but he is at least entertaining. There is also the fun of seeing him succeed for once at one of his plans. Even the first half of Last of the Time Lords isn't that bad. I'm not that big on Martha but her quest has some narrative value and the tension is appropriately spiked in various locations. But the last 15 minutes are just so bad. We have the Doctor becoming God, a total character flip that allows the Master to die but not actually destroy Earth and Martha's uncomfortable goodbye scene where she spills her heart out. I had been avoiding rewatching this one for a while and the second time around validated my avoidance of the story. Here's hoping that whatever the episode the John Simm Master pops up in next, he's given better material to work with than here.
Overall personal score: The Sound of Drums - 4 out of 5; Last of the Time Lords - 0.5 out of 5
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
Monday, October 31, 2016
The Lazarus Experiment
It doesn't usually take me that long reverse the polarity; I must be rusty.
The Lazarus Experiment represents the turning point for Series Three. The first half of the series was a little too hung up on Martha's attraction to the Doctor and the Doctor's moping due to Rose's departure. As such, it's got a lot of issues, even with good stories like Smith and Jones and Gridlock. However, the second half of the series put the Doctor and Martha more on friends footing and more into normal adventuring mode and that helped the mood a great deal. Better writing also aided the cause.
Plot Summary
The Doctor returns Martha to her apartment the morning after he picked her up. He prepares to say goodbye, although both seem a bit reluctant to do so. In the midst of that, Martha's mother calls and leaves a message that her sister is on TV. Martha turns it on to see her sister Tish behind an old man named Richard Lazarus giving an announcement of findings that will change the shape of humanity. The Doctor, intrigued by the announcement, decides to stay a bit longer to investigate.
Martha and the Doctor head to Lazarus' lab where he is hosting a gala and demonstrating his research. After a brief speech he climbs into a machine and orders the technicians to activate it. The machine activates but appears to be going out of control. The Doctor leaps to the controls and manages to stop the machine. However, it has done it's job as Lazarus steps out, now appearing to be in his early-thirties.
The Doctor is concerned about this experiment and the possible side effects and he and Martha slip into one of the labs to learn more. There they learn that Lazarus is splicing his DNA and mutating it to produce it's age reversal. However, the DNA is still mutating and unlocking dormant and unused genes.
Lazarus heads back to his office with his chief financier, Lady Thaw. He begins to mutate into a spider-like creature and absorbs her life-force before returning to his normal appearance. Unsatisfied with this energy drain, Lazarus goes in search of more. He finds Tish, who is his head of PR, and invites her up on the roof. Flattered by this attention, she follows.
The Doctor and Martha emerge from the lab and learn that Tish has gone off with Lazarus. Martha's mother, Francine, is increasingly suspicious of the Doctor and tries to dissuade Martha from going with him. Her fears are further stoked as an aide to Harold Saxon, candidate for Parliament, whispers in her ear about previous exploits of the Doctor.
The Doctor and Martha head to Lazarus' office where they discover Lady Thaw's body. The Doctor locates an energy trace and uses it to find Lazarus and Tish on the roof. Lazarus begins to transform and Martha and Tish run off. The Doctor distracts Lazarus while he orders Martha to get everyone out of the building. The Doctor does distract Lazarus for a bit but he emerges in the lobby, killing one guest and sending the rest of the building into a panic.
The Doctor pulls Lazarus away while Martha uses the sonic screwdriver to unlock the doors, letting everyone else escape. Her mother pleads with her to come with them but she goes back into the building to help the Doctor. They reunite in the lobby and the Doctor pulls her into the machine to avoid Lazarus, knowing that he won't destroy it. Lazarus instead activates the machine but the Doctor reverses the polarity of the machine, sending a pulse of energy outward that appears to kill Lazarus.
An ambulance arrives to take Lazarus away and check on everyone else. However, Lazarus is not quite dead and he absorbs the life of the EMTs before fleeing into a neighboring church. The Doctor, Martha and Tish follow him and find Lazarus succumbing to the mutation in the church. Knowing that the experiments were based on sonic energy, the Doctor whispers to Martha that they need to get him into the bell tower. As Lazarus transforms, Martha and Tish lure him away.
The two women manage to get him into the bell tower and the Doctor begins to play the organ with his sonic screwdriver amplifying the sonic energy. The sound waves disrupt the mutation, causing Lazarus to fall from the tower and break his neck.
With the adventure over, the Doctor invites Martha to continue traveling with him. She agrees and they disappear in the TARDIS as Francine leaves a message on Martha's machine telling her she knows things about the Doctor from Harold Saxon and that she is in danger.
Analysis
The Lazarus Experiment is both enjoyable, but also rather unmemorable. As noted above, it starts a turn in the storytelling where Martha acts like a real friend and companion rather than a moon-eyed girl. The Doctor also seems to finally stop moaning over his lot in life and just go an investigate. All of this is great. But at the same time, there isn't much in the story to reach out and grab you, making you want to pull the story off the shelf and watch it again.
All of the acting was quite good in this story. The Doctor was on point with even a bit of his humor back. Martha also was enjoyable, actually stepping up as a true assistant in the analysis of Lazarus' DNA that probably hadn't been seen since the days of Liz Shaw. Their relationship got over the "maybe he likes me" point and it was nice to see them working together as two scientifically oriented minds and friends, even if Martha still had to do her fair share of screaming.
I thought Lazarus worked well as a villain. He was quite believable as a man so scared and arrogant about death that he would do anything to avoid it. His condescension towards others once his youth had been restored was well done and did quite a bit of shorthand in defining him as an unsympathetic bad guy. I thought it also an interesting bit that when he was an old man, Tish was repulsed by Lazarus kissing her hand but when he had become young, she admitted that she was willing to make out with him on the roof. It was an amusing bit of contrast in the shallowness of appearance and was one of the few things that softened Lazarus as not a truly evil person, just misguided and destroyed by his own fear.
The mutant creature was an interesting concept and reminded me of the Star Trek: TNG episode Genesis in that there was nothing alien about Lazarus, only rejected mutations. The realization of this creature was not quite up to par though. It was a good effort but the production team opted to try and map Mark Gatiss' face on to the creature and the effect is about what you would expect for 2007. It's not as primitive as what you saw in something like the Goldeneye video game, but it still wasn't up to the point where you would believe it to be real. Not something to punish them severely for, but it is a moment that takes you out of the reality of the story.
Martha's family was ok. Tish and her brother are pretty non-descript and even when she tags along, there is nothing really developed with Tish. The primary focus is on her mother and she does a pretty good job in making you dislike her off the bat. It's probably a bit too effective because she just takes an instant dislike to the Doctor for no reason and it feels a bit like those moms who try and make their children perfect and control their lives to make up for their own crappy ones. I say that because at no point do you feel sympathy with Francine when she worries about her daughter. Instead it just feels like mom trying to control Martha's life from a different angle. If she had been shown as a bit more sympathetic when first interacting with the Doctor and Martha, her concern over Martha's involvement with the Doctor given the information of Harold Saxon would have garnered more of the concerned parent angle and given us more reason to feel for her being duped since we know that the Doctor is good, even if we don't know who Harold Saxon actually is yet.
As far as the overall story, it's a bit interesting because it's so short. The Doctor and Martha actually defeat Lazarus initially in the first thirty minutes of the story. They then give him the fake death bit to allow the Doctor and Martha take him out a second time. However, in both instances, there is not much to really say. The monster chases them with Martha or the Doctor being bait and then the Doctor figures a solution. The intellectual aspect is over once they discover the still mutating DNA. I think it is for that reason that this story is both enjoyable but also forgettable. A generic monster run around with no major witty moments or hard decisions is fun but it just sort of sits there and is easily replaced once the story is done.
I think you could actually accuse this story of having padding as well. The Doctor is shown setting a couple of traps for Lazarus during the first chase through the lab. We are also shown Martha and Tish being in extra danger because the Doctor is not fully prepared to hit Lazarus once he is in the bell tower. These add up to artificial tension as well as a way to increase the run time. They also seem to hit various tropes, with Tish grabbing Martha by the arm before she falls off the edge being the most common.
Again, there is nothing bad about this story and it will entertain you well enough for 42 minutes. But it also will slip out of your mind just as quickly. I would think of this story as a small bag of potato chips, tasty but junk food. Easy to pull out and watch if you've nothing better to do, but not one that will be on anyone's first choice list.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
The Lazarus Experiment represents the turning point for Series Three. The first half of the series was a little too hung up on Martha's attraction to the Doctor and the Doctor's moping due to Rose's departure. As such, it's got a lot of issues, even with good stories like Smith and Jones and Gridlock. However, the second half of the series put the Doctor and Martha more on friends footing and more into normal adventuring mode and that helped the mood a great deal. Better writing also aided the cause.
Plot Summary
The Doctor returns Martha to her apartment the morning after he picked her up. He prepares to say goodbye, although both seem a bit reluctant to do so. In the midst of that, Martha's mother calls and leaves a message that her sister is on TV. Martha turns it on to see her sister Tish behind an old man named Richard Lazarus giving an announcement of findings that will change the shape of humanity. The Doctor, intrigued by the announcement, decides to stay a bit longer to investigate.
Martha and the Doctor head to Lazarus' lab where he is hosting a gala and demonstrating his research. After a brief speech he climbs into a machine and orders the technicians to activate it. The machine activates but appears to be going out of control. The Doctor leaps to the controls and manages to stop the machine. However, it has done it's job as Lazarus steps out, now appearing to be in his early-thirties.
The Doctor is concerned about this experiment and the possible side effects and he and Martha slip into one of the labs to learn more. There they learn that Lazarus is splicing his DNA and mutating it to produce it's age reversal. However, the DNA is still mutating and unlocking dormant and unused genes.
Lazarus heads back to his office with his chief financier, Lady Thaw. He begins to mutate into a spider-like creature and absorbs her life-force before returning to his normal appearance. Unsatisfied with this energy drain, Lazarus goes in search of more. He finds Tish, who is his head of PR, and invites her up on the roof. Flattered by this attention, she follows.
The Doctor and Martha emerge from the lab and learn that Tish has gone off with Lazarus. Martha's mother, Francine, is increasingly suspicious of the Doctor and tries to dissuade Martha from going with him. Her fears are further stoked as an aide to Harold Saxon, candidate for Parliament, whispers in her ear about previous exploits of the Doctor.
The Doctor and Martha head to Lazarus' office where they discover Lady Thaw's body. The Doctor locates an energy trace and uses it to find Lazarus and Tish on the roof. Lazarus begins to transform and Martha and Tish run off. The Doctor distracts Lazarus while he orders Martha to get everyone out of the building. The Doctor does distract Lazarus for a bit but he emerges in the lobby, killing one guest and sending the rest of the building into a panic.
The Doctor pulls Lazarus away while Martha uses the sonic screwdriver to unlock the doors, letting everyone else escape. Her mother pleads with her to come with them but she goes back into the building to help the Doctor. They reunite in the lobby and the Doctor pulls her into the machine to avoid Lazarus, knowing that he won't destroy it. Lazarus instead activates the machine but the Doctor reverses the polarity of the machine, sending a pulse of energy outward that appears to kill Lazarus.
An ambulance arrives to take Lazarus away and check on everyone else. However, Lazarus is not quite dead and he absorbs the life of the EMTs before fleeing into a neighboring church. The Doctor, Martha and Tish follow him and find Lazarus succumbing to the mutation in the church. Knowing that the experiments were based on sonic energy, the Doctor whispers to Martha that they need to get him into the bell tower. As Lazarus transforms, Martha and Tish lure him away.
The two women manage to get him into the bell tower and the Doctor begins to play the organ with his sonic screwdriver amplifying the sonic energy. The sound waves disrupt the mutation, causing Lazarus to fall from the tower and break his neck.
With the adventure over, the Doctor invites Martha to continue traveling with him. She agrees and they disappear in the TARDIS as Francine leaves a message on Martha's machine telling her she knows things about the Doctor from Harold Saxon and that she is in danger.
Analysis
The Lazarus Experiment is both enjoyable, but also rather unmemorable. As noted above, it starts a turn in the storytelling where Martha acts like a real friend and companion rather than a moon-eyed girl. The Doctor also seems to finally stop moaning over his lot in life and just go an investigate. All of this is great. But at the same time, there isn't much in the story to reach out and grab you, making you want to pull the story off the shelf and watch it again.
All of the acting was quite good in this story. The Doctor was on point with even a bit of his humor back. Martha also was enjoyable, actually stepping up as a true assistant in the analysis of Lazarus' DNA that probably hadn't been seen since the days of Liz Shaw. Their relationship got over the "maybe he likes me" point and it was nice to see them working together as two scientifically oriented minds and friends, even if Martha still had to do her fair share of screaming.
I thought Lazarus worked well as a villain. He was quite believable as a man so scared and arrogant about death that he would do anything to avoid it. His condescension towards others once his youth had been restored was well done and did quite a bit of shorthand in defining him as an unsympathetic bad guy. I thought it also an interesting bit that when he was an old man, Tish was repulsed by Lazarus kissing her hand but when he had become young, she admitted that she was willing to make out with him on the roof. It was an amusing bit of contrast in the shallowness of appearance and was one of the few things that softened Lazarus as not a truly evil person, just misguided and destroyed by his own fear.
The mutant creature was an interesting concept and reminded me of the Star Trek: TNG episode Genesis in that there was nothing alien about Lazarus, only rejected mutations. The realization of this creature was not quite up to par though. It was a good effort but the production team opted to try and map Mark Gatiss' face on to the creature and the effect is about what you would expect for 2007. It's not as primitive as what you saw in something like the Goldeneye video game, but it still wasn't up to the point where you would believe it to be real. Not something to punish them severely for, but it is a moment that takes you out of the reality of the story.
Martha's family was ok. Tish and her brother are pretty non-descript and even when she tags along, there is nothing really developed with Tish. The primary focus is on her mother and she does a pretty good job in making you dislike her off the bat. It's probably a bit too effective because she just takes an instant dislike to the Doctor for no reason and it feels a bit like those moms who try and make their children perfect and control their lives to make up for their own crappy ones. I say that because at no point do you feel sympathy with Francine when she worries about her daughter. Instead it just feels like mom trying to control Martha's life from a different angle. If she had been shown as a bit more sympathetic when first interacting with the Doctor and Martha, her concern over Martha's involvement with the Doctor given the information of Harold Saxon would have garnered more of the concerned parent angle and given us more reason to feel for her being duped since we know that the Doctor is good, even if we don't know who Harold Saxon actually is yet.
As far as the overall story, it's a bit interesting because it's so short. The Doctor and Martha actually defeat Lazarus initially in the first thirty minutes of the story. They then give him the fake death bit to allow the Doctor and Martha take him out a second time. However, in both instances, there is not much to really say. The monster chases them with Martha or the Doctor being bait and then the Doctor figures a solution. The intellectual aspect is over once they discover the still mutating DNA. I think it is for that reason that this story is both enjoyable but also forgettable. A generic monster run around with no major witty moments or hard decisions is fun but it just sort of sits there and is easily replaced once the story is done.
I think you could actually accuse this story of having padding as well. The Doctor is shown setting a couple of traps for Lazarus during the first chase through the lab. We are also shown Martha and Tish being in extra danger because the Doctor is not fully prepared to hit Lazarus once he is in the bell tower. These add up to artificial tension as well as a way to increase the run time. They also seem to hit various tropes, with Tish grabbing Martha by the arm before she falls off the edge being the most common.
Again, there is nothing bad about this story and it will entertain you well enough for 42 minutes. But it also will slip out of your mind just as quickly. I would think of this story as a small bag of potato chips, tasty but junk food. Easy to pull out and watch if you've nothing better to do, but not one that will be on anyone's first choice list.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Smith and Jones
The Judoon platoon on the moon.
Smith and Jones was the first story since Rose that had to introduce a new companion and the first one overall in the new series that had to do it with an established Doctor. In that regard, it did it's job fairly well.
Plot Summary
Martha is going to work when she runs into the Doctor who takes off his tie in front of her. Martha continues, all on the phone with her family who are all freaking out about her father bringing his girlfriend to her brother's 21st birthday party. In the hospital, Martha goes around with a group of medical students under the supervision of a senior teaching Doctor. There she meets the Doctor again but he has no memory of meeting her earlier. In her examination, she discovers that he has two hearts but he winks at her to keep it a secret. A few hours later, Martha is on the phone with her sister again and discovers that the rain is localized around the hospital and falling upward. Suddenly the hospital is transported to the surface of the moon.
Martha and a colleague try to calm the patients when the Doctor shows up and the two of them investigate how they still have air to breathe. They discover a shield around the hospital that traps the air in but also realize that with no filtration, people will soon suffocate as the oxygen runs out. While investigating, three Judoon ships land and march their troops into the hospital. They have transported the hospital to the moon and are looking for an alien criminal. They begin to scan people and mark off anyone who registers as human. The Doctor realizes that if he is detected, the Judoon will simply mark him as non-human, proclaim him the criminal and execute him and possibly the entire hospital for harboring a fugitive.
Meanwhile, the real criminal, a plasmavore disguised as an elderly woman, attacks the teaching Doctor and drinks his blood to mask her own alien signature. She is discovered by the Doctor and Martha and she sends two robots after them to kill them. They elude one and the Doctor destroys the other by modifying an X-ray machine although his sonic screwdriver is destroyed in the process. Leaving the room, they run into the Judoon who realize the Doctor is non-human. They run away and hide on a floor the Judoon already have searched but realize they will be discovered soon. To buy time, the Doctor kisses Martha, leaving a trace of alien DNA on her skin while he runs to the MRI lab. There he discovers the plasmavore modifying the MRI machine to emit a pulse that will kill everything within a 250,000 mile radius except her in a shielded room.
The Doctor pretends to be human and tricks the plasmavore into thinking that she will need more blood to escape a second scan. She promptly starts to drink the Doctor's blood. The Judoon, having discovered Martha, pause to do a full scan on her due to the trace of alien DNA. Upon discovering that she is fully human, she leads them into the MRI room. The Judoon see the Doctor's nearly drained body and prepare to close the case. Martha grabs the Judoon scanner and points it at the plasmavore. The Doctor's alien blood counters the human blood previously consumed and the Judoon recognize her true nature and promptly execute her.
Realizing the danger of the MRI bomb, the Judoon evacuate. Martha manages to revive the Doctor and then passes out due to the lack of oxygen. The Doctor manages to disarm the bomb and as the Judoon leave, they transport the hospital back to Earth where everyone is revived. The Doctor leaves and Martha heads home and then to her brother's birthday party. A fight breaks out between her parents at the party and in the chaos, the Doctor motions Martha over to an alleyway. He shows her the TARDIS and invites her aboard for a trip as a thank you for what she did for him. She is skeptical but he then goes back in time briefly to show her him removing his tie before she went to work. Convinced, Martha enters the TARDIS and they take off.
Analysis
Smith and Jones is a fun little adventure that does it's job of introducing Martha as a companion. In that regard, it isn't so much a standard adventure but instead more of a character study. The down side of that is that while fun, things move a bit too quickly and simply and you are left with a feeling of That's it?
I did like the Judoon and their simplistic logical efficiency. They are similar to the Sontarians in many regards and an amusing send up of military and police bureaucracy. I also liked the villain in this story. It was rather nice to see an older actress play a sinister character with a bit of brain to manipulate their way out of a situation. I also liked the interaction between the Doctor and Martha. When they focus on the problems at hand, such as in the hospital situation, they have a nice chemistry and readily bounce ideas off each other. It is also nice to see the beginnings of a companion who doesn't take the Doctor's guff and is willing to put him on the spot.
What I didn't care for or just didn't sit right with me about this episode was how quickly everything wrapped up as far as the source of danger. It was both over too quickly and it made too much room for the inclusion of Martha's interactions with her relations. Not that there was anything bad about them, but it brought up an immediate feeling that like Rose, there would not be just the companion. The stories would involve her whole extended family as well and having done that dynamic with Jackie and Mickey, it had a touch of the shoehorn to fit an established style.
Rose also hangs heavy over this episode which is another slight knock against it. The Doctor is clearly still pining for Rose and that makes him mopey and mopey Tenth Doctor is annoying. There is also the beginnings of the unrequited love of Martha which has two negatives. One, it again forces us to constantly call back to Rose when we should be done with her. Two, Martha going into big eyes adoration mode destroys the natural chemistry she and the Doctor have. They function better as an investigative team, bouncing ideas off each other (Holmes and Watson so to speak) and whenever that is lost by Martha taking whatever the Doctor says because she is fond of him, it just seems to undo the natural order of things and takes you right out of the story.
Those drawbacks aside, it is a fun little story and easily watchable again. It would not be my first choice of the Series Three options but you'll get no complaints from me if someone suggested it.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
Smith and Jones was the first story since Rose that had to introduce a new companion and the first one overall in the new series that had to do it with an established Doctor. In that regard, it did it's job fairly well.
Plot Summary
Martha is going to work when she runs into the Doctor who takes off his tie in front of her. Martha continues, all on the phone with her family who are all freaking out about her father bringing his girlfriend to her brother's 21st birthday party. In the hospital, Martha goes around with a group of medical students under the supervision of a senior teaching Doctor. There she meets the Doctor again but he has no memory of meeting her earlier. In her examination, she discovers that he has two hearts but he winks at her to keep it a secret. A few hours later, Martha is on the phone with her sister again and discovers that the rain is localized around the hospital and falling upward. Suddenly the hospital is transported to the surface of the moon.
Martha and a colleague try to calm the patients when the Doctor shows up and the two of them investigate how they still have air to breathe. They discover a shield around the hospital that traps the air in but also realize that with no filtration, people will soon suffocate as the oxygen runs out. While investigating, three Judoon ships land and march their troops into the hospital. They have transported the hospital to the moon and are looking for an alien criminal. They begin to scan people and mark off anyone who registers as human. The Doctor realizes that if he is detected, the Judoon will simply mark him as non-human, proclaim him the criminal and execute him and possibly the entire hospital for harboring a fugitive.
Meanwhile, the real criminal, a plasmavore disguised as an elderly woman, attacks the teaching Doctor and drinks his blood to mask her own alien signature. She is discovered by the Doctor and Martha and she sends two robots after them to kill them. They elude one and the Doctor destroys the other by modifying an X-ray machine although his sonic screwdriver is destroyed in the process. Leaving the room, they run into the Judoon who realize the Doctor is non-human. They run away and hide on a floor the Judoon already have searched but realize they will be discovered soon. To buy time, the Doctor kisses Martha, leaving a trace of alien DNA on her skin while he runs to the MRI lab. There he discovers the plasmavore modifying the MRI machine to emit a pulse that will kill everything within a 250,000 mile radius except her in a shielded room.
The Doctor pretends to be human and tricks the plasmavore into thinking that she will need more blood to escape a second scan. She promptly starts to drink the Doctor's blood. The Judoon, having discovered Martha, pause to do a full scan on her due to the trace of alien DNA. Upon discovering that she is fully human, she leads them into the MRI room. The Judoon see the Doctor's nearly drained body and prepare to close the case. Martha grabs the Judoon scanner and points it at the plasmavore. The Doctor's alien blood counters the human blood previously consumed and the Judoon recognize her true nature and promptly execute her.
Realizing the danger of the MRI bomb, the Judoon evacuate. Martha manages to revive the Doctor and then passes out due to the lack of oxygen. The Doctor manages to disarm the bomb and as the Judoon leave, they transport the hospital back to Earth where everyone is revived. The Doctor leaves and Martha heads home and then to her brother's birthday party. A fight breaks out between her parents at the party and in the chaos, the Doctor motions Martha over to an alleyway. He shows her the TARDIS and invites her aboard for a trip as a thank you for what she did for him. She is skeptical but he then goes back in time briefly to show her him removing his tie before she went to work. Convinced, Martha enters the TARDIS and they take off.
Analysis
Smith and Jones is a fun little adventure that does it's job of introducing Martha as a companion. In that regard, it isn't so much a standard adventure but instead more of a character study. The down side of that is that while fun, things move a bit too quickly and simply and you are left with a feeling of That's it?
I did like the Judoon and their simplistic logical efficiency. They are similar to the Sontarians in many regards and an amusing send up of military and police bureaucracy. I also liked the villain in this story. It was rather nice to see an older actress play a sinister character with a bit of brain to manipulate their way out of a situation. I also liked the interaction between the Doctor and Martha. When they focus on the problems at hand, such as in the hospital situation, they have a nice chemistry and readily bounce ideas off each other. It is also nice to see the beginnings of a companion who doesn't take the Doctor's guff and is willing to put him on the spot.
What I didn't care for or just didn't sit right with me about this episode was how quickly everything wrapped up as far as the source of danger. It was both over too quickly and it made too much room for the inclusion of Martha's interactions with her relations. Not that there was anything bad about them, but it brought up an immediate feeling that like Rose, there would not be just the companion. The stories would involve her whole extended family as well and having done that dynamic with Jackie and Mickey, it had a touch of the shoehorn to fit an established style.
Rose also hangs heavy over this episode which is another slight knock against it. The Doctor is clearly still pining for Rose and that makes him mopey and mopey Tenth Doctor is annoying. There is also the beginnings of the unrequited love of Martha which has two negatives. One, it again forces us to constantly call back to Rose when we should be done with her. Two, Martha going into big eyes adoration mode destroys the natural chemistry she and the Doctor have. They function better as an investigative team, bouncing ideas off each other (Holmes and Watson so to speak) and whenever that is lost by Martha taking whatever the Doctor says because she is fond of him, it just seems to undo the natural order of things and takes you right out of the story.
Those drawbacks aside, it is a fun little story and easily watchable again. It would not be my first choice of the Series Three options but you'll get no complaints from me if someone suggested it.
Overall personal score: 3.5 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
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Utopia
The Master... reborn!
Utopia is an excellent episode that starts a little off but improves greatly as it progresses. I don't know if I would think of it as the be all and end all that some fans give it, but it's still very, very good.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Martha land in Cardiff to refuel on the energy rift. Just as they are about to take-off again, Captain Jack throws himself on the TARDIS. In an attempt to throw him off, the TARDIS launches forward 100 Trillion years to the end of the universe. They land on a small planet where the remnants of humanity are gathering in an attempt to find a way to escape the heat death of the universe. Chased by mutants called the Futurekind, the group escapes to the base and are met by the chief scientist called Professor Yana. The Doctor assists the Professor and gets the rocket power source to work. However while preparing for take-off, a Futurekind that had snuck into the base sabotages the power source.
The Doctor and Jack head down to the radiation soaked reaction chamber. Jack, as a result of Rose bringing him back to life in The Parting of the Ways, cannot die and is able to work in the room without being damaged by the radiation. Meanwhile, Professor Yana is affected by all the talk of time travel and pulls out a fob watch to articulate his feelings about time. Martha recognizes it as the same type of fob watch that the Doctor used to become human in Human Nature/The Family of Blood. Martha runs down to tell the Doctor and as the rocket takes off, Professor Yana, illuminated by Martha's interest, opens the watch.
With the essence of the Master restored, Professor Yana shuts down the defenses of the base allowing the Futurekind in. He locks out the Doctor and mortally wounds his assistant Chantho. Before she dies, Chantho shoots the Master. He locks himself in the Doctor's TARDIS and regenerates into a younger form. With the Futurekind attempting to break in through the door, the Master disappears with the TARDIS, abandoning the Doctor and his companions in the far future.
Analysis
The episode begins on a bit of a sour note as the Futurekind look like a cheap Mad Max rip off. The chase of the Doctor and his companions (and one other human) is nothing special and it doesn't draw you in very much. However, once they are in the base and Derek Jacobi is given full sway, the whole tone of the episode changes. The characters become deeper and more interesting and that drives the story far more than the very simple plot.
The two best moments are when Jack and the Doctor are talking while Jack operates in the radiation soaked room and while Professor Yana loses himself in his embedded memories, trying to recall who he really is. Despite the tension being high in trying to get the rocket to launch, the Doctor and Jack have an interesting discussion about what happened to Jack, why the Doctor abandoned him, and how he realized what happened to him as he waited one hundred fifty years for the Doctor to arrive. It's a quiet moment where the Doctor and Jack just talk with no subterfuge or garbage between them. It's just an honest heart to heart talk that draws you in as you enjoy both of these characters.
Professor Yana's scene is just about the power of Derek Jacobi as an actor. Events build throughout the episode as little bits of Time Lord lore and phrasing are dropped but when the concept of traveling through time and space in the TARDIS is revealed, you can see the internal struggle going through Professor Yana. The slow burn of this development, including the reveal of the fob watch are done well and allow Jacobi to express everything through his face and hands. When he does speak, it only emphasizes what he is already expressing visually. The culmination where Professor Yana becomes the Master again is interwoven beautifully with the actions of the Doctor both to finish the launching of the rocket and then fashbacks to the Face of Boe's prediction that the Doctor is not alone. It holds you tightly and keeps you fully engaged the whole time.
The episode does sag a little bit after such a good build up and the Master in both his Professor Yana and Harold Saxon forms go a bit over the top. It's not bad, but it's a stark contrast that it can be a bit jolting and overuse would become grating. But it works well enough in this instance.
Overall, this is a very good episode. If I were more picky I'd dock it for the opening, but I can't justify that given how good the episode is after they are in the base. This is an easy one to go back to and watch again with just as much enjoyment as the first time you saw it.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Utopia is an excellent episode that starts a little off but improves greatly as it progresses. I don't know if I would think of it as the be all and end all that some fans give it, but it's still very, very good.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Martha land in Cardiff to refuel on the energy rift. Just as they are about to take-off again, Captain Jack throws himself on the TARDIS. In an attempt to throw him off, the TARDIS launches forward 100 Trillion years to the end of the universe. They land on a small planet where the remnants of humanity are gathering in an attempt to find a way to escape the heat death of the universe. Chased by mutants called the Futurekind, the group escapes to the base and are met by the chief scientist called Professor Yana. The Doctor assists the Professor and gets the rocket power source to work. However while preparing for take-off, a Futurekind that had snuck into the base sabotages the power source.
The Doctor and Jack head down to the radiation soaked reaction chamber. Jack, as a result of Rose bringing him back to life in The Parting of the Ways, cannot die and is able to work in the room without being damaged by the radiation. Meanwhile, Professor Yana is affected by all the talk of time travel and pulls out a fob watch to articulate his feelings about time. Martha recognizes it as the same type of fob watch that the Doctor used to become human in Human Nature/The Family of Blood. Martha runs down to tell the Doctor and as the rocket takes off, Professor Yana, illuminated by Martha's interest, opens the watch.
With the essence of the Master restored, Professor Yana shuts down the defenses of the base allowing the Futurekind in. He locks out the Doctor and mortally wounds his assistant Chantho. Before she dies, Chantho shoots the Master. He locks himself in the Doctor's TARDIS and regenerates into a younger form. With the Futurekind attempting to break in through the door, the Master disappears with the TARDIS, abandoning the Doctor and his companions in the far future.
Analysis
The episode begins on a bit of a sour note as the Futurekind look like a cheap Mad Max rip off. The chase of the Doctor and his companions (and one other human) is nothing special and it doesn't draw you in very much. However, once they are in the base and Derek Jacobi is given full sway, the whole tone of the episode changes. The characters become deeper and more interesting and that drives the story far more than the very simple plot.
The two best moments are when Jack and the Doctor are talking while Jack operates in the radiation soaked room and while Professor Yana loses himself in his embedded memories, trying to recall who he really is. Despite the tension being high in trying to get the rocket to launch, the Doctor and Jack have an interesting discussion about what happened to Jack, why the Doctor abandoned him, and how he realized what happened to him as he waited one hundred fifty years for the Doctor to arrive. It's a quiet moment where the Doctor and Jack just talk with no subterfuge or garbage between them. It's just an honest heart to heart talk that draws you in as you enjoy both of these characters.
Professor Yana's scene is just about the power of Derek Jacobi as an actor. Events build throughout the episode as little bits of Time Lord lore and phrasing are dropped but when the concept of traveling through time and space in the TARDIS is revealed, you can see the internal struggle going through Professor Yana. The slow burn of this development, including the reveal of the fob watch are done well and allow Jacobi to express everything through his face and hands. When he does speak, it only emphasizes what he is already expressing visually. The culmination where Professor Yana becomes the Master again is interwoven beautifully with the actions of the Doctor both to finish the launching of the rocket and then fashbacks to the Face of Boe's prediction that the Doctor is not alone. It holds you tightly and keeps you fully engaged the whole time.
The episode does sag a little bit after such a good build up and the Master in both his Professor Yana and Harold Saxon forms go a bit over the top. It's not bad, but it's a stark contrast that it can be a bit jolting and overuse would become grating. But it works well enough in this instance.
Overall, this is a very good episode. If I were more picky I'd dock it for the opening, but I can't justify that given how good the episode is after they are in the base. This is an easy one to go back to and watch again with just as much enjoyment as the first time you saw it.
Overall personal score: 5 out of 5
Monday, January 25, 2016
42
Burn with me.
When I found out Friday that Chris Chibnall will be taking over as show runner following Series 10 in 2017, I thought I should pull one of his episodes again to refresh myself on his work. This worked out fairly well as I had no memory of 42 the first time I watched it. The net result... eh.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Martha receive a distress call and land on a ship that is crashing into a star and will impact in forty-two minutes. The room where the TARDIS is becomes flooded with super-heated steam, preventing the evacuation of the ship. What's more, one of the crew has been infected and has sabotaged the main engine controls. Martha and one crew member (Riley) head to the auxiliary engine control room which has been sealed off by a series of doors. The doors are password protected with the password being the answer to trivia questions the crew came up with during a drunken binge.
The Doctor attempts to help repair the engine controls but gets pulled off as the infected crew member attacks and vaporizes other members of the crew. Martha and Riley manage to avoid being killed but are trapped in an escape pod that is launched towards the sun. The infected crewman is neutralized temporarily and the Doctor journeys outside the ship and magnetically pulls the escape pod back to the ship. However, he is infected by the star and learns that the captain had mined the outer layer of the star for fuel, unwittingly stealing the heart of the star which is alive. Martha attempts to rid the Doctor of the infection but the infected crewman revives and cuts the power. The captain then grabs the infected crewman and casts him and herself out of the airlock and into the star. Unable to help, the Doctor sends Martha to the auxiliary engine control, which has been opened by Riley and another crewman, and orders her to dump the fuel. She does so and the engines come back on line allowing the ship to escape.
Analysis
When I first watched this episode, I was just following on from The Lazarus Experiment and thought I could stay up for another one, despite being tired and a little tipsy. Needless to say, it didn't register and when I was looking back at episodes I had seen, I realized I couldn't remember any plot details of this one. Watching it a second time, I can see why it didn't register with me.
The thing is, there is nothing particularly wrong with the episode, but it didn't really grab me either. My immediate thought was that it felt somewhat similar to The Impossible Planet in it's set up. But where that episode had engaging characters and a horror tone, this one gave me no reason to care about any character other than Riley and very little time to appreciate any tone other than urgency.
The hook for this episode is the real-time countdown to destruction. But I think that actually worked against it in a way. The little time that was spent in slower moments where you would develop character were tinged with a feeling of wasting time that undercut the potential character moment. The rest was just running around, rushing to make sure someone didn't die or attempting to unlock the puzzle of the moment. The countdown itself was the only driver and it left you a bit cold towards the characters.
Another flaw in terms of grip was the Captain's portrayal. The Captain came across as a bit weak. She seemed to be someone who let someone else make decisions for her, which would be fine if (like The Impossible Planet) she had been thrust suddenly into command, but she was the Captain from the get go. It was she who made the decision to mine the star for fuel and then seemed like someone hit on the head when trouble began. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't compelling either and just seemed out of place given that she was with the Doctor in nearly every scene.
There were some nice moments. Martha had a couple of nice scenes where she called her mom and she also had some nice chemistry moments with Riley. I would have preferred if the Saxon team with Martha's mom hadn't been revealed until the last scene but it still worked. Likewise, the Doctor had some nice moments especially when he was rescuing Martha and after he had been infected.
Still, I think the word for this episode is uneventful. It has elements that should make it compelling, but it never really gels and once it is over, it begins to slip way from your mind. There's nothing here to really grab you and make you want to watch it again. Again, not bad, just not particularly good either.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
When I found out Friday that Chris Chibnall will be taking over as show runner following Series 10 in 2017, I thought I should pull one of his episodes again to refresh myself on his work. This worked out fairly well as I had no memory of 42 the first time I watched it. The net result... eh.
Plot Summary
The Doctor and Martha receive a distress call and land on a ship that is crashing into a star and will impact in forty-two minutes. The room where the TARDIS is becomes flooded with super-heated steam, preventing the evacuation of the ship. What's more, one of the crew has been infected and has sabotaged the main engine controls. Martha and one crew member (Riley) head to the auxiliary engine control room which has been sealed off by a series of doors. The doors are password protected with the password being the answer to trivia questions the crew came up with during a drunken binge.
The Doctor attempts to help repair the engine controls but gets pulled off as the infected crew member attacks and vaporizes other members of the crew. Martha and Riley manage to avoid being killed but are trapped in an escape pod that is launched towards the sun. The infected crewman is neutralized temporarily and the Doctor journeys outside the ship and magnetically pulls the escape pod back to the ship. However, he is infected by the star and learns that the captain had mined the outer layer of the star for fuel, unwittingly stealing the heart of the star which is alive. Martha attempts to rid the Doctor of the infection but the infected crewman revives and cuts the power. The captain then grabs the infected crewman and casts him and herself out of the airlock and into the star. Unable to help, the Doctor sends Martha to the auxiliary engine control, which has been opened by Riley and another crewman, and orders her to dump the fuel. She does so and the engines come back on line allowing the ship to escape.
Analysis
When I first watched this episode, I was just following on from The Lazarus Experiment and thought I could stay up for another one, despite being tired and a little tipsy. Needless to say, it didn't register and when I was looking back at episodes I had seen, I realized I couldn't remember any plot details of this one. Watching it a second time, I can see why it didn't register with me.
The thing is, there is nothing particularly wrong with the episode, but it didn't really grab me either. My immediate thought was that it felt somewhat similar to The Impossible Planet in it's set up. But where that episode had engaging characters and a horror tone, this one gave me no reason to care about any character other than Riley and very little time to appreciate any tone other than urgency.
The hook for this episode is the real-time countdown to destruction. But I think that actually worked against it in a way. The little time that was spent in slower moments where you would develop character were tinged with a feeling of wasting time that undercut the potential character moment. The rest was just running around, rushing to make sure someone didn't die or attempting to unlock the puzzle of the moment. The countdown itself was the only driver and it left you a bit cold towards the characters.
Another flaw in terms of grip was the Captain's portrayal. The Captain came across as a bit weak. She seemed to be someone who let someone else make decisions for her, which would be fine if (like The Impossible Planet) she had been thrust suddenly into command, but she was the Captain from the get go. It was she who made the decision to mine the star for fuel and then seemed like someone hit on the head when trouble began. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't compelling either and just seemed out of place given that she was with the Doctor in nearly every scene.
There were some nice moments. Martha had a couple of nice scenes where she called her mom and she also had some nice chemistry moments with Riley. I would have preferred if the Saxon team with Martha's mom hadn't been revealed until the last scene but it still worked. Likewise, the Doctor had some nice moments especially when he was rescuing Martha and after he had been infected.
Still, I think the word for this episode is uneventful. It has elements that should make it compelling, but it never really gels and once it is over, it begins to slip way from your mind. There's nothing here to really grab you and make you want to watch it again. Again, not bad, just not particularly good either.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Gridlock
You are not alone.
Gridlock was the first episode where I keyed into the "gay agenda" prevalent in the RTD era. That threw me a little bit at first, but on reflection, this is a rather good episode.
Plot Summary
In a return to New Earth (New Earth), the Tenth Doctor and Martha find the planet recovering from a plague that struck nearly fifty years prior. Martha is kidnapped and dragged into a car on the Motorway, a wall of cars trapped in a long tunnel under the city. The Doctor pursues and ends up in another car. After getting Martha's location, the Doctor chases through the cars to discover the bottom of the tunnel inhabited by Macra (The Macra Terror) who eat the travelers granted access to the "fast lanes." Before he can reach Martha's car, the Doctor is transported by a hospital agent to see the Face of Boe. The Doctor and the Face of Boe work together to open the roof of the Motorway, but the act is too much for the Face of Boe, who dies afterwards, warning the Doctor that he is not alone. Martha returns to the Doctor who tells her about the Time War and how he believes he is the last of the Time Lords.
Analysis
While there are some action sequences near the beginning and the Doctor's chase through the cars, Gridlock is more of a character piece story, which is something that is right up Russell T. Davies alley. The Doctor spends a good deal of time with Brannigan (an Irish cat person) and his human wife Valerie while Martha spends even more time with her kidnappers, who are only trying to use her to escape the Motorway. Both instances give time for interaction and reflection in a close environment. It can get a little dull but the dialogue stays fairly witty through most of the period which also makes it fairly enjoyable.
The use of the Macra was lost on me in the first go around. It was enough that the Doctor knew who they were. But, having now seen The Macra Terror, the use of an old foe is a nice touch. Why worry yourself to create a new villain, especially for such a small scene, when you can call back to an old one. This saves creative effort and gives classic fan boys a little thrill.
Much has been made of The Face of Boe's death and while it is a nice scene, it's a bit underwhelming for me. Although the Face is in two other episodes, he's still more or less just there and the emotional connection wasn't really made for me. Far greater impact is the end where the Doctor is just talking about Gallifrey to Martha and finally opening up a little bit. That was a nice scene and one that I wished could have gone on a little longer.
This episode was not a major standout, but it was a nice story and it had the advantage of being a good story surrounded by several bad stories (The Shakespeare Code, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks). I'd watch this one again without any issues.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
Gridlock was the first episode where I keyed into the "gay agenda" prevalent in the RTD era. That threw me a little bit at first, but on reflection, this is a rather good episode.
Plot Summary
In a return to New Earth (New Earth), the Tenth Doctor and Martha find the planet recovering from a plague that struck nearly fifty years prior. Martha is kidnapped and dragged into a car on the Motorway, a wall of cars trapped in a long tunnel under the city. The Doctor pursues and ends up in another car. After getting Martha's location, the Doctor chases through the cars to discover the bottom of the tunnel inhabited by Macra (The Macra Terror) who eat the travelers granted access to the "fast lanes." Before he can reach Martha's car, the Doctor is transported by a hospital agent to see the Face of Boe. The Doctor and the Face of Boe work together to open the roof of the Motorway, but the act is too much for the Face of Boe, who dies afterwards, warning the Doctor that he is not alone. Martha returns to the Doctor who tells her about the Time War and how he believes he is the last of the Time Lords.
Analysis
While there are some action sequences near the beginning and the Doctor's chase through the cars, Gridlock is more of a character piece story, which is something that is right up Russell T. Davies alley. The Doctor spends a good deal of time with Brannigan (an Irish cat person) and his human wife Valerie while Martha spends even more time with her kidnappers, who are only trying to use her to escape the Motorway. Both instances give time for interaction and reflection in a close environment. It can get a little dull but the dialogue stays fairly witty through most of the period which also makes it fairly enjoyable.
The use of the Macra was lost on me in the first go around. It was enough that the Doctor knew who they were. But, having now seen The Macra Terror, the use of an old foe is a nice touch. Why worry yourself to create a new villain, especially for such a small scene, when you can call back to an old one. This saves creative effort and gives classic fan boys a little thrill.
Much has been made of The Face of Boe's death and while it is a nice scene, it's a bit underwhelming for me. Although the Face is in two other episodes, he's still more or less just there and the emotional connection wasn't really made for me. Far greater impact is the end where the Doctor is just talking about Gallifrey to Martha and finally opening up a little bit. That was a nice scene and one that I wished could have gone on a little longer.
This episode was not a major standout, but it was a nice story and it had the advantage of being a good story surrounded by several bad stories (The Shakespeare Code, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks). I'd watch this one again without any issues.
Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5
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