An Hour of Who a Day: February 2015

February 28: "Time Crash" / "Voyage of the Damned"

The fifth and tenth Doctors. ("Time Crash") ©BBC

It's 16 November 2007, which means it's time once again for Children in Need -- and Doctor Who is there to help the cause again, with another specially-filmed mini-episode. But this one is particularly special, because we get Peter Davison back; Doctor Who is explicitly referencing its 20th-century past with this 8-minute vignette, set in the middle of the last scene of "Last of the Time Lords". And yes, of course Davison looks older¹⁹¹, and his voice has changed a bit (although this is less surprising to anyone who's listened to his Big Finish plays), but it's still genuinely thrilling to see him here, in his costume and dashing around the TARDIS console. Of course, in fine multi-Doctor tradition, the tenth Doctor gets some snarky remarks in (such as when Davison turns down the sonic screwdriver: "you liked to go hands free, didn't you, like hey, I'm the Doctor, I can save the universe using a kettle and some string. And look at me, I'm wearing a vegetable."), while the fifth Doctor also gets some nice moments ("What have you done to my TARDIS? You've changed the desktop theme, haven't you? What's this one, coral?", and the way he mistakes the tenth Doctor for a fan). It's a joy to see these two Doctors together, and while the resolution of the problem is a bit silly (a supernova and a black hole cancel each other out?), David Tennant is exhibiting such clear joy at being on screen with Davison that it's easy to forgive any flaws. It's short and sweet, and you sort of wish Davison could have stuck around a little longer, but "Time Crash" does what it set out to do with great style.

That said, Murray Gold's brief use of an old synthesizer to give us that early '80s Doctor Who feel might be the best thing here.

And then it's Christmas 2007 and time to get a proper start to Doctor Who's fourth series, with "Voyage of the Damned". It opens with a new arrangement of the theme tune (mainly distinguished by electric guitars and more prominent drums), and then it's into Doctor Who's take on disaster movies.

I have to admit; when it first came out I couldn't really see the appeal of this story. "Voyage of the Damned" wants less to subvert the disaster movie and more to respect it, to follow in its footsteps -- and it's never quite clear why this is a good thing. But after rewatching it a number of times, its virtues become more apparent. There's quite a bit that this story does well.

The cast is one of those areas. Kylie Minogue is really quite wonderful as Astrid Peth, portraying her as optimistic and hopeful and generally sweet. (Minogue, incidentally, becomes one of the rare people who's been mentioned in Doctor Who (in "The Idiot's Lantern") and then subsequently appeared in it.) Bernard Cribbins (last seen on the show (sort of) as PC Tom Campbell in the film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., and last heard in the 2007 McGann audio story Horror of Glam Rock) has a great little cameo as the man in the newspaper booth, and the ever-unflappable Geoffrey Palmer, true to form, shows up on Doctor Who just so he can be killed (see also Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Mutants).

The Doctor's party discover their next obstacle. ("Voyage of
the Damned") ©BBC

But really everyone here is lovely -- you really grow to like all the survivors in the Doctor's party (well, except for Rickston Slade, but he's designed to be awful -- and Gray O'Brien does a great job with the character, making him totally unrepentant), and it's a genuine tragedy when they start dying off, as Davies has taken the time to make these characters seem like real people, rather than just ciphers. Even if the direction makes at least two of the deaths look unnecessary. (All right, maybe Astrid couldn't jump out in time -- but why does Foon lasso the Host and pull it with her when she could have just pushed it? All right, she's decided to commit suicide -- but then why do we get a shot of the rope falling off the Host as Foon falls, and why didn't the Host just fly back up at that point?) And other characters, like Midshipman Frame (as played by Russell Tovey, who was reportedly Russell T Davies' favorite for the eleventh Doctor), also do their part with considerable style.

It's not a total success, though; I'm not sure if the Host's resemblance to the robots in The Robots of Death is intentional or not, but it does lead to comparisons between the stories that "Voyage of the Damned" doesn't win. Meanwhile, George Costigan as Max Capricorn has decided to overplay much of it, and while this generally works, the part where he discusses how the women of Penhaxico Two are fond of metal tips it into Austin Powers' Dr. Evil territory.

But there's enough here to enjoy to make "Voyage of the Damned" worth your time. It looks fabulous, it moves at a nice clip, and there are enough gems in the dialogue to keep you entertained. It's even a bit self-aware at the appropriate moments ("One of these days it might snow for real," the Doctor comments, after Mr. Copper mentions how he thinks the snow is actually the Titanic's ballast). Not bad for the BBC Wales' version's highest viewing figure to date, at 13.13 million viewers.

(And it's rather sweet how this is dedicated to the memory of Verity Lambert, Doctor Who's first producer. One wonders what she would have made of this episode.)

¹⁹¹ We get a nice explanation for why the fifth Doctor looks older that can be retroactively applied to things like The Two Doctors. However, this means that the tenth Doctor isn't sure where in the fifth Doctor's lifespan they're meeting -- although given that he's wearing the shirt and pullover from his first two seasons combined with the season 21 trousers, this has to take place, from the fifth Doctor's point of view, between Warriors of the Deep and The Awakening.

February 27: The Lost Boy Parts One & Two (SJA)

And so here we are, the series 1 finale of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the focus is on Luke. Apparently he's actually a missing boy named Ashley, and once Sarah Jane finds out she has no choice but to turn him over to his parents -- even though he really doesn't want to go. Mr. Smith confirms that Luke is Ashley, with the implication being that the Bane abducted a boy and did some surgery and mental conditioning on him, rather than just growing a human clone like we all thought. This part of the story seems awfully fishy, but it never seems like writer Phil Ford ever expects us to believe that Luke is really this missing boy -- there's a gesture toward it near the beginning, but this is soon set aside in favor of more interesting things. It is, however, genuinely a surprise to see that the aliens behind this elaborate plot are the Slitheen -- the slimline suits are a good move, throwing the viewers off the trail. Of course, they're working for something called the Xylok -- although, oddly, the child Slitheen from Revenge of the Slitheen seems to be the one in charge.

Alan, Maria, Sarah Jane, and the Slitheen watch the moon being
pulled into the Earth. (The Lost Boy Part Two) ©BBC

It's an interesting move, making Mr. Smith secretly a villainous alien all along. This sort of "traitor" storyline tends not to work very well when shows attempt it, but this one is surprisingly effective -- after all, who would think the computer would be the villain? And they handle it well, turning Mr. Smith into the sort of gloating villain that Sarah Jane often fights, but they still manage to have their cake and eat it too, by infecting Mr. Smith with a virus that deletes the Xylok aspect of his personality while still allowing Sarah Jane to use all the useful bits. And we get K-9 back for a bit! He's fighting off Mr. Smith while Sarah Jane puts in the virus (another reason why you shouldn't set your CD drive default to "Auto-Play"), thus stopping Mr. Smith from smashing the moon into the Earth and releasing the dormant Xylok.

It's also cool how the show decides to handle Alan Jackson having learned about aliens and such at the end of last episode. He initially overreacts, declaring his intentions to move, but he's awfully quick to accept it and get involved in the action. (It also means he's even more sympathetic toward Maria and her friends when Chrissie tries to separate them.) It's really nice to see another person drawn into this world, and it's great that it's Alan. (Pity, then, that he and Maria only have one more story left.)

So The Lost Boy isn't the most exciting plot, and the moon collision stuff is a bit strange, but what really makes this story work is the character dynamics between all the regulars. It's a lot of fun to watch Clyde defend Luke and try to work out what's going on, and it's just as interesting to see Maria pull her dad into this and find evidence that the story about Ashley isn't what they think ("Maria, I told you, I don't want you here," Sarah Jane tells Maria, trying to distance herself emotionally. "They're not Luke's parents, they're Slitheen," Maria replies matter-of-factly). These relationships are what make The Lost Boy work so well.

But then that's largely been the case for this entire first series. What The Sarah Jane Adventures have really done well is develop the main characters and make us care about them. Elisabeth Sladen does an outstanding job as Sarah Jane, providing a wiser, older voice to counterbalance the younger members (although the writers do have trouble not making her seem just like the Doctor at times). And happily, the people they've gotten in to play Maria, Luke, and Clyde are all first-rate talents -- it never feels forced or painful to watch. Throw in some satisfying storylines (even if they tend to be rather light and breezy -- but that's not a bad thing either) and the result is a fine first series, and a much better claim to following in Doctor Who's footsteps than series 1 of Torchwood could make.

February 26: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? Parts One & Two (SJA)

Following on the heels of Warriors of Kudlak, we get another good story. Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? is the sort of story you'd think Doctor Who would have done by now (changing a timeline and seeing the results), but, while it's been threatened a lot as the motivation behind other stories, we've never really seen the effects of such a change (other than that moment in Pyramids of Mars with the barren, ruined Earth). Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?, on the other hand, decides to play with this idea -- admittedly in a minor way (as the Trickster arranges things such that the only meaningful difference that results from Sarah Jane's removal from established history is the impending meteor crash that Sarah Jane was going to prevent), but still in an interesting one.

One of the nice consequences of this (in real world terms) is that it gives a chance for Yasmin Paige to take center stage as Maria, as she's the only one who remembers Sarah Jane after the Trickster changes history (thanks to an alien cube that Sarah Jane gave her). After being totally confused by the presence of a woman named Andrea Yates in Sarah Jane's house, and combined with the fact that no one besides her remembers Sarah Jane or Luke, Maria figures out that this is because Sarah Jane and Andrea traded places during an accident when they were both 13 -- Andrea was supposed to have died, but Sarah Jane seems to have taken her place. Maria shines in this roll, railing against everyone, trying to figure out what happened, and being incredibly angry that no one else remembers Sarah Jane. It's a great showcase of her talents. And Maria's dad (as played by Joseph Millson) also gets the opportunity to stand out -- first by trying to humor Maria but being totally bewildered (and a little concerned) by her behavior, and then by being placed in the same position as Maria was in, once the Trickster takes her away. And he gets to outwit a Graske, which is a lot of fun too.

Alan and Maria look as Andrea decides to defy the Trickster.
(Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? Part Two) ©BBC

Another nice thing about this story is Jane Asher as Andrea. Asher (who's probably still best known as Paul McCartney's one-time fiancée, but as far as Who fans go played Susan Foreman in the 1994 BBC Radio 4 play Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? (which can be found on the Dalek Invasion of Earth DVD if you're interested)) does a great job of playing a character who starts to remember that she made a desperate bargain with the Trickster, and tries to keep it going until she realizes that the world needs Sarah Jane more than it needs her. Andrea is shown to be not so much evil as simply human, desperate to cling to her life but ultimately willing to make the greater sacrifice, and Asher does a great job of getting this across. It's also interesting how Andrea had forgotten about Sarah Jane's death (albeit probably because of the deal she struck), but Sarah Jane had never forgotten about Andrea's death -- and in fact cited it as one of the defining moments of her life. This seems to be the moment that finally clinches it for Andrea, and it's played very well.

It's a good, solid story, and writer Gareth Roberts does a great job of taking what could have been a clichéd and tedious idea and turns it into something more interesting. He's aided by Graeme Harper's direction, which gives a lot of impetus to these proceedings. The Trickster is a great creation -- and it's a simple but creepy mask -- and it's hardly surprising that he would go on to be one of the Sarah Jane Adventures' recurring foes. This is a story that works on almost every level -- even Maria's mom Chrissie isn't that annoying.

Plus we get a great cliffhanger -- Alan now knows about aliens and supercomputers, and demands an explanation from Sarah Jane and the gang...

February 25: Warriors of Kudlak Parts One & Two (SJA)

Now we're getting into it! This story is where The Sarah Jane Adventures starts to really distinguish itself from its sibling shows, as we're presented with a scenario and plotline that naturally fits into this show in a way that it's hard to imagine Doctor Who or Torchwood pulling off quite as well.

In Warriors of Kudlak, writer Phil Gladwin gives us a storyline inspired by things like The Last Starfighter and Ender's Game, with children being recruited to fight in a war based on how well they do in a game. It's not the most original plot ever, but it's also a plot that's never been done by televised Doctor Who or one of its spin-offs, so that's not really a problem. Besides, Gladwin does a good job of balancing the two storylines -- Clyde and Luke playing the game and getting recruited, and Sarah Jane and Maria investigating a missing child that seems to lead to the place where Clyde and Luke are -- so you never feel bored with either one. All the regulars continue to be excellent -- we're a long way from the exaggerated and/or wooden acting you occasionally get in these shows (stand up, K-9) -- but Daniel Anthony in particular has a great energy and charm as Clyde. It's great to watch them all together.

General Kudlak learns he's been duped. (Warriors of Kudlak
Part Two) ©BBC

But let's be honest; the star of this story has got to be Chook Sibtain as Mr. Grantham. He is clearly having a great time playing this character, and you can't help but be entertained as well. But it helps that he's still taking this all seriously; even when he is acting in an exaggerated manner, it feels like a natural part of the character, so you're never pulled completely out of the story. But it's his interactions with, well, everyone, that make this story great. It also helps that Clyde and Luke are being proactive and trying to break everyone out of the crates they're being held in -- it means that while Sarah Jane and Maria are investigating and dealing with Grantham, they're not just waiting helplessly. And General Kudlak, of the Uvodni race, is a great-looking alien (although the decision to dress him in a red peacoat, maybe not so much). They also do a great job of making the two storylines neatly dovetail, with Sarah Jane and Maria teleported aboard the Uvodni ship to rescue the kidnapped children.

But the decision that really makes this story stand out is the fate of General Kudlak. Once he realizes that he's been duped (well, sort of; it was actually a programming error, it seems, but it comes out to the same thing), he's surprisingly contrite and gracious -- and he's even willing to make amends by trying to find other children he'd press ganged into service and bringing them back home. It's the sort of ending that you simply can't imagine Torchwood (or even, to an extent in this era, Doctor Who) doing -- but Warriors of Kudlak pulls it off with ease, and we get a happy ending with no one dead, and that missing kid Lance back home, ready to be great instead of dying in an alien war. "Well, after today, he might want to be an astronaut," Sarah Jane says. "Be the first man on Mars. The first human man on Mars, that is."¹⁹⁰

It's a fun story, with some great characters and a good plot, and a happy ending to boot. It's actually a bit of shame that Phil Gladwin never wrote for the show again -- he clearly has a good handle on the characters and knows what makes a good story. Warriors of Kudlak shows The Sarah Jane Adventures beginning to really find its stride.

¹⁹⁰ Setting aside the fact that Sarah Jane has been on Mars in Pyramids of Mars (since that hardly counts as official)... what about The Ambassadors of Death? One of the opening lines notes that Mars Probe 7 "took off from Mars manually", so there were definitely people aboard. And it's not like Sarah doesn't know this; even if you try to suggest that she didn't know about Mars Probe 7 (highly unlikely, given her background and the fact that Michael Wisher kept giving us live television updates of the mission's progress), you have to deal with the fact that The Android Invasion has her doing a profile of Guy Crawford right before he made his Jupiter mission -- so no, it's not very likely. So what happened to those '70s Mars missions?
(All right, here's a fig leaf: if you assume that Mars Probe 7 was the first of the Mars Probe missions to actually land on Mars -- not implausible, as the first moon landing took place in Apollo 11 -- but that the alien spaceship intercepted the craft before it landed (after all, it had already made contact with humanity via Mars Probe 6 and thus might have been waiting for a return visit) and that they landed the craft for some reason but without any humans on board and then faked a twelve-hour broadcast from the surface of Mars (maybe so as not to freak out Earth's general population), then maybe no person has actually set foot on Mars yet. You have to have humanity learn this somehow (so that Luke doesn't say to Sarah Jane, "Wait, what about Frank Michaels?"), and also to have them decide that Mars is out (which is plausible after the events of The Ambassadors of Death) but maybe Jupiter is worth checking out. No, it's not very satisfying, is it?)

February 24: Eye of the Gorgon Parts One & Two (SJA)

This is another pleasantly charming episode that doesn't happen to be particularly memorable, but is fun while it lasts. What's perhaps most striking about Eye of the Gorgon is how much it feels at times like a synthesis of Tom Baker-era Who and children's television -- but that synthesis never feels that awkward.

Luke and Clyde are accosted by some unfriendly nuns. (Eye of
the Gorgon Part One) ©BBC

The Who bits are the basic setup of the main plotline. There's a sense of following in the footsteps of Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes, as we're introduced to an ancient alien artifact that has ties to ancient Earth history, and Greek mythology in particular. Much like those '70s stories used mythology and older stories and had them inspired by something alien and dangerous, writer Phil Ford does the same thing here, with the Gorgons (not the Quark villains¹⁸⁹) being aliens who want to come to Earth and colonize the place via humanity -- although it's not clear why it's taken them three thousand years to get to this point. (The plot seems to want us to conclude it's because the talisman was lost, but this is never actually stated.) Mixed in with this we get sinister nuns protecting the Gorgon while it prepares to take over the world (although full marks for making the nuns actually under the thrall of the Gorgon and not actually intrinsically evil), and an old abbey with secret passages. (Actually, it's not a million miles away from The Abominable Snowmen, either -- and look, the Yeti get a namecheck in part two.) If they'd decided to actually go full bore on the scarier aspects of this setup, they'd have had a pretty scary episode. But this is kids' TV (as opposed to Doctor Who, which often gets lumped with children's television but is actually designed for a family audience), so they can't go that far.

And because this is targeted towards children, we get some elements that would be decidedly out of place in Doctor Who. Maria's mother Chrissie is really rather awful by way of being completely self-absorbed and oblivious to the larger world (to be clear, this is obviously a character point, and Juliet Cowan does a good job with what she's given) -- she doesn't consider what moving into her ex-husband's new house for a few days will do to her daughter, and she wanders around Sarah Jane's property looking for Maria, rather than just calling her. (This comes after the last story, where she was convinced that she was the common element to all the weird things happening since Maria met Sarah Jane.) And the petrification of Maria's dad in the part one cliffhanger does feel more tilted towards younger viewers than older.

But that doesn't detract from this story in any way. As I said, if there's a problem with Eye of the Gorgon, it's that it's rather unmemorable. It's fun while it lasts (and Phyllida Law gives a great performance as the Alzheimer's-afflicted Mrs. Nelson-Stanley -- incidentally, I think this is the first mention of Sontarans in the BBC Wales stuff), and the Gorgon is a nice idea, but it's not scary enough or striking enough to stay in the memory. Still, that's not the worst of sins by any means, and it's nice to have a Who idea like this, even if they pull their punches a bit.

¹⁸⁹ I assume there are about six people who understood that reference. To everyone else, my apologies; carry on.

February 23: Revenge of the Slitheen Parts One & Two (SJA)

It's been three months since "Last of the Time Lords", and nearly ten months since "Invasion of the Bane", but it's finally time to return to Bannerman Road and The Sarah Jane Adventures. And you might get a blast of nostalgia as you note that we're now getting multi-part (well, 2, but still) adventures with 25-minute installments, just like 20th-century Doctor Who. (And if that's not enough nostalgia for you, you can spend time looking at all the things in the background in Sarah Jane's attic: there's a book on UNIT and lots of drawings of Doctor Who things, like the old sonic screwdriver, the TARDIS, and, intriguingly, the Jagaroth spaceship from City of Death. Oh, and writer Gareth Roberts has one of the Slitheen namedrop the Wallarians, as mentioned in Carnival of Monsters.)

The Slitheen decide what to do about Sarah Jane. (Revenge of
the Slitheen Part Two) ©BBC

We get some more recent nostalgia as well, as the Slitheen are brought back. They seem rather more at home in a school than in Downing Street, which is both a positive and a drawback, as they're not quite as grotesquely incongruous and threatening here. But the farts seem to gain more notice from the students, which is somewhat entertaining. These Slitheen seem just as villainous as the bunch we saw in Doctor Who, but now they have the added motivation of revenge against the planet for the deaths of their family members. Their plan is a little odd, though; they want to drain all the energy from the Earth and the sun, put into giant batteries, and then sell it off. It looks like it takes an incredible amount of effort to make this happen -- the Slitheen must really want revenge.

The other major event in these two episodes is the introduction of Clyde Langer, a fellow boy from school who, like Maria and Luke, has also just started school in a new place. Clyde is cocky and self-confident and perhaps trying a bit too hard to be cool, but he quickly fits in with Maria and Luke, and he's certainly significantly less frustrating a character than Kelsey was in "Invasion of the Bane". He certainly copes with all the new alien stuff a lot better, and he does help in figuring out the Slitheen's weakness. Daniel Anthony does a good job of making Clyde likeable while he's skeptically learning about aliens and then running away from them. (And his face when the one Slitheen explodes on him and Maria is great.)

It's not an incredible standout episode, but it's fun while it lasts and serves to reintroduce everyone and the basic format of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It's certainly never dull, and while it may not be memorable, it's still entertaining while it lasts to see everyone in action, running around schools and fighting aliens. The Sarah Jane Adventures are off to a good start.

February 22: "Last of the Time Lords"

Hmm. This is a bit of a schizophrenic episode. On the one hand it does some things really well, but on the other hand it has some flagrantly silly moments.

What works? The "one year later" conceit works surprisingly well -- it actually lets the Master win for a bit, and we see that he's about as awful a ruler as you might expect. He's crazy and selfish and generally terrible, but he's clearly having a ball being in charge. John Simm is presenting us with an unhinged Master, one who has come a long way but hasn't quite completed his goal yet. The way he humiliates the Jones family is handled well, and the abuse that Lucy Saxon endures is subtle -- a line here, a bruise there -- but effective; it makes sense that she would be the one to shoot the Master.

The stuff with Martha traveling the Earth also works well; we get to hear about some of the atrocities the Master has committed (such as the destruction of Japan) without the Mill having to knock up an unconvincing visual effect to try and sell it. Martha is shown to be still in control, even despite what she's seen, and that's a good move. Meanwhile, her discovery of the true nature of the Toclafane -- that they're the humans we saw in "Utopia" -- is a great moment, tying in with the first part nicely (if bleakly) and providing us both the reason why the Master turned the Doctor's TARDIS into a paradox machine and some insight into his mad plan to make the Toclafane into the new Time Lords and Earth the new Gallifrey. (What's not clearly explained is why the Master thinks this will be an acceptable substitute, but we can probably excuse that away as a consequence of the drums in his head.)

Jack says goodbye to the Doctor and Martha. ("Last of the Time
Lords") ©BBC

Sadly, Jack doesn't get much to do this episode, as he spends most of it chained up, but the Face of Boe gag is cute. (Although if Jack really is the Face of Boe, clearly something happened to his biology over the millennia to let him be pregnant.) And it's nice that the Doctor has gotten over his prejudice against Jack and offers to let him travel with him -- but there's another series of Torchwood coming up, so Jack has to decline.

Where "Last of the Time Lords" goes off the rails is with the Doctor. The old man stuff isn't too bad (although it took them a year to come up with a plan to get the Doctor the Master's screwdriver?), and while the little Doctor troll is daft, there's something charming about such a bold move as Davies makes here. What's ludicrous, however, is the deus ex machina ending (yes, another one), which really is a move too far. Nothing, not the earlier descriptions of the Archangel network, not the Doctor making a statement about how he had a year to "tune myself into the psychic network and integrate with its matrices", can paper over the sheer silliness of the Doctor being de-aged and flying around thanks to the power of worldwide love. It's far and away Davies' most blatant deus ex machina resolution yet, and it weakens the whole episode. The Master's refusal to regenerate, and the Doctor's desperate desire to not be the only Time Lord, is nicely played though.

So as I said, there are some good moments in "Last of the Time Lords" and some risible ones. But when you take the first two episodes into account, you get a solid take and a great reintroduction for the Master. It's only when tasked with a resolution to this story that Russell T Davies comes up short; everything else is firing on all cylinders.

But then that's been par for the course for most of series 3. After the unevenness of series 2, Doctor Who seems to have regained its footing. The stories are of a higher quality than last year's, and they've really lucked out with Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones, who consistently turns in an excellent performance and makes us care about Martha from almost her first moment onscreen. It's a genuine shame that they made her primary characteristic appear to be pining after the Doctor, because both the character and the actress deserved better. There's also the related problem that this series spends a bit too much time in Rose's shadow; it doesn't happen as much as it sometimes feels, but there is a danger of the show looking back too often instead of forward, and that's also grossly unfair to Martha/Freema.

But these concerns aside, series 3 provides us with a show that's shaken off its sophomore slump and reemerged victorious. David Tennant is in fine form, and the show under Davies seems as vibrant as ever. It's certainly the most consistent in tone and characterization that Doctor Who has been since 2005. Now, will they be able to keep it going in series 4?

February 21: "The Infinite Quest"

But before we get to the climactic series 3 finale, there's a piece of Doctor Who to deal with first...

Throughout series 3, the spin-off show Totally Doctor Who (which was a show designed primarily for children, giving them behind-the-scenes looks and testing their knowledge and resourcefulness) has been running an animated story -- with the voices of David Tennant and Freema Agyeman -- in roughly three-minute installments (so, strictly speaking, I haven't followed this story chronologically with the rest of series 3). The final installment aired at the end of the edited-together "Omnibus" edition, which was broadcast immediately before "Last of the Time Lords" (if I'm reading the BBC's Genome website correctly, that is). Hence why I've decided to watch it at this point in series 3.¹⁸⁸

Technically it's rather well done. The animation is really quite gorgeous, with lots of clean lines and some very smooth movement -- we've come a long way since Scream of the Shalka four years ago. It also helps that everyone in the cast seems fully committed to making this as good as possible, with no one phoning it in. (It probably doesn't hurt that a number of the cast -- David Tennant included -- are veterans of the Big Finish audio dramas.) Anthony Head does a fine job as the main villain Baltazar, and Freema Agyeman seems to be having a good time with this too.

The Doctor and Martha confront Baltazar. ("The Infinite Quest") ©BBC

Where it falls down is the storyline. Writer Alan Barnes (one of the more talented and prolific spin-off writers -- particularly in the audio format) has given us a relatively simple and straightforward quest storyline, as the Doctor and Martha try to track down an ancient spaceship called the Infinite before Baltazar can get his evil hands on it. This is pretty clearly because the story is broken up into segments -- most of the locations are only on-screen for seven minutes or so -- but, watched all together, this is oddly like viewing a version of The Keys of Marinus that's been compressed into 45 minutes -- right down to the nature of the quest (data chips instead of keys, but the principle's the same). Barnes tries to make a virtue of this, with lots of exotic locations and strange creatures (with the dung city and the giant insect queen being a highlight), but ultimately there's not much he can do.

Still, it's not too dumb or anything, and it generally remains entertaining throughout. It's about as deep as a kiddie pool, but again, this is because of the nature of the beast. No, in the end this is another pleasantly average and inoffensive story: fun enough while it lasts, but nothing particularly memorable about it.

¹⁸⁸ In terms of internal chronology, it's worth noting that Martha's still wearing the outfit she wore in the first few episodes, when she was on her "one trip." I'm going to tentatively suggest this takes place between "Gridlock" and "Daleks in Manhattan", but your mileage may vary.

February 20: "The Sound of Drums"

The second part¹⁸⁶ of series 3's three-part finale (just like an old 6-parter!) brings us back to contemporary London, with our heroes able to escape after the Doctor fixes Jack's Vortex Manipulator. The Master is in fact this Harold Saxon person we've been hearing about since "Love & Monsters", and he's just become Prime Minister. That, of course, puts the Doctor and company in danger, what with the Master declaring them to be "Public enemies number one, two, and three" and all.

The Master introduces his allies, the Toclafane. ("The Sound of
Drums") ©BBC

It's occasionally hard to tell what John Simm is doing as the Master -- sometimes it looks like he's not taking this remotely seriously. But that's clearly meant to be the point: this is a Master full of energy and life, in a very similar way to David Tennant's Doctor. The difference is that the Master is completely unhinged. But that doesn't mean he can't have a good time while he's being insane and evil. (I really like the scene with the Cabinet and the gas mask, which combines this sense of fun with being evil.) And we can in fact tell that this silliness is a part of the character (as opposed to Simm taking the piss) because of how serious his phone conversation with the Doctor is. The conversation about the fate of Gallifrey, and how the Master was resurrected (and note the choice of word there -- presumably that's to deal with what was seen at the end of the TV Movie, but it's written vaguely enough that you can have all sorts of interpretations and theories about the Master's fate) to fight in the Time War, only to run away and hide, is proof that Simm can be serious as the Master. What this means is that the combination of the two (serious and wacky) make for a dangerous individual, and clearly shows how the Master is meant to be the Doctor's counterpart. And it definitely is the Master -- Davies slips in some references to the old Master just to make it explicit (his watching of Teletubbies harkens back to watching Clangers in The Sea Devils, and his line "Peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully" is deliberately meant to resemble the beginning of the Master's proclamation to the universe in Logopolis).

In many ways this story is a bit of a treat for long-time fans: in the Doctor's descriptions of the Master, we get some lovely views of Gallifrey as it was, complete with Time Lords wearing those Deadly Assassin high collars and the reappearance of the Seal of Rassilon (that figure-eight design). But we also get an explanation for the Master's villainy after the fact: he's doing it because of the constant drumming in his head, because looking into the time vortex (via the Untempered Schism on Gallifrey) drove him mad. (And as an aside, note how the young Master's costume is meant to look like the ones we saw in The War Games.) We also get some fun dialogue between Martha and the Doctor about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master:

MARTHA: And what is he to you? Like a colleague, or...
DOCTOR: A friend, at first.
MARTHA: I thought you were going to say he was your secret brother or something.
DOCTOR: You've been watching too much TV.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Sound of Drums)

(There's also a lovely line, after the Doctor describes how a perception filter works: "It's like when you fancy someone and they don't even know you exist. That's what it's like." It's slightly annoying because that's Martha's "thing", the unrequited love bit, and the Doctor's just oblivious to it, but then Jack turns it on its head into a genuinely funny moment: "You too, huh?" he says, looking at Martha.)

This episode spends a lot of time setting things up for the final few minutes, as Harold Saxon has announced to the world that first contact with an alien race is going to happen the next morning. This seems to happen on a UNIT helicarrier called the Valiant (so, not at all like Captain Scarlet's Cloudbase/Marvel Comics's SHIELD helicarrier, then (delete according to preference)), with the proceedings being run (briefly) by the US President Winters.¹⁸⁷ It's an action-packed climax, to be sure -- President Winters assassinated (on live television, it seems), the Doctor reduced to an old man (thanks to the Master's laser screwdriver -- "Who'd have sonic?" he asks derisively), Jack killed ("And the good thing is, he's not dead for long!" the Master exclaims. "I get to kill him again!"), and Martha on the run with Jack's teleport, as the skies fill with billions of Toclafane, raining death from the skies while Rogue Traders' "Voodoo Child" plays on the Valiant. How are they going to wrap this all up in "Last of the Time Lords"? It's hard to say, but if that's anything like these first two installments, we'll be in for a real treat.

¹⁸⁶ There's actually a bit of debate as to whether "Utopia" counts as its own story or as part 1 of 3. Russell T Davies has said that he thinks of it as a standalone episode that sets up the finale, and "Utopia" has some characteristics that set it apart from "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords": it has a different director (Graeme Harper) than the other two (Colin Teague) -- which isn't unprecedented (see, for instance, The Daleks) -- and it was filmed in a different production block, which is unprecedented. However, Davies made his comment in a column explaining why you need to make the end of series 3 one 3-part story in order to get "Planet of the Dead" to be story #200, which is how they were promoting that episode (you also have to make The Trial of a Time Lord one story in order for that numbering to work -- in other words, there's no way you can have Dragonfire be story 150 and have "Planet of the Dead" be story 200 at the same time). Doctor Who Magazine thinks it's one story, mind, and most people have followed suit. But not all.
¹⁸⁷ Much has been made by people (myself included, at one point) by the fact that Winters introduces himself to the Toclafane as "President-elect of the United States", which would seem to suggest that he's not actually the President yet, and so has been elected but not yet sworn in. This would have been between November 2008 and January 2009 and thus looks like an effort by Davies to stick with the "current year+1" dating. Except that causes all sorts of havoc with the rest of the dates we've seen in the series (regarding Saxon's election campaign in particular), which are hard enough to sort out without this extra bit of information. In order to accommodate the other dates, some people have suggested that perhaps the timing of the election in the United States has moved -- but to an American, this would be like moving the dates of Decimal Day in the UK and thus isn't a great solution. But what's also interesting is that this is the only time Winters is referred to as "President-elect" -- in every other case (in dialogue and on-screen graphics) it's simply "President Winters". So it's probably easier to assume that Winters is in fact the full President of the United States, and he simply chose an odd way of stating he was the elected President.

February 19: "Utopia"

Well, it took six months (in contemporary real world terms), but we finally find out what happened to Captain Jack when he ran out of the Torchwood Hub at the end of "End of Days" -- he clung to the outside of the TARDIS as it dematerialized (having stopped off briefly to refuel at the rift -- "Should only take twenty seconds," the Doctor remarks in one of the few acknowledgements of the events of Torchwood in Doctor Who; "the rift's been active"), and the TARDIS was so freaked out by Jack's presence that it went to the end of the universe -- the year one hundred trillion -- to try and get rid of him.

It's really great to see Captain Jack back with the Doctor again -- the chemistry between the two is well done, even with Tennant playing the Doctor as stand-offish (since, as we learn later, the Doctor finds Jack to be "wrong" now that he's a fixed point in time -- and this is the first time this now oft-recurring phrase gets used). Fascinatingly, Jack snaps back into focus as a character; he's perfectly happy to accept orders from the Doctor, he's flirting with people again, and his energy and liveliness are back to where they should be. The brooding Jack of Torchwood is nowhere to be seen. (Although, oddly, it's in this episode and not Torchwood where we learn something about Jack's history between "The Parting of the Ways" and "Everything Changes", and how he used his Vortex Manipulator (the thing on his wrist) to travel back in time: "I thought 21st century, the best place to find the Doctor, except that I got it a little wrong. Arrived in 1869, this thing burnt out, so it was useless. ... I had to live through the entire twentieth century waiting for a version of you that would coincide with me.") One of the best moments of "Utopia" is the quiet conversation between the Doctor and Jack as Jack sets the couplings that will let Professor Yana's rocket fly. Part of it is just bringing people up to speed/reminding them of past events, and part of it is to trigger things in Yana's head, but the way Tennant and Barrowman interact is genuinely lovely.

Professor Yana meets Martha, the Doctor, and Jack. ("Utopia")
©BBC

But what's also great about "Utopia" is the story: Russell T Davies does a great job depicting the end of the universe (so the Doctor Who universe has an end then -- but then that's consistent with Logopolis, so it's not the first time the universe has been chronologically finite), showing that people still survive in some form, clinging to hope. There may be no better exemplar of this than the character of Professor Yana, who keeps on plugging away at his rocket, giving the humans living on Malcassairo hope that they'll one day reach Utopia. Sir Derek Jacobi is incredible as Yana, full of energy and enthusiasm and brilliance, all wrapped in a kind-hearted package -- albeit one bothered by a constant drumming sound in his head. All that makes Yana's true nature all the more surprising and compelling, as he reveals that he has a fob watch just like the Doctor had in "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood". Once Martha brings the watch to his attention, he starts to hear voices -- including a chuckle from Anthony Ainley and one of Roger Delgado's lines from The Dæmons: Professor Yana is in fact the Master.¹⁸⁵

What's really impressive is how incredibly evil Jacobi is in his few short minutes as the Master. It's all too easy to see that this is the same Master as before, selfish and vindictive and wanting to make the Doctor suffer -- in particular, the hatred in Jacobi's eyes as he confronts his assistant Chantho is frightening indeed. You sort of get the impression that Jacobi is living out a dream here, to be on proper televised Doctor Who (remember, he'd already played the Master in Scream of the Shalka, but that's not really the same thing) -- and apparently he was. It's somewhat sad that he's shot by Chantho at the end of the episode -- "Killed by an insect. A girl. How inappropriate" -- and regenerates into John Simm. Not that that's meant as a slight against Simm, mind, but it would have been cool to have seen even more of Jacobi.

Hell of a cliffhanger, though, as the newly-regenerated Master takes the Doctor's TARDIS away while the Futurekind are trying to get at our heroes so they can kill (eat?) them. "Utopia" is a gripping, enthralling success, with a glorious return for one of the Doctor's oldest enemies, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

¹⁸⁵ Allegedly they wanted to use a clip of Eric Roberts from the TV Movie as well, but the complicated rights issues surrounding that production -- note that the US didn't receive a home video release of that story until 2011 for that same reason -- prevented it. It probably would have been a line like, "Life is wasted on the living," but I like to think it would have been "I always drezz for the occasion."

February 18: "Blink"

It is, of course, one of the best episodes Doctor Who has ever done -- it's been in fandom's collective top ten since its debut and subsequent years have done nothing to tarnish its luster. It reinforced Steven Moffat's reputation as an A-list Who writer (a reputation that only began to falter once he was required to write more than one story a year), and it won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form -- Moffat's third win in as many years. No mean feat for an episode that barely features either main character.

Sally with a bunch of creepy statues. ("Blink") ©BBC

But like last series's "Doctor-lite" episode, "Blink" exists in the Doctor's shadow -- not as much as "Love & Monsters" did, but with a strong influence from the Doctor, as he's the one who brings this episode's main character, Sally Sparrow, into events. (Well, sort of; by the end we know it's not that simple.) But the focus is on Sally (played by another person just before she made it big, Carey Mulligan), as she slowly works out what's going on, thanks to clues that have been planted decades earlier for her to discover right now. It's one of those plots that seems like it would have come up before, but for a show about time travel, Doctor Who seems rather reluctant to play with time much (except for Steven Moffat, who seems far more interested in it than anyone else writing for the TV version) -- but we get some ontological paradoxes, as the Doctor tells Sally what to do based on things she's told him as a result of his telling her what to do. Or as the Doctor says, in probably the best-known line from this episode (and possibly the entire show): "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff." ("Started well, that sentence," Sally remarks. "It got away from me, yeah," the Doctor replies.)

But while the time hijinks are fun (and there's something incredibly wonderful and tragic about the old Billy Shipton meeting Sally again: "It was raining when we met," Billy remembers. "It's the same rain," Sally replies), the thing that really elevates "Blink" above its peers is the sense of tension and terror it induces. Moffat has hit upon a winning formula with his Weeping Angels creation -- a monster that only moves when you're not looking at it. It plays upon the fear of being watched when you don't know it, and of things moving that you only see out of the corner of your eye. (There's also a more mundane origin: Moffat was inspired by the children's game "Statues".) It's a very effective and creepy adversary, and even the way it "kills" you -- by sending you back in time and feeding on the life you would have had -- is inspired.

So, an incredibly effective monster, a great cast (Carey Mulligan justly gets a lot of praise, but Finlay Robertson, as Larry Nightingale, does a lot with a somewhat thankless role -- and look, it's Louis Mahoney, from various David Maloney-directed Who stories, as old Billy), wonderful direction, and some clever fun with time travel mechanics and paradoxes make "Blink" a special episode indeed. It's clever and smart and just about everything we want the show to be, and the Weeping Angels are probably the greatest creation of the BBC Wales run. It's not hard to see why this captured the imagination of so many people.

February 17: "The Family of Blood"

Son of Mine and Mother of Mine gather their army. ("The Family of
Blood") ©BBC

Here's where the action is, as the Family of Blood start killing people and sending their scarecrow army against the public school John Smith is teaching at, all so that they can get their hands on a Time Lord and thus live forever. To this end we get some good action moments, such as the boys shooting down the scarecrows and the Family bombarding the village to draw the Doctor out.

But ultimately, what this story wants to be is a character study of the Doctor: once you strip away all the "lonely god", "last of the Time Lords" stuff, what's left? What is it that makes the Doctor tick? Is the Doctor, at his core, a good man (to borrow one of series 8's promotional lines)? The answer seems to be yes, but they try to have it both ways: to make a human Doctor still a good person, but all the while insisting that the full Doctor is one of the best things ever. So what this means is that, while you might expect that John Smith has the basic traits and beliefs of the Doctor, that's not really what we get. Instead we get the result of a human Doctor, and the result is...human. Plain old homo sapiens sapiens. He's not a bad man, but he's very much human, with all the failings and weaknesses that entails.

Here's a case in point: last episode, Tim starts daydreaming during machine gun practice, and so Hutchinson asks if he can go discipline Tim. John Smith agrees without a second thought. It's certainly in keeping with the time period, but it doesn't really match how we -- all right, I -- think the Doctor should be. (A similar situation in the book gives John Smith pause, which might be why this sticks out to me.) It is, however, a human reaction.

But so while the "Human Nature" 2-parter espouses the virtues of being human, it also details the benefits of being the Doctor -- best summed up in Tim's speech: "He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun. ... He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe. ... And he's wonderful." And that seems to be the point of this story: that it's good to be human, but it's also good to be the Doctor, even if he brings death and destruction with him. The universe needs him. But that's nothing new; that's been an underlying theme of the show for some time now.

And so here's the thing: this story is definitely firing on almost all cylinders -- there are only a couple odd moments, like the Doctor's rather vengeful punishments for the Family -- and David Tennant is incredible here, as he rages against becoming the Doctor. It's also fascinating how much more distant he becomes once he's the Doctor again -- the scene between him and Nurse Redfern at the end is very powerful as a result. The rest of the cast are excellent -- Harry Lloyd in particular is incredibly creepy as Son of Mine -- and the direction and design is gorgeous. But I find that "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood" isn't quite the story I want it to be. It sometimes feels like there's a missed opportunity, a lost chance to see what really makes the Doctor tick.

The Discontinuity Guide uses a phrase to describe The Caves of Androzani: "brilliant but over-rated." That pretty much sums up my feelings on "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood". It's wonderful, but I feel like it could have been even more wonderful.

February 16: "Human Nature"

"Human Nature" is the first part of Paul Cornell's two-part adaptation of his own novel Human Nature -- one of the best received of Virgin's New Adventures line, which continued the Doctor's adventures after Survival. In the original novel it was the seventh Doctor and his companion was archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield, who posed as his niece instead of a servant, but the general plot beats are the same between the two (which, if you think the books are "canon" -- as much as anything in Doctor Who is considered canon -- leads to some interesting conversations about whether this storyline had happened before the tenth Doctor put his Time Lord-ness in a Chameleon Arch).

John Smith and Nurse Joan Redfern. ("Human Nature") ©BBC

What's most obvious about "Human Nature" is how good David Tennant is. He manages to make John Smith a distinct character from the Doctor, yet still one who still seems like he might have the Doctor in there somewhere. As such, his shy, awkward nature -- around Nurse Redfern in particular -- is quite entertaining to view. It's fascinating to get essentially a different take on how to play this character, and Tennant is clearly relishing the opportunity to do so. And while Tennant is playing at being human, Freema Agyeman continues to excel in the rather more thankless role of looking after him without trying to be too obvious about it. It's interesting to watch her deal with racism and looking "a little familiar" with John Smith, and Martha frankly does a good job of keeping her head about all this. These scenes are good, but my favorite ones might be when she heads into the TARDIS and views the video instructions the Doctor left her before he transformed -- the ones that give all sorts of instructions but utterly fail to describe what to do if the Doctor falls in love. (Even if the line about how the Doctor "had to go and fall in love with a human, and it wasn't me" rings a bit of a sour note -- yes, this is clearly the direction they want to take Martha, but it never feels right, for a multitude of reasons (least of all that it reduces Martha's role to that of pining hopelessly after the Doctor, which is a great injustice).)

I said the plot beats are largely the same between the book and the TV version, but that's not quite true; the televised version has a much better reason for the Doctor to change (here it's because he's being pursued by aliens; in the book it was because he was worried he was too out-of-touch with humanity, and the aliens showed up later), and the urgency that this lends events is really nice. It gives a much sharper purpose, and it gives us a lot more foreshadowing about what's to come that works well in this story's favor. The inclusion of the scarecrows as monsters is also a nice touch, and the way the Family of Blood all tilt their heads and sniff as they try to find the Doctor is simple yet effective. On the other hand, the MacGuffin that holds the Doctor's Time Lord nature is essentially stolen by Tim Latimer, which is a bit problematic in pure heroic terms. (In the book, Tim finds the MacGuffin outside.)

Still, it's a really well done episode of the show, even if it is pure setup until the cliffhanger. The question is, how will the second half hold up? The "next time" trailer after the credits certainly provides some interesting scenes...

February 15: "42"

Seems we have a winner in the "shortest episode title" category (unless someone names an episode "X" or "?" or something)...

Here's the thing about "42": everyone involved in actually filming this episode is working almost flat out to make this work, and to their credit they just about do it. It's hard to point at much in the episode we see on screen and be able to say, "That bit's terrible." Graeme Harper is doing a great job of injecting action and tension in this, and David Tennant and Freema Agyeman have thrown themselves completely into this story. The supporting cast is good, and the set design is pleasingly industrial (and in keeping with "The Impossible Planet" / "The Satan Pit", which is set in roughly the same time period). So then why does the final product feel so underwhelming?

The thing is, a week ago we had something that looked perilously close at times to Doctor Who self-parody, with a giant monster chase serving as a substitute for an actual plot, much how the general public might think the show operates. This week we get something that Doctor Who actually does: a "base-under-siege" tale, essentially, with an external force threatening to destroy everyone inside the base, and an intruder inside also wreaking havoc. But "42" doesn't have a new spin on this sort of thing.

That's not the worst of sins, of course, but the other problem that becomes apparent once you stop to think about this episode is how much writer Chris Chibnall is throwing at this thing, hoping something will stick. And so we get a bunch of locked doors (in what must be the stupidest security system ever -- incidentally, the answer about the most number one hits presupposes we're talking about British number ones, as the Beatles have the most number ones in the US), a sentient sun, possessed people (including the Doctor!), a situation with an escape pod, the real-time idea... There are so many ideas that they're all jostling for attention, and thus none of them really get the attention they deserve. And the thing is, there are some interesting ideas here -- the sentient sun should have probably have received a lot more focus, but instead it's just there to explain why the crew members are possessed. And while the possession bit is actually rather well done (thanks, again, to the efforts of the people concerned with things that will show up on screen), with nice faceless masks that look properly intimidating, they never feel like too much of a threat -- partly because we then have to deal with the escape pod, and then the Doctor being possessed, and then the ship falling into the sun, and then...

(Oh, and if they didn't keep putting up the real-time countdown clock, you'd never notice. Also, they cheat a few times -- such as between the first and second appearances of the clock.)

So there are lots of ideas, each potentially workable on their own but denied the development they deserve. The result is a shallow, ultimately unsatisfying story, one that looks more like Doctor Who-by-numbers than something original. That's a shame, because Chibnall has some interesting ideas here, as I said -- it's just that none of them get a chance to breathe. To their credit, the cast and crew almost make something of this, but ultimately "42" is a rather disappointing tale. (Even if it's better than Chibnall's series 1 Torchwood scripts.)

February 14: "The Lazarus Experiment"

So has writer Stephen Greenhorn ever actually seen Doctor Who? Because "The Lazarus Experiment" looks a lot like what someone who had only ever been told about the show might come up with. It looks more like the general public's conception of Doctor Who rather than what the show actually does. And sadly, it doesn't even do that particularly well.

The main problem here is that there's no underlying point for their monster story. When the show has done monster stories in the past, frequently it's as an allegory for something else (such as the original conception of the Cybermen, which made Kit Pedler's fears about people slowly replacing their body parts and becoming less and less human as a result into an easy-to-visualize threat) or occasionally to keep the younger viewers happy while the older ones focus on the more conceptual problem that the story is worrying at (see Ghost Light for possibly the oddest realization of this). But there's nothing like that here; instead the focus is on Professor Lazarus's meddling with nature, but there's nothing beyond that -- and as Lazarus is shown to be something of a lecher before he undergoes his transformation (observe the scene between him and Tish, and note also how all his assistants are pretty young women), they can't even go down the "good man overwhelmed by baser instincts" route (as seen in Planet of Evil, or Doctor Octopus in the movie Spider-Man 2). No, the whole thing is an excuse for them to pull out their crap CGI monster and have it chase our heroes around for a while, justifying the exercise with some nonsense about "dormant genes" becoming active.

Then, bizarrely, they decide to lift the ending of Timelash (always a story you want to emulate) and have a second ending instead, in a move which looks designed to fill the remaining time rather than because of some story decision they wanted to make. It doesn't take the story in a new direction; it just gives us another chance to see their crummy monster in action. (And it really isn't a very good monster, is it? The face in particular is a bad move as it never changes expression, making it look like something out of a PlayStation cut scene rather than a real world creature.)

It's not all bad; there are some good lines (such as "Really shouldn't take that long just to reverse the polarity. I must be a bit out of practice") and Freema Agyeman continues to be one of the best things this series -- I love the way she brings up the DNA sample, or how she insists on being more than just a passenger in the TARDIS. The Saxon subplot is also interesting -- it's the first time we get the impression that this is going to be more than a simple background clue, to remain slightly obscured until episode 12 of the series, and I also like the way Harold Saxon, whoever he is, is being set up in opposition to the Doctor. (Although, worryingly, the lightweight nature of the main plot means that this Saxon bit is the part you're most likely to remember from the whole thing.) But ultimately "The Lazarus Experiment" is a failure, an attempt to justify an episode-long monster chase with a monster that's not really up to the challenge. This is the first out-and-out failure of series 3.

February 13: "Evolution of the Daleks"

Now "Evolution of the Daleks" -- that's a title! Shame about the rest of the episode, though.

All right, that's not fair. There's a lot that this episode does right -- the "evolution" mentioned in the title is particularly interesting, and the suggestion that the Daleks might in fact dramatically change their way of life is fascinating. "Do you trust [Dalek Sec]?" Laszlo asks the Doctor. "I know that one man can change the course of history," the Doctor replies. "Right idea in the right place at the right time, it's all it takes. I've got to believe it's possible." In fact, for a while it looks like we might actually get a fundamental shift in the nature of the Daleks (or, alternatively, we're waiting for Dalek Sec to reveal his true colors and show that he's duped the Doctor -- but either way, drama), but the supreme nature of the unmodified Daleks takes over and we get a version of the original plan (make humans that are actually Daleks, even though they look externally human). Still, the idea was fascinating for a while, and it's neat that they decided to push ahead with it as long as they did. There's also an interesting subthread about the Doctor seeming to want to die (twice he basically orders the Daleks to kill him and braces for the shots that never come), as if he's finally decided that he's had enough and doesn't want to keep dealing with Daleks anymore.

The problem, however, lies in the sheer amount of technobabble that writer Helen Raynor (hey, our first female writer for the show since Rona Munro and Survival!) has to employ to get all her pieces in the right positions. The DNA splicing between humans and Daleks is bad enough (and what, exactly, makes Dalek DNA spiky?), but fine, maybe there's some special chemical/technique we just don't about that would make this work. But it's the moment where the Doctor is struck by a gamma radiation lightning bolt which passes his DNA down the cables to all the waiting would-be Daleks that makes you just throw your hands up in despair. Unknown techniques are one thing, but electricity transmitting DNA sequences? Those are two different things we know enough about to realize that they're completely incompatible. That's a piece of technobabble too far, and it's so blatant a move to get us to a deus ex machina ending that it's incredibly frustrating as a result.

That's a shame, because for large chunks this story works surprisingly well. We get some exploration of a new direction for the Daleks, we get some nice period stuff in New York, and a lot of the acting is top-notch. But the resolution does overshadow everything, weakening the final product. "Daleks in Manhattan" / "Evolution of the Daleks" is likely to be remembered more for that than any of the moves in its favor.

February 12: "Daleks in Manhattan"

So Martha's "one trip" has consisted of a trip to the past, a trip to the future... and now another trip to the past (albeit the more recent past) -- and our third extended visit to the United States (after The Gunfighters -- which is technically set in a territory, not a state -- and the TV Movie). I'm not counting the brief American interlude in The Chase -- but maybe I should: that interlude included Daleks at the top of the Empire State Building, and it turns out we get the same thing here, even if it's 35 years earlier. It seems the Daleks were involved in the Empire State Building's construction.

Of course, since we're talking the Empire State Building's construction, we're talking 1930 and therefore the Great Depression. That brings us to one of the many shanty towns constructed around the country nicknamed Hoovervilles, after then-President Hoover. It seems that people have been disappearing from New York's Hooverville in mysterious circumstances -- and all the while the construction of the Empire State Building is moving faster and faster.

But look! It's Andrew Garfield as Frank, one of the Hooverville residents, right before he became better known as a movie star! It's interesting to see him here in a minor role, interacting with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman as one of the people heading through the sewers. Actually, I'd forgotten that he survived to the cliffhanger -- I'd thought the pig slaves had got him for good.

Oh right, the pig slaves. It's not quite clear why they're around -- I think the idea is that the Daleks are practicing genetic manipulation on them before they do it to themselves, but that's never made clear. Still, it's not a bad design, and it's certainly memorable. Not quite as memorable as the cliffhanger, though, where the half-human/half-Dalek Sec steps out of his Dalek shell. Now that's an image.

I like "Daleks in Manhattan". There's a nice sense of building threat and mystery, and that cliffhanger definitely sends the story in a new direction. I also like that we get a Dalek story that doesn't have any particular "event" significance attached to it -- it's just the next Dalek story (so it's like The Chase in another way). We'll have to see how the second half is.

But let's be honest: "Daleks in Manhattan" is kind of a crap title, isn't it?

February 11: "Gridlock"

A trip to the past for Martha and now a trip to the future, as the Doctor takes her to New Earth and New...New York. Martha is thrilled but also slightly peeved: "That's the view we had last time," the Doctor says, activating a scanner. "This must be the lower levels, down in the base of the tower. Some sort of under-city." "When you say 'last time', was that you and Rose?" Martha asks. "... You're taking me to the same planets that you took her?" "What's wrong with that?" the Doctor asks. "Nothing. Just ever heard the word 'rebound'?" she adds under her breath.

That's the set-up, but the actual storyline is so much more wonderfully mad than that. Russell T Davies takes an annoyance from modern life, the traffic jam, and extrapolates a version that's worse by the nth degree. In some ways it's a bonkers idea -- people being stuck in gridlock for over twenty years -- but because everyone on the inside of it treats it so seriously, we end up treating it seriously as well.

But what's especially nice about "Gridlock" is how everything seems to logically follow from that point, and Davies takes care to ensure that most of the viewers' questions about how this situation operates are answered. Off-hand references to self-replicating fuel and muscle stimulants take care of some of it, and the businessman (the one who looks like Judge Dredd's Max Normal) describes how the ship's controls are locked off to the Doctor, which takes care of the big problem of "why don't people just drive illegally?" So that takes care of some of the potential questions, and we're free to marvel at the society that exists inside the Motorway.

It's an interesting society, with each car consisting of its own microenvironment, tailored to the tastes of the occupant(s) who never leave the car. But they can communicate with other cars and many seem to have established friendships that way -- and then they all join in singing the Methodist hymn "The Old Rugged Cross" for the Daily Contemplation. Even when they're in their own vehicles they're still together.

All that and more from Russell T Davies, who brings back not just the Face of Boe but makes the strange creatures lurking at the bottom of the Motorway the Macra. It's a bold move to bring back an alien species from a) 1967 and b) a completely missing story (I'm talking about The Macra Terror, if you need reminding), but it fits rather well into the context of "Gridlock" -- and if you don't know about The Macra Terror it doesn't matter, because it's not germane to the plot. It's just a nice little present for long-time fans (and it retcons the Doctor's actions in that earlier serial to no longer be genocide). We also get a really great action sequence, as the Doctor drops from car to car (which allows us to see a lot of different redressed versions of the same car, giving the story a sense of scope and individuality), and a nice triumphant ending, as the Motorway is opened and the cars leave. Plus we get a final appearance from the Face of Boe, who expends his last remaining energy to help save the people in the Motorway and dies -- but not before providing the Doctor with one last mystery: "Know this, Time Lord: you are not alone." Ooh, and a conversation between Martha and the Doctor, where the Doctor finally opens up to her (after some needling -- "You don't talk. You never say," she tells him) about what happened to his people, and his description of Gallifrey matches the one given by Susan in The Sensorites (another gift to fans).

It's fast, it's fun, it's clever, and it's thoughtful. It's also put together so well that it makes the whole thing look easy -- so easy, in fact, that if you're not paying attention you might not realize just how effortless "Gridlock" makes the show look. Because it definitely looks effortless, but that's because they've done an amazing job of putting the work in ahead of time. The result is that this is one of those overlooked gems -- but it's a gem nevertheless, and one of the best stories BBC Wales has given us yet.

February 10: "The Shakespeare Code"

And so this year's celebrity historical involves one William Shakespeare -- at a point before the Doctor ever met him it seems (in Shakespeare's personal timeline, that is -- see, among others, City of Death and The Mark of the Rani for suggestions that the Doctor has met Shakespeare before, albeit after 1599¹⁸⁴). It's also Martha's first trip in the TARDIS, and you can tell that writer Gareth Roberts (in his first official Doctor Who televised script -- he'd previously done "Attack of the Graske" and a number of the TARDISodes last series, but nothing that went out as part of the main series) is having a great time with it:

MARTHA: But are we safe? I mean, can we move around and stuff?
DOCTOR: Of course we can. Why do you ask?
MARTHA: It's like in the films. You step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race.
DOCTOR: Tell you what then, don't step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?
MARTHA: What if, I don't know, what if I kill my grandfather?
DOCTOR: Are you planning to?
MARTHA: No.
DOCTOR: Well, then.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Shakespeare Code)

Martha's worries about her race are also shrugged off: "Just walk about like you own the place," the Doctor tells her. "Works for me." Easy for him to say, he looks like a white man. The bit about there being black people in Elizabethan England is historically accurate, though. What's probably less accurate is how no one makes any sort of comment about Martha's race (beyond Shakespeare referring to her as a "Dark Lady", which is actually a reference to his sonnets) or about the strange clothing she's wearing (again, one passing comment from Shakespeare and that's it). But I suppose there's only so much you can fit in in 45 minutes and Roberts in interested in other things.

Those other things include witchcraft, with three witches (actually aliens, but it hardly matters) using their witchcraft to get Shakespeare to free their fellow witches, and Shakespeare himself, who's shown to be keenly intelligent (note how he's not fooled by the psychic paper when Martha is) and in love with life -- the way he yells at the audience in the beginning of the episode ("Shut your big fat mouths!") being a prime example. Dean Lennox Kelly does a fine job of presenting Shakespeare as a person, rather than just a caricature. Even if he's less bald than we might expect.

But the idea behind "The Shakespeare Code" is that words have power, and that thus Shakespeare has the power to bring the Carrionites back from where the Eternals (see Enlightenment and a brief mention in "Army of Ghosts") banished them at the beginning of time. It's a fun script, with lots of witch elements (including the now-standard three witches gathered around a cauldron) and some mysterious deaths, like that of the Master of the Revels, who appears to have drowned in the middle of a dry street. ("I've never seen a death like it," says the Doctor, who seems to have forgotten all about the death of Professor Kettering in The Mind of Evil -- and if Roberts is enough of a fanboy to slip one of David Whitaker's lines from The Crusade into the "text" for Love's Labour's Won ("The eye should have contentment where it rests"), you'd think he would have remembered this.) The way the Doctor and Martha keep making Shakespeare references is also cute, particularly since they do play with it a little (such as the reference to Henry V: "Wait a minute, that's one of mine").

But yes, witches and Shakespeare and genuine lost Shakespearean plays; it's a fun script, and even when it's showing us genuinely alien moments (such as the trip to Bethlem Hospital) it moves along. There are parts to quibble over (such as the Doctor being an oblivious bastard to Martha while they're sharing a bed: "No, there's something I'm missing, Martha. Something really close, staring me right in the face and I can't see it. Rose'd know." (Ass. Bet she wouldn't, anyway)), and I'm of two minds about the Harry Potter references: on the one hand I find it a bit crass to put them in the same category as Shakespeare, but it does get across the point of the popularity of Shakespeare's works in contemporary times and helps make the connection for younger audience members. (That said, the "Expelliarmus" bit is a bit too far.) It does a good job of keeping the viewer entertained, with a lot of energy and deftness on display, and it's not afraid to play with its subject a little, which makes him seem more human and alive, and thus more relatable. "The Shakespeare Code" gives us Doctor Who in confident control, and it's hard not to join in with the fun.

¹⁸⁴ Strictly speaking, they've screwed up the year, as Love's Labour's Won is mentioned in a book dated 1598. But never mind.