An Hour of Who a Day: February 14: "The Lazarus Experiment"

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.