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.

The Doctor is possessed by the sun creature. ("42") ©BBC

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.

Professor Lazarus changes into a monster. ("The Lazarus
Experiment") ©BBC

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.

The Doctor talks to Dalek Sec. ("Evolution of the Daleks") ©BBC

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.

The Daleks select people for processing. ("Daleks in Manhattan")
©BBC

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.

The Doctor enters the Motorway. ("Gridlock") ©BBC

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.

William Shakespeare on the Globe stage after a performance of
Love's Labour's Lost. ("The Shakespeare Code") ©BBC

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.