Doctor Who Club of Australia

[Greg]

Part 2. After Helen Raynor's 2-parter last year, I was afraid we'd be treated to another pathetic 2nd half.

Luckily I was wrong.

Far better than part 1, this story takes the various plot threads from the first half and moves them sensible expansion to a satisfying conclusion, even if it was a little predictable. The delivery made up for the predictability to a large extent.

I compared the first half to The Invasion, but this time around I'm rather more reminded of The Seeds of Death, with the teleporting between Earth and a base in orbit, the main weapon being something that appears to be dangerous in one way but is actually more deadly in another, the creeping around through an alien base to foil their plans without getting caught, and even needing equipment from the reclusive genius's base to resolve everything - but luckily these elements were reordered and given far different trappings than in the classic Troughton story.

We were also treated to the Doctor acting very much like the Doctor. I really didn't buy the whole 'Donna reminds the Doctor that he cares about humans' schtick from The Fires of Pompeii, and was much happier with the Doctor telling the UNIT general (whose name escapes me!) off for forgetting his soldiers are individual human beings.

This episode was a battle episode, but with sufficient human moments in the mix that it never cesaed to be Doctor Who, which is always a risk when there's a lot of shooting to be done.

A few other points:

This story has confirmed to me that I prefer Martha to Donna. This didn't come as a surprise, really, but I find that Freema is a much better (and seeminly natural) actor than Catherine.

I want Gramps to get a ride in the TARDIS! He's my favourite of the various companions' family members we've seen over the four series. He does, however, get minus points for sealing the house up with putty and forgetting to block the gap under the doors. Silly old duffer!

And - geez, Rose, not sure why you are so incompetent at getting in touch with the Doctor. Hurry up, this already feels like a unduly drawn-out plot thread after 5 episodes, most of them without a glimpse of Rose...!

[KnottyEmily]

so many hints to upcoming episodes....and I'm not 100% sure, but didn't Captain Jack have the hand last?

Next week should be interesting, lots of explaining to do.

[uhumanite]

Greg ill disagree out Fires of Pompeii ect but other than that your spot on.

Love the Brig/Rutan mentions ( you old fans would have been a tad niffed without them)

I was very impressed and i must say Series 4 seems to be the best of the Tennant series so far.

Hazza for Gramps (I bet he just ran out of putty )

[dave]

I enjoyed this one, and was pleasantly surprised by it. The development of the threat was well done, as was the use of the clone of Martha. Calls lots of good past stories with dopplegangers in them back to mind. I thought the Sontarans tended to be killed too easily once the UNIT soldiers could use guns, though; I expected them to be more resistant to physical injury than that.
Not too many megalomaniacs are going to sacrifice themselves like that, I'd have thought. Wasn't particularly happy with the resolution to that part of the story, although I can see how it might've been necessary.
I find I quite like Donna as a companion, and think she works well with Martha. I'm curious to see how long Martha will be sticking around.

[KnottyEmily]

there was a reference to the 2005 series too, the Doctor said "are you my mummy?" to Colonel Mace (sp?) when he put on the gas mask.

[Amano07]

loved it, cant wait for next week!

was i the only one that noticed that Commander Skorr (after being shot by Colonel Mace)was aboard the Sontaran battle ship after he was killed?? I know they are all clones but really no other Sontaran took of his helmet at all so it was rather lazy.

This is the only the second time I have noticed sloppy editing.

The first time was in Doomsday when a Dalek shot down two Cybermen when they first meet. When they cut to the Cyberman falling down his head hits the ground inside the void ship room even though he was clearly outside and down the corridor when he was shot.

[Panecea]

Much better, more story, more history and more hints.

Rose is calling

The Doctor is in for a surprise next week.

[KnottyEmily]

can't be too much of a surprise, surely? Obviously he wasn't expecting to run into her, but they must have had some sort of relationship at some stage?

[meglos]

Loved it.

[KnottyEmily]

[Hiruma]

Great Episode, as for the not defeating the Sontarans though in Battle, the Rutans have done a good job of it, and I have never heard of them being a Warrior only race. I thought the end was a little cliched though, I could see Rattigan stepping up to the plate to save the day before the Doctor had even left.

Great Episode though

Very Interesting about next weeks episode

[FredDag]

OKay okay, I eat my words. Last week I thought the story was gonna be crap, but it's not it's fantastic!!! I loved this episode, thanks Helen for Giving us a great story. I'm sure if I pulled it apart and prodded and poked I'd find problems, but I'm just gonna enjoy this story as it is. I'm still loving Donna a heap. I'm still saying, pity she's only doing one season. Next episode looks like it's gonna freak me out.

[Amano07]

[Tegan]

With one minor quibble, an almost perfect second part. The way Donna's mum took control and smashed the windscreen was blindingly obvious, but also so well done. It made everyone else look just a little foolish.

The reference to 2005's Empty Child was nice. The show has got to the stage where they can refer back to old episodes from the new show but not look forced.

Donna is settling in really well, and I am so glad they toned down her character. I love Bernard Cribbins as Grandpa.

The clone Martha worked well and gave Freema a chance to act. Sadly I'm not yet convinced. One thing that it does though is shoot down my idea that the Rose from ep 1 was some sort of clone. Surely they couldn't use that idea twice in one year.

And at last, at long last, a proper unexpected cliff-hanger at the end of an episode that doesn't link part one to part two. Maybe the stories can start to link together without necessarily being a story arc.

The quibble? Surely British (or rather UNIT) officers wouldn't allow themselves to kiss in public. Or at least not officers of the opposite sex.

[Sulp Niar]

Bah, I feel guilty in saying this because a lot of people obviously enjoyed it, but... nope, did nothing for me.

Hey, I enjoyed "Sontar-HA" (in its many uses). In fact, come to think of it, I can safely say that I actually enjoyed the story all round. It was fun. But it was also complete unplug-your-brains entertainment save for the pretty-good dialogue, and that annoys me. It annoys me because we've hit a point where 'Planet of the Ood', or next week's 'The Doctor's Daughter' - two episodes that at least offered/offer something fresh - are relegated to one-part stories, whilst yer-standard-invasion-of-Earth is two. Just... why? I'm not denying that a lot of hype revolves around 'The Doctor's Daughter' (a life-changing experience for the Doc, maintains Russell), but then (I could be wrong) I've a suspicion that, like last year's 'Gridlock', the flagged up big moment ("The Doctor has a daughter!"/"The Face of Boe reveals his secret!" respectively) won't truly be the most important thing to the episode.

So. This was the story that got the Radio Times cover. It promised the return of the Sontarans, UNIT, Martha, Donna's family... aaaaand that's basically what we got. Guess what? Any old fan could write that. I'm not jumping on fan fiction writers here mind you (god, we wouldn't have progressed from the 90s onwards without 'em!), I'm just pointing out that when the series is doing something that a fan could cook up in ten minutes, then that's a bit of a snag.

To be fair on Raynor, I doubt many fan fiction writers could write the scripts with such pretty-good dialogue, and yet... that's still not a justification for what we got. It could be argued that '42' is still pleasingly Doctor Who in the way that it mixes pop music (trivia) with Sunshine, and yet... it's irrelevant to the episode, completely. It's trying hard to be different by adding something on to cliche, instead of rewriting the cliche from the ground up and fruitful eccentricities springing henceforth. You've only got to note that 'The Sound of Drums' mixed pop music with what is technically an alien invasion plot, but since the episodes were mounted around the characterisation of how insane the Master is, it meant that the structure was immediately different. The Toclafane were the means to an end, rather than the whole threat in the first place. That's why that story didn't feel like we'd seen it done in the last two series finales.

Maybe that's the problem? Maybe it's that, well, it's the Sontarans. Don't get me wrong, I love the Sontarans, but... the Master is greedy and insane and vengeful. Yet those three words alone can be interpreted in different ways by many different writers; all of the Masters have been like that, yet look how different each one is. The Sontarans here are faithful to what the Sontarans are, in the sense that they're as war-loving and arrogant and treacherous as they were in the 70s, as well as pointing out their intrinsic stupid jockiness as they were in the 80s. So that was done well. But...

...well, I asked a friend who has no knowledge of the classic series what he thought of the episode. He actually really liked it (so he's not as sick of aliens-invading plots as I am, obviously), yet when I asked what he thought of the Sontarans, he said that they just seemed to be typical "warry aliens" to him (and that UNIT was just some "random military organisation"). Haha, I'm sort of wondering what he liked about it then, but the point remains that I don't think we old fans are seeing much new, and at the same time I don't even think new fans are seeing much new either.

'Course, I could be totally wrong. I personally won't understand it, but even for some old fans seeing things as they already were is enjoyable and commendable. Seeing as I love Doctor Who as being the ultimate changing series with an endlessly imaginative core idea (he can go anywhere in time and space!), this is the kind of story that just passes me by. It's enjoyable, but I doubt I'll ever rewatch it again. Much like '42'! (Which I haven't touched at all since buying the Series 3 Boxset, not even for the commentary)

So what else was there in this ep? Ooh, the thing that makes Doctor Who immediately more meaningful than most other sci-fi shows at the moment; emotional scenes. Or rather, genuine emotion, rather than ham-fisted, stuck-on moments of "character development", and - oh no, hang on, I'm thinking of Series One of DW. Sorry, in actual fact, I didn't even enjoy the big character moments in 'TSS/TPS'. Were we really supposed to be sad about the clone's death? Were we really supposed to care if Martha thinks "I belong here", when she's already said that in a brilliant scene at the end of Series 3? Why are we reiterating this again? Why are we being told that the Doctor's wonderful again? We know he's wonderful; 'Planet of the Ood' managed to remind us of that without pointing it out so irritatingly. Oh yes, there was an end scene where the Ood praised him hugely, but that came at the end after he'd won. Why are we being told by Donna, at the start of 'TSP', that the Doctor is going to brilliantly win? To show she has faith in him? They could have just done that with the "he rings her up and guides her" scene. And more to the point, surely telling us he's wonderful and never loses sort of points out the fact that the episode will end with him winning?

Man, and to pour salt into the wound, unlike what I predicted, there doesn't seem to be any fallout in this at all. We get news reports - again - and the Valiant - again - and the sky boiling over with flame (okay, that one's not been done ), and yet I didn't see any ramfications from it. Oh wait, some kids got to go cycling. Whoop-dee-doo. We've had the Doctor pointing out that Earth is getting noticed and that the human race should be way back in 'The Christmas Invasion', so why hasn't it happened yet? I'd seriously believed that RTD was going somewhere with the death of the President, but so far, Speckled Jim seems to be right; it's had no point or purpose whatsoever. Hey Russell, get this; the year on the Valiant may not have happened, but people still saw the Toclafane on TV. Their prime minister, who's now suddenly disappeared, told them that. Are we truly meant to believe that all of these things have no impact on the public?

And by the way, I didn't even really feel that the world was at stake in this story anyway. Furthermore, I've no idea why this was even set in London; 'Doomsday' had to be due to the involvement of Torchwood, 'The Sound of Drums' was because of the political overhaul making it easier for the Master to ingratiate himself (and he probably knew of the Doctor's attachment to Britain and wanted to capitalise on that). In this story, we're treated to a global military force, and yet we're still stuck in London. For no reason. Whatsoever.

Oh, and it should be pointed out that yes, if they do go the route of having the aliens far more noticed by the public of the modern day, then that'll mean some huge ramifications that'll no doubt stretch the budget massively. Okay, so here's an amazingly original idea; don't set it in the modern day. Don't even set it on Earth, for that matter.

...I should stop ranting.

Basically, as it stands, I enjoyed this purely because, as a DW fan, I was able to pay attention to the dialogue and notice the nice little touches and details it provided. But I didn't enjoy it, and furthermore, I wouldn't at all show this to someone I was trying to get into the series. It's not an indication of what Doctor Who can do at all, it's an indication of what any old show can do. And that's just not enough, I think.

[Speckled Jim]

I thought this was pretty good; a definite improvement on TSS, which didn't seem to promise much initially. But I did enjoy the concept of the Sontarans looking for a nice fat hatchery with which to shore up their 50,000-year war, and I seem to be one of the few who actually thought Rattigan was a great character, and the young actor who played him injected just the right amount of ham and nastiness - he was a kind of Gen Y Blofeld. Kinda did see that self-sacrifice coming at the end, but hey, it's not like that sort of scene has never happened in Who before. And it did leave the Doc in a rather saucy situation there when he was zapped back in the teleport; Martha on one shoulder (grrrr...) and Donna on t'other (erm .... grrr?).
A small downer was the Sontarans themselves - I thought they were actually rather more human than previous incarnations, both in the way they moved and spoke - and the dialogue began to grate quickly, particularly the Young Warrior's Guidebook to Battle dialogue ("The honour of death!", "You must always face your enemy!", "It's a fair cop, guv!" or whatever else they spouted).
So overall I was fairly happy with the end result here. Series 4 so far has been up and down - but this was one of the "up" efforts.
Having read Sulp Niar's rather eloquent diatribe, however, I have to pipe up on one or two pertinent points raised....

[Sulp Niar]

Thanks for the replies!

Actually, thinking about it, Rattigan was probably my favourite thing about the story, haha. I was indifferent to the self-sacrifice, but yeah, I thought he was a great character.

[PS: I really do love how we can all disagree on this forum... in a way that really is just discussion/debate and not flaming/trolling or whatever. It makes this place really welcoming and fun, actually.]