Monday, May 12th, 2008...11:05 am
hot blonde + science fiction - coherent plot = lame episode of doctor who
That’s the complicated scientific formula i developed to explain why this weekend’s episode of Doctor Who, “The Doctor’s Daughter” was so bad.
***SPOILER ALERT***
I’m gonna leave out all the flowery language and just note what i didn’t like about this episode.
1) If this piece of rubbish human tech can actually genetically engineer a super hot Time Lord/Lady in less than 30 seconds then why hasn’t The Doctor done that to resurrect his race? I mean the genetic stock is fairly limited but surely something with the genius intellect of The Doctor can find away around that.
2) So she’s a Time Lord/Lady/Person and she gets shot and dies. Instead of maybe hanging around to see if she regenerated or maybe taking her into the TARDIS The Doctor just leaves her on this crappy planet with a bunch of people he’s only just met. Way to show that you care Doc.
3) This next one was so predictable i nearly turned the show off when it started happening. She of course regenerates and then proceeds to run off to have adventures across the stars just like dear old Dad. I’m keeping my eyes open for a new spin-off called “Jenny: The Doctor’s Daughter”. For some reason gets to hang onto her kick ass body though. Now if it was me i’d be pretty happy too because who knows what you could end up with after a regeneration but are we just going to slap 60 odd years of continuity out of the window?
4) This one was pointed out to me by my girlfriend while we watched. Why does Martha have to get separated from The Doctor? It might have been an attempt to show both sides of the conflict but if that was the case then perhaps it would have been better if the fish people with the green water breathers were able to speak, at all. Freema does an ok job of conveying what they’re saying but she’s no Han Solo talking to Chewy. This bit needed work.
5) Martha gets way too upset when fish man drowns. It is of course sad, but she’s totally broken up. You knew him for all of 20 minutes, that was not long enough to forge such a powerful bond. Also, his death was meaningless and useless. It seems that the only reason she fell into that black pond was so that he could save her and drown thereby showing us that he was willing to sacrifice himself for a human. All very nice and everything but totally pointless. We could have had that any number of ways. Fish man holds off trigger happy humans while Martha escapes would have been much better.
6) If i have to sit through another Doctor/Donna moment where they make it clear to all concerned that they’re not together i will be sick. WE GET IT! She’s isn’t into him in that way. She’s not a Martha or a Rose. She’s an old school companion just in it for the adventure. We do not need it driven home in every single episode.
7) The scene where Donna says she’s going to use her feminine wiles to subdue the guard. Cheesy but after Jenny did it earlier i was willing to go along with it. I thought maybe she’d go out there, be cute for a bit then sock him one in the face. But instead we get a whole, “Sorry Donna but you’re pig ugly and your wiles couldn’t stop a blind man who’d been in prison for 20 years” from The Doctor. I’m not the biggest fan of Catherine Tate but this was a cheap laugh not worthy of Doctor Who.
This episode was like Doctor Who in 2-D. There was zero depth here. Everyone, even the main characters that have had seasons to be fleshed out, felt like caricatures. Fingers crossed that next week will pick up the slack.
6 Comments
May 12th, 2008 at 11:07 am
[...] Such was my reaction to this weekend’s episode of Doctor Who that i posted a review of the episode. [...]
May 12th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Right off I’ll say it wasn’t the best episode, but I don’t think it was as bad as you make out.
1) When Donna says that Genny is a time lord the Doctor says that being a time lord is more then mere genetics but shared memories and experiences. So he could use the machine to bring back the Gallifreans but not the time lords. There were two groups of people living on Gallifry, Time lords and the Gallifreans. Gallifreans were people who chose/were not worthy of becoming Time lords and were forced to live in the waste lands outside of the citadel. Gallifreans did not have the powers of the time lords, including regeneration and ability to fly TARDISs (Invasion of Time)
2) The Doctor lost his real daughter centuries ago. It was the reason he left Gallifry was the death of his family (bar his granddaughter Susan). He stole the Tardis and left. (Tomb of the Cybermen). Fun note, the Master was sent to track the Doctor down and bring him back to Gallifry to stand trial. The Master, free from the leash of his superiors decided he would rather rule the galaxy The doctor did stand trial (War games) and was sentenced to exile on earth. The Tardis went with him, but was sabotaged so it wouldn’t fly (Tardis imprint themselves on their pilots creating a bond that can not be broken) The doctor was freed after the Three Doctors.
3)See 1) above. Also the Time lords were all about order. To watch but not to interfere. They were disciplined. Most Time Lords had control over their regeneration. Romanna, a former companion, went through several bodies before settling on one (Destiny of the Daleks) Even the Master, who had extended his regeneration cycle past the 12 the other time lords have and then could use it to steal bodies. The Doctor on the other hand rejected his Time Lord up bringing (See above) and become chaotic. The Doctor embraced the randomness of his regeneration and thus never knew what he would get (Christmas Special 1 - “Am I ginger?”). Genny is a soldier. Remarkably disciplined. This is also the only body she knew so it might be plausible that if she did regenerated she could end up with the same body. However since she wasn’t a Time Lord she should of be able to.
4)Okay I agree with you completely on this one.
5) I think the fact that his death was so pointless that Martha was upset. Also it should of been her that died - he saved her life and lost his own. Her being upset makes her a real, caring human being.Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t be upset if someone got smacked by a car in front of you, especially if they grabbed you and throw you out of the way first? If so then you are a scary and sick person.
6) First of all, I think his may be a homage to the third Doctor and Sarah Jane. They often stated that they weren’t a couple (though the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane never had to…) Second of all I still don’t think yoiu do get it. She is that into him. (I thinketh the lady protesteth a little too much) And it is because she’s not Rose or Martha. This isn’t a school girl crush, but rather something a little deeper.
7)Rather then being a case of “Sorry Donna but you’re pig ugly and your wiles couldn’t stop a blind man who’d been in prison for 20 years” may be it’s a case of “I don’t want to see you degrade youself and even pretend to throw youself at the guard. Plus it could be dangerous not every guard is going to be an idiot” I think it may be your own bias that led you to your conclusion.
I think there was depth here and some real characterisation. Plus I think this might be a setup for the season finale. However this was not the best episode and there were real problems.
I’ll leave you with this one to mull over:-
If the war has only been going for seven days and the children of the machine are all created as young adults thus believing the war has been going forever, why was the general in his fifties? It can’t be excelerated aging as the population created by the machine would all be dead in a week or two. Who was the general? Clone? The First officer? If so, how come he didn’t know where the ship or the terraforming matrix was?
May 12th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I refuse to believe that the creative team behind this show will have three companions in a row be smitten with The Doctor. Call it whatever kind of attraction you want, i will be physically ill if it turns out that Donna is in love with The Doctor.
If it is some sort of “i love him like a brother” thing then that doesn’t count.
I totally forgot about the short life span of the clones. It was weird. My understanding was that they were getting killed so quickly that their concept of time was skewed. I’d have an easier time accepting something like that if it had occurred over several years, not seven days.
I bow to your superior knowledge of Doctor Who mythology for most of my above points. I always assumed that regeneration was something random. Now that you mention that certain Time Lords have the ability to choose how they regenerate i’m reminded of a line from the Season Three episode Utopia where the Master (Derek Jacobi) regenerates. He says; “Well if The Doctor can be young and strong then so can I”. I’d never given it much thought but based on your information it would seems that The Master chose his new form (that of John Simm).
I’m not convinced that The Doctor shooting down Donna’s wiles was anything but a cheap joke. It didn’t sound like he was trying to protect her dignity. And even if he was, he didn’t seem to have much of a problem with his daughter using her wiles a few minutes before.
Well i am of course scary and sick but i still think they could have found a better way to make Fish Guy’s death more emotionally resonant. This might just have been something that came about for the sake of expedience so i’ll let it go.
The part where The Doctor fobs off Jenny saying that there’s more to a Time Lord just being about genetics is completely erased by the reaction that he has when she dies. He loses his people all over again in that moment. For a brief period he had another Gallifreyan with him and even though he didn’t want to admit it i’m sure that he felt the beginnings of hope for a new beginning for the Time Lords.
I’m pretty sure that covers everything for the moment.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Maybe not a new beginning for the Time Lords, but perhaps a new beginning for his long dead family.
Another point I reminded of by your mention of Utopia is the Master is killed in the tele movie that eventually led to the new series. I often wondered if the telemovie was part of continuity, as it claimed the Doctor was half human (a fact they no longer claim, and for the better). However the Master in the three part arc mentions that he had died and the Time Lords resurrected him to fight in the Time war.
The time lords did have the technology to pull Time lords past selves out of time and place them side by side (Three Doctors, Five Doctors) so in theory the Time Lord Army could consist of every time lord past, present and future and all 12 of their regenerations. This would explain why the time lords ceased to exist everywhere at once and why the Doctor couldn’t just go back in time and live in Gallifry’s past.
The point I am coming to is did the Doctor have to relive the death of his family all over again during the Time War? Now a third shot at a family is taken from him? I’d be a little upset.
I could accept the time span of the clones, they are created at a young age and killed in the war. Say two generations a day, over seven days, that’s 14 generations which is about 350 years. It was the general that threw me. He’s old…see my above points.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
[...] differs greatly from my review but it makes some excellent [...]
July 17th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
[...] May i posted about the episode of Doctor Who titled “The Doctor’s Daughter”. Among other [...]
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